Scotland should become such a low-tax, business-friendly society that entrepreneurs and the wealthy are enticed north of the border from England, Ruth Davidson said last night.
The Scottish Conservative leader berated the SNP and Labour for curbing investment, discouraging enterprise and chasing the rich out of Scotland.
Giving a speech to the Adam Smith Institute in London, Ms Davidson championed a policy platform that, she claimed, would allow Scotland to thrive. It would involve keeping taxes as low as — or preferably lower — than the rest of the UK, encouraging scientific developments such as GM crops and leading a fracking revolution. This summer the Scottish government announced a controversial ban on growing GM crops. It previously imposed a moratorium on fracking.
Ms Davidson said she believed that the Scottish government should promise never to raise taxes higher than the rest of the UK. Failing to do so would only encourage Scotland’s already low proportion of top-rate taxpayers to flee south, she said.
Ms Davidson also derided the proposal from Kezia Dugdale, Labour’s new leader in Scotland, to levy a 50p top rate of tax on people with salaries of more than £150,000.
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Scotland has 14,000 top-rate taxpayers, about 5 per cent of the UK total and below its population share of 8 per cent.
Ms Davidson wants to attract another 10,000 high earners to contribute hundreds of millions of pounds towards public services.
She said: “We do that first by guaranteeing that tax rates in Scotland will be no higher than the rest of the United Kingdom, something I urge the Scottish government to do immediately. This sends out the right message to everyone from across the UK that Scotland is not about punishing earned wealth. I want to see us in Scotland rolling out the red carpet to our neighbours across the United Kingdom.”
Ms Davidson believes that Labour’s decision to move to ground on the left that has already staked out by the SNP gives her party the chance to prosper in the middle with right-leaning, pro-business policies. Her strategists also believe that the arrival of real tax-raising powers for the Scottish parliament next April gives the Conservatives a genuine chance of doing well in the Holyrood elections, because they will be the only ones advocating lower taxes.
She said that the SNP’s ban on GM crop development and fracking would deter scientists and engineers from moving to Scotland. “I know from speaking to business leaders at home that there are real worries that we are missing out of this great British revival.”
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Turning to Labour, she said: “Kezia Dugdale, was barely in the job a week before stating her desire to raise taxes on middle to high earners. This, of course, will receive the warmest welcome from George Osborne as its most immediate impact will be to encourage Scotland’s top-rate taxpayers to leave Scotland for south of the border.
“It is Labour at its most typical: borne of legitimate intentions, but utterly naive and self-defeating.”