PHILIP Hammond told the SNP to be more grateful for Scotland’s share of cash from the Treasury coffers.
Delivering his Spring Statement to the Commons, in which he unveiled a handful of spending pledges, the Chancellor told MPs that “Scotland gets its share of the increased spending on capital and resource, but precious little thanks do we ever hear from those on the SNP Benches in exchange for it”.
Hammond was responding to comments by SNP depute leader in Westminster, Kirsty Blackman, in which she said Scotland’s resource block grant for 2019-20 was “almost £2 billion lower in real terms than in 2010-11”.
Blackman told the Tory this was a “direct consequence” of his “continued obsession with austerity”.
Earlier, Hammond had made a number of new spending commitments that will have some impact in Scotland, included a £65 million share of the £260m investment for a new Borderlands growth deal.
He also confirmed reports that Edinburgh University is to get £79m for a new “Archer 2” supercomputer, “providing researchers with a fivefold increase over the current computing capacity, paving the way for new discoveries in pharmaceuticals, climate science and aerospace”.
It will be five times faster than the current supercomputer generation and capable of carrying out 10 thousand trillion calculations per second.
There would also be reviews of the aggregates levy, which is now devolved to Scotland, reforms to how VAT is claimed back by government departments, and oil and gas decommissioning efforts.
Elsewhere he announced a new £100m top up for police forces in England to pay for overtime aimed at addressing the “epidemic” of knife crime – that should have Barnett consequentials for the Scottish Government. Hammond also announced plans to copy the Scottish Government’s period poverty campaign and make sanitary products available for free in secondary schools and colleges across England.
The Chancellor’s announcements were dismissed by John McDonnell.
In a hard-hitting speech, Labour’s shadow Chancellor said: “We have just witnessed a display by the Chancellor of this Government’s toxic mix of callous complacency over austerity and ... mishandling of Brexit.”
McDonnell told the Tory that “austerity was never a necessity it was always a political choice”,
He said history would hold Hammond responsible. “There are no alibis. He is implicated in every cut, every closure, every preventable death of someone waiting for hospital treatment or social care.”
Scottish Government Public Finance Minister Kate Forbes, said
she was disappointed by the statement.
She said: “Years of austerity and continued uncertainty at the hands of the UK Government is impacting on business investment in Scotland right now and causing unnecessary harm to some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.”
She added: “The plans he set out today will be a drop in the ocean compared to the harm that EU exit will cause, with business investment already falling and growth expected to slow.
The latest figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility predict that the UK economy will grow at at 1.2% this year, the slowest since the financial crisis of 2009.
That is a significant cut from the 1.6% predicted by the independent economic watchdog last October.
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