PowerSwitch

Nicola Sturgeon has attacked the “scale and speed” of government spending cuts, while pledging that the Scottish government will campaign for the UK to stay in the EU.

In her first major speech on the economy since the general election, Scotland’s first minister argued that the proposed cuts would hamper the economic recovery and make reducing the deficit harder.

Addressing business leaders in Edinburgh, Sturgeon insisted: “We will continue to oppose spending reductions of the scale and speed that the UK government has suggested. We believe these will slow economic recovery and make deficit reduction more difficult and that’s something that has been demonstrated already by the impact of the cuts that have been imposed since 2010.”