Conservatives reveal plan for £600m boost

INCREASING the number of taxpayers in Scotland rather than stinging people with higher taxes could provide a £600 million-plus boost to funding for schools and hospitals, new analysis by the Scottish Conservatives says.

The party’s research suggests that this amount could be available by simply raising the proportion of middle and upper rate taxpayers to the UK average; £600 million, it says, would be around the same as the cost of training 1,200 new GPs or building a new hospital.

Ruth Davidson said the figures emphasised the need for the SNP Government to prioritise economic growth in 2017, which, she said, it could start doing by ditching its plan to tax people in Scotland more than the rest of the UK.

The Scottish Conservative leader pointed out how under the new Scotland Act extra powers would come to Holyrood this year, meaning funding for schools and hospitals in Scotland would come directly from the pockets of Scottish taxpayers.

Stressing how it was wrong for the Scottish Government to demand taxpayers pay ever more, she said: “The right way to fund our public services is to focus on increasing jobs, so that more people are paying in.

“Our figures illustrate the kind of windfall we’d get from taking that right course. If the number of higher and additional rate taxpayers was raised to the UK average, the Scottish Government would get back more than £600 m in extra taxes to spend on our NHS, schools, or on better roads and rail.”