Peter Lazenby
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SCOTLAND is being made to pay for Westminster’s “financial implosion” with stealth taxes, cuts and insufficient aid for the vulnerable, Scottish unions and campaigners warned today.
The Scottish TUC said Scotland’s workers were “being held to ransom” by the Tories’ self-inflicted economic disaster.
And child poverty campaigners said the little aid that was being made available in Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Budget on Thursday would not “stop the ice from cracking” under struggling families in Scotland where 250,000 children live in poverty.
The Chancellor’s increase in minimum wages was more than offset by “sleekit” — the word for sly in Scots — taxes which would see incomes fall by 7 per cent, said STUC general secretary Roz Foyer.
“We need wealth taxes, not stealth taxes, and the Scottish government must not repeat the mistakes of this beleaguered Chancellor seeking to cover the tracks of his predecessor,” she said.
“Workers across Scotland are being held to ransom for the financial implosion of the UK government.”
Child poverty campaigners said the benefits increase, in line with 10.1 per cent consumer price index (CPI) inflation, would still leave desperate families struggling.
Child Poverty Action Scotland director John Dickie said: “This is only the fourth time UK benefits have risen by inflation in the last 10 years.
“As a result, there are almost four million children living in poverty in the UK, over a quarter of a million of them in Scotland alone.”
He said that the Conservative government should follow the example of Holyrood which has increased child benefit in Scotland by £25 a week and increase investment in tackling child poverty.
“Scrapping the two-child limit and a £20 uplift to child benefit would be good places to start,” he said.
The National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland said the budget could see more students sink into poverty.
Union president Ellie Gomersall said: “What future can students hope for when our economy is tanking and our planet burning?”
The Scottish National Party said that in Scotland 91 per cent of employers now pay the real living age, and that “only with the full powers of independence can we provide a fair deal for workers and deliver the wages they deserve.”
