Scotland’s political leaders clashed tonight in the second televised debate of the election campaign.
With the Scottish Parliament getting new powers over income tax rates and bands, Nicola Sturgeon, Kezia Dugdale, Ruth Davidson, Willie Rennie and Patrick Harvie were involved in heated exchanges over tax at Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms.
First Minster and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon accused Labour of “throwing in the towel” in the fight against austerity by backing the Tory budget at Westminster.
She insisted the purpose of tax is to raise revenue for services – and said: “My tax proposals will do that.”
But the SNP has rejected increasing the top rate of income tax to 50p in 2017-18 – the first year Holyrood has the powers – arguing such a move could cost £30 million.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale hit back at her rival, saying: “You won’t ask rich people to pay a penny more.”
Ms Dugdale told the STV programme Scotland Debates: “Nicola says her plans raise £2 billion – actually you need to raise double that to stop the cuts.
“If she is not prepared to raise that amount of money she can not feasibly say she is against austerity.”
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said all four other leaders “want to raise taxes on the hard working people of Scotland” adding that in contrast the Tories would “fight to keep more money in the pockets of the workers of Scotland”
The Conservative argued: “I think it’s not in the national interest to have a higher rate of tax here than the rest of the UK. Yes we need fair taxes but we also need competitive taxes too if we’re going to encourage the kind of enterprise and jobs we want to see here.”
But Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: “Ruth has just talked about cutting taxes, she only really wants to cut taxes for the rich, she doesn’t want to improve services for anybody else.
“I want to make a transformational investment in education so it is the best in the world again.”
Scottish Green co-convener Patrick Harvie argued: “Taxation isn’t just an accounting mechanism to ensure we fund public services, it should also be about income and wealth inequality in our society because our economy belongs to all of us.”
His party plans to raise income tax to 60p for the very highest earners, though Mr Harvie insisted most taxpayers would be better off under the Green reforms.
He said: “We do need to be investing in the public services, all the public services, everyone of us depend on everyday throughout our lives.
“But the Scottish Green Party doesn’t believe we can do that with a status quo tax policy.”
