Brown: Austerity until doomsday under SNP

AUSTERITY will be “here until doomsday” under the SNP and its proposals for independence, Gordon Brown has insisted.

The former prime minister accused the Nationalists and the UK Government of presiding over the worst decade of NHS growth since it was created 70 years ago, and argued spending would plummet even further after separation.

It comes as the country’s leading economic think tank said the SNP’S independence blueprint implied a decade of austerity and public-service cuts.

In its formal verdict on the party’s controversial Growth Commission report, the Institute for Fiscal Studies

(IFS) said it suggested public spending could be even lower than in the rest of the UK.

Addressing Labour supporters in Glasgow, Mr Brown said it was a “national disgrace” that, under the SNP, Scotland’s NHS growth rate was lower than down south.

The former chancellor also referenced the IFS’S judgment, adding: “You look now at the SNP’S proposals for independence. They will not be spending money on the health service this decade, they won’t be spending it the next decade, and they won’t be spending it the decade after.

“Austerity is here until doomsday if the SNP is all that is going to confront it.”

The formal “observation” from the IFS contradicts assurances by Nicola Sturgeon that the proposals would not mean more Tory-style austerity, and is likely to fuel divisions among Yes supporters.

The Tories urged Ms Sturgeon to admit her plan amounted to “austerity max”.

The 354-page commission report, which Ms Sturgeon ordered in 2016 and which was published by corporate lobbyist Andrew Wilson last month, has infuriated the Left of the movement.

It proposes a tight rein on public spending in the first decade of independence in order to halve Scotland’s deficit, shadowing UK corporation tax, and keeping the pound.

The IFS said it was “an important contribution to the debate” and “commendably” faced up to the challenging financial position in a newly independent Scotland.

Taking the commission’s proposal to save all North Sea oil revenue and keep public spending one per cent below assumed GDP growth of 1.5%, the IFS said the upshot would be growth in public spending held down to 0.5% a year.

This would “imply at least another decade of the sort of restraint on public spending that Scotland is currently experiencing”, the think tank argued, while Scotland’s ageing population meant there would likely be cuts “to many other public services”.

The IFS also directly challenged the report’s assertion that it was not proposing austerity. It said the SNP’S plans even “imply slightly slower real growth in spending than the UK Government is currently implementing”.

However, it said a new country would have no choice but to cut its deficit, to avoid ballooning debt and instability.

Speaking just weeks before the 70th anniversary of the NHS’S founding, Mr Brown said current projections showed the health service’s annual Uk-wide growth in the decade since 2010/11 is set to fall to 1.1%.

Scotland’s average growth is worse, he argued, at only 1% between 2010 and 2017.

He insisted the NHS needs a minimum of 5% every year to meet its needs.

Mr Brown, who was prime minister between 2007 and 2010, reiterated calls for an immediate Uk-wide 1p National Insurance rise to pump extra cash into the health service.