Meeting of the Parliament 31 January 2018
You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard the news a couple of hours ago. The ever-faithful Patrick Harvie has once again saved the Scottish National Party’s bacon; the always-willing Scottish Greens are there to do their masters’ bidding; the wholly owned subsidiary has had its orders from head office and, after the usual pretence of playing hardball, with choreography that the greatest showman would be proud of, it fell sweetly into line exactly as was planned all along.
The price for that, of course, will be paid by hard-working Scottish taxpayers—not the high earners, but families that are struggling to get by, with Mr Mackay’s hand in one pocket and Patrick Harvie’s in the other.
“The perception, if you are a talented person sitting in London, Manchester or Birmingham and Scotland wants to attract you, is that you may think Scotland is a high tax economy.”
Those are not my words, but the words of Sir Tom Hunter, one of Scotland’s leading business figures. Liz Cameron of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce put it this way:
“If Scottish businesses are taxed more and Scottish-based staff are taxed more, then that would not seem to be a situation designed to attract investment and grow Scotland’s economy.”
The SNP should listen to what Scottish business is telling it.
This budget can be summed up in four words: pay more, get less. It is a budget in which the SNP has broken its promise to the taxpayers of Scotland not to increase income tax for those paying the basic rate, and one that will nevertheless deliver cuts to services across Scotland. I need hardly remind members that the promise on income tax was made in the SNP manifesto in 2016, and has been repeated since then some 53 times over the past two years. Nicola Sturgeon said it 10 times, Derek Mackay said it at least 10 times, John Swinney said it at least five times—