Scotland’s education secretary has been told that she should be “spitting mad” about the cuts made to council budgets in 2022-23 – and that this will result in a “£100 million cut to core school budgets”.

The claim was made by the Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie as the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee used its first meeting of 2022 to grill Shirley-Anne Somerville over the government’s spending plans for the coming financial year.

Mr Rennie, a former leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, said at yesterday’s meeting that the local government budget settlement had resulted in a real-terms cut of £268 million for councils. The figures Mr Rennie was quoting came from a report compiled for the committee by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe).

Want to see more SNP fails? – Enviroment Matters