Bob Doris, SNP MSP for Glasgow, has criticised Labour health spokesperson Jackie Baillie MSP and her Labour colleague James Kelly after they contradicted one another in a parliamentary debate while attacking Scottish Government spending plans.

Ms Baillie said money should be refocused from the justice to the health budget to pay for healthcare in the prison service, before Mr Kelly contradicted her argument by demanding money be found to pay for support staff in the justice system.

Bob Doris said: “I find the Labour party’s continuing hypocrisy astounding. On the one hand Jackie Baillie is demanding that money from the justice budget be spent on health, while moments later her colleague James Kelly is arguing for the exact opposite.

“Clearly the Labour party’s lack of a coherent budget strategy has them at sixes and sevens and neither Jackie Baillie nor James Kelly seem to be willing to acknowledge the wider context of cuts being handed down from Westminster, nor are they intent on giving any indication as to where the money they are demanding might be found.

“While this is nothing new in itself, what is truly shameful is that, when the Scottish Government is working so hard to protect frontline provision, all the Labour party have to contribute to the debate is scare-mongering, contradiction and talking Scotland’s services down.

Jackie Baillie: If we look again, we see that, for the first time, the cost of delivering healthcare in the prison service is being transferred from justice to health without the corresponding transfer of resource. That will cost the health service an additional £20 million a year. Strip that out and we are left with an uplift of 1.4 per cent set against inflation pressures of more than 4 per cent. Even a primary school child can understand that arithmetic.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r=6534&;i=59377&c=1238903

Official report, Meeting of the Parliament 10 November 2010