Swinney sets extra £130m to work on education and housing

Published on Wednesday 8 February 2012 00:00

FINANCE secretary John Swinney will attempt to take some of the sting out of Scotland’s austerity cutbacks today as he prepares to lay out additional spending of more than £130m in the majority SNP government’s first budget.

Mr Swinney is expected to plough fresh cash into further education colleges and social housing, following protests over swingeing cuts due to take place from April.

Talks with opposition parties, meanwhile, will continue this morning. Mr Swinney said last night he wanted to “build consensus”.

All the opposition parties are calling for extra funding for further education colleges.

The move comes after the SNP government announced last year than it would cut further education budgets by £74m by 2014-15.

The extra cash Mr Swinney has available today comes as a result of the UK government’s autumn statement last year, which has increased the Scottish Government’s coffers for next year by £130m.

Mr Swinney added last night: “The Budget Bill underpins our approach to boosting economic growth, creating jobs, investing in infrastructure and improving public services in Scotland, and I am determined we use every device possible to support the recovery.”

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Danielrober2

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 10:28 AM

All the housing built by councils, and governments both Conservative and Labour governments need replacing. Housing does not last forever it needs to be replaced regularly and this is the duty of government, to ensure that the state housing stock is regularly replaced. Cutting back on housing stock replacement not only keeps families in poor and often expensive housing, its keeps people unemployed as well. This one of the boring but utterly vital good governance jobs which must be done and it must be done now, not in 3 more years time.

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Family guy

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 08:00 AM

Where there is an extra pot of public money for housing, there will be an Ian MacMillan hoovering it up.

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