Three former economic advisers to the Scottish government have warned that the country faces a flight of high earners and wealth creators to England unless the SNP matches Conservative tax cut plans.
Sir George Mathewson, the former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, Professor Sir John Kay and the tycoon Jim McColl said Scotland had been left in a no-win situation and would lose much-needed tax revenues unless it acted.
The trio, who served on the Scottish government’s council of economic advisers, intervened following the chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s radical cuts to income and property tax — cutting the top rate of income tax to 40 per cent while it remains at 46 per cent in Scotland.
They argue that the Scottish government should now bring taxation in line with the rest of the UK.
Meanwhile, Douglas McWilliams, a leading economist and deputy chairman of the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), told The Sunday Times that “it would be realistic to assume about 20 per cent of top-rate taxpayers could move south”.