Rebecca Machin, the Fort William and Ardnamurchan SNP candidate in the by-election which goes to the polls on Thursday 21st November, has hit out at the impact the budget is going to have on the ward.
“What the UK Labour government’s budget demonstrated is that Scotland is out of sight, out of mind,” Machin said.
“Despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledging to put Scotland at the “beating heart” of everything his government does – this promise has proved as reliable as his words on tuition fees, pensioner winter heating allowances and not raising taxes on working people.
“Rachel Reeve’s patronising, out-of-her-remit comments about the Scottish Government aside, her National Insurance meddling will result in costs of an extra half a billion pounds for the public sector in Scotland, £75 million for the voluntary sector and £30 million for Scotland’s university sector.
“This is going to be even more pronounced in Fort William and Ardnamurchan, where so much of our economy is reliant on the hospitality sector.
“Staffing costs will now make up a disproportionate cost for bars and restaurants which are not able to just increase covers to make this up.
“Imagine a sole trader, running a restaurant on the High Street of Fort William.
“Say the NI changes push up the wage bill up by £20K a year. But, in hospitality, revenue is pretty fixed.
“You can’t increase restaurant covers served by £20K a year without either buying a new restaurant or serving more people.
“But, you would need to hire way more people to turn over those covers which would increase costs in NI contributions…”
Machin continued:
“Value Added Tax (VAT) is reserved to Westminster, but we should be copying our European neighbours by reforming VAT to reduce costs for certain businesses and using it to incentivise good behaviour.
“After all, France has a 20% VAT rate the same as the UK – but there are certain sectors which pay as little as 2.2%.
“Why not do the same for hospitality businesses using local suppliers and make owning a café, restaurant and bar economically viable and more environmentally sustainable?
“Scotland’s economy continues to do well – we have the second highest growth in employment behind Northern Ireland, despite them having access to the EU market.
“We have grown GDP per capita faster than the rest of the UK since the SNP came to power in 2007 and we have done all of this despite Brexit sabotaging the economy and Scotland competing on a world stage with one hand tied behind its back by Westminster in-fighting.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Scotland needs more economic levers of its own.”
