Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch will on Thursday claim income taxes and welfare spending in Scotland are too high when she meets business leaders in Edinburgh.
Ms Badenoch, who will visit Aberdeen on Friday, says the income tax burden is at its highest level since devolution.
She will note that nurses and teachers are being penalised while money is spent on foreign aid – a matter reserved to Westminster – and the constitution. She says Scotland’s welfare bill will rise to £9.2 billion by 2030.
Ms Badenoch will be joined by Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Andrew Bowie.
They will visit the premises of a whisky brand where Ms Badenoch will re-iterate her call for the Government to assess the impact of rising alcohol duty on pubs and the wider hospitality sector.
“Scotland needs a government that will back business, cut welfare and grow the economy,” she says. “Instead Scotland has the SNP, whose budget raises taxes and benefits, and leaves hardworking Scots worse off than people in the rest of the UK.
“Under the SNP, nurses, teachers and families are being forced to pay higher and higher taxes just to bankroll a failing nationalist agenda.”
Referring to Scottish Labour’s decision to abstain in the Budget vote, she added: “Labour’s decision to stand aside and let this terrible budget pass shows they can’t provide the alternative Scotland desperately needs. Reform just want more welfare spending.
“Only the Conservatives are serious about cutting taxes for working people, getting a grip on benefits, backing businesses and restoring economic growth to Scotland and the whole of the UK.”
Mr Bowie said: “Scotland is being shafted by two tired, cynical governments that have completely run out of ideas.
“By allowing this damaging Budget to pass unchallenged, Labour is complicit in raising taxes on millions of hard-working Scots.
“Only the Conservatives will get a grip on Scotland’s ballooning welfare bill and cut taxes for working people to drive the growth Scotland so desperately needs.”
Ms Badenoch is expected to use her visit to the north east on Friday to reiterate the Conservative commitment to liberate Britain’s oil and gas industry by ending the ban on new oil and gas licences.
The SNP says its Budget changes to income tax will mean that 55% of Scots will pay less tax than taxpayers south of the border.
Ellen Milner at the Chartered Institute of Taxation Scotland, said that the increase in thresholds for the basic and intermediate rates means the point taxpayers start paying more income tax than someone on the same salary elsewhere in the UK will increase to £33,493.
Compared with the current tax year, this represents a maximum saving of £31.75 next year.
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