Warped tax priorities from the SNP - Ian Murray

If there was any lingering doubt that the SNP can still pretend to stand up for working people in Scotland, that has been well and truly put to bed.

Humza Yousaf now believes that anyone earning more than £28,500 in Scotland should pay more income tax, says Ian Murray

Humza Yousaf now believes that anyone earning more than £28,500 in Scotland should pay more income tax – but energy giants recording profits of £33 billion-a-year should pay less tax. These are astonishingly warped priorities from the SNP.

Frankly, I’d have been stunned if the right-wing Tories had been this wrongheaded, but this is probably too much even for Rishi Sunak, the highest axing PM on working people in 70 years.

If the SNP’s latest position is news to you, I accept it can be hard to keep up. Just like the nationalists’ multiple election strategies, Yousaf changes his mind on a near daily basis.

When Labour first proposed a windfall tax on the energy giants making such huge profits, the SNP bafflingly opposed this at the height of the cost-of-living crisis, when electricity and gas bills were going through the roof. Then the nationalists were shamed into supporting us. And now? Now they’re opposing it once again. What an utter disgrace.

While your bills remain so high – hundreds of pounds more than just a few years ago – the SNP believes that energy giants should be allowed to pocket tens of billions of pounds. And at a time when a third of households in Scotland are living in fuel poverty and there were 521 avoidable deaths in Scotland last winter because of cold homes.

Yousaf’s Green colleagues are remaining uncomfortably silent – presumably they care more about their ministerial limos than siding with working people. But I am confident that many SNP politicians are privately deeply unhappy with the party’s new position.

The time-limited windfall tax extension is a key component of Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan, which will help to generate the revenue to invest in Scotland’s green industry. That is vital to ensure the jobs and opportunities of the future come to Scotland, and the north-east in particular. I have written to SNP MPs to urge them to think again.

If you have an SNP MP, then ask them the same questions I have asked – do you side with the third of Scottish households in fuel poverty or do you side with multinational energy companies? Are you on the side of higher taxes for nurses, but not oil and gas companies? Or do you care more about opposing something because Labour came up with the idea than doing the right thing for the people of Scotland?

If ever there was a reminder that we need to kick out as many SNP MPs at the forthcoming election as possible, this is it. We need MPs who champion their local communities and stand up for the working people of Scotland.

Labour’s plans will tackle the cost-of-living crisis and drive down bills for good by delivering cheaper, cleaner energy and retrofitting homes, as well as establishing a publicly-owned GB Energy company, creating 50,000 new clean power jobs in Scotland, and delivering clean energy by 2030. In stark contrast, the SNP is betraying the people of Scotland.

Ian Murray MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland