SCOTLAND “never says thank you” for the money it is sent by the government at Westminster, one Tory MP has complained.
Conservative MP Vicky Ford – who very briefly served as a minister in Liz Truss’s disastrous government – whinged about what she saw as a lack of gratitude from Scotland during an appearance on the BBC’s Politics Live.
Ford’s intervention came as SNP MP Drew Hendry spoke on the show about the election of Stephen Flynn as his party’s new leader at Westminster.
Hendry had been asked about a perceived divide in the SNP, with the BBC host pointing to a reported disagreement between Flynn and Nicola Sturgeon’s policy on North Sea oil and gas.
The MP said the two SNP leaders were on the “same page in terms of the need for a just transition from oil and gas to renewables”, pointing to a £500 million fund from the Scottish Government set up for that purpose.
Hendry noted that the fund had not been matched by the Conservative government at Westminster, which riled Tory MP Ford.
“Are you going to say thank you for the £200,000 you got yesterday though, that Scotland got from the Shared Prosperity Fund?” she interjected.
“You never say thank you for the money you do get.”
Ford’s “£200,000” claim was presumably meant to reference the £212m from the UK Government – announced on Monday – that has been allocated to Scotland to replace the EU funding lost as a result of Brexit.
The UK Government claims this £212m is part of a larger fund which “matches and succeeds old EU funding”.
However, those European funds were worth a total of around £1.5bn each year. The Tories’ replacement is worth much less, at £2.6bn in total from 2022 to 2025, rising to £1.5bn a year only after that.
In response to Ford, Hendry asked if she planned to say thank you “for the £54bn”, a reference to the amount of money the Tory government hopes to raise through windfall taxes on oil and gas extractors, and a levy on low-carbon electricity generators.
The majority of the cash raised by these extra taxes is expected to come from firms operating in Scottish waters.
Fat chance of a thank you from the Tories for that.
