Scottish Labour won't vote against SNP government's budget, Anas Sarwar says

Severin Carrell

The Scottish budget will pass through Holyrood comfortably after Anas Sarwar said Labour would either abstain or vote for it, despite John Swinney’s theatrical warnings about its precarious status on Monday.

Swinney annoyed his allies in the Scottish Greens and irritated Labour by claiming yesterday the budget hung in the balance because his minority government had no guarantees other parties would support it. The SNP has 62 MSPs in Holyrood, three short of a majority.

The Scottish Greens, who believe they were in “sincere” talks with Swinney’s ministers about backing the budget, said his rhetoric risked fuelling cynicism about politics by inventing a crisis; Sarwar accused him of “shadow boxing”.

Sarwar told BBC Radio Scotland on Tuesday morning Scottish Labour, which has seen its support in the polls plunge since November, would not obstruct the budget and might even support it:

We, at this current stage, will abstain from this budget, because this budget is going to pass anyway. It has the votes of another political party, at least one of the opposition political parties, so we are not going to vote against this budget.

Labour is in a delicate position: the budget uses several billion pounds of extra spending provided by the UK Labour government, and will reverse the chancellor’s cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners in Scotland – a policy Sarwar supports.

He told Good Morning Scotland Labour might even vote for it if Swinney enacts his pledge to scrap the two-child payment cap this year rather than next year – another measure which goes against UK Labour policy.

If they actually put the ending of the two-child benefit cap into this budget and lift it on the first of April, we will vote for the budget.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is doing a phone-in on LBC. He has just said that, if the government does not hold a new national inquiry into sexual abuse and rape by gangs, his party will organise its own version. He said:

If [the government] won’t do it, we at Reform will do it. I will have no difficulty in raising the money to do this whatsoever. We’ll appoint independent ex-judges and experts.

Farage said that he would press ahead with this plan within the next few weeks, if the government continued to refuse to set up its own inquiry.

When Nick Ferrari, the presenter, put it to him that a party-led inquiry would not have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence, Farage replied:

I think this would garner such massive public support that anybody asked to appear that didn’t appear would look terrible.

Farage also said he was encouraged by the Times coming out in favour of a new inquiry in an editorial today. The Times, which has published much investigative reporting on this topic, said:

Grooming gangs were only one element of Professor Jay’s inquiry — Rotherham garners a sole mention in her 468-page report and the gangs in Telford are not referenced. A new national inquiry is needed to explore where and how these gangs operated.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is basking in praise from liberal, progressive Britain today for the way he hit back at calls for a new inquiry into child sexual abuse scandals, and the way they are being driven by inflammatory and false claims by Elon Musk and other rightwingers on X. But Tory Britain has yet to be persuaded, and the rightwing papers are promoting the Conservative party’s (very dubious) claim that Starmer was smearing anyone opposed to child rape as far-right.

This morning Prof Alexis Jay stepped into this argument. As the main chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), the eight-year, all-encompassing inquiry into child sexual abuse in Britain, she has as much authority on this subject as anyone. Today she clearly came out against calls from Musk, Reform UK, the Tories and others for a new national inquiry focusing specifically on rape or grooming gangs.

When it was put to her on the Today programme that Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, told MPs last night that the scale of sexual abuse in Bradford could “dwarf” what happened in Rotherham, and that this showed why a new inquiry might be useful, she replied:

No, I don’t agree with that, in the sense of requiring further and more detailed national inquiries into child sexual exploitation. We have learned quite a lot from those reviews that have already been undertaken.

Jay said she did not believe that there are many areas where officials are still trying to cover up sexual abuse allegations. It might be happening in some places, she said. “But in general terms we believe that people are well intentioned in their local efforts to address any known problems about child sexual exploitation,” she said.

Asked if she thought a new national inquiry would be counter-productive, she replied:

I think that the time has passed for more inquiries. We’ve had enough of inquiries, consultations and discussions, and especially for those victims and survivors who’ve had the courage to come forward …

They clearly want action, and we have set out what action is required, and people should just get on with it, locally and nationally.

Asked if a new inquiry would hinder the implementation of the recommendations from the final IICSA report, which came out in 2022, she replied: “It would certainly cause delays.”

Asked if she thought people calling for a new inquiry were politicising the issue, she replied:

I would not attribute that to everyone, but I’ve certainly been very unhappy about the politicisation of child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse in the way that many people, sometimes in a very uninformed way, have waded into the argument.

This sounded like a clear reference to Musk. But, asked if she thought “billionaires in America” knew what was happening in places like Oldham, Jay said she did not want to talk about individuals.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a phone-in on LBC.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

9.30am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, holds a press conference at the Senedd in Cardiff.

10am: Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive at the Electoral Commission, and colleagues give evidence to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee about the 2024 election.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

2.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, gives evidene to the Commons housing committee.

2.30pm: Executives from McDonald’s, Tesco and the British Retail Consortium give evidence to the Commons business committee about the employment rights bill.

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