Burnham Offers to Work With Swinney on Pushing Power Beyond Holyrood in First Major Scotland Visit as PM

LANARKSHIRE: Prime Minister Andy Burnham has invited Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, to work with him on shifting decision-making powers away from both Westminster and Holyrood and down to Scotland’s regions, cities and towns, in his first major event in Scotland since taking office in the summer.

In remarks released ahead of his midday speech in Lanarkshire, Burnham said he had told the First Minister during his first week in office that he wanted to work together to spread opportunity to communities across Scotland. He said his government was “rewiring the state” through its No10 North initiative and wanted Scotland’s regions to be fully included in that effort.

The Scotland Office described the offer to the Scottish Government as genuine and said it was ready to work alongside Edinburgh to deliver good jobs and opportunities in every part of the country.

The visit coincides with the Scottish National Party’s annual conference in Aberdeen, and the SNP has invited the Prime Minister to attend while he is in Scotland. Relations between the two leaders have been tense. Swinney has predicted that Burnham could be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom, pointing to nationalist-led governments in all of the devolved parliaments, and said the Prime Minister’s trip showed he had got “inside Burnham’s head”.

Burnham hit back during his own party conference speech in September, revealing that Swinney’s remarks had come on the day his father died and had left him determined to prove the First Minister wrong.

While Burnham has repeatedly ruled out a second independence referendum, the SNP has accused him of hypocrisy for proposing to reopen the debate on Brexit and re-examine the UK’s relationship with the European Union.

The proposal is likely to draw scrutiny over how it would work in practice, since local government in Scotland is a devolved responsibility of the Scottish Parliament, meaning any transfer of power below Holyrood would depend heavily on the Scottish Government’s cooperation.