While there is still a formula to follow, increasing taxes is not the answer

Keith Howell’s agenda continues to be to attack the SNP Scottish Government. (Letters, 26 December).

But he misrepresents the situation.

Enoch Powell discerned that power devolved is power retained, and that is the case with devolution to Holyrood. Westminster determined the rules of engagement for the basic “settled will of the Scot- tish people”, and for the transfer of some additional powers under the Calman and Smith Commission proposals which continued Barnett.

Calman decreed that from 2016 we take responsibility for the 10p one-half standard rate of income tax £5 billion proceeds from Calman, with the £5bn being deducted from the Barnett-based block grant. We await details of the progress on that – if there is a shortfall in the calculated figure, would we have recourse back to the block grant to make up the difference? From 2017, all earned income tax would follow under Smith.

For the current year, no Holyrood party proposed any tax increase under Calman, so the finite aspect of our fundingremained. Wecouldspend only the central funding that Barnett provided. So, only were the SNP to hold back, and to fail to allocate, any of the available money, could there be overall attribution to their actions. Otherwise, the reductions would be attributable to a shortfall from Westminster.

With Smith clicking in next year, and uncertainty about the accuracy of the Calman revenue also occurring in 2017, it would have been foolhardy for the SNP, or for any party (in power or otherwise), to commit to the increase in tax that Keith Howell craves for the SNP.

So, we have to take the bruhaha of the opposition parties, united as they are in criticising every move by the SNP, with a pinch of salt. In demanding, effectively, that their own policies are preferable to those of the Scottish Government, and having a 64 to 63 majority, they could oblige the SNP to resign en bloc – imagine the chaos that would cause as the four disunited opposition parties squabbled among themselves for priority for their own disparate standpoints, without, individually, sufficient electoralsupport, Iwonder,which would Keith Howell support?