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Fiscal-lite is not credible without tax cuts

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Published Date: 07 October 2006
By BRIAN MONTEITH
IT SHOULD come as no surprise to anyone that the Scottish Conservatives will soon be presented with a set of new policy initiatives that includes making the Holyrood Parliament responsible for raising a larger proportion of the money it spends.
With more money than they know what to do with (spending has risen from £15.6 billion in 1999 to a projected £32 billion in 2007; total under-spends in that period amount to £1.2 billion and will rise further) MSPs do not appreciate the burden indivi...

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Mev Brown,

Southhouse, Edinburgh 07/10/2006 02:15:11

Any policy should be built on a foundation of principle.

My fear is if the Tories introduced a policy of tax cuts it would be built on the foundations of either incompetence or desperation.

To suggest tax cuts would suggest Scotland has no major problems that needs state funding, so taxes could be lowered rather than wasted.

However, consider the following.

Scotland is awash with drugs. Most informed observers accept that the police, despite their best efforts, have lost the war on drugs.

Given this unpleasant and unavoidable fact the call to either de-criminalise, or even legalise, class ‘a’ drugs is growing. And this call includes the voice of the Strathclyde Police Federation.

They know that the police can offer little more than a minor interruption to the drugs supply chain.

Indeed, I suspect the state pushes more class ‘a’ drugs in Scotland than the police actually seize on a year-on-year basis – so why bother?

Given that Scotland drugs problem causes an estimated 70-80% of Scottish crime, legalisation in a compelling argument.

I would suggest MSPs, including Tory MSPs, consider some serious policies to tackle Scotland’s drugs problem rather than continuing the existing policy of pussy-footing around.


 

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