Exclusive:'A promise we can't keep': Anas Sarwar on whether Labour will abolish council tax

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: ‘I'm not going to commit now to say we will abolish the council tax’

Anas Sarwar has moved away from previous Scottish Labour commitments to abolish and replace council tax.

The party leader said he would not “make a promise we can't keep”. Labour’s manifesto at the previous Holyrood election pledged to abolish council tax and replace it with a fairer alternative based on property values and ability to pay. The party’s 2016 manifesto also vowed to scrap the existing system.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar | PA

However, speaking on The Steamie, The Scotsman’s politics podcast, Mr Sarwar said: "This is a complicated and really important issue, and what I'm not going to do is do what the SNP did in 2007, which is promise to scrap and abolish the council tax, but instead we see councils - both SNP, Labour or other party councils across the country - putting up council tax by in some cases 5 per cent, in some cases 10 per cent, because of the huge cuts to local council funding.

"So what I'm not going to do is make a promise we can't keep. I'm not going to commit now to say we will abolish the council tax. We will look through our policy-making process about what is the right approach to take on council tax.

"But more broadly, we are going to make a firm commitment to have a fair funding settlement for local government.”

The Scottish Government recently announced another consultation on council tax reform, 18 years after the SNP came to power with a promise to scrap it. Critics dismissed the move as “cynical” and “a fantasy”.

Elsewhere, Mr Sarwar, whose party will hold its annual conference in Glasgow this weekend, insisted SNP ministers were to blame for "exorbitant" council tax hikes, and not local authorities.

Labour-led East Lothian Council became the first in Scotland to confirm a double-digit hike earlier this week. The local authority said a 10 per cent increase was necessary to maintain essential services.

Asked if this was too much, Mr Sarwar said: “I think councils across the country are going to be looking at council tax rises, which will feel like too much and will be too much. But I will not blame an SNP council when they put up council tax, just like I’m not going to blame East Lothian Council.”

He added: “I actually have the same sympathy for an SNP council or an SNP councillor. They are having to put up council tax because their own party government at Holyrood is not giving them a fair funding settlement.

“So for me, this is not about the colour of any particular party in an individual council. The blame for this doesn’t lie with an SNP councillor, it lies with Scottish ministers, SNP ministers, who are not giving SNP councils, Labour councils or councils of any colour, the support they need, meaning they are therefore having to put up exorbitant, high rates of council tax, which is hurting people in the middle of a cost of living crisis.”

First Minister John Swinney previously told The Scotsman council tax rises of 10 per cent were too high and not necessary.

"I think if you had a quiet conversation with council leaders where they were not being bound by certain things, they would say to you 'we got a better settlement than we thought we were going to get',” he said.