A WAR of words has broken out between two of the area’s rival MSPs with claims of being “hopelessly ill-informed” and “embarrassing”.

Margaret Burgess and Margaret McDougall have criticised one another over comments recently made by Labour MSP McDougall about the financial situation in Scotland, with SNP member Burgess suggesting that she was “just plain wrong” on the figures.

The attack was met with a strong response from the Labour member and suggested that Burgess “should spend less time attacking me in the papers”.

Both MSPs are retiring for the upcoming 2016 Scottish Parliament elections and during their time of office, have had numerous disagreements with each other.

Margaret Burgess was the first to criticise her rival in this instance and was irked with McDougall’s comments on the SNP underspending the budget.

She said: “What this Labour List MSP calls an ‘underspend’ might in a normal country be called a surplus - a sign of good budgeting.

“Not a penny of this money is lost to Scotland’s public services – the money is simply spent this year.

“The reality is, of course, that unlike most of the world, Scotland has not been allowed to borrow to cover current spending.

“The Scottish Government has until the current financial year never had any such borrowing powers.

“Moreover, the Labour List MSP’s ‘eye watering’ figure amounts to just over one per cent of the Scottish Budget – if any individual, household or business could budget to one per cent above or below their plans, they would rightly be quite proud.

“In 2007 when the SNP became the Scottish Government, Labour had run up ‘underspends’, in one year as much as £718 million. Total Labour ‘underspends’ ran to £1.5 billion – funds which they returned unspent to the Treasury in London.

“The only consistency in Labour’s line is ‘If it’s the SNP doing it, it must be bad’.

“The Labour attack on spending is scarily ill-informed and, on this aspect of Scotland’s public finances, they are just plain wrong.”

Margaret McDougall responded: “What we are seeing from Margaret Burgess MSP here is the usual SNP response of passing the buck.

“Despite the fact her Government has been in power for eight years, Margaret Burgess refuses to defend her Government’s underspend, instead trying to divert attention away from their own record and on to Labour’s. 

“The SNP are underspending at a time of massive austerity, our public services are being pushed to breaking point and are crying out for money now, not next year. Under the SNP underspends have increased year on year and since 2007, £1.3billion in total has been underspent and unlike Labour this isn’t saving money for infrastructure projects, it is mismanagement of budgets.

“It’s all well and good for Margaret Burgess to say the money carries over, but as the underspend has increased from £42m in 07/08 to £357m in 14/15, her Government doesn’t seem to realise you actually need to spend it.

“Finally, talking about plain wrong and being misinformed it really is a bit embarrassing that Margaret Burgess MSP, Government Minister for Housing and Welfare, doesn’t seem to know that the Scotland Act 1998 provides a limited power for short-term Scottish Government borrowing up to a value of £500m, and more borrowing powers are being introduced through the Scotland Bill 2012.

“Margaret Burgess should spend less time attacking me in the papers and more time making sure her department is using the full resources and money available to them.”