SCOTTISH First Minister and SNP leader John Swinney has made a desperate plea to other parties to support his party’s draft Budget.

He said that blocking the Budget risks “catastrophic reduction in service delivery” and “feeding the forces of anti-politics and populism” in his first speech of the new year today.

The SNP needs the support of other parties or individual MSPs to pass the Budget, which includes restoration of the winter fuel allowance to pensioners in Scotland.

Holyrood has 129 MSPs, of which the SNP has 62. The other parties are Conservative (31), Labour (22), Green (7) and Lib Dem (4), Alba (1), Ind (1), and the presiding officer at Holyrood (1).

Addressing representatives of public and private-sector groups in Edinburgh, Mr Swinney said: “If the Budget falls, the impact will not be felt primarily, directly, by the MSPs who choose to vote No. 

“It will be felt by the people in this room and the people you serve.

“Voters will rightly struggle to understand why politicians, despite being in agreement with probably more than 95 per cent of the Budget’s contents, choose to block it from passing to prove some nebulous, and ultimately highly damaging, political point.”

The draft Budget is expected to be voted on in coming weeks.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said: “It’s incumbent on opposition parties to try to shape the Budget in a way that will best unpick some of the damage caused by years of SNP neglect.

“Whether we back the Budget in the final analysis will depend on the detail of the commitments made so far and what progress is offered on other key priorities for us.”

Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer accused Mr Swinney of “hugely overblown rhetoric” but said that “if the First Minister is prepared to be bolder, then he will have our support.”

He said the Scottish Greens believe the Budget can do more to tackle poverty including through measures such as expanding free school meals and making public transport cheaper.

Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Craig Hoy MSP said the Budget failed to support “struggling businesses.”

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “What we want to see from that Budget, though, is not just where the money is spent, but how the money is spent.

“The reality is that John Swinney and the SNP have been passing Budgets in Scotland for 17 years and things continue to get worse.”