THE Scottish government’s new financial strategy could lead to 10,000 public-sector workers being “tossed on the scrapheap,” the STUC warned today.

Presenting the Scottish government’s seventh medium-term financial strategy and first fiscal sustainability delivery plan, Finance Secretary Shona Robison warned that “funding gap” could open over the next five years without “similar actions” to those announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Outlining plans to make a £2.6 billion “cashable saving” by 2029-30, she told MSPs: “We will reform and reshape our public services using technology and new ways of working.

“By focusing on efficient public spending, modernising services and growing our economy and taking a strategic approach to tax, we can build a stronger, fairer Scotland.”

Slamming the cuts plan, STUC general secretary Roz Foyer said: “They may dress it up as efficiencies, but this strategy proposes scything cuts to Scotland’s public services.

“Over the next five years, more than 10,000 workers could be tossed on the scrapheap.

“At a time when ordinary people are crying out for help, our population is ageing, the climate crisis deepens and public services are starved of funding, this strategy should have been a turning point towards a fairer, more progressive taxation system.

“Instead, we got cuts to our public services presented to us as some form of salvation.

“You cannot cut the staff who support these services and expect them to improve. That means being honest with the public about tax.

“We know Scottish ministers face fiscal constraints, but we need vision and political courage to build a better Scotland.

“Unfortunately, today ministers have chosen to cut public services,rather than use their powers to help redistribute wealth, tackle inequality and invest in our collective future.”