Hansard

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I join other members in welcoming you and your colleagues to your new roles.

I congratulate those members who have been re-elected and those, like me, who are joining the chamber for the first time. I extend particular good wishes to my fellow Glasgow MSPs. Despite our obvious differences, I am sure that we can all work together when required, and I look forward to that happening. I thank the many thousands of people across Glasgow who voted Reform, searching for something that other parties were not providing—a new way for a new time.

I also extend my thanks to the cabinet secretary for her speech. However, she will not be surprised to know that I do not agree with most of it.

As this is my first address to the chamber, I would like to share a little of my background. A small glimpse into a person’s soul, I find, gives a sense of perspective on their approach to life and to politics. I grew up in a council flat in Haddington, East Lothian, the youngest of four daughters. My father was a labourer and my mother was a secretary. Times were often tough. I remember my father’s face when work was scarce and he had to sign on at the buroo, as we called it then. I understood then, and I believe now, that a person’s dignity is bound up in their ability to bring home a wage. When my father could not do that, it was written all over him. That stayed with me and it shapes everything that I believe about taxation, work, education and the role of Government.

I know what it means to work hard, to build something and to understand what ordinary families are really facing. That background is not incidental to why I am here; it is the reason why I am here. Those views mirror what I heard from Reform voters on the doorstep—they said it, and I certainly got it.

So, to the business of the chamber. The most obvious task that I have is to play a part in holding the Government to account. That begins today. In the weeks since I entered the Parliament, I have watched the long arm of the state extend further still. The SNP Government has set about its manifesto commitments with enthusiasm, and that arm has been lengthening since its first majority Government, with no sign yet of restraint.

My first impression has been clear: “profit” is a dirty word here, and the answer to everything is to tax the rich, even when there is no evidence that that has ever worked. I do not believe that “profit” is a dirty word. It is what drives us forward. It becomes a problem only when Governments fail to use the powers that are already at their disposal—competition law and regulation—to prevent abuse and excess. The answer is not to punish success; the answer is to govern well.

This week, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland confirmed what Reform has argued throughout: Scotland’s six income tax bands act as a disincentive to work. As a small country with a small population, we have constructed one of the most complex devolved taxation systems anywhere. Reform believes in a simpler structure: lower taxes, a freer marketplace with less regulation, and our economic growth driven by the spirit and enterprise of our people. That is how we fund public services sustainably and without punishing aspiration. We do not believe that the answer is always to spend more money, particularly when there is no hard evidence that it is making anything better.

There is a reality that the Parliament must face honestly: Scotland has a structural deficit. Everyone here knows it. The public deserves honesty about the need to bring spending under control—not more commitments that we cannot afford and not more taxation that drives away the very people and businesses that we desperately need here.

That brings me to today’s motion—yet more tax that Scotland does not need. Let us be clear about the constitutional reality: the Scottish Government’s powers on taxation are limited, and those powers have already been pushed to their limits. At almost every earnings level, Scots already pay significantly more income tax than those south of the border. Higher council tax bands for properties worth more than £1 million are in the pipeline. The devolved tax levers have all been pulled and still it seems that it is not enough.

Wealth taxes do not work. The evidence across every jurisdiction that has tried them is consistent. They distort behaviour, reduce investment and raise considerably less than projected. Why is that? It is because capital is mobile. People with the means make choices. They move, they restructure and they invest elsewhere. A thriving economy is not built by making the country the most expensive place to succeed.

I want to go further than the economic, because there is something deeply personal at stake here. We are talking about the homes for which families across Scotland have worked and saved for decades—the nest eggs set aside for children so that they might not have to struggle as hard as their parents did; the asset that might one day help to meet the cost of care in retirement, which is already a source of enormous anxiety for so many families.

In England, where a similar property threshold was set at £2 million by another well-intentioned left-wing Administration, we can see that the policy is backfiring. The housing market is feeling the effects, and the cruellest consequence will come when elderly people are forced to release equity from their homes not only to fund help with care but to meet that unfair and poorly designed tax. People who did everything right—people who worked hard, saved hard and planned for the future—are being let down at the last hurdle. The Government’s proposed tax is not a progressive tax; it is a betrayal.

The Government’s motion is well intentioned but mistaken. Scotland does not need more taxation; it needs growth, enterprise, honesty about our finances and the courage to make different choices. I am proud to oppose the motion.

I move amendment S7M-00249.2, to leave out from “believes” to end and insert:

“notes the data published by HMRC and research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which show that each 1% increase in income tax results in a 0.77% reduction in tax revenue; believes that this acts as a disincentive to growth and contributes to economic stagnation and loss of opportunities for everyone; further believes that increasing taxation for some people has a wider impact on everyone; considers that evidence suggesting that, in retrospect, increases in wealth taxes can lead to a significant flight of tax revenues, contradicts previous assessments by the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) that increasing taxation would result in only a minimal flight of tax revenue, and calls on the SFC to review its approach to modelling of using contradictory real data against its hypothetical forecasts.”

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