Meeting of the Parliament 11 December 2024
Last week’s budget continues on a path that has been well trodden by the Scottish National Party—more tax, more excuses, poorer public services and an abundance of smoke and mirrors to mask the absence of economic growth.
The SNP has form: it repeatedly seeks to evade responsibility for its actions. Our motion sets out the choices that the SNP could make—decisions that would be in Scotland’s national interests, not in the SNP’s interests.
However, as always, SNP ministers never learn. They focus on inputs, not on outcomes. The Scottish Government’s high-tax agenda repeatedly fails to deliver value for money for ordinary Scots. It fails to deliver better public services, and it fails to deliver public service reform.
Despite Scotland’s record-high taxes, the tax take continues to be weak. The SNP has imposed £1.7 billion more in income tax, but the net tax position is expected to be only £800 million. The Scottish Fiscal Commission says that that is an “economic performance gap” under the SNP.
In contrast, we set out plans to improve our economic performance through fully costed tax cuts for ordinary Scots, including for bus drivers, nurses and teachers. The average Scottish worker would be £222 a year better off. Nearly 2.7 million people would get a real cut in their income tax bill. Compare that with the SNP’s cynical move to freeze the lower tax threshold last week, which saves most taxpayers just £1 a month. It is a pound-shop budget from a pound-shop Government.