Scottish Rate Resolution

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 19 February 2019.

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Photo of Willie Rennie Willie Rennie Liberal Democrat

I read in Dundee’s

The Courier this morning that Patrick Harvie is really angry: angry that the SNP Government is not putting tax up enough. I would have thought that that level of anger and the concern that he has just expressed would have led Patrick Harvie to vote against the rate resolution today, but no. As we have just heard, he is going to oppose it by abstaining at 5 o’clock. As he has just outlined and as his budget letter to Derek Mackay makes clear, that will allow the SNP to win the vote this evening. The Greens are so angry that they will oppose the Scottish rate resolution by letting the SNP win.

It is curious, because last year this tax package was devised by the Greens. Now they have reflected, they are angry about it. If the people who invented the tax system are not even going to vote for it, I am not surprised that nobody else in the chamber is going to vote for it either.