SCOTTISH Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s fingerprints are “all over the Budget here in Scotland,” Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has confessed at a bash for Labour Party activists and donors in Glasgow.

Sir Keir, who suspended some MPs last year for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, called on the party’s Holyrood candidates to “shout it from the rooftops” that Chancellor Rachel Reeves had announced in her Budget that the cap would end in April.

Pointing to Mr Sarwar, he told the party’s gala dinner: “What Anas has said to me over many weeks and months since we won the general election is that three things matter to him and to Scotland more than anything else.

“The first thing he said is the cost of living, people struggling to make ends meet. Anas’s fingerprints are all over the Budget here in Scotland.”

Referring to the decision to retain the windfall tax on oil and gas profits, an SNP spokesman commented: “Sarwar’s being thrown right in it by his boss.

“The truth’s out that he’s just as culpable for slashing tens of thousands of jobs in Scotland as Starmer and Reeves are.

“Voters won’t forget this.”