Findlay challenges Swinney to use Budget to deliver ‘game-changing’ tax cut

John Swinney has been urged to deliver a “game-changing” tax cut to help Scotland’s businesses in next month’s Holyrood Budget.

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay told the First Minister that higher rates of income tax in Scotland are “stopping businesses from growing, preventing them from creating jobs”.

On income tax, the Tory said: “Everyone is pleading for the SNP to change direction.”

In recent budgets SNP finance secretaries have used powers over income tax rates and bands to increase charges for higher earners, with ministers seeing this as a method of raising more cash for public services.

Mr Findlay raised this issue at First Minister’s Questions after Glasgow University Professor David Heald told MSPs on Holyrood’s Finance Committee that  the high marginal tax rates in Scotland were “ludicrous”.

Hitting out at the SNP leader, the Tory said: “John Swinney surely knows that high tax kills growth and costs jobs.

“But in his topsy turvy world, hitting hard-working Scots with high taxes will somehow boost our struggling economy. Even his own MSPs are worried.”

With the Scottish Budget due to be unveiled on December 4, Mr Findlay said the First Minister must “do the right thing” for businesses who “urgently need more help”.

The First Minister, however, told Mr Findlay that since the SNP had come to power Scotland had seen higher rates of GDP growth per person than the UK as a whole.

“Since 2007 GDP per person has grown by 10.5% in Scotland compared to 6.3% at a UK level,” Mr Swinney told MSPs.

“Just to remind Parliament, so Parliament has got complete information, 2007 was the moment that this government was elected.

“So in the lifespan of this government we have delivered more growth per head than the rest of the United Kingdom.”

He went on to note: “Most of the taxation that is imposed upon business is not determined by this Parliament, most of it is determined by the United Kingdom Parliament.”

In relation to the Budget, Mr Swinney said Finance Secretary Shona Robison was in talks with opposition parties – with the minority SNP administration needing the support of at least one other party at Holyrood to pass its Budget.

While he said there were “discussions under way” to seek to “construct agreement”, Mr Swinney made clear cuts in tax would have to lead to cuts in public spending.

He said: “The implications of Mr Findlay’s point to me is that if we are to cut taxes we will have to cut public expenditure as well.”

Here Mr Swinney added that parties calling for cuts in taxation should “at least have the democratic responsibility” to set out “where the spending cuts are going to come as well”.