Scottish Opposition pressures Swinney to cut free school meals, flat-rate train tickets | Scottish Politics

Opposition parties in Scotland have called on John Swinney to reverse unpopular cuts to free school meals and flat rail fares after suffering two defeats at Holyrood.

In a key test for the Prime Minister’s minority government, opposition parties backed Conservative motions that rejected decisions to scrap plans to provide free school meals to all primary school pupils and reintroduce peak fares for rail travel.

All four parties accused the Scottish government of undermining efforts to tackle child poverty and the cost of living crisis by failing to use its money wisely.

While the votes have no legislative effect, the defeats highlight the challenges Swinney faces in getting his budget passed in December, after his finance minister, Shona Robison, announced £960 million in cuts and spending adjustments last month.

Under the rules of the Scottish Parliament, a budget must win a majority of votes. The Scottish National Party is three votes short after the previous First Minister, Humza Yousaf, tore up a power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens.

Swinney is pinning his hopes on Rachel Reeves, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, to increase funding for Scotland’s devolved government in October, a move that would allow ministers in Edinburgh to buy support from at least one opposition party by striking spending deals.

Liam Kerr, for the Scottish Tories, said Robison’s decision not to provide free school meals to all children in P6 and P7, except those whose families received child benefit, was a breach of an SNP manifesto promise. “Promises made, promises broken,” he said.

Jenny Gilruth, Scotland’s education secretary, said ministers wanted to fund the policy eventually, but fully extending free school meals would cost £256 million over the next two years. That was unaffordable, she said.

Fiona Hyslop, the transport minister, said the attempt to boost rail services by scrapping peak-rate rail fares had proven too expensive. It had boosted passenger numbers by 6.8% but had benefited middle-income earners, with little effect on overall car use.

Richard Leonard, former leader of the Scottish Labour Party, called Hyslop’s definition of middle incomes insulting, citing nurses, teaching assistants and caretakers who had to travel to and from work by train during peak hours as people who were struggling to make ends meet.

Graham Simpson, for the Scottish Tories, said it was essential to keep fares low and it was easy to see how to boost rail use, but now peak fares would effectively double from next week. “If your policy is to get more people on the road, then this is genius,” he said.

Hyslop said Scots make 5 billion car journeys a year and the fixed fare pilot had reduced this number by 0.1%, at a cost of £40 million.