John Swinney 'will not strike deal' with Reform to pass the Scottish budget

John Swinney appeared to suggest he will ask Reform to back his final budget before next year’s Holyrood election.

However, senior party insiders emphatically denied the First Minister would work with Holyrood’s lone Reform MSP on budget conditions.

Despite saying he would “hear all views”, including those of Nigel Farage’s party, a source said Mr Swinney would not deal directly with Reform under any circumstances.

Pointing to the fact the party has only one MSP, the insider said Reform are currently an “irrelevance” in the Scottish Parliament.

They acknowledged the SNP would have to listen to Reform’s tax and spending position in the chamber but there would be no private meetings or deals.

The Scottish Greens had expressed fury at the idea of the SNP working with the right-wing party on budget conditions.

Suggestions of a deal arose when Mr Swinney’s spokesman was asked if the SNP would speak to Reform in pre-budget horse trading.

He replied: “I presume we would, yes. I presume we’d be speaking to all parties represented [in parliament].”

Asked directly by The Scotsman, Mr Swinney replied: "We will hear all views.

“I will listen to everybody because I’ve got to listen to a lot of people in life.”

However, the source, who is close to the First Minister, said: “There is no stopping Reform publicly setting out, not least in the various budget debates in the chamber, their views.

“We will hear them, and that is right and proper.

“This is a democracy where everyone has freedom of speech.

“That is a world away from doing a deal with them.

“And the First Minister has been clear for one, and he was one of the first to be clear, we will do no deal with Reform.”

“In Parliament, Reform are irrelevant right now, and we are not going to make them relevant,” they added.

Following the contradiction, a senior Reform insider accused the SNP of not knowing “what it was doing”.

They said: “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

“This is typical SNP.

“They need to get their house in order.”

Graham Simpson is Holyrood’s second Reform MSP, having defected from the Scottish Conservatives last month.

Mr Simpson, a list MSP, had welcomed what he called Mr Swinney’s “welcome change of tone”.

Earlier this year Mr Swinney headed up a “summit” of Scottish civic leaders in a bid to challenge the rise of the hard right in Scotland.

The event quickly became dubbed an “anti-Reform summit”.

Polling shows Mr Farage’s latest party could gain as many as 12 to 20 seats in next May’s Holyrood election.

Last month Mr Farage said he wanted Reform to be “strong enough” to remove the SNP from power next year.

Usually the minority government relies on the pro-independence Scottish Greens to help see the budget pass through parliament.

The government is still operating under emergency spending controls introduced last year to try to manage a straitened Scottish budget.

Among the measures introduced was a ban on civil servants claiming train fares from Glasgow to Edinburgh for work.