A growing cross-border disparity in economic performance was exposed yesterday in new figures which show that unemployment has fallen to a seven-year low across the UK but has risen sharply in Scotland.
Ministers in both Edinburgh and London were urged to take urgent action after official statistics showed that Scotland’s jobless total increased by 18,000 to 170,000 over the summer.
Over the same period — June to August this year — unemployment fell in the UK as a whole by 79,000, to 1.7 million, its lowest level since 2008.
This means that the Scottish jobless rate of 6.1 per cent is now significantly worse than the average UK rate of 5.4 per cent — and the gap is widening.
John Swinney, the Scottish finance minister, blamed the UK government, at least in part, for the rise in Scottish unemployment, claiming that there would have been stronger economic growth had UK ministers agreed to spend more north of the border.
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Mr Swinney said Scotland was still doing better than the UK as a whole in terms of youth and female employment but he acknowledged that “there remain serious challenges to economic recovery”.
The finance minister said that while the Scottish government had continued to invest in infrastructure, this was being threatened by the cuts that Westminster planned to implement.
He said: “The Scottish government has put forward an alternative option for a UK-wide fiscal mandate, which would ensure the UK’s debt and deficit are put on a downward path while allowing up to an additional cumulative £150 billion of investment across the UK by 2019-20 — with around £12 billion in Scotland — compared with the UK government’s current plans.
“Such investment would support continued economic growth and is in total contrast to the huge public spending reductions that have been set out by Westminster.”
David Mundell, the Scottish secretary, insisted that the UK government’s long-term economic plan was right and would deliver growth. He said: “There can be no doubt there is still hard work to undertake to build on the UK government’s long-term economic plan which has tackled a record deficit and laid the foundations for a stronger and more stable economy.”
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Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said: “The SNP cannot run away from the fact that unemployment in the rest of the UK is at a seven-year low while more people in Scotland are out of work.
“While the SNP were busy plotting a second referendum, declaring war on the BBC and doing everything they can to distract from their record in government, 18,000 more Scots found themselves out of work.
“It is time that Nicola Sturgeon got on with the day job and told us what she is going to do to help get these people back into employment.”