The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
‘Come clean over new tax powers’
Holyrood leaders will be punished at the ballot box if they fail to tell voters how they will use new powers coming to Scotland, according to a UK Cabinet minister.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell said it would be “inexplicable” to voters if parties relied on technicalities to shirk new tax and welfare powers coming their way through the Scotland Bill.
The raft of changes will be the “biggest transfer of power in the history of UK devolution” and will create “in effect a new Scottish Parliament”, Mr Mundell told an Edinburgh audience.
He warned: “Any party who sought to get away with not telling people how much tax they intended to put upon them will suffer electoral repercussions.”
The Bill will devolve power to Holyrood to set income tax rates and bands, top-up welfare benefits or create new ones and to keep half of all VAT receipts from April 2017. Scotland, said he was confident the SNP wanted to reach an agreement on the fiscal framework, which sets out the financial terms of the power transfer.
But he added: “There is no point devolving powers to Scotland if they are just going to be held in Edinburgh.”
SNP MSP Stewart Maxwell said his party has already outlined what it will do for the limited powers Scotland gets this year.
He added: “But it is a bit premature of David Mundell to be asking parties how they will use the powers proposed in the Scotland Bill, given that financial arrangements underpinning them are still being negotiated.”
Speaking in Edinburgh last night, Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, said parties can no longer claim they are powerless to act.
She said her party will bring back the 50p top tax rate for those earning more than £150,000, not raise the threshold for higher rate payers and will scrap the SNP’s plan to get rid of air passenger duty.