Glasgow Anniesland By-elections 2000

'Team McLeish now includes every Labour MSP from Edinburgh. All five have Executive jobs, but of Glasgow's 10 Labour MSPs, only one - Ms Margaret Curran - has a ministerial role.' Murray Ritchie & Robbie Dunwoodie in the Herald, 30 th October 2000.

Package geared for Anniesland by-elections

By Robbie Dinwoodie in the Herald 9 th November 2000

It was, of course, a pre-Budget Report for the whole UK, but it certainly did not miss the mark in Anniesland, where the number of pensioner households - at 29.9% - is well above the Scottish average.

As Scottish Secretary John Reid put it: "Thanks to this Government's prudent handling of the economy, extra funding can go to where it is needed most - to help pensioners, families, businesses, and regenerate our inner cities."

For First Minister Henry McLeish, the package brought fairness to families, help for motorists and hauliers, and a good deal for pensioners. Cheques for the £200 winter fuel allowance will start dropping through pensioners' doors next week, which is hardly an electoral liability.

Then there is the £1bn package for urban regeneration.

They call it the inner city in England, but here it's the peripheral estates. Be sure that Drumchapel gets some very good news from Scotland's £1m this side of polling day.

This left Opposition parties able only to make claims of "U-turns" and pressure successfully applied.

Speaking for the SNP at Westminster, Alex Salmond said: "Today's statement made a nonsense of last week's propaganda from the Chancellor.

"He has reversed his wrong-headed policies of previous years and showed that there was room within the public finances to make concessions on both fuel tax and pensions. The SNP were right to argue for these measures."

He welcomed the increase in the Minimum Income Guarantee and the pensioner tax credit linked with earnings, but said: "For those pensioners who do not wish to be subjected to means testing, the rise in the basic state pension was still insufficient."

The Tories' Westminster candidate for Anniesland, Dorothy Luckhurst, said: "All he is offering to do is to freeze duty at the level that caused the fuel protests in the first place.

"He still doesn't understand that the fuel protest was a protest by all the people, by mothers and pensioners and people running small businesses, all being crippled by the cost of filling the tank. These are the people in Anniesland who are being punished by the Government."

Scottish LibDem convener at Westminster, Michael Moore, said: "After all the hype, on his own figures, the Chancellor is still spending less of the national cake on public services than the Tories did, because of his first three years of Conservative budget cuts.

"Bust for pensioners, schools, and hospitals, followed by election boom, is no way to run the country - it is time for the honest approach of long-term steady investment, for which the Scottish Liberal Democrats alone campaign."

Green MSP Robin Harper accused the Chancellor of capitulating to the hauliers and the roads lobby, adding: "His smoke-and-mirrors strategy has, in fact, given a cut in the price of diesel and a large proportion of petrol disguised as an environmental measure. This is not the leadership we need in a country where flooding has yet to recede."

- Nov 9