A MEMBER of the House of Lords has said that the UK Government should cut Scotland’s budget after suggesting it was “illegally spending money on reserved areas.”
In a column in The Mail on Sunday Lord George Foulkes, a former Labour Scotland Office minister, said the Scottish Government was spending money on reserved areas including “the cost of publications preparing for a second independence referendum which will not take place.”
Foulkes has spoken previously in the House of Lords calling on the UK Government to monitor the Scottish Government’s spending.
He also questioned the validity of the SNP’s mandate to hold a second independence referendum.
An SNP spokesperson said: “The irony will not be lost on anyone in Scotland that Lord Foulkes, who sits in the undemocratic House of Lords is denying the democratic mandate delivered by the people of Scotland for an independence referendum.”
In May, it was announced that the Scottish Government was allocating £20 million towards an independence referendum.
Foulkes’ column specifically suggested that the UK Government should cut the budget by “the amount spent wrongly” and suggested that it should consider using the courts as a means of stopping “illegal expenditure.”
He wrote: “I accept that none of these are easy options but if no action is taken Nicola Sturgeon will continue to thumb her nose at the UK Government and is likely to be emboldened to go even further.
“I know the UK Government is currently hesitant about taking action, worried a backlash against them might take place in Scotland.
“However, it is my strong belief and experience, not just from the echo chambers of Twitter but also from the reaction I get from people who know my view, in the street and elsewhere, that there is mounting anger at the way in which the Scottish Government is both acting illegally and allowing services in Scotland to decline inexorably.”
