Nicola Sturgeon has pledged “credible, deliverable and affordable plans” to protect poorer families from tax credit cuts as she criticised Labour’s “back-of-a-fag-packet” proposals to ensure no Scots lose out.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has already pledged if the Conservatives at Westminster reduce the payments, her party would use new powers coming to Holyrood to fully mitigate these.
The First Minister said today her government would act to counter the changes if they are pushed through by Chancellor George Osborne.
But she did not give any details on what form this would take or how it would be paid for.
Ms Sturgeon came under pressure from Labour on the issue of tax credits at First Minister’s Questions at the Scottish Parliament.
It comes after Ms Dugdale told the Scottish Labour Party conference that if she becomes First Minister after next year’s Scottish elections, she would reverse the cuts for households north of the border.
The Scottish Labour leader said this would be paid for using income tax cash from higher earners and by not cutting air passenger duty, as the SNP plans to do.
She told Ms Sturgeon: “Across the UK, Labour will fight the Tory government’s attempt to cut tax credits. We want George Osborne to scrap his plan altogether.
“But if he doesn’t, this Parliament must act to protect working families.”
The SNP leader told her: “Over these next three weeks we intend to keep up the pressure on George Osborne to drop his plans for tax credit cuts.
“Unlike Labour – who remember initially abstained in the House of Commons on this issue – the SNP have consistently opposed these cuts.”
She said if the cuts were not reversed in full “what we will do as a responsible government is bring forward credible, deliverable and affordable plans to protect low-income households, just as we did on the bedroom tax.
“I think that, frankly, is a far better plan and it is far fairer for people who are affected by these cuts than back-of-a-fag-packet proposals from a party that knows it has little chance of ever being in a position to implement them.”
She hit out at Labour, saying that “just when the pressure is building across the UK on George Osborne, they ease up on the Tories and attack the SNP instead”.
Ms Dugdale told the First Minister that Labour had introduced tax credits as she pledged the party would “do everything we can to protect them including using the powers of this Parliament.”
The Labour leader insisted: “No matter what George Osborne does at the autumn statement, Scottish Labour is committed to restoring the money lost through tax credits for working families.”
She pressed Ms Sturgeon on the issue the day after Social Justice Secretary Alex Neil told MSPs the Scottish Government will have the power to top up tax credits if they are cut by the UK – but said Holyrood ministers would not reveal their plans until they have been “properly costed”.
Ms Dugdale said the 6,000 families in the First Minister’s Glasgow Southside constituency who benefit from the payments “deserve a bit more than a vague assurance from the SNP that the government will act”.
She added: “This is the week the SNP’s constitutional games came unstuck, because after years of responding to every problem with complaints about the constitution, Alex Neil finally gave the game away. This was the week the SNP had to admit the new powers heading our way can transform Scotland.
“This is the week that the SNP had to confront the fact that difficult choices will have to be made, so will the First Minister now give up the politics of grievance, will she look to the future of what is possible, move on from the past and just get on with delivering a fairer Scotland?”
Ms Sturgeon said the SNP would “continue to oppose these cuts at source, unlike Labour who when it came to a vote in the House of Commons abstained”.
She added that if the reductions to tax credits go ahead, ministers “will bring forward a credible, workable, deliverable affordable plan to protect low-income households”.
The First Minister continued: “The detail of this, to families out there who are affected, really matters. And one of the details that matters most is how this policy would be paid for.”
Ms Dugdale has said some of the cash would come from not implementing the SNP’s planned cut in air passenger duty, but the First Minister said in an interview with Holyrood magazine the Labour leader had already pledged to spend that money on education.
“In the space of 24 hours Labour managed to spend the same sum of money twice over,” Ms Sturgeon said.
“That is basic incompetence and the people of Scotland frankly deserve better.
“We’ve known for some time that the public thinks Labour is unelectable, I think what we have found out this week is that Labour thinks Labour is unelectable. It’s less Keir Hardie, more Laurel and Hardy.”
Ms Sturgeon, who has urged voters in next May’s Holyrood elections to judge her on her record, added: “There’s one place and one place only where Labour can be judged on their actions and not on their words, and in Wales Labour don’t even mitigate the bedroom tax: that’s the reality of Labour in government.”
Ms Sturgeon said that latest amendments to the Scotland Bill – which will give MSPs new responsibilities over income tax and welfare – would improve the legislation in “some key areas” but, she added, it “still falls far, far short in other areas”.
She added: “SNP MPs will propose further amendments in the House of Commons next week including one to deliver real power over tax credits in their entirety.”
Conservative MSP Annabel Goldie said Ms Sturgeon and her government should “move on, stop caterwauling at Westminster and start telling us how her government will actually use these extensive new powers”.
The First Minister awarded Ms Goldie “ten out of ten for sheer brass neck” after the Tory peer voted to try to stop the House of Lords from blocking tax credit cuts.
“It will be a long time before I am prepared to take any lessons in this chamber from Baroness Goldie on the issue of tax credits,” she said.
Ms Sturgeon was challenged again on the subject by Labour’s Jackie Baillie.
She called for a “yes or no” answer on whether the First Minister “will help working families and restore every penny lost through tax credit cuts”.
Ms Sturgeon responded: “They (the families who will lose tax credits) deserve better than game-playing. They deserve real detailed, credible, deliverable, affordable plans, and that’s what they will get.”