Hansard

I wish you a happy new year, Deputy Presiding Officer.

This year, 2026, must be the year in which Scotland’s politicians tackle the cost of living crisis. People across Scotland are under pressure, and many families are struggling to get by. Their bills are rising and everyday costs keep going up. In a matter of weeks, after years of Scottish National Party tax rises and wasteful spending, voters will face a clear choice. The SNP and Labour want people to keep paying more through higher taxes and they want to increase the benefits bill. Reform joins them in wanting to increase Scotland’s soaring social security bill. All of that adds to the pressure on hard-working Scottish families.

However, there is a different way—a commonsense way that focuses on bringing bills down and making work pay. It is an approach that focuses on widening the tax base and not hitting the same people harder each and every year. That is what our motion sets out to do. At its core is the same call that we made in relation to last year’s budget. We are calling for income tax on lower and middle-income workers to be cut by scrapping the Scottish basic and intermediate rates of income tax and replacing them with a single Scottish income tax rate—a flat 19 per cent rate on earnings up to the higher-rate threshold of £44,000.

However, we need to go much further than that to deal with the damaging effects of fiscal drag. In her first budget, Rachel Reeves said that freezing tax thresholds would hurt working people, but, barely 12 months later, she froze them for three years, following in the footsteps of the Scottish National Party.

Today, we propose to reverse that, to lift thresholds in line with inflation and to use a new zero rate to increase the point at which Scots start paying income tax, not just this year but in each of the five years of the next parliamentary session. I will tell members why we must do so. If the thresholds remain at their present levels, most Scottish workers will be paying the higher rate of tax by the end of the decade. A tax that is meant for high earners will be paid by workers on average incomes. Under Labour and the SNP, there will be higher-rate tax for the many, not the few. That is the reality of the SNP’s fiscal policy, which is, of course, aided and abetted by Scottish Labour.

We are talking about the pernicious effects of prolonged fiscal drag, which raises taxes on hundreds of thousands of Scots through the back door. Worse still, those stealth tax raids involve taking money from pay packets to fund billions in extra welfare spending. The benefits bill is set to reach £10 billion by the end of the decade.

When I met Mr McKee and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, Shona Robison rightly asked how we would pay for our proposals. Let me tell the minister how we would do it. In cutting waste in Government, we would go further than the £1 billion that Mr McKee has allegedly identified. We would cut the benefits bill while ensuring that those who are in genuine need would continue to secure proper support. We will set out specifically which benefits we would scale back once we hear from the Scottish Government in next week’s budget, when we will discover just how much more the cabinet secretary is set to snatch from working households to blow on Benefits Street.

Let me be clear to workers and businesses. In recent years, the SNP has made the decision to increase taxes to pay for ever more benefits. It has the cheek to say that those tax increases fall on those with the broadest shoulders, when we all know that teachers and nurses are paying more. As my colleague Russell Findlay said this week, the Government is not asking workers to pay—it is demanding that they do so. They have no choice in the matter. They cannot just turn around and say, “Sorry, Shona—I’ll skip paying your higher taxes this year.” It is a non-negotiable one-way street to ever more tax to pay for ever more welfare.

However, it does not have to be that way, because reducing benefits incentivises work. It puts more money into people’s pockets and generates more in tax receipts, which, in turn, delivers more economic growth.

Before I close, I will return to the frankly laughable SNP amendment that has been put before MSPs today, which says that the Government must

“respect Parliament by outlining its tax policy”

only when it publishes its budget next week. Let us reflect on that SNP culture of respect for this Parliament. What respect did it show when core details of last year’s budget somehow found their way into the mainstream media before Shona Robison had even got to her feet? What respect did it show to this Parliament when, in 2022, Nicola Sturgeon’s vitally important Covid update was reported by the press long before it was announced to Parliament, which the Presiding Officer said was “disappointing” and “disrespectful”?

Just this week, what respect did the Government show to this Parliament when media reports suggested that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs was safe in her role even before the findings of an official probe had been published? It showed it absolutely no respect whatsoever, so let us take no lectures from a party that repeatedly treats this Parliament and the Scottish people with utter contempt.

The measures in our motion would go a considerable way to closing the corrosive tax differential with the rest of the United Kingdom. They would save average full-time workers more than £600 this year and, by raising thresholds by £1,300 by 2030-31, they would grow the tax base and deliver growth. They prove that the Scottish Conservatives are the only party that is serious about cutting tax and cutting waste, the only party that is serious about cutting the SNP’s bloated benefits bill and the only party that is committed to a fairer deal for Scottish workers.

I move,

That the Parliament calls on the Scottish Government to reduce income tax on working people in Scotland; commits to uprating income tax thresholds in line with inflation in the forthcoming Scottish Budget and in future Scottish Budgets; further commits to removing the Scottish basic rate and intermediate rate of income tax and replacing them with a single Scottish income tax rate of 19 pence on income up to the higher rate threshold, and believes that these fairer measures would begin to reduce the tax differential with the rest of the United Kingdom, put more money into the pockets of working families, and support economic growth by addressing the cumulative effects of current income tax policy.