Ian Murray retracts claim journalist "made up" figure about £150m anti-poverty fund

EXCLUSIVE: The Scottish Secretary has clarified earlier comments which appeared to rubbish the £150m figure.

Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has retracted claims a journalist “made up” a figure about his department and a £150m warchest. The MP backtracked after appearing to give the impression the figure had been invented.

In June, the Daily Record ran a story saying a Labour win would see the next Scottish Secretary directly control around £150m of former EU funds.

Our sister newspaper, the Sunday Mail, then reported after the election that the Government would change the law to allow Murray to bypass Holyrood and directly fund anti-poverty schemes. The same £150m figure was used in this report.

However, Murray told the BBC on Sunday: “I don’t have a £150m war chest, that was a front page newspaper article that everyone seems to have run with, it was a journalist that made up that figure, not me.”

He added: “I don’t have a £150m war chest, that was a front page headline from a journalist who made that figure up.” Murray has now retracted the claim he made to the state broadcaster

Asked if he was suggesting any Daily Record or Sunday Mail journalist had made up the £150m, he said: “No.”

He added: “The point I was trying to make was we don’t have any money yet, in the sense of the Scotland Office being a spending department.

“The figures that are in the public domain were calculated using previous structural funds money which was in the manifesto.” He said the £150m figure was “not made up”.

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