The Scottish Government will shortly pass its Budget for 2024/25 which includes a combination of cuts to vital support services, alongside a damaging lack of essential investment to adequately boost the incomes of low-income households.
Scottish Ministers have chosen to press ahead with a planned Council Tax freeze next year but say they are ‘committed to Council Tax reform’ and will back a process to develop proposals for the Scottish Parliament to ‘consider’ before the next Scottish election in 2026.
Responding to the final Budget, Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “This deeply disappointing and disjointed Budget risks bringing to a screeching halt – and if anything, throwing into reverse – action to tackle poverty.
“The potentially poverty-busting gains made through fair Income Tax increases for the richer are being wasted on a simultaneous backhander to the better off through the intended Council Tax freeze. It’s an alarmingly muddled misstep that’s fundamentally flawed.
“Scottish Ministers must stop stumbling from one short-term, short-sighted budget to the next. Promising to support the development of proposals to reform the Council Tax would be welcome, if we hadn’t been hearing about Council Tax reform for years. It’s time to turn talk and promises into meaningful and common-sense fair tax reform.”
/ENDS
For more information please contact: Rebecca Lozza, Oxfam Media and Communications Adviser, Scotland and Wales: rlozza1@oxfam.org.uk / 07917738450