TV debate sees Sturgeon name SNP price for supporting Labour

Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that, as part of a deal to keep Labour in power in Westminster, the Scottish National Party (SNP) will push for Scotland to have full control of all of its taxation and spending. "I would like it as quickly as the other parties would give it," she told Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy during testy exchanges in a debate in Aberdeen. "I would vote for it. Would you?"

The SNP’s plans for so-called full fiscal autonomy are strongly questioned by critics, who argue that the halving of oil prices would leave Scotland with an immediate £6 billion (€8.27 billion) hole in its budget.

On Tuesday, the first minister was met with groans during an Edinburgh TV debate, when she indicated that a pledge to hold a second referendum would be included in the SNP’s manifesto for next year’s Holyrood elections.

Backtrack

Last night, however, she backtracked, saying “something has to change” before it would be included, such as the Conservatives getting set to hold a European Union membership referendum that could take Scotland unwillingly out of the EU. Sturgeon’s remarks came during a debate hosted by BBC Scotland in Aberdeen of Scottish political leaders. These included

Ruth Davidson

of the Scottish Conservatives, Patrick Harvie of the Green Party, and Ukip Scottish MEP David Coburn.

Seizing on the confusion Sturgeon has created about whether she will promise a new referendum, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie told her: “You are not thinking about breaking a promise, because I would advise against it.”

Uncomfortable on occasions in the teeth of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy’s attacks, Sturgeon said that she accepted last year’s referendum result but insisted that Scotland has to take responsibility for its own affairs.

“If you listened to these other parties, then you get the impression that Westminster is some great protection for Scotland’s public finances,” she said, arguing that Scotland’s public spending has been cut by £12 billion.

This was about Scotland taking care of its own resources, she added, rather than leaving itself at the mercy of Westminster.

The Scottish Labour leader rejected Sturgeon’s demands for full Scottish tax and spending powers, saying that Scotland would cut itself off from UK-wide sources of tax and lose billions in existing treasury funding.

“I don’t think that that makes sense,” he said, adding that “just one-third of 1 per cent” of the £2 billion to be raised from a Labour-imposed tax on mansions worth more than £2 million would be raised in Scotland.

Full powers

Opinion polls in Scotland indicate wide support for full tax-and-spend powers, though, equally, the poll also shows that Scots want benefits to be at the same rate as elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Murphy, who is striking a strongly left-of-centre tone in the campaign to lure back drifting Labour voters, said he wanted pensioners in Kirkcaldy, in Fife, to get the same pension as an OAP in Wales.

Saying that she would feel “a sense of betrayal” if the SNP bids to hold another independence referendum, the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, said Scots had been told that it was “a once-in-a-generation” vote.

Davidson said she had challenged the SNP during the referendum on its belief that oil prices would stay at the level they were – double today’s figures – but “she told me that I was doing Scotland down”.