Why Salmond was suspended

DAVID Torrance (The Week, 14 April) has fallen for the SNP’s rewriting of history.

Alex Salmond was not expelled from the House of Commons during Nigel Lawson’s 1988 Budget speech for objecting to the poll tax – it was in fact not mentioned once in Lawson’s speech.

As a quick check of Hansard reveals, his interjection, “this is an obscenity. The Chancellor cannot do this”, came immediately after Lawson announced that the basic rate of income tax and the small companies’ rate of corporation tax were both to be reduced to 25 per cent.

Salmond now wishes to portray himself as in favour of lower rates of corporation tax for Scottish companies – the truth is that as far back as 1988, he thought that they were obscene.

Ian Stuart, Dingwall