Swinney will not be drawn on scale of financial challenge facing country

Scotland’s First Minister has refused to be drawn on the size of the financial black hole his Government has to fill.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison is expected to lay out a harsh financial reality on Tuesday, just 24 hours before John Swinney will publish his first Programme for Government containing the his legislative plans for the next 12 months.

But asked by journalists at the SNP’s annual conference in Edinburgh how much the Government could be forced to come up with, Mr Swinney refused to answer, citing parliamentary protocol.

“I think that we’re getting dangerously close to me setting out details that Parliament needs to be told first,” he said.

“I’m here to be as helpful as I can, but because I’ve got those parliamentary occasions I have to be very careful.

“I want my Government to conduct itself within the parliamentary rules, so let me just say that we face an acute financial challenge and Shona Robison will set out the details of how we’re addressing that on Tuesday.”

Mr Swinney has put tackling child poverty at the top of his political agenda, but the potential for in-year cuts to funding could impact his ability to create new measures designed to help families – but the Programme for Government will contain measures aimed at tackling poverty, he said.

“There will be John Swinney approaches to tackling poverty on Wednesday, yes there will be, and I’ll map them out to Parliament,” he said.

The First Minister also described claims that the UK Government did not know the state of public finances when Labour won the July election as “baloney”.

The SNP conference takes place following a devastating defeat for the party, which saw it lose dozens of MPs.

In a closed-door election post-mortem on Friday, Mr Swinney laid out what he believed caused the defeat, which saw the SNP fall to just nine MPs from the 48 returned in 2019.

According to a report in the Times, the First Minister said the party shed 250,000 voters to Labour in Scotland, while the party found its campaign “dwarfed” by Sir Keir Starmer’s message of change.

Independence had also been less of a priority among the public than previously, the First Minister said, while the party had spent too long talking about the process of gaining independence as opposed to the arguments in favour of leaving the UK.

On the second day of the conference, former SNP MP Joanna Cherry – one of the casualties of the July election – said members at the event who were optimistic for the future were in “denial”.

In a post on X – formerly Twitter – Ms Cherry said: “It’s called denial.

“Discussing what’s gone wrong is one thing, but acting to address those failings means root & branch change.

“The mood is upbeat because many of those who understand that, including myself, have chosen not to attend.”

Responding to the criticism, the First Minister joked: “Do I look like I’m a man in a state of denial?”

“I’m not in a state of denial, I can tell you,” he added.

During the session, he said, he acknowledged “this was a bad election for the SNP”.

“Of all the things I can be accused of, being in denial is not one of them,” he said.