A FURTHER war of words erupted between the Yes and No campaigns in the Scottish referendum debate yesterday, this time over pensions.

The Scottish independence referendum campaign entered its final throes this week as MSPs met at Holyrood for the last time before the poll next month.

SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon opened the final stage of campaigning with a message for pensioners, insisting that Labour must explain why it is “backing Tory plans to cut payments for pensioners across Scotland.”

“When he was the prime minister, Gordon Brown backed a much slower increase in the state pension age, but now the Labour party has joined the Tories in plans to increase the state pension age to 67 from 2026," she said.

“This decision is unfair to men and women across Scotland and will mean that Scottish pensioners continue to lose on average £10,000 compared to pensioners in the rest of the UK.

“The decision to follow the Tory lead and abolish savings credit is a direct hit on poorer pensioners who have saved for their retirement.”

She also criticised the decision not to increase pension credit in line with the triple-lock, describing it as “a blow to poorer pensioners.”

But a spokesman for the Better Together campaign said: “Despite Nicola Sturgeon’s bluster, the reality is that independence would put the hard-earned pensions of Scots at risk.

“The impartial experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have made clear that a separate Scotland would need to make extra cuts worth £6 billion to things like pensions in the first few years after independence. That’s a risk we don't have to take.”