Opponents set to play hardball over Budget as Mackay seeks Holyrood majority

Opposition parties have warned the Scottish Government will have to make significant changes to its Budget before they will support it at Holyrood.

Finance Secretary Derek Mackay now faces a headache as he seeks to ensure the spending plans for 201819 are passed when MSPS vote on them next year, with the SNP running a minority administration.

The Tories will never support the Budget proposals for tax hikes for middle and higher earners.

The SNP relied on their fellow independence-supporting Greens to get their spending plans through last year.

But Greens local government spokesman Andy Wightman warned yesterday that the £153 million cut to council funding set out in Thursday’s Budget will have to be reversed.

He said local councils had been treated as “second cousins” for too long by the Scottish Government as he flagged that negotiations could look at the “flawed” small business bonus scheme.

“We want a real terms increase [in council budgets] and that would involve somewhere in the region of £150m,” Mr Wightman said.

Green demands resulted in an extra £160m of cash for councils from the Scottish Government last year, but the settlement was still down by £200m. The cuts to councils could also scupper any prospect of a deal with Labour on the Budget.

There are claims the £153m cut is on top of the £535m, which local government body Cosla said was needed to stand still.

“Labour cannot support a Budget that contains hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts to lifeline services, fails to give people a fair wage and continues the Tories’ failed austerity agenda,” a party spokesman said.

Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie is warning the Budget does not go far enough to meet the party’s demands in the key areas of education and mental health.

“We called on the Scottish Government to invest in people through a transformative investment in education and a step-change in mental health,” Mr Rennie said.

“But they have gone nowhere near far enough for us to support this Budget.

“Instead we have a set of announcements that pay lip service to the challenges that Scotland faces.

“We are always willing to be constructive partners, however, so we will now look at opportunities to amend this bill so that it delivers the investment in education, mental health and lifeline ferry services.”