Readers' Letters: Starmer's plan shows disrespect for Scotland

Downgrading our devolved government to the status of a region of England where our First Minister will have to compete with English mayors for table scraps from the government in London is an insult to all of Scotland.

Starmer goes even further and sidelines our First Minister with the intention to use the Westminster controlled Scotland Office to promote Scotland through UK trade and diplomatic networks.

I have no respect for the right wing Labour Party that evidently has no respect for me or my country.

Ni Holmes, St Andrews, Fife

Shrinking pot

It may be admirable to sincerely promise that you will stick to the “fiscal rules” but why has the Labour Party chosen the Conservatives’ rules?

Having done so, their election manifesto severely lacks the substance to match the ambition of “change”. The deception in use is to talk constantly about the promised changes to public spending which the Institute of Fiscal Studies this week called “tiny, going on trivial”. A child would recognise that a pocket-money increase from £10 to £10.05, in four years’ time, is indeed trivial. A child would recognise an attempt to deceive in being told, over and over again, that it actually includes an increase for chocolate and an uplift for soft drinks.

It’s the headline figure that matters, particularly so in Scotland where most public services are devolved. Westminster does not send hospital appointments to Scotland, as Anas Sarwar seems to think – it sends money. The Barnett consequentials identified in the Labour manifesto are £322 million by 2028-29 on a Scottish Government budget by then of about £63 billion. The Conservative public spending plans which Labour will follow inevitably mean that Scotland’s government will be, overall, £1 billion short of what it needs just to stand still. Factor in the bigger-than-average increase which the NHS needs and it is bad news for other parts of our public services.

“No austerity under Labour” demands that we believe the difference between Conservative austerity and Labour “change” is one-half of 1 per cent in four years’ time.

Robert Farquharson, Edinburgh

Target taxes

If Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister, it’s highly likely that he will have a huge majority which immediately nullifies SNP First Minister John Swinney’s plan to use what he calls SNP power at Westminster to persuade the new PM to raise taxes throughout the UK.

Raising taxes is never the way forward. It simply cuts the spending power of the population, reduces company income and leads to unemployment. If the First Minister made a serious effort to create jobs by investing in the Scottish economy and eliminating free this and that, maybe he wouldn’t have to raise taxes.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

Fresh start

It is highly unlikely that the SNP will achieve a majority of Scottish seats in the Westminster elections of 2024. Following this event it is forecast that the number of seats held by them in the House of Commons will fall from the current level of 43 to 16 or less.

Hopefully this will be a forerunner to the Holyrood elections in Scotland on 7 May 2026. The projected seat changes in the Scottish Parliament indicate a loss of 17 seats by the SNP, and ten seats by the Tories – with Labour gaining 20 seats and the Lib Dems seven.

Not before time the people of Scotland will bear witness to an end to SNP rule at both Parliaments, and also in many Scottish local authorities.

Hopefully this will signal a new start for this northerly part of the UK after far too many years of the SNP administration, and the resulting economic stress – also with far too much unwanted interference by the unelected Scottish Greens.

Scotland will, I am certain, thrive under a new administration!

Robert I G Scott, Northfield, Ceres, Fife

Avoid or evade?

I was astonished to read that Labour would be “clamping down on tax avoidance” (your report, 14 June), so I checked with Labour's manifesto. You are correct, the party plans “investment in HMRC to reduce tax avoidance”.

However, tax avoidance is legal; one is allowed to arrange one's affairs so as to minimise tax liability within the law. What is illegal is “tax evasion”: the non-payment or underpayment of tax.

I presume that, by mistake or ignorance, the wrong word has been used in the manifesto. It should be corrected.

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

Probably

Is the biggest election lie, “Everything in our manifesto is fully costed”.

Alastair Paisley, Juniper Green, Edinburgh

Bad housekeeping

It’s good to see John Swinney getting his priorities right by putting the football campaign above the election campaign.

However, he continues to blame Westminster for the austerity which is holding Scotland back.

It’s interesting, then, that the SNP was able to find a third of a billion pounds for two ferry boats which have yet to see a fare-paying passenger. That’s a huge sum of money, not something you find down the back of the sofa even in Bute House. Where did that money come from? It certainly wasn’t the original budget price. Was it “borrowed” from the health budget, the education budget, maybe the social housing budget? Or perhaps all three?

The SNP have an unenviable record of financial mismanagement so instead of “Westminster-inspired austerity” we should be saying “SNP-inspired austerity”?

Bruce Proctor, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Austerity extra

Mary Thomas (Letters, 14 June) points to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimating an £18 billion budget shortfall in Labour's plans. She might have pointed out that if this estimation is correct it applies to the whole of the UK and that only a fraction of that figure would apply to Scotland.

She might also have mentioned that Labour's plans including, for example, a £10 billion windfall tax on mega-rich oil companies – which the SNP opposes – would more than make up for any shortfall.

But it is interesting to note that Ms Thomas shares with First Minister John Swinney and Westminster SNP leader Steven Flynn an implicit faith in the findings of the IFS which they use to allege a continuation of austerity. Given, therefore, that independence is the prime – indeed, the only – policy in the SNP's manifesto, would it not be honest to bring attention to other findings of the IFS on the costs of independence? Separate IFS reports have forecast at least ten years of further austerity would be incurred and that "it is highly likely an independent Scotland would need to make bigger cuts to public spending or bigger increases to taxes in the first decade following independence than the rest of the UK would need to”.

So there we have it according to the IFS. Vote SNP for austerity on stilts. Catchy.

Colin Hamilton, Edinburgh

Magic money gone

Forget the general election for a moment. For years, nationalist ministers have struggled unsuccessfully to get Scotland's finances under control. The latest figures are mind-blowing – they show borrowings year-on-year, despite record UK funding – reaching the point where we have to pay out, this year alone, £267 million simply to keep up loan interest and repayments. This situation has been laid fairly and squarely on the shoulders of SNP ministers over the years who were supposedly in charge of our financial matters and had all the levers any half-competent administration anywhere would require and relish.

It is in truth eye-watering, ultra-incompetence. It is no use knee-jerk finger pointing. We must ask ourselves how else could there have been approval for the uncountable billions blown on the ferry fiasco, the Bifab debacle, and all the other total disasters over which they presided. Bogeyman Westminster was not in any way involved.

The ministers involved must have assumed there was a never-ending cash supply from the SNP's Magic Money Tree. And that multi-million grants from the EU were not required.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Drop prices

An early morning trip to Edinburgh airport yesterday to drop off my son and his wife and at 04.00 the airport was very busy with many Scotland fans arriving for flights to Germany. There was a constant stream of cars dropping people off and at £5 a time it must have been a very profitable morning for Edinburgh Airport.

Am I alone in thinking that drop-off charges have increased at a ridiculous rate? In 2016 I had a part-time job collecting and delivering people to Edinburgh Airport. At that time the drop off charge was £1. I am struggling to think of any other prices which have increased by 500 per cent, even allowing for Covid, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis.

Paul Birrell, Linlithgow, West Lothian

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