Labour takes fight to SNP

TONY BLAIR stepped up Labour's campaign to combat the threat from the Scottish National Party yesterday by claiming that it would damage health and other public services north of the border.

Speaking in Glasgow, the Prime Minister warned that the SNP would divide families against each other by denying Scottish citizenship to the children and grandchildren of Scots who were born outside the country.

Attacking a new SNP policy statement, Mr Blair said: "They would make children of Scots foreign in Scotland and would divide families throughout Scotland into two categories - citizens and foreigners... In an era when barriers should be coming down, nothing could make clearer the barriers that they would impose."

If the SNP took control of the Scottish Parliament in next May's elections, Mr Blair warned, the priority it would give to separatism would deny resources to public services.

"While Labour is investing in the National Health Service, the nationalists would first invest in the new apparatus of a national government," he said.