The UK government will not dictate what position Scottish Labour should take on key welfare issues, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said.
Anas Sarwar’s party north of the border has diverged from Sir Keir Starmer’s administration on the two-child benefits cap, the winter fuel payment and compensation for Waspi women.
Speaking to BBC Scotland News on a visit to a Glasgow shipyard, Rayner said devolution allowed Scottish Labour to take different policy positions.
She stressed that both wings of the party were aligned in their aim to reduce poverty.
The deputy prime minister said her party had supported devolution “for a reason”. She insisted it was not so the Westminster party could dictate “to Scottish Labour what they do”.
Rayner told BBC Scotland News: “That’s about working with Scottish Labour. So they may want to do things in a different way but ultimately our values and our aims are absolutely the same.”
She said Labour politicians across the UK shared the same goals – improving child poverty rates, housing, employment and public services.
The minister said it was right that politicians with “skin in the game in their local area” decided what worked for them and that the UK government worked collaboratively rather than “patronising” nations and regions.
She added that Sarwar would always get a “listening ear” from her and Sir Keir.
Sarwar’s party has publicly opposed the two-child cap on benefits, and called for the Scottish government to speed up efforts to mitigate the policy north of the border.
The cap was originally introduced in 2017 by the UK Conservative government but has been kept in place Sir Keir’s Labour administration, which says it cannot afford to scrap it.
Rayner argued that a £22bn “black hole” in the economy meant the UK government had been forced to make “tough choices” on welfare.
She said tackling child poverty was about more than one policy.
The UK minister added: “The last Labour government brought figures down for child poverty, we’re determined to do the same again.”
Labour won a landslide victory both north and south of the border in July, but has since seen support decline in the polls.
The deputy prime minister said the UK government had taken on a “dire inheritance” and that policies affecting Scotland – such as Great British Energy and reformed workers’ rights – would “take time to filter through”.
She also defended the chancellor’s planned visit to China amid surging borrowing costs.
The Labour minister said: “The domestic economy is an international economy, and therefore it’s right that the chancellor goes and talks to other nations around trade.”
