Former First Minister Henry McLeish has blamed London for any deterioration in relations between Holyrood and Westminster.

His intervention came after former Tory Scottish Secretary Lord Forsyth of Drumlean claimed that, without a new needs-based settlement to replace the Barnett formula, "the worm of separatism" would eat away at Unionism north and south of the border.

Lord Forsyth had appeared to lay the bulk of blame at the door of the new Scottish Executive, but Mr McLeish disagreed, saying: "I think everybody anticipated that with the election of the SNP, they might want to pick battles with Westminster but it's been the other way around and I cannot believe some of the circumstances that have emerged."

Mr McLeish said of the Westminster government: "My concern is that they often look upon devolution as a second-class event.

"We had the situation about the lack of telephone calls, we've had the situation over Libya - those could have been avoided by a bit more sensitivity being exercised by those at Westminster."

Lord Forsyth had claimed that Holyrood announcements on student finance and care of the elderly were provocative to English opinion. "The fact that Scotland receives an extra 20% per head in public expenditure compared to England has, in the past, been justified on the basis of need," he said.

"A series of proposals for free higher education, care for the elderly and life saving and sight-saving drugs which are not available on the NHS in England has made the case for a needs-based assessment of expenditure throughout the UK unanswerable.

"Joel Barnett is right to call time on his formula and Gordon Brown is the man to do it. A failure to address these problems will feed the worm of separatism which is growing at the heart of the Union."

But Mr McLeish, the former Labour First Minister, told STV's Politics Now: "London has got to take a much more mature and positive attitude towards devolution generally and the Scottish Parliament."

He added, referring to the new executive: "This administration is not going to sit idly by and see Scotland in their eyes treated with contempt."

An aide to Alex Salmond said of Lord Forsyth's comments: "This is the man who single-handedly removed the Tory party from Scottish politics and only the revival of the Scottish Parliament resurrected them.

"It may well be that the First Minister has more in common with Annabel Goldie in seeking a constructive, consensus-building approach than Michael Forsyth has.

"We have always said that any move away from the Barnett formula should be a move in the direction of full fiscal autonomy for Scotland."

Lord Forsyth fought a ferocious campaign as Scottish Secretary in the final days of Conservative rule in the run-up to the Labour victory in 1997 and the loss of all of the Conservative seats in Scotland.

Some Tories from his free-market wing of the party has come around to favouring the idea of Scotland being responsible for raising the taxes it spends.