DEREK Mackay unveiled his Scottish budget last week, revealing not one but two victories for East Lothian Labour campaigns... sort of.

Labour has been out early at county rail stations campaigning for long-suffering commuters to be given a break in the form of a fare freeze. The Finance Secretary did find some money for rail travellers – but chose to spend it on a gimmicky free week’s travel, on a week he chooses, for season ticket holders only. Most commuters won’t benefit, and fares will rise as planned.

I have also been campaigning with our local Labour councillors to ensure that additional council tax raised in East Lothian is spent here in East Lothian. Mr Mackay had planned to take £100m of council tax increases for his own coffers, but he was forced to cancel that plan.

That would be great, if it had not turned out that he was then planning to cut £327m from council budgets anyway. He tried all kinds of spin to pretend this cut was not happening, but over last weekend his budget unravelled, with expert after expert confirming that councils and therefore local services would see their core budget cut yet again.

In East Lothian, that cut will amount to more than £6m. These levels of budget cuts will put serious pressure on the funding of key services like schools and care of the elderly. They will not be compensated for by our share of funds such as the school attainment fund – East Lothian schools are still waiting two years after it was introduced.

The days when SNP ministers could claim they had no choice about austerity cuts like these because their budget was fixed by Westminster are gone. Mr Mackay chose how much he would have to spend next year, because he also set tax rates. He chose, more or less, to follow the Tory Chancellor on tax – and our schools and hospitals will pay the price.