By stewartb

Whilst on the subject of council tax, this evening [Tuesday 17 October] on BBC Radio 4 (at c. 1730hrs) we got a very partial account of the FM’s conference speech. The BBC correspondent sought to link the new commitment to freeze council tax across Scotland next year with concerns (unattributed) about a negative impact on Local Authority (LA) budgets.

Last time the SNP in government froze council tax (between 1999/2000 and 2015/2016), Labour repeatedly claimed in Holyrood that the council tax freeze had been “underfunded” to the detriment of LA budgets.

A rebuttal of this claim was carried in, of all places, The Scotsman in an article dated 22 September, 2015. It had this headline: ‘Scottish Government council tax freeze “over-funded” – the council tax freeze is not underfunded and claims that the Scottish Government does not offer a fair deal to local authorities are not borne out by statistics, Scottish Parliament researchers have found.’

We learn that the independent Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) had concluded that the money provided by the Scottish Government to freeze the council tax resulted in LAs receiving more income than they would have done by increasing rates by RPI (retail price index).

The same article had this: ‘Commenting on the Spice report, SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said the report has “COMPLETELY DEMOLISHED YEARS OF BOGUS CLAIMS FROM LABOUR “. (my emphasis)

Source https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-government-council-tax-freeze-over-funded-1494848

One wonders if the BBC’s correspondent is aware of this recent history. And we wait to discover if the BBC correspondent’s remarks today signal Labour’s next SNPbad attack line.