People in east central Scotland are a combined £255 million worse off under UK austerity measures, Yes Scotland has claimed.
The pro-independence campaign group used research by professors Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam University, which uses figures in the Westminster Budget and Autumn Statement to project the regional and UK-wide impact of cuts to welfare spending.
Yes Scotland claims this translates as every person in Angus being on average £414 worse off under the schemes, with people in Clackmannanshire hit by £550 per head, Dundee £595, Fife £480 and Perth and Kinross an average of £382 per person.
Chief executive Blair Jenkins said: “This is one of the reasons why we need the full powers of independence. These cuts, which only prolong the economic slump and which even the IMF has condemned, would never have been imposed if Scotland had full control over its own spending.”
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has said a future Labour Government would continue coalition austerity spending if elected in 2015.
Citing a leaked cabinet paper by Finance Secretary John Swinney, which talked about welfare “volatility” in the event of independence, a spokesman for Better Together said: “What the SNP say in public about welfare is very different from what they say in private.”