Message of hope for weary Scots taxpayer

IT is a rallying cry that middle Scotland has been waiting to hear for years.

Launching his bid to lead the Scottish Tories, Jackson Carlaw spoke up for the ‘everyday, middle-of-the-road earners who are the backbone of our country’.

Under the SNP, nurses, teachers and police officers are among about 860,000 Scots who have been hammered by tax-grabs. As Mr Carlaw pointed out, they are far from an ‘affluent elite’, and yet they have paid a heavy price for their aspiration and professional commitment.

It is enormously heartening that the frontrunner in this contest is prioritising changes to the unjust tax regime – but he should go further. For now, he is focusing on those earning around £26,000 to £45,000, and easing their financial predicament is rightly at the top of his agenda.

But what of those earning more than £45,000 – some 350,000 people – who are currently paying the highest tax rates in the UK? The tax apartheid the SNP has created means the UK Government’s hike in the threshold for high-rate taxpayers wasn’t replicated here.

It was a short-sighted move that failed to recognise the risk of a ‘brain drain’ that would prompt talented young Scots to leave the country.

Nor has providing a disincentive for the country’s top earners done anything to bolster our negligible economic growth.

And not even the SNP could legitimately argue that its tax increases have boosted the quality of failing public services.

Mr Carlaw’s strategy has the capacity to woo many wearied taxpayers, but it must be the start of wider – and desperately needed – reform.