Tories have warned that Scotland risks “being left behind” if SNP ministers at Holyrood fail to match the tax-cutting proposals being introduced in the rest of the UK.
While SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford condemned as “nonsense” Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s package of measures, Scottish Conservative MP John Lamont urged the Scottish Government to adopt similar “radical” proposals.
Changes to income tax included in Friday’s mini-budget included a cut in the basic rate to 19p in the pound, as well as the scrapping of the top rate for those earning £150,000 a year or more.
Those measures do not apply in Scotland – where control over income tax rates and bands is devolved – but with SNP ministers having previously boasted that the system north of the border results in most people there paying less in tax than their UK counterparts, that situation will no longer apply.
Douglas McWilliams, a leading economist and deputy chairman of the Centre for Economics and Business Research told The Sunday Times that “it would be realistic to assume about 20% of top-rate taxpayers could move south” as a result of the changes announced by the UK Government.