THE new leader of the Scottish Labour party will today claim the SNP is adopting Conservative Party policies when he makes his first speech to Labour's annual conference.
Iain Gray, who will be introduced to Labour activists by Des Browne, the Scottish Secretary, will attack the SNP government at Holyrood as one prepared to cut public services. He will say this mirrors the Tory policy in England of looking to trim the
size of the state to fund tax cuts.
he will also attack Liberal Democrat demands to find around £25 billion of cuts to fund a 6p reduction in the basic rate of income tax.
Mr Gray will argue Labour alone is a "force for fairness" and the only Holyrood party committed to social justice.
But in a sign of the economic concerns affecting Scotland, Mr Gray will leave Manchester immediately after his speech to attend emergency cross-party talks in Edinburgh on the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB.
Mr Gray is thought likely to steer clear of demanding a referendum on Scottish independence, in contrast to his predecessor, Wendy Alexander.
Mr Gray's comments will come after his Lib Dem counterpart at Holyrood, Tavish Scott, used his address to his own party conference last week to call for the Scottish Parliament to use its powers to introduce an emergency 2p income tax cut.
A Labour spokesman said: "Iain's key line is that because of what the SNP are doing and the Lib Dems are proposing, Labour is the only force in Scottish politics that cares for people."
The full article contains 272 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
