Speaking following Alex Salmond's address to an SNP rally today, Iain Gray said:

"The Labour Government is taking real action to help families and help the economy. While Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have put £2 billion into the hands of Scottish families, are helping people in difficulties save their homes, and are investing millions in schools, hospitals and transport, the SNP government are doing absolutely nothing."

Scottish Labour's Finance spokesperson, Andy Kerr, accused Alex Salmond of creating a smokescreen for his own inadequacies. Mr Kerr said:

"Cuts are happening now under the SNP and this is an attempt by Alex Salmond to cover his tracks for his government's lack of funding for frontline services. The reality is that the SNP make swingeing cuts and pretend they are not.

"Alex Salmond's claim that £1bn is being withheld from Scotland has been widely discredited.

"His claims on oil are laughable in week when a barrel of oil fell to 44 dollars. Their own statistics show a separate Scotland would be in deficit by billions of pounds. The SNP may want to gamble our entire economy on a commodity that is volatile in price and diminishing in quantity, but the rest of Scotland doesn't."

A spokesperson for Scottish Labour added:

"This is cynical SNP spin to mask their swingeing cuts, at a time when the Government is giving Alex Salmond twice the money Donald Dewar had.

"The speech was desperate stuff from Salmond, who is acting like a busted flush trying to stave off the anger of his hardline separatists.

"This is not money being taken from Scotland: it is going straight back into the pockets of Scots in the form of tax cuts. 

"Mr Salmond's bogus bluster cannot hide the inescapable truth that Labour has spent over £37 billion pounds to save Scotland's banks from total collapse.

"The SNP and Tories are the do-nothing parties of Scotland, opposing the funding for the fiscal stimulus and believing the recession should run its course. That failure of leadership may well cost Scotland dear." 

6 December