Nicola Sturgeon is pledging no increase in the basic 20p rate of income tax for the life of the next parliament and has ruled out a rise in the higher 40p and top 45p rates for the first year.
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The Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland figures published earlier this month showed the Scottish government ran up a £15bn in 2014-15, equivalent to 9.7% of GDP, compared to 4.9% for the rest of the UK. “We can’t allow apathy to set in”.
A bid by the Scottish Parliament to oust a group of independence campaigners from Holyrood land is to be heard at the Court of Session.
It said: “Given that the majority of these revenues would have come from operations in Scottish waters, the impact of these further declines on the Scottish deficit is proportionately much larger than that on the deficit of the United Kingdom as a whole”.
This includes the loss of UK Government cash, additional interest payments and costs of setting up a currency if it was unable to continue using the pound.
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, said: “Let’s be clear: it wouldn’t be the rich who’d suffer from the SNP’s con trick on independence”.
Professor John Curtice, senior research fellow at ScotCen Social Research, said: “The fact that the Scottish Parliament to be elected on May 5 will be a markedly more powerful body than its predecessors fits a public mood that, following on from the referendum, is more supportive of a powerful Scottish Parliament than ever before”. “It would be the poor who rely on benefits, the sick who rely on our NHS, and the elderly who need care”. The days of showing how Scotland can be the best again start today.
The country would have broken away officially from Britain today had the independence referendum gone the other way but, under SNP plans, the oil price crash would have left a “fiscal gap” worth about £2,000 for every person.
Local government spokesperson, Andy Wightman, said: “It’s also concerning to see Labour proposing to cap the powers of councils to set the rate of property tax when what councils need is greater fiscal freedom to strengthen local democracy and accountability”.
Extra spending cuts or tax rises would be needed to put the public finances on a firmer footing, it said.
The First Minister said: “It’s important to stress higher rate taxpayers willnot pay a single penny more in tax than they do just now as a result of ourplans”.
The White Paper suggested a separate Scotland could outstrip the UK’s growth by 3.8 per cent over 30 years but he said it would take more than 90 years at this rate to eliminate the financial black hole.
From April 2017 the Scottish Government gains control over income tax rates and bands, as part of the devolution of new powers in the Scotland Bill.
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43 per cent of respondents also say that Scotland’s economy would become better under independence, while only 37 per cent believe it would be worse.
