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Labour won’t support SNP austerity budget

SCOTTISH LABOUR warned yesterday that it will not support the Scottish government’s budget if it includes plans to slash millions of pounds of funding from local government.

The party’s leader Kezia Dugdale has written to Finance Secretary Derek Mackay arguing that proposed cuts are “unnecessary” given the Scottish Parliament’s new powers of tax and spending.

In her letter she pledges to “table amendments to the SNP’s budget to stop, in full, the £327 million cuts to local services like schools and care of the elderly, and to invest in our economy.”

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The new Scottish Parliament looks set to continue a cycle of managerial tinkering while public services face the axe, writes STEPHEN LOW