Alex Salmond was coming under severe pressure last night to explain why he had twice gone to court to prevent details of his government’s local income tax plans being made public.
The disclosure puts the Nationalists on the back foot for the first time in the Holyrood election campaign. It also fuelled speculation that the reason the SNP ditched the plan two years ago was that government officials had secretly advised ministers they would have to set a much higher rate than they had envisaged.
However, a pledge to introduce local income tax is again due to be included in the SNP manifesto for this year’s Scottish election although, as The Times reported last week, the Nationalists are now prepared to wait until at least 2015 before trying again.
After the announcement by the SNP in 2009 that it was temporarily dropping the plan, a newspaper asked, under Freedom of Information legislation, for details of the financial implications of the new tax.
The newspaper was especially keen for the SNP government to publish a document written, it is believed, by officials on the financial implications of the tax for the Scottish public. But the paper was blocked by ministers who applied to the Court of Session to prevent the release of the information.
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After a lengthy legal fight, the objection was dropped and Scotland’s information commissioner, Kevin Dunion, was given access to the papers.
Last month he ordered that some of the information should be released. But a new appeal has now been lodged by Mr Salmond, claiming that the commissioner was wrong and further delaying the release of the information. This means that publication has been delayed beyond the election on May 5.
A Scottish government spokesman said: “Ministers have appealed against the commissioner’s decision to the Court of Session as they consider that the decision is not in line with the provisions of Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Pending the court’s consideration of the appeal, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
But opposition parties seized on the disclosure, since it gave them ammunition against the SNP after several days when the election momentum appeared to be swinging towards the Nationalists.
The Scottish Labour leader, Iain Gray, called on Mr Salmond to “come clean” on how much a local income tax would cost families.
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Mr Gray lambasted what he described as “an orchestrated and unprecedented cover-up by Alex Salmond and the SNP to conceal the truth during an election campaign about how their tax plans will hammer hard-working Scottish families”.
Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Conservative leader, asked what Mr Salmond had to hide. Miss Goldie added: “There is a can of writhing worms that Alex Salmond is going to extraordinary lengths to keep a lid on. This new appeal to the courts looks like a brazen attempt to get past polling day without having to spill the beans.”
Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, said it was no wonder Mr Salmond wanted “the embarrassing details locked away in a filing cabinet so the public can’t see what a shambles the SNP’s tax policy is”.
Mr Salmond attempted to get away from the controversy by returning to the campaign trail yesterday with a visit to Monklands Hospital in a attempt to remind local people how his government had saved the hospital’s accident and emergency department from closure.
Labour highlighted what it said was evidence that the SNP had broken 100 of the the promises that it made to the voters in 2007.
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The Conservatives promised to protect Scotland’s health budget while the Scottish Liberal Democrats highlighted their plans to improve rail services in Scotland.