Council tax: SNP incompetence is to blame for massive proposed increases that will harm those who can’t afford to pay – Murdo Fraser

The SNP’s tax plans are not about equality, but their own economic inadequacy

There’s a hole in Humza Yousaf’s fiscal bucket and the only way he can think of dealing with it is by raising tax again – this time council tax. Again. Remember the SNP were elected in 2007 on a pledge to abolish what they called the “hated council tax”. They didn’t. They kept it. They even boasted about freezing it. Sixteen years on, they plan to make it more hateful for many but have no plans to reform it. For many, it may boil rather than freeze.

Leaked papers from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities suggest they plan staggering rises for those who live in higher value homes of up to nearly a quarter. Now we can debate the merits of a plan to “soak the rich” but the real problem for Scotland is that there is a diminishing pool of rich to soak. Indeed, under the SNP it struggles to be a puddle.

Wealth creation is our national problem and, without it, any argument for the redistribution of wealth is a sham. Humza Yousaf, as is traditional for the Nationalists, is fond of saying he doesn’t have enough “levers” to govern. When it comes to tax he has plenty, but he uses them not as levers but as crowbars with which he beats wealth creation to a pulp.

Already the SNP have used their income tax powers to raise extra funds, but barely enough to cover the losses compared to the system we had before tax devolution. Raising income tax for the highest earners has created a substantial tax differential with the rest of the UK, but has actually raised very little for the Scottish coffers.

There is a £1 billion hole in Scottish finances for next year. So now, after years of depriving local government of the funds they need (and refusing to give them their share of cash sent by the UK Government under the Barnett Formula) the SNP will seek to punish the Scottish middle class further for being successful, where they fail.

Regardless of how many local government services they use, or their income, people who own properties the SNP deem to be expensive, will pay more for their government’s failings. Retired people will be punished for staying in homes they bought decades ago. People whose incomes have not risen will be penalised by a substantial increase in council tax. This is not just desperate stuff. It is a policy without a future. A plan with a best-before date. A strategy which will soon go off.

Scotland’s problem is not the redistribution of wealth, it is the creation of wealth to redistribute – or, rather, the lack of it. And Scotland under the SNP is not an attractive place for wealth creators to live in or to come to. We are the highest-taxed part of the UK. This is driving people away and making it harder to attract talent here. Two weeks ago, Dr David McColl of the British Dental Association told a parliamentary committee at Holyrood that higher taxes here were deterring young dentists from taking jobs in Scotland. His concerns are reflected across many other sectors of the economy.

The SNP try to argue that ‘free’ public services make up for that, but that is not true. Our health service doesn’t work. Our schools are behind those in England despite having more cash per pupil. University places which used to be available based on talent are now limited for Scots, while those from the rest of the UK, and foreign parts, have access if they pay.

There is a limit to what the middle class can pay because the SNP have set limits on how much Scotland can prosper. They have done that by their ineptitude. Like drugs deaths, they have taken their “eye off the ball” when it comes to the economy.

Recently Humza Yousaf said that, if Scotland was independent, we could avoid the economic difficulties every country in the world is suffering from. No argument, just assertion. No policy, just piffle. He still can’t even tell us what our currency would be if we ever did secede.

But with cash running out, a failing First Minister without a plan will punish the successful who did have a plan for their lives, with more tax in the shape of a rise in the council tax he said he would abolish. It might be a short-term ruse for a politician desperate to close the gap in public finances created by his and his colleagues’ ineptitude. But it is not a plan for a nation. It is not a strategy to grow an economy.

The SNP’s tax plans are not about equality, they are about their own inadequacy. And what they don’t see – and what they would see if they had a real vision for our nation – is that their tax rises are really a tax on aspiration. That within or without the UK, Scotland will only grow if we give Scots the opportunity to grow, which the SNP have limited through education, and the chance to prosper, which the SNP have stymied through tax.

Many of those asked to pay these council tax rises, including many pensioners on fixed incomes, simply won’t have the money to do so. At the time of a cost-of-living crisis, it seems extraordinarily callous to squeeze their household budgets still further.

The answer, surely, is for the Scottish Government to start properly funding councils again, instead of slashing their budgets year on year, and expecting them to make up the shortfall by hiking taxes on those who might not be able to pay. But that would require a government that can actually cope with handling public finances, and there is precious little evidence that the one we currently have at Holyrood fits that description.

Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife