FINANCE Secretary John Swinney yesterday sought early talks with the Treasury about how the new £2bn Forth bridge is to be financed, after the row over financing the project threatened a constitutional crisis.

Treasury minister Yvette Cooper wrote at the weekend telling him that this plan "unfortunately cannot provide a credible option for the funding need" and prompting yesterday's demand for talks.

Aides to Mr Swinney were playing down the rift with the Treasury yesterday, arguing that Whitehall officials had simply failed to understand the sheer size and timescale of the Forth replacement crossing, arguing that if this had been a £20bn transport project crucial to London then a way would have been found to make it happen.

"We were disappointed with the conclusions of the Treasury letter but not the tone," said a senior government adviser. "We want a common-sense solution to a singular project, one which is unique both in scale and in the timescale required. It is not an insurmountable issue. Because of the unique nature of that project it is very reasonable to argue for the cost of it to be spread.

"The right thing to do is for us to have a good, business-like meeting on this and see where it progresses."

He argued that because the Scottish Government had no control over the timescale of the new bridge, which had to be in place by the time the current bridge may be closed to some traffic in 2016, and because of the sheer scale of a budget of between £1.7bn and £2.3bn when Scotland's annual capital budget runs at about £3.5bn, the Treasury should be more flexible.

The letter from the Treasury was described as disappointing in its conclusions but not negative in its tone. It was dated last Friday, January 2, and was believed to have been transmitted as an e-mail late that day, copied to Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.

The reply rejecting the request for capital rescheduling then broke over the weekend, prompting Mr Swinney to respond early yesterday to the suggestion of a meeting with Treasury officials.

Mr Swinney said yesterday that his plans for a Scottish Futures Trust would help when it came to aggregating a number of smaller health or education projects, and would come on stream this year, but this did not apply to one of the biggest infrastructure projects in modern times.

But Labour finance spokesman Andy Kerr said: "The Forth crossing was the acid test for the Scottish Futures Trust and it has been an embarrassing failure."

He accused Mr Swinney and Alex Salmond of trying to shift the blame on to London and of putting the SNP's interest ahead of Scotland's. "The onus is on them as the Scottish Government to find a credible way to pay for the crossing," he said.

"The SNP must stop playing grudge-and-grievance politics in their own interest while Scotland suffers. They are trying to pick a fight rather than build a bridge."

His deputy, David Whitton, added: "They've got to look at the budgets that they currently have ... or they could, as the Treasury have suggested to them, look at PPP/PFI projects - but of course they are ideologically opposed to doing that."

Tory enterprise spokesman Gavin Brown called for the publication of full details of all discussions and correspondence into the funding of the bridge. He said: "If there has been a constructive relationship between Scotland's two governments, then I assume that such talks began a number of months ago, long before the announcement last month. If this is not the case, then they stand accused of political posturing, more interested in the blame game than building the bridge."

LibDem finance spokesman Jeremy Purvis said: "The most significant infra- structure project for a generation has been reduced to party point scoring between SNP and Labour governments.

"The SNP have had four different policies on how they would fund the crossing in as many years. To come to parliament with no funding mechanism agreed was an outrage. The SNP have let down communities across Fife, Edinburgh and east Scotland."

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