JOHN Swinney has confirmed he will cut £400m of funding from health and social care services to help pay for staff pay deals and meet rising inflation costs – in a move branded “downright dangerous” by opponents.

The Deputy First Minister, who is also acting as Finance Secretary, set out £615m of budget cuts in his emergency budget review , taking the total amount of savings required up to £1.2bn.

Of the £400m of cuts to health and social care services, ministers have chopped £116m from Covid services, including on vaccinations, test and protect and PPE.

The Scottish Government has also cut £70m from set-up costs for the National Care Service while £65m has been cut from primary care services, £63m from re-phasing and pausing of other health and social care programmes and £38m from mental health services.

Scottish Labour health spokesperson, Jackie Baillie, told Mr Swinney the £400m of cuts for a health and social care service “on the brink of catastrophe” was “downright dangerous”.

She added: “There is a deadly winter crisis looming and raiding the budgets of essential frontline services will cost lives.

“The SNP claim that this is ‘reprioritising’ budgets to pay NHS staff, but pay is recurring year after year, so these are clearly cuts.

“NHS staff and patients cannot be forced to pay the price for SNP and Tory economic vandalism. The SNP must rethink these reckless plans.”

In education, £40m of capital savings have been set out including £30m due to construction delays for further education projects.

Almost £61m of cuts to capital budgets have been allocated for net zero, energy and transport including £10m the Scottish Government had previously pledged to support a carbon capture and storage project in the north east.

Mr Swinney insisted that “they are not decisions which we would wish to make”, but added that “in the absence of funding from the UK Government, they are decisions that we are compelled to make”.

The Deputy First Minister told MSPs that the Scottish Government was initially told it would receive an extra £660m of funding due to soaring levels of inflation, but warned that instead “our funding will be reduced by £230m of the period of the UK spending review”.

He claimed that it was “a swing of almost £900m in the space of less than a month”.

Pointing the finger at the UK Government, Mr Swinney suggested that “calamity is giving way to austerity” with “deep spending cuts expected”.

He said: “While I would have preferred to see the OBR forecasts and the outcome of the UK statement prior to publishing this review, I have concluded that we can wait no longer.

“The scale of the challenge is so severe and the impacts and uncertainties for people, households and businesses so significant that the imperative consideration must be to provide as much stability, certainty and transparency as possible.”

Mr Swinney told MSPs that when he set out his initial cuts package of £560m for 2022/23 in December, he was “clear additional savings would still be required”.

His budget review “set out a further £615m in savings” including “£400m in reprioritisation of spending within health an social care to provide a fair pay offer for NHS staff” as well as meet inflationary costs.

Mr Swinney added: “Taken together, those decisions and those already set out in December total almost £1.2bn.

“They are not decisions which we would wish to make bit in the absence of additional funding from the UK Government, they are decisions that we are compelled to make.”

Scottish LibDems leader Alex Cole-Hamilton pressed the Deputy First Minister over the £38m of cuts to mental health services, while the £20m independence referendum budget remains intact.

He said: “Make no mistake – we are here in large part because of the calamitous decisions made by the Conservative Government. They have added hundreds of pounds to peoples’ mortgages and it is unforgivable. That’s why we need a general election.

“But the choices this government have made are manifestly wrong as well. Irrespective of when that £20 million is allocated, we are still spending civil servant time and money on the production of constitutional papers, £17 million on national testing and up to a billion on the ministerial takeover of social care.

“All the while, councils are being squeezed to the pips, long Covid sufferers continue to struggle, and £38m is being stripped from mental health.

“On this last point, can I ask the Deputy First Minister, what has changed in the severity of the national mental health crisis that he can find that level of money to cut from the mental health budget?”

Mr Swinney admitted that “the resources allocated to mental health today are not increasing as fast as we had planned”.

He added: “They will still be growing, but they will not be growing as fast as we had hoped.”

Scottish Conservative finance spokesperson, Liz Smith said: “The current difficult circumstances do not absolve the Deputy First Minister or his colleagues of responsibility for the position Scotland finds itself in after fifteen years of their government.

“So he has now announced yet more huge cuts to health, education and justice. However, he won’t touch the constitution budget. He made much of the fixed and finite nature of the Scottish Government’s budget, but the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that he and his colleagues, not the UK Government, bear the responsibility. And that they prefer a divisive referendum to practical support measures.

“This is the worst possible time to set up a hugely expensive and untested new care service, or to pursue plans to break up the UK. Both should be dropped, and the SNP Government must focus on real support for struggling Scottish households.”

Scottish Labour Finance spokesperson Daniel Johnson, warned that “the public are paying the price for political failure in this budget”.

He added: “The Tories’ economic vandalism has pushed things to crisis point, but years of low growth and mismanagement from both our governments has laid the groundwork for this perfect storm.

“Nicola Sturgeon promised to open the books and take a team Scotland approach to tackling the cost of living crisis, but she hasn’t.

“Despite dragging their heels for months before delivering this update, the SNP are still just tinkering around the edges and making the same announcements on a loop.

“Scotland deserves better than these two failing governments and their disastrous economic illiteracy.”

Poverty Alliance director Peter Kelly, has warned that “cuts in public services almost always affect the people living on low incomes the most”.

He added: “It is hard to see then how the reductions in health and social care will not impact on people on low incomes.

“The decision to not increase community links and mental health worker numbers will certainly hit those on low incomes. Similarly, reductions in spending on mental health is likely to affect people living in low-income communities.

“These are clearly difficult decisions for the Scottish Government, and we would expect them to closely monitor the equalities impacts of the decisions that have been announced today.

"People on low incomes cannot be expected to pay the price in their health and wellbeing for the economic crisis we are in.

“That crisis has been exacerbated by the actions of the UK Government in recent months. It was also good to hear the Cabinet Secretary back our calls on the new Prime Minister and Chancellor to raise benefits in line with inflation.

"The spotlight now moves to Westminster, where we need to see compassion and justice reflected in the Autumn Statement - as the PM promised when he took office.”

Union leaders have urged politicians to continue to protect workers and offer improved public sector pay deals amid soaring levels of inflation.

STUC general secretary Roz Foyer, claimed that “the Scottish Government’s next budget is critical”.

She added: “Our members have no choice but to continue to take action to protect workers from the worst of the cost-of-living crisis."