SNP Finance Secretary Kate Forbes has accused Gordon Brown of “blatant mendacity” over his criticisms of her cost-of-living response.
She blasted the former Labour Prime Minister for “lumping in” the Scottish Government with Tory administrations responsible for austerity.
In an article for the Record this week, Brown accused both governments of “snubbing the poor” when responding to squeezed living standards.
One of the Scottish Government’s policies is a £150 rebate for households living in bands A-D properties.
Brown dismissed the initiative as a “carbon copy” of Tory plans from Chancellor Rishi Suna k.
He wrote “For the poorest households, that £150 rebate - worth just £3 a week - cannot make the difference between managing through this crisis and the sheer desolation of not being able to turn up the heating enough.”
In a piece of her own, Forbes said Brown was guilty of a “shoddy mishmash of false equivalencies, political misdirection and blatant mendacity”.
She added: “Bluntly, Gordon Brown is the very last person anyone in Scotland can trust on these issues . He told people to vote No in 2014 promising respect for Scotland and equal partnership. Instead we have had continued Tory austerity, Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, and Brexit imposed on Scotland against our will – a Brexit which Brown's Labour party now supports.”
She added: "Gordon Brown knows how devolution works so his argument that the SNP isn’t ambitious enough is misleading. Scotland’s funding has been unpredictable, our Parliament’s powers curtailed and the social security net has been consistently reduced by Westminster."
Her full article can be read below.
