FOLLOWING last week’s UK Government budget, we have now had two underwhelming Budgets from two failing Governments.

The Tory UK Budget did not even begin to undo the damage they have done to our economy over their 14 years in office. Families are still struggling, food prices are still going up and annual mortgage payments are still £2,000 higher.

Mr Hunt’s decision to follow Labour’s lead and extend the windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas giants has exposed Douglas Ross’ irrelevance in his own party. Bizarrely, it also leaves the SNP to the right of the Tories on this and at odds with their Green coalition partners who want the windfall tax to be strengthened.

The Tories’ desperate Budget came in the same week new statistics revealed more than 17,500 Scots have waited a year and a half for NHS Scotland treatment or procedures. Instead of the improvement promised, long waits are getting worse.

The latest figures show the SNP Government’s own treatment time guarantee law, which states all patients should be treated within 12 weeks, has been broken a staggering 680,000 times.

Scottish taxpayers are now facing the highest tax burden anywhere in the UK, the slowest growth in disposable income and failing public services. We are literally paying more for less. Scotland deserves better than recession with the Tories, or an SNP that thinks that oil and gas giants should pay less tax while a nurse should pay more.

At the next election, people in East Lothian and across Scotland will ask themselves if they are better off today after years of Tory and SNP failure. For the vast majority, the answer will undoubtedly be a resounding no.

Labour stands ready to deliver the change Scotland and the UK needs by making work pay, growing our economy and renewing our struggling public services.