Swinney under pressure to give hard hit businesses a much needed tax break in budget

John Swinney must give businesses a 'game-changing' tax break in the Holyrood budget to offset years of damage inflicted by the SNP , Russell Findlay said yesterday.

The Scottish Conservative leader tore into the First Minister at Holyrood, telling him: 'Everyone is pleading for the SNP to change direction'.

A brutal cross-party report by the parliament's SNP-led finance committee yesterday cited expert opinion damning some Scottish income tax rates as 'ludicrous'.

Professor David Heald of Glasgow University the Adam Smith Business School said the marginal tax rate between £100,001 and £125,140 was now 69 per cent.

The committee also said they were 'deeply concerned about the Scottish Government's lack of a strategic approach to managing Scotland's public finances'.

At First Minister's Questions, Mr Findlay said the punitive tax burden in Scotland was 'stopping businesses from growing, preventing them from creating jobs'.

He said: 'John Swinney surely knows that high tax kills growth and costs jobs.

'But in his topsy turvy world, hitting hard-working Scots with high taxes will somehow boost our struggling economy. Even his own MSPs are worried.'

Defending raising extra tax revenue, Mr Swinney said he believed in 'using investment to stimulate growth', whereas 14 years of Tory restraint had been 'an unmitigated disaster'.

Mr Findlay scoffed there had been 'no return' on the 'so-called investment', with only 9 per cent of Scottish firms believing the SNP even understand business.

He reminded the FM his government took more than £600 million from the Treasury over three years to provide business rates relief for the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, but struggling Scottish businesses had 'barely received one tenth of that figure'.

Michael Bergson of the Buck's Bar Group called that 'a disgrace', Mr Findlay said.

Looking to the Scottish budget for 2025/26, which is published on December 4, Mr Findlay said the FM must 'do the right thing' for businesses who 'urgently need more help'.

He said: 'Scotland's tax system needs to change.

'Higher taxes are stopping businesses growing and preventing them from creating jobs, which would generate more money for public services.

'Scotland's businesses need more than rates relief - they need a game-changing tax cut.

'In this year's budget, will John Swinney start to repair some of the damage that has been inflicted by the SNP?'

Mr Swinney said most of the tax imposed on business was set by Westminster.

He said Mr Findlay's plan for tax cuts implied cuts to public spending, too, and the Tory leader had a 'democratic responsibility' to explain where those would fall.

'If we dabble with the financial madness of the Conservative Party that we got under Liz Truss, we all know where that will end up,' Mr Swinney said.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar urged Mr Swinney to use an extra money coming to Holyrood - £789 million this year and £1.72billiion next year - as a result of more health spending in the UK budget to address the 'deadly crisis' in the Scottish NHS.

Mr Swinney told Holyrood: 'I welcome the investment that has been made in public expenditure as a consequence of the budget, and I give him the absolute assurance that that will be invested in strengthening, reforming and improving the national health service.'

But he said if Labour wanted that, it should vote for the SNP's budget.

Mr Bergson said: 'The SNP not passing on rates relief was a disgrace. Scottish businesses were much worse off than in the rest of the UK.

'We need more help in this year's Scottish Budget because Scotland is not at the races for investment from businesses.'