Shona Robison: UK Government 'balancing books on backs of disabled people'

The UK Government has chosen to “balance the books on the backs of disabled people”, Scottish finance secretary Shona Robison has said.

In a speech on the impact of the chancellor’s spring statement, Robison said the outlook for public services will be “very, very challenging indeed”.

She told MSPs: “The Labour UK Government's planned welfare reforms have caused a great deal of alarm, particularly as sick and disabled people will bear the brunt of the cost savings.”

She went on: “The cuts announced this week appear to be driven by a desire to save money and to balance the books on the backs of disabled people.”

The UK Government has announced welfare reforms, cuts to the civil service and an increase in defence spending. Health-related Universal Credit payments will reduce for new claimants and the criteria for Personal Independence Payments will be tightened. The Office for Budget Responsibility has downgraded predicted growth for this year, but upgraded its estimate for the next four years.

In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, Robison said the changes “will have a direct impact on Scotland's planned budget in the coming years”, with initial indications that adjustments to the block grant for social security benefits mean £408m less will be provided. She went on: “We will absolutely strain every sinew to protect disabled people from this deplorable action from the Labour UK Government. But let me also be clear how difficult that will be given the scale of this.

“Equally, we will continue to tackle child poverty, a job made even harder by UK Government decisions, and we will do this in the face of Labour's austerity on welfare. As a parliament, we need to start to plan and reckon with the impact that those cuts from Labour will have on the sustainability of public finances. As such, I will update parliament on how we are engaging with the UK Government on its spending review, which will report on 11 June.”

Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser accused Robison of using the statement like a party-political broadcast and his colleague Craig Hoy said both Labour and the SNP were hurting household incomes, stating: “In the 1970s Labour squeezed the rich until the pips squeaked. Fifty years on, Labour and the SNP are doing the same thing to lower and middle income Scots.”

Calling on Scottish ministers to enact welfare changes, Hoy said: “Fixing Scotland's broken benefits system isn't just desirable now, it is essential, and this is something the Scottish Government doesn't seem to recognise.

“The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the Scottish Government will find it, and I quote, almost impossible to avoid cuts to other services if they choose not to follow the UK's welfare reforms, because in four years' time, the Scottish Government will be spending £2 billion more on benefits than it receives through the block grant. So the choice facing ministers is crystal clear. They can reform benefits, or they will be forced into cutting front line services and increasing tax.”

Labour finance spokesman Michael Marra said UK ministers were acting to restore stability after taking over from the previous Conservative administration.

Commenting on Robison’s speech, he said it was “replete with both spending demands and revenue raising rejections”, and that “ever-more borrowing is not available, but nor is it affordable”.

Marra said: “The chancellor's decision to invest for the long-term is designed to not just to secure our economy, but our public services for the long-term. To put it bluntly, she is currently engaged in a rescue mission for UK public services, given the inheritance she received just nine months ago.

“Rachel Reeves inherited an economy where there'd been no growth for 14 years, which had an in-year fiscal black hole, where the national reserve had been spent three times over in the first quarter and public services were in a state of collapse in need of immediate investment, and that is the context in which difficult decisions have been made. We cannot return to a situation of soaring interest rates like the Tories inflicted on us.”