Give young families tax cut to boost birth rate, urges Forbes
She f lies in the face of Humza’s punitive hikes
YOUNG couples looking to start a family should receive tax cuts amid a radical bid to boost birth rates, former finance secretary Kate Forbes has said.
The mother of one – and former SNP leadership race contender – said Scotland needed to adopt more family-friendly policies that would reduce the financial burden of having children. The latest data shows Scotland’s birth rates have dropped by a fifth in a decade.
The number of births registered in 2022 was 46,957, down 19 per cent from the 58,027 births recorded in 2012. There were almost 16,000 more deaths than births in 2022, statistics published by the National Records of Scotland at the end of March show.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Ms Forbes, 33, said extra financial support could encourage people to start families, adding that some of her peers are thinking about having children but first want to ensure they had a stable income and home.
Crucially, she suggested a council tax cut – currently reserved to single people, those on smaller incomes and the elderly – could also be applied to young families.
Ms Forbes also said a solution to the population crisis, something she labelled ‘Scotland’s greatest challenge’, was to consider changes to Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, which would make it easier for young couples to buy larger homes to house their growing brood.
The proposals fly in the face of the punitive tax regime espoused by the SNP and its leader, First Minster Humza Yousaf.
More than half a million Scots have been hit with tax rises that came into force last month, creating a record tax gap with the rest of the UK.
Ms Forbes said: ‘The most obvious tax that families face is council tax, and there is financial support for single-person discounts and there is financial support for those who are struggling to pay.
‘But there isn’t financial support for families with children and if you put that alongside the fact that a lot of children who are in poverty are actually in families where parents are working, I don’t think you can just ask parents to work harder to meet the costs, I do think we need to reduce costs as well.’
She added: ‘It’s about providing homes as well, making it easier to get on the housing ladder. There’s a lot of support generally for single people or older people who are struggling to make ends meet, but those who have kids and those who have a job are unlikely to benefit from any of the state support.
‘So if you’re serious about supporting families to have children then you need to do more to ensure they can afford housing, make sure they can access work that actually pays.’
In Hungary, reduced income tax is offered to parents of two or three children, while those with four are exempt altogether. It is believed fertility rates have risen from 1.25 to 1.59 births per woman in Hungary.
Ms Forbes said: ‘When was the last time we saw a policy introduced specifically to support families? There’s a lot that is designed to support those with low incomes which is totally legitimate, but children eat into your income like nothing else.
‘We need higher birth rates because the projections for population decline are extremely worrying.’
She said an aging population ‘has a massive impact on our economy, on our ability to provide public services that are fully staffed, and also the future of certain communities are actually at risk’.
Estimates from the Left-wing IPPR Scotland think-tank say a new higher income tax rate of 45p would raise £257million a year.
‘Children eat into your income like nothing else’