Gray: SNP cutting more public-sector jobs than Chancellor

THE SNP government was accused yesterday of going ahead with plans to “cut more public sector jobs” than the Tory Chancellor, George Osborne.

Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray made the claim during a bad-tempered clash at First Minister’s Questions. He also said police numbers had fallen in seven of Scotland’s eight forces and the government had cut almost 4,000 teachers from schools, with 700 positions gone in the past year alone.

Mr Gray claimed that Nicola Sturgeon, the health secretary who stood in for Alex Salmond yesterday, was the “worst offender” for public-sector job cuts, saying there had been “4,500 NHS staff cut since 2009, and in the last year alone 1,569 nurses and midwives cut by her from our NHS”.

However, Ms Sturgeon dismissed the Labour leader’s claims as “a load of utter nonsense”.

Ms Sturgeon said: “This government will stand up for our public-sector workers. We will stand up for our public sector, and that’s why we won such an overwhelming victory in May. There is one part of the UK, of course, where Labour is in government: it’s in Wales. The health service budget is being cut by 8.1 per cent in real terms.

“That’s what Labour does when it is responsible for the National Health Service,” she said. “I’ll take no lessons from Labour.”

Ms Sturgeon also insisted there were more qualified nurses are in Scotland today than 2006, and more nurses and midwives were in the NHS today than in nine out of the ten years when Labour were in power.

But Mr Gray claimed that the “reality” under the SNP was “teachers on the scrapheap, police in the back office and nurses on the plane to jobs abroad”.

He said: “They’ve cut more public-sector jobs than George Osborne. Twenty-five years ago I was a teacher under Margaret Thatcher and we never ever saw cuts like the ones imposed by Mr Russell as education secretary.”