JACOB Rees-Mogg has waded into Aberdeen City Council’s efforts to bypass the Scottish Parliament and get funding directly from Westminster.
This week councillors at the administration voted by 22 to 19 to write to Scottish Secretary Alister Jack requesting money is sent directly to them.
They also voted to approach the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) to tell them they’d like to receive any granted without it first going through Edinburgh.
The council, co-led by Tory Douglas Lumsden and former Labour representative Jenny Laing, has been accused of planning a “massive attack on devolution”.
READ MORE: Aberdeen Council votes to bypass Holyrood and ask UK Government for funds
Labour suspended nine of the city’s councillors from the party after they formed a coalition with the Tories, so Laing now sits as an independent.
Lumsden argued that Aberdeen City Council has been historically one of the lowest funded in Scotland, and that his motion aimed to get the city its “fair share”.
However the average local authority spend per head in England, according to Westminster figures, is less than what Aberdeen receives.
The SNP’s group leader Alex Nicoll has been highly critical of the council’s actions. He said: “I would respectfully suggest the ‘fair share’ is an ill-thought out concept that requires some flesh on the bone.
“Please tell us today how this is actually going to work in practice?
“It’s very easy to stand there and claim we are being hard done by.
“A more cynical person might suggest, quite simply, that this is a plan to fail in order that you can once again moan at the Scottish Government.”
Now the Leader of the House of Commons has got involved in the row, saying councillors in the city are taking action to avoid the “failures of the SNP”.
Speaking in the Commons, Rees-Mogg said Aberdeen “wants to separate from Edinburgh to avoid the machinations and failures of the SNP – the failures in education, the failures in policing and the failures in the health service in Scotland”.
He went on: “What is Aberdeen saying? ‘Let’s cut out this failed administration run by the SNP – why don’t we go directly to London to have our settlement done with London?'
READ MORE: Douglas Lumsden's desire to bypass SNP for UK cash is an attack on devolution itself
“Is it not fascinating that the failures of the left-wing SNP are making councils in Scotland try to escape from its auspices and authority?
“The strength of the United Kingdom has provided £8.2 billion to keep the Scottish economy going.
“Together as one country, one group of taxpayers have helped every part of the country with a depth, a strength, a thoroughness that would not be possible if they were separated.”
Aberdeen South MP Stephen Flynn responded to say the move is another “clear sign” that the UK wants to “pull the drawbridge up on devolution and reduce the role of the Scottish Parliament”.
He went on: “That’s something that the people of Aberdeen will not support and the Tories running our council should be careful what they wish for given the UK Government have cut council budgets in England by some 80%.”
A spokesperson for the Scottish Government commented: “Local government is fully devolved and as such is the responsibility of the Scottish Government.
“There is no question, therefore, of any Scottish local authority being funded directly by the UK Government.”
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