Scotland Tax: Tories vow to fight on low taxes

30 May 2010 By Hamish Macdonell -- THE Tories aim to go into next year's Holyrood elections promising to make Scotland the lowest taxed part of the UK, Scotland on Sunday has learned.

Senior Scottish Conservatives believe the new tax powers which the UK Government has promised to hand over to Holyrood should be able to be used to cut income tax north of the Border.

This would allow the Conservatives to go into the election next year with a radical tax-cutting platform and put "clear blue water" between themselves and the other main parties in Scotland.

They also hope such an eye-catching policy would help them recover from their dismal performance in this year's general election, when they again only won one seat in Scotland.

Using the Calman tax powers, which the UK government pledged this week to introduce, will be one of the key issues dealt within the Scottish Tories' internal policy review, which is about to get underway.

One senior source said that the aim was to make Scotland "more competitive and that means the most competitive part of the UK.

" We instinctively want lower taxes," he said, adding that the Calman tax plans would provide the party with an opportunity to advocate a proper tax-cutting agenda that it hadn't been able to do in the past.

The Calman Commission proposals include plans to hand power over the top 10p of income tax to the Scottish Parliament.

The Scottish Government would then have to decide on what level of tax it wanted to set. It would no longer just be able to accept a block grant from Westminster with no responsibility for money raised.

The Tories believe that cutting taxes would make Scotland more attractive for businesses and migrants.

Derek Brownlee, the party's finance spokesman and head of the review team, said no final decisions had yet been made on the manifesto content.

"We want to have a wide-ranging engagement with every part of Scotland, every sector of society," Brownlee said.

"Every member of the party will be able to contribute to policy development and we want to go wider than that, to listen to people who are not Conservatives," he said.

And he added: "Some of the most exciting political ideas have come from the centre-right and there is no reason why we cannot become the party of ideas."

The party's opposition to a referendum on independence will also be up for debate, although privately the leadership does not expect any change in approach to this fundamental issue.

Some Tory grandees, including Lord Tebbit, have suggested a total break between the Scottish and UK parties and a new right-of-centre party for Scotland, under a different name. But this will also not be part of Brownlee's review.

Any such proposals to change the party's structure would have to be dealt with by the party's ruling council, and that is not expected to recommend anything too radical – at least ahead of next year's Scottish elections.