MILLIONS SPENT PUTTING SCOTS OUT OF WORK

5th February 2013

£ 24,371,090.50 million spent in the Highlands & Islands region alone on redundancy.
- 4,473 people pushed out the door.

Scottish Labour has uncovered that over £601 million has been spent by the Scottish Government on redundancies, early retirement and other forms of severance payment over the past five years.

In Highlands & Islands Region, a staggering 4,473 people have been put out of work at a cost of £24,371,090.50

Highlands & Islands Labour MSP Rhoda Grant said:“At a time of record levels of unemployment, the SNP Government have chosen the misguided route of spending more than half a billion pounds not on getting Scots into work, but on pushing them out the door.

“In this area more than 4,473 people have been put out of work. In a week when the government brings forward its Budget for the year ahead, John Swinney should be focusing on jobs and growth but these figures suggest they are more focused on reducing the public sector.

“The SNP will this week push through a budget that will cut £35 million from Scotland’s college budgets – but these figures show he has spent £41 million laying off college lecturers. Thousands more individuals will now be turned away from learning because of the choices made by this SNP Finance Minister and I will vote with my Labour colleagues against this cut.”

Scottish Labour’s Finance Spokesman, Ken Macintosh added:“We are in the midst of the worst unemployment crisis for a generation and this government has spent more than half a billion pounds not on getting Scots into work, but on getting rid of them In one year alone, 2010/2011, the Scottish Government spent more than £200 million removing 10,000 people from their posts and from providing public services. What a perverse, misguided and fundamentally incompetent waste of tax-payers money.

“This is not about any particular individual or institution, this is clearly a policy affecting every part of the public sector and this SNP administration has either deliberately or inadvertently watched the sums involved quadruple in just two years.

“For two years running Mr Swinney has talked of a budget for jobs, but instead of spending money on wage subsidy or job creation programmes, he has spent £600 million putting more people out of work. It reflects a Government obsessed not with jobs or the best use of scarce resources, but with their plans for separation.”