Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 11 February 2016.
Patrick Harvie
Green
What a day for the Parliament’s sound system to be on overcharge. It has not helped the atmosphere in the chamber.
Many points have been made about the historic nature of the decision that we are about to make—the Parliament’s first decision on substantive tax powers. I am afraid that I just do not buy that. Since 1999, this Parliament has had the ability to make tax policy at local level to provide for local services but we just have not used it. Session after session, we have been deadlocked for one reason or another.
Since the first session of Parliament, the Greens have been advocating radical changes to local tax policies. Even in the 2011 election, when we saw the Tory cuts coming down the line and John Swinney came to us all and said, “Look, we’ll have to implement a public sector pay cap, because the alternative is to lay people off”, we were willing to say, “Let us raise revenue and let us do it at the local level.” I am pleased to see that other parties are now saying that it is time to raise revenue. I still say that we must be willing to raise revenue if we want to protect our public services and the people who deliver them from those cuts.
We must continue to make the case for doing that at local level. We have seen a continued constraint—an ever-tightening grip—of national tax policy against the local flexibility that used to exist. Just as we predicted in 2011, fees and charges now represent a larger proportion of local council income than the council tax, which is the least progressive way of funding those services. That approach is going to be continued.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
