article_snippet.sent: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, pictured ahead of First Minister's Questions today, said Ms Sturgeon wanted to spend longer cutting the deficit than Labour or the Tories .
article_snippet.sent: Ms Sturgeon, meanwhile, was today forced to reject scathing criticised of the SNP's spending plans by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
article_snippet.sent: The IFS said the party's spending commitments did 'not necessarily match' the party anti-austerity rhetoric and could result in billions of pounds of cuts for UK government departments.
article_snippet.sent: The IFS said the SNP's proposals implied the same reductions in spending as Labour, although the SNP's proposals said the nationalists would 'cut less to start with', meaning that the 'period of austerity would be longer than under the other three parties we consider'.
article_snippet.sent: Ms Sturgeon dismissed the IFS report as 'full of assumptions and speculations', adding that the think tank had got 'the SNP's plans wrong'.
article_snippet.sent: Ms Sturgeon told MSPs at Holyrood: 'I have said repeatedly I do want to take longer to eliminate the deficit than the other parties.
article_snippet.sent: Ms Sturgeon added: 'That is the clear difference between my party and the other parties represented in this chamber.'
article_snippet.sent: Ms Sturgeon said the IFS report 'doesn't credit for any increases in revenue for the tax rises that we are proposing'.
article_snippet.sent: The First Minister continued: 'Secondly, it gives no credit for the revenue we would increase from cracking down on tax avoidance ... but the fundamental misassumption at the heart of the IFS report this morning is this one: it assumes that the SNP would cut borrowing by 2019/20 to 1.4% of GDP. '