Iain Gray clashes with Alex Salmond over 'broken promise' on education

FIRST Minister Alex Salmond was today accused of trying to set a new world record for the "fastest broken promise ever".

Labour leader Iain Gray claimed that at the "very moment" that the First Minister was promising action to deal with illiteracy, Edinburgh City Council was cutting funding for the issue.

Mr Gray pressed Mr Salmond on the issue at First Minister's Questions in the Scottish Parliament.

He also attacked the First Minister after it emerged a meal-for-four hosted by Mr Salmond was sold for around 9,000 at an SNP fundraising event.

The Labour leader said: "Everyone knows there is no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it comes to Alex Salmond."

He told MSPs that three weeks ago Mr Salmond had agreed with him that "eradicating illiteracy should be a national priority in Scotland" and action on this would be delivered under the concordat deal with local councils.

But Mr Gray added: "Priorities need resources. At the very moment the First Minister was promising us the concordat was the answer to Scotland's literacy problems, just up the road Edinburgh's SNP council was planning to cut 6.5 per cent from the budget which funds their literacy programme. And that's on top of more than 30 per cent cuts they've already made in those literacy programmes.

"In Holyrood Alex Salmond supports literacy. But in Edinburgh the SNP cuts it."

And he asked: "Was the First Minister trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest broken promise ever?"

But Mr Salmond told Mr Gray that, under the SNP administration, the proportion of the Scottish budget going to local authorities was on the up.

The First Minister said the last budget set by the previous Labour/Liberal Democrat Executive had given 33.39 per cent of the available funds to councils.

However, he added that under the SNP this amount had "gone up year by year", stating this had gone from "33.39 per cent in the last year that Labour set, then 33.63 per cent, then 33.99 per cent and then 34.09 per cent".

He also hit out at the Labour Government at Westminster, saying: "The reality is that the Scottish budget, the Scottish Government and every local council in Scotland are struggling with the 800 million of cuts set on us by the Labour Party."