The Scottish Government

Finance and Sustainable Growth Secretary John Swinney

Friday, November 30, 2007

For too long Scotland's economy has underperformed. Not only does our historically low growth rate compare poorly with the UK, but we are left standing by successful small independent countries like Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Finland.

For too long politicians have sat complacently while young bright and mobile Scots have left this country to seek better opportunities elsewhere. The world is full of successful Scots. We want to create the opportunities to enable our talented people to build a successful Scotland.

Ours is a government of ambition. That is why we are determined to match or exceed the UK's growth rate by 2011. We will create the conditions for successful business and through them make Scotland wealthier. And we want to see more Scots sharing in that wealth.

We want Scots to benefit from the learning process on a lifelong basis - we want people to go to university or college to improve their chances of a good job, or to improve their performance in the job they are in and so to contribute ever more to the economic growth of our nation.

We can make a good start with the powers currently available to the parliament. With greater powers we could do so much more - more to attract and retain business activity, for example, and ensure that the additional wealth they create helps to fund the front-line services we need to make our country more productive, more competitive, and just.

With over 1,500 responses in two weeks I am delighted at the overwhelming response to the national conversation. I welcome the debate it has generated across all sectors of Scottish society on ways to make our country more successful, wealthier and fairer.

This blog is now closed to further comments.

Comments

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• 141. Jacquie Johnstone - Sutherland

  Tuesday, February 26, 2008 05:07

  Mr Swinney,Hands off Scots water!!!!!!
  Are you proposing selling off yet another of our assets just as westminster has done?
  If this is a way of you balancing your books forget it.
  As a life long advocate for Scots independance I shudder at the thought of our own parliament selling off the little we have left.
  There was furor before regarding this it will not go away.

• 142. Dave Eastabrook - Largs, Ayrshire

  Wednesday, February 27, 2008 19:34

  141. Jacquie Johnstone
  If selling off our water meant we could turn on our taps and smell and drink pure tasty Scottish Water, rather than having a dead dank revolting smell, and the enforced poison halogenic fluoride, in our water, I guess I wouldn't care who got it!
  
  Yum yum, natural water, not added chemicals.

• 143. Scottish Banknotes Again! - Fife

  Saturday, March 1, 2008 15:17

  #140 Jacqui
  
  I personally have very little problem exchanging Scottish notes in England or anywhere else, for that matter. However I do take the currency of the area and some English notes in case I have an emergency situation. This is no more than common sense, in my opinion, because when I travel abroad I am usually on holiday and intend to enjoy myself, rather than picking a pointless fight with my hosts.
  
  Let see if the SCOTTISH parliament can do more than the British parliament to make the refusal of ANY legal tender a CRIME. The Suggestion is stupid, and I am surprised that you wish to deny the ENGLISH the same rights that we all have, namely to refuse to accept coinage or notes that we feel are suspect.
  

• 144. Ian Burnett - Glasgow

  Wednesday, March 5, 2008 22:49

  Mr Swinney has announced that £63 million will be allocated in 2008-11 for Third Sector development, as well as a further £30 million for direct investment through the new Scottish Investment Fund. This represents a 37 per cent increase in third sector funding.
  
  Mr Swinney added:
  
  "We are establishing the Scottish Investment Fund and the Third Sector Development Programme to enhance the capacity and the potential of third sector organisations to contribute to building a better country.
  
  "Much of the third sector already makes a great contribution to Scotland, but we intend to ensure the Third Sector is resourced to make an even more significant contribution."
  I find that statement from November 2007 very hard to align with the reality of the current situation. More and more groups and organisations within this sector are scaling down their projects, making redundant some of the best people who practice within this area of the third sector and why? because they cannot obtain the much needed funding to keep going. Action speaks louder than words and to date all that has been forthcoming has been words. The Investment fund has been mention in releases for months but where is it, you type it into the search engine on the govs site and all you find is words, no links, no application forms, no criteria for applications. Come on wake up to what is happening out here in the real world, there are many skilled and commited individuals who are leaving the sector which means that the people who need their services the most are going to be the ones who ultimately suffer.
  3 months after your statement there is a despondency setting in that could be hard to turn around - make the money available so that all those groups/organisations that need your support can continue to provide the support that the many hundreds, if not thousands, of people in lesser fortunate circumstances have come to rely upon to get through each day of their lives.
  Act upon your words, don't wait any longer and have these funds made available to all those groups/organisations that are struggling to maintain the depth, breadth and quality of their services to those that need it the most.

• 145. Heard the latest joke? Local Income Tax - Fife

  Wednesday, March 12, 2008 14:22

  Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo land otherwise known as Scotland. Our government is full of wonderful people who will make our lives rosy and make us rich.
  (Provided the government at Westminster funds the proposals, LIKELY? No way.)
  
  Perhaps the first lesson for the government is that ALL taxes that people have to pay are HATED, not just the Council Tax. However taxes are levied to provide funds for the services we have come to expect in a civilised society. Council Tax is assessed at a local level for the 20% not funded by central government to provide the services required for a local population. It is not a perfect method of raising tax but it has a number of advantages. Pensioners whose income has dropped, as has their ability to look after a 3 or 4 bedroom house, can opt to move to a smaller and more easily maintained property and benefit from the reduced outlay required for Council Tax. People who are at the bottom of the earnings bracket and cannot afford the full payment can get further assistance from central government with help to pay the bill. People who live in big houses or mansions even can get well and truly clobbered with a tax based on the value of their property.
  
  Let’s look at the local income tax option.
  
  OAP’s now have no incentive to move unless they wish to realise the capital from their property, but will now have to pay another 3p in the pound towards the NATIONAL income tax take, irrespective of their house size. If both have a pension and pay tax then both will have to stump up the 3p. The beauty of this procedure is that they will be taxed BEFORE they receive the income.
  
  People who qualify for respite can no longer claim for the relief, no bill no subsidy, BUT if they pay tax they will also have to pay the extra 3p in the pound. Possible? You tell me.
  
  How about the rich people living in mansions? Let’s say they pay themselves £20,000 a year salary and £100,000 a year on dividends. That would work out at £450 / year extra in income tax, allowing for £5,000 personal allowances, and ZERO extra tax on the dividends. (£3,000 minimum if the tax was levied on this portion of ‘income’.) According to Mr Swinney there are too few people in this bracket and it would be too expensive to collect!!! He apparently hasn’t worked out that a lot more business people will be looking at this option once (if) it becomes law. Getting back to our two pensioners with a pension each, living in a single bedroom, sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. Their combined tax contribution will possibly be greater than the rich person in the mansion!!
  
  The Scottish government wouldn’t do that to the Scottish people would they? Look after Mr Trump, and his representatives and Mr MacDonald and his pals, before the local population? Both of these people will be able to thank the ‘amazing’ Mr Salmond for arranging that their employees have to pay more tax than they will.
  
  Alistair Darling may not be the most experienced Chancellor of the Exchequer but he is hardly likely to pay up front for a bill that doesn’t exist, or collect tax for the Scottish Government free of charge, if at all. If Mr Swinney thinks it’s too expensive to collect £3,000 + from his rich pals, then what chance the treasury will feel the same about collecting £300 or less, from the poorly paid?
  
  Where will the tax be collected, or levied for that matter. If you work for a company with its head quarters, and payroll department in England will they be obliged to collect the tax and pay it to the Scottish Government. Worse, what if the employee works in England and lives in Scotland? Can they be billed at all? Or are these just situations that are too difficult to resolve and best left alone?
  
  Sorry folks but at this rate and shortfall in income how long will it be before the income tax, local or national has to increase to 5p, 10p, 20p ……? The shortfall on means tested benefit is worth £80 / year for every man, woman and child in the country, the difference between the saving on my band D house in Fife and my tax bill would be £1,200 / year in my favour so I should be happy, but I’m not. One way or another I am going to have to pay for the services I now expect to have and I suspect it will be a lot more than the £1,200 I am supposed to save. Free buses? Cheap rail fare? Subsidised gym and swimming facilities? Kiss them all goodbye. Just by freezing the Council Tax Fife has gone from the cheapest provider of care in the community to the most expensive. Any savings we could have made have gone in the subsidy for use of facilities at the local gym / swimming pool for low paid workers, dropping from 50% to 10%.
  
  Be careful what you wish for, you might get it!!!
  
  PS Four adults sharing a flat will be charged at the +3p irrespective of the services they use, have already paid up to subsidise the local councils through the income tax they pay anyway. It’s called the POLL tax.
  

• 146. Paul Craig - Renfrewshire

  Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:03

  The SNP live in fantasy land if they think that raising taxes will bring wealth to Scotland. Local income tax and other increases in taxation could easily drive the most wealthy and the taxes they pay out of our economy.
  
  It is not healthy that higher earners currently (under UK labour policy) pay a vast portion of their income in taxes. Direct taxes are the tip of the iceberg. VAT, fuel and other duties, road tax, council tax, insurance premium tax, stamp duty etc amount to a vast drain.
  
  Labour policy since being elected seems to consist of making the life of those in the public sector very comfortable with scant regard to the cost of doing so.
  
  To stimulate our economy more money needs to be spent on infrastructure projects and improving our country rather than 'feather-bedding' all in the civil service.
  
  I often wonder if it is a deliberate policy of the UK government to look after the almost 50% of the working population employed by the government to virtually guarantee a majority vote.
  
  Scotland needs a "new broom" to sweep away the burden of government which absorbs almost half of GDP. Restore pride in our nation to all and let industry flourish by having less intervention fiscally and through regulation.
  
  We should be planning how we can become a low tax nation to attract inward investment and wealthy individuals rather than contemplating raising taxes.
  
  We have rich natural resources on land and in the waters surrounding our country. We should benefit from that rather than having EU dictating that our fisherman cannot fish our waters.
  
  We also need honesty in polictics. Like in any other walk of life MSPs guilty of fiddling their expenses etc (which is fraud) should be sacked. Less of the Punch and Judy and more serious debate. Opposition should be working to influence government policy and suggest alternative rather than opposing everything for the sake of it.

• 147. Ian A Downie - Balmedie, Aberdeen

  Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:20

  Somewhere in the Executive there should be senior official charged with ensuring all departments are pointing in the same direction and exercising a degree of joined up thinking so sadly lacking it would appear.
  
  The decision to push back the Balmedie - Tipperty dual carriageway works by one year has a direct and substantially detrimental impact of the Trump International Golf Course Development at a time when the imminent Inquiry has been thrown into disarray by the actions of four Aberdeenshire councillors. Bear in mind that the Trump proposal is at outline stage only and the prospect of having to deal with such a negative and obstructive local authority in relation to the processing of any reserved matters planning applications must be giving increasing encouragement to throw in the towel and invest in Northern Ireland. Less talk and more joined up action please or Aberdeenshire's Councillors will have the lights out in the FM consituency before long.

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