SNP ‘got it wrong’ over SVR

Dec 3 2010 Perthshire Advertiser Friday

Dear Editor, – The views expressed by Roseanna Cunningham MSP in this newspaper on Friday, November 26, were both surprising and deeply disappointing.

She claimed that there was “manufactured outrage” surrounding the decision to ditch the SVR. This is an extraordinary assertion given the facts.

Is Ms Cunningham really unaware of why people are angry?

Does she really believe SNP Government can orchestrate one of the biggest cover-ups in post-devolution politics and get away with it?

The real reason why so many people across Scotland are angry with the SNP administration is not, as the SNP spin machine has tried to tell us, because Parliament has temporarily lost its ability to raise or lower taxes.

It was because the government, of which Ms Cunningham is part, failed to inform parliament that they were going to allow the SVR to lapse; thereby disregarding the most important point about parliamentary democracy.

Worse still, for three years, the SNP has led us all to believe that this power was actually available: one only has to look at all of their grandstanding on local income tax to find evidence of it.

John Swinney and Alex Salmond have both been forced to concede that they had got it wrong. Roseanna Cunningham should do the same.

Alastair Paterson,

Oaklands,

Pitheavlis Crescent,

Perth,

PH2 0JA.

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