Readers' Letters: Sarwar's defence of OAP heating cuts makes no sense

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar claims the decision to end the winter heating allowance universal benefit was correct because millionaires don’t need it.

Why on earth do politicians always look at the extreme cases to justify the unjustifiable? There is a valid debate to be had about the allowance but the vast, vast majority who receive the allowance are not millionaires and arguing these extremes does nothing to support the case.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves could have made the allowance taxable so the less well off would pay no tax, and those in receipt of other income could have been taxed on the benefit. Easy to administer, clear and straightforward. Instead, after agreeing a rise for public sector workers of twice the rate of inflation at a cost of £8 billion, she withdraws a universal benefit for pensioners claiming the £1.6bn cost is unaffordable. I can imagine the howls of anguish from Labour if the Conservatives had proposed this cut when they were in power.

Anas Sarwar defended Rachel Reeves's winter fuel payment cuts, saying it made little sense for 'millionaires' to get the handout at a time of immense pressure on public services (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty)

There’s undoubtedly more pain to come. It’s in the DNA of Labour to despise aspiration, to hate wealth creation, and to tax, tax, tax. We knew this before the election, so it should come as no surprise now. The irony is that if we create more wealth, then there is more tax income and it’s easier to help those in genuine need.

Brian Barbour, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

Word of advice

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has discovered a £20bn black hole in our finances. Before her particular black hole there were many others, and they were all plugged. Hence a national debt that has risen from £350bn to £2,800bn in 27 years, with any adverse comment drowned by the clatter of a printing press.

The solution is obvious Rachel – start plugging!

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinross

Enough outrage

Wednesday’s Letters pages were dominated by outraged separatist reaction to Labour’s attempts at fiscal responsibility. Such a notion is an alien concept to the Scottish Government, which wastes our ever-increasing taxes in an orgy of ineffective virtue-signalling.

Have any of these indignant correspondents actually worked in private enterprise of any description? Three first ministers in a row have made empty promises about “re-setting” relations with the alienated business community.

Nationalists have much to say about social welfare and “universal provision” but are almost silent on how all this is to be financed.

No country can sustain extravagant expenditure without the means to pay for it, but this is the heartless lie fed by the SNP to its core supporters. They pretend that yet more taxation on higher earners will magically facilitate utopian dreams, despite all evidence demonstrating that anti-wealth policies merely stifle growth.It’s also suggested that if Holyrood had the “financial levers of any normal country” (ie limitless borrowing powers) we could live on tick forevermore. If this were the case, every Third World country would enjoy a high standard of living with somebody else picking up the bill!

Other implements in the secessionist toolkit are, of course, Brexit and “Scotland’s vast renewable energy resources”. Not for the first time, they’re used by Mary Thomas (Letters, 1 August), who ignores the fact that Europe would not welcome into their club a country with a perpetually high budget deficit, as well as a nasty habit of encouraging certain regions to break away from EU member states.

She talks of “an energy-rich Scotland being a net exporter to the rest of the UK”. It certainly won’t be if North Sea production and nuclear are shut down, leaving us at the mercy of unreliable, inefficient wind farms which blight the landscape, harm wildlife and occupy much-needed agricultural land.

Ms Thomas reports with undisguised glee that Britain didn’t feature in the world’s top ten manufacturing nations this year.A perfect illustration of how deeply in denial these so-called patriots are about the Four Nations’ intimately linked economies and mutual prosperity.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

Such silence

The letter pages of The Scotsman are filled with a plethora of articles covering the spat between supporters of the SNP and the Labour Party. There is, however, a deafening silence over the article by the Just Transition Committee outlining that the SNP have underestimated the cost of housing and building efficiency projects by a factor of four. Their £33 billion price has escalated to over £130bn!

The Climate Emergency Review Group quango set up by the SNP gave a figure of £150bn for a Scottish Green Revolution yet the Office for Budget Responsibility paper outlines a Scottish debt of around £800bn – again the SNP were out by a factor of more than four. The SNP ferry contract estimate is already out by a factor of four and not a single vessel has been transferred into service!

The blunt truth is that the Scottish taxpayer cannot afford to repay Green Transition debts so when is the public going to accept that independence is irrelevant until we fix the climate and vote in politicians who can adopt a plan that does not result in penury for so many many?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

Reform needed

If anything exemplifies how ludicrously generous and unsustainable many of our public “service” defined-benefit pensions are, it is Huw Edwards’s “entitlement” to his BBC pension of £300,000 pa.

It has also been reported, by former Bank of England economist Neil Record, that our public sector’s accrued pension liabilities, largely unfunded and therefore payable by future taxpayers (aka our children and grandchildren), now total £4.9 trillion, almost double the official national debt of £2.7 trillion.

NHS pensions alone cost taxpayers the equivalent of 82 per cent of salaries, more than six times the contributions of even the highest-earning NHS staff, and ignored by the chancellor Rachel Reeves in her public comments on the 22 per cent salary increase she has just agreed. Teachers’ and civil servants’ pension schemes cost us only slightly less.

It is past time for all public sector defined-benefit schemes to be terminated, with accrued benefits crystallised and honoured, and substituted by defined-contribution schemes, just as the private sector realised 30 years ago and has almost universally implemented ever since.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

No more excuses

Recent negative correspondence regarding the two-child policy for benefits ignores the simple fact that the world thrived two thousand years ago with vastly fewer people and, as a result, generated no hostile anthropogenic climate change. With our greatly superior knowledge we shall achieve the same result over time should we put our minds and skills to it. If so, the future, much diminished, world population will be very grateful for our efforts.

Of course, as there is “no gain without pain” we shall have to mend our current neglectful ways, but applied human ingenuity can easily avoid any need for immigrants to fill vacant posts. Remember, we already have well over a million fit but uneconomically active persons of working age. Far better to train up and set these to work than poach scarce talents from abroad.

Where there’s a will there’s a way. No more excuses, please.

Tim Flinn, Garvald, East Lothian

Cut strings

Before deciding who should lead the Scottish branch office of the Conservative Party members should first decide whether they see their new leader as a puppet of a future Boris Johnson or Liz Truss administration run from London, or whether they believe their leader can make different and better decisions if sincerely able to act independently of London control in the best interests of Scottish members and the wider Scottish public.

The “Scottish Conservatives” can have a meaningful role in the future governance of an independent Scotland, a role which will be enhanced by taking advantage of “Scottish Labour’s” continuing failure to shun London-centric Labour Party policies, but members need to speak out and vote in favour of a new approach.

Regrettably, as the third leadership contender enters the race it appears that still the only choice is another puppet unwilling to genuinely stand up for Scotland.

Stan Grodynski, Cairnsmore, East Lothian

Don’t build

I totally agree with James Duncan’s view on Stirling Council turning part of the Bannockburn battle site into a building site (Letters, 1 August). This is a matter for National Trust for Scotland, formerly Scottish Heritage.

Considering Stirling Castle looks down on Bannockburn field, it would be astonishing were the council permitted by the Holyrood government to build a trotting track and car park.

Bannockburn must be forever cared for by Scottish Heritage and not left open to the whims of Stirling Council.

Regardless of which political party we support, it is incumbent upon all of us to make certain Stirling Council cannot proceed with its ill-conceived and unneeded development.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

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