The Scottish Conservatives, who had called for tax cuts and reduced welfare spending, have criticised the Budget.<\/p>\n
The party’s finance spokesman, Craig Hoy, said: “Tens of thousands more nurses, teachers and police officers on relatively modest salaries are being dragged into the higher rate, which was never intended for them.<\/p>\n
“The SNP’s vindictive tax on aspiration is stifling Scotland’s economic performance by making it harder and harder for businesses to recruit and retain skilled individuals.” <\/p>\n
The Scottish Greens said they had secured concessions from the government on a “mansion tax” and a new levy on private jets, earmarked for 2028. <\/p>\n
However, co-leader Ross Greer said the government could “go further”, calling for measures to cut the cost of transport and childcare.<\/p>\n
He said: “Labour may have walked away having achieved nothing, but the Scottish Greens will continue working to secure more changes which save families money and protect our planet.”<\/p>\n
Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Jamie Greene said he was “pleased to see that many of the Liberal Democrat asks” in the draft Budget. <\/p>\n
However, he warned many companies are “facing choppy waters ahead” despite a package of transitional relief for businesses facing rising rates bills after a revaluation.<\/p>\n
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes said the tax changes would allow the government to support public services.<\/p>\n
She told BBC Scotland News: “I know that people want to see investment in their NHS, investment in education, investment in transport, and so the decision that we’ve taken is to ensure that there is as much funding as possible to invest in the services that people rely on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Scottish Conservatives, who had called for tax cuts and reduced welfare spending, have criticised the Budget. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-369373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}