Calman's tokenism

THE Calman report (your report, 16 June) looks like a stitch-up to give the illusion of change. I do not write of the refusal to give us a share of oil revenue since the argument against is reasonable.

I write of the purely public relations call for Scotland to get more power to vary income tax, which no government has come close to using. This is tokenism. The power we could and should get is to reduce corporation tax. Everybody knows it was the reduction in this tax that was the driver of Ireland's 7 per cent growth. This is why the SNP went into the last election promising to try to get us the power to reduce it. That was and remains the basis of their promise to produce a "Celtic Lion" economy matching Ireland's. It is also something the former Labour leader Jack McConnell promised to support and that even the Lib Dems had been "looking at" (your report, 3 July, 2006).

If we actually want to grow Scotland's economy, control of the levers which could most directly improve our competitiveness must be used and the most obvious is corporation tax. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

NEIL CRAIG

Woodlands Rd

Glasgow