So who’s to blame for £76m police VAT bill?
IT is astonishing that Nicola Sturgeon should make such a great fuss about the VAT bill that Police Scotland must settle (Mail). I agree it’s nonsense that a body such as this must pay and that the £76million or so it has paid since its inception is not recoverable. But we must be clear about two things. The first is that the SNP was well warned that the structure it opted for – a structure that gave them maximum influence – would attract a VAT rating. That warning was ignored, just like all the warnings that too much power was being handed to one Chief Constable and that local accountability would vanish when one giant force replace eight regional forces. The Nationalists were never going to be diverted from their course. They were going to show off and create a superforce that would be ‘world-class’. Which brings me to my second point. The new Chief Constable, Phil Gormley, has his hands tied to a very great extent. he has growing demands but fewer and fewer officers and less of a budget. That is not down to VAT or the Tories at Westminster. It is down to the SNP and Justice Secretary Michael Matheson cheese-paring the budget so that liners for waste bins are rationed and officers have to pay out of their own pockets to replace light bulbs at stations. The situation is dangerous as it puts overworked officers at risk and, of course, the public have less protection under the new system. The SNP created Police Scotland and have left it short of cash and trying to blame the Tories, as Miss Sturgeon did at First Minister’s Questions, was childish.
Jim Alexander, Glasgow.
EVEN if you stopped Police Scotland paying VAT, the force would still be way underfunded. how can the SNP claim that gap is the fault of Westminster? It’s the fault of a party up here which has squandered millions on things such as failed wave power schemes and woolly ‘climate change’ projects. The public know how stretched the police are – and exactly who is at fault.
JOE Lomax, aberdeen.