On the day before the Income Tax Rate Resolution is debated in the Scottish Parliament, statistics published by the OECD have confirmed that the Scottish economy continues to fall behind the rest of the developed world.
The independent Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast Scottish GDP growth of just 0.2 per cent in Q4 2017. This compares to GDP growth in the OECD of 0.6 per cent for the same period.
This means that the Scottish economy is only growing at a third of the rate of the OECD as a whole, a third of the rate of the EU and less than half the rate of the UK as a whole.
By contrast, growth for the UK economy as a whole for this period was 0.5 per cent, which is in line with growth in the US, Germany and France.
Tomorrow, in the Scottish Rate Resolution debate in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP will make over one million taxpayers pay more tax than if they lived in the rest of the UK.
Scottish Conservative shadow economy secretary, Dean Lockhart said;
”The SNP are about to break a central manifesto promise and raise income taxes while the economy is falling far behind Europe and the UK.
“It is now clear that, after a decade in power, the SNP is responsible for the lowest trends in economic growth for 60 years.
“As leading commentators have highlighted, the SNP cannot continue to blame Brexit as Scotland lags well behind the rest of the UK.
“The SNP's failure to grow our economy is directly responsible for less money being available for schools, hospitals and public services.
‘’The SNP’s only answer is to raise taxes despite protests from business groups who know this will simply damage the economy further.
“Once again the SNP is making hard-working taxpayers in Scotland pay more and get less.”