Moderator delivers damning verdict on council tax freeze

THE leader of the Free Church of Scotland has condemned the SNP’s council tax freeze as the ‘economics of fairyland’.

In a rare intervention in day-to-day politics, the Rev David Robertson accused the Nationalists of ‘handicapping’ local authorities, and said parties were being ‘led by politicians with a Messianic complex’.

Following a series of exposés by the Mail into fat- cat salaries, the Dundee-based minister also blasted the sky-high wages enjoyed by many council bureaucrats.

All 32 local authorities are set to freeze council tax for the ninth year from April, despite attempts by some to defy Finance Secretary John Swinney.

Some Labour-led councils are considering legal action against the Scottish Government, which plans to reduce the total grant for local government by £774million in 2016-17, or 7.2 per cent when inflation is taken into account.

Mr Robertson said: ‘We are in an era when the old balances and checks that existed in our country are being threatened by an increase in big government, run by parties funded by big corporations who purchase big media, and led by politicians with a Messianic complex. Despite the cries of democracy, there is an increasing trend towards centralisation whether to Edinburgh, London or Brussels, and the victims in this are local communities and councils.

‘There is no doubt that many of Scotland’s cities and councils are in crisis. They are being compelled to make savage cuts in basic services whilst being restrained from cutting others.’

He added: ‘The council tax freeze worked well as a temporary populist measure, but to have it as an indefinite policy in a time of austerity is the economics of fairyland.’

But while councils have complained about the looming cuts, it emerged last month there has been an 18 per cent increase in the number of taxpayer-funded pay and pension deals worth more than £100,000 awarded to senior council officials.

In 2014, it was also reported how Glasgow City Council had 32 employees receiving a sixfigure sum in 2012-13 – partly because of retirement and redundancy programmes.

David Crawford, former executive director of social care services in Glasgow, received the largest remuneration package in the UK of £486,303. He took early retirement on a salary of just over £102,000, and received a sixfigure compensation cash deal, with a large pension pot top-up.

Mr Robertson said: ‘Civil serv- ants have more power than elected officials and therefore reap the rewards.

‘In what world does it make sense to have one tax-funded employee earning almost double the salary of the Prime Minister or the First Minister? At a time when social care is being slashed I’m sure the poor are delighted to know that the person who was being paid to look after them was being made rich.’

In response, a Government spokesman said: ‘The Scottish Government has funded the council tax freeze to the tune of almost £500million since 2008 to ensure local authorities are able to continue to provide essential services they are responsible for.

‘Indeed, recent independent research found that the freeze has actually been over-funded.

‘We recognise the pressures on budgets across the whole of the public sector, and in households throughout Scotland, which is why it is important to maintain the council tax freeze – which has now saved the average band D household around £1,550 – while we consider ways to replace it.

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: ‘We continue to make substantial cost savings at the top layer of management.’

As pressure grows on Mr Swinney ahead of next week’s final budget vote, the secretary of the GMB union in Scotland, Gary Smith, said: ‘Ministers need to take their heads out of the sand about the devastating impact of the cuts.’

‘ The tax freeze worked well as a temporary populist measure, but to have it as an indefinite policy... is the economics of Fairyland’ Rev David Robertson ‘Messianic complex’