General Election: Gordon Brown accuses SNP of 'exploiting poverty' in order to blame Westminster and push independence

The former Labour prime minister said the SNP want voters to think that Westminster was the source of their problems

The SNP are “exploiting poverty” in Scotland so they can blame the Westminster government and pursue their ultimate goal of independence, Gordon Brown has claimed.

The former Labour prime minister told an audience in his home town of Kirkcaldy that the SNP had purposefully not helped the poorest people in Scotland because they wanted voters to think that Westminster was the source of the problems.

Mr Brown said the strategy explained why the SNP had not acted on issues such as the bedroom tax and the rise of food banks, adding that Alex Salmond “must share the blame” for failing to address poverty while he was First Minister.

“Why do the SNP not act when they have powers in Scotland? When he refused to use the powers available to him to ameliorate the bedroom tax, [SNP Finance Secretary] John Swinney gave the game away saying: ‘I have no intention of letting the Westminster Government off the hook’,” he said.

---

Are you undecided about who to vote for on 7 May? Are you confused about what the parties stand for and what they are offering? Take this interactive quiz to help you decide who to vote for...

Click here to launch

---

“This explains the whole SNP approach. They don’t want to act because they want to prove Westminster is to blame for refusing to act. But when they say they won’t let Westminster off the hook they leave thousands of poor Scots on the hook. It suggests their aim is not ending poverty but exploiting poverty, their priority not to act in pursuit of social justice but to act in pursuit of independence.”

Mr Brown announced that if Labour was elected, it would immediately give 167 Scottish food banks a share of a £1 million emergency fund. It would also hand people loans so they could avoid payday lenders; help them with their energy bills and pay for cookers so their children could eat hot food; and give them bus fares to reach food banks.

The intervention by Mr Brown, who is not standing as an MP at the election, came 24 hours after he accused David Cameron of “whipping up English nationalism” in an attempt to win the general election for the Conservatives. Labour, who are facing a wipeout in Scotland at the hands of the SNP, will hope his words still carry weight with voters.

Mr Brown told the audience at Kirkcaldy’s Old Kirk that the key difference between Labour and the SNP was: “They wake up in the morning thinking of how to make Scotland independent. We wake up in the morning thinking of how to advance social justice.”

The fact that Scotland has more people relying on food banks than London despite the capital having twice its population was “one of the most damning statistics”, he said, before questioning why the SNP had not acted on the issue before the election.

“With the powers they have, they could have acted to have mitigated the distress and alleviated the deprivation,” he said. “But just like on the bedroom tax they have delayed doing what is urgent. And can we now afford days and weeks of constitutional negotiations when people need relief urgently?”