SNP clashes with PM over St Andrew's Day

Published on Sunday 18 November 2007 00:52

A GROWING campaign for a Remembrance Day bank holiday has put the SNP on another collision course with Gordon Brown.

The idea clashes with the Scottish Government's desire to turn St Andrew's Day into an official day off, as it is unlikely that two extra bank holidays would be created in November.

Brown has called for a national day equivalent to the US's July 4 or Bastille Day in France, and has suggested the Monday after Remembrance Sunday as a day to celebrate Britishness.

His proposal appears to have huge popular support - by last night a petition on the Number 10 website calling for a national Remembrance holiday had attracted more than 47,000 supporters and was the third most popular.

However, the SNP Government in Holyrood is keen to establish St Andrew's Day, November 30, as a public holiday. This year, for the first time, workers can swap it with an existing public holiday in order to take the day off, at the discretion of their employer.

A new UK public holiday would normally be created through Royal Proclamation or statute at Westminster, but the Scottish Government can, as it did with its St Andrew's Day Bill, offer employers the chance to substitute a local holiday at another time of year for a day off on the Scottish saint's day.

Jim Panton, chief executive of Poppy Scotland, said he would welcome a national Remembrance Day holiday and suggested that people could be offered the choice of Remembrance or St Andrew's Day holidays.

Angus Robertson, the SNP's Westminster leader, said he did not think a Remembrance Day public holiday was needed and that veterans and serving personnel would be better recognised through other means, such as better care and rehabilitation services.

It was unfair to pit his support for St Andrew's Day as a public holiday against his opposition to a Remembrance Day, he said.