The Scottish Retail Sales Monitor for October, collated by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), showed that like-for-like sales in October rose by just 0.2%. A year earlier, they had increased by 3.2%. Total sales were up by 4.9% on 2006's figures.

The mild weather was blamed for the fall in clothing and footwear sales, while food sales also slowed.

The Scottish figures were worse than the UK average, which saw like-for-like growth of 1% in October.