A LABOUR minister has accused a Scottish newspaper of having “made up” a claim that Keir Starmer would set aside a £150 million “war chest” to help tackle poverty in Scotland.
In a tense interview with Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, BBC Sunday Show host Martin Geissler challenged the Labour MP over the decision to axe winter energy payments for pensioners.
He raised a Daily Record story which ran during the election campaign which said that under a Labour government, the Scotland Office would be given a £150m war chest “to combat poverty”.
Murray (below) was quoted in the article as saying: “This funding will help create jobs across the country and unlock opportunities across Scotland, especially in deprived communities who have been let down by the Tories and the SNP for too long.”
But now he has claimed the story was a fabrication.
He said: “You’ve been given £150 million by the UK Government to fight poverty in Scotland, a specific war chest of £150m, that co-incidentally is how much this policy is going to cost in Scotland.
“I presume, feel free to tell me you are going to do this, I presume you are not going to use that whole £150m to offset all of that policy. But are you going to use some of that £150m to help the pensioners who are going to be pushed into poverty because of this?”
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Murray replied that the “key” priority for the Scotland Office was tackling poverty, but added: “I don’t have a £150m war chest, that was a front page newspaper article that everyone seems to have run with, it was a journalist that made up that figure, not me.”
He added: “I don’t have a £150m war chest, that was a front page headline from a journalist who made that figure up.”
Geissler (above) tried to change topic by asking about Labour’s previous criticisms of the SNP for implementing cuts in Holyrood but an agitated Murray interjected after the BBC host said: “So it doesn’t sound like you’re going to do anything as the Scotland Office to specifically offset this policy for people in Scotland.”
Murray then accused the BBC of making up the figure, which had originated in the Daily Record, saying: “Well, I can’t do anything with Martin with a figure you pluck out of the air that’s not true, so that’s the answer to that question.
"I’m not accepting that you’re just flippantly saying that I’m not going to do anything. I don’t have a £150m that you’ve made up”
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