Badenoch pledges across the board tax cuts – Daily Business

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch today promised a series of tax-cutting measures aimed at “getting Britain working again”.

Ms Badenoch intends to rip up Ed Miliband’s net zero “vanity targets”, scrap the tax on family farms and cut the “bloated benefits bill”.

She also wants to scrap business rates for pubs and high street shops and abolish the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax on people’s homes.

In a speech to the party’s Scottish conference, she pledged to “save this country from a path of economic suicide led by the Labour Party in Westminster and by the SNP here in Scotland”.

She said the SNP had spent the last two decades “letting Scotland down”. It had the highest tax burden anywhere in the UK” which left Scots in a “low growth doom loop” where £1 in every £7 spent by the Scottish Government goes on benefits.

“Scotland has lost out on £12 billion of growth since the SNP took power because they don’t care at all about the economy,” she told the conference at Murrayfield stadium.

“God knows how many people have missed out on opportunities because of that – not getting a first job, missing out on the chance of promotion, businesses going under. The SNP have robbed Scotland of opportunity.”

Turning to Labour’s record she said that if it wasn’t for the work of Conservatives, family farms in Scotland would soon be being broken up.

“Can you imagine how cruel you’d have to be, how stupid, to want to see Scotland’s farming industry broken up?

“Families that have reared livestock in Aberdeenshire for generations, grown barley in the Borders, having to sell up because of Labour’s ignorance? Shameful.”

She said her party would scrap the “vindictive” family farms tax and accused Labour and the SNP of not understanding or caring about rural Scotland.

She added: “We need to hammer home the message that it not government that creates growth, it is business that creates growth. It is business that innovates. It is business that creates jobs. Government needs to create the conditions for business to do that.

“We need to cut taxes, we need to bring the welfare bill down, and make it make sense to work again.

“Unemployment has gone up every single month since Labour took office. Youth unemployment is now higher in the UK than the EU for the first time ever.”

Ms Badenoch accused Energy Secretary Ed Miliband of exporting energy jobs to China.

“He is killing off the British energy industry and our energy security to meet a load of self-imposed vanity targets here at home, while importing wind turbines and solar panels from a country building a new coal-fired power station every other week.

“In Scotland, for every three jobs being lost in oil and gas only one is created in green energy. The other jobs are being exported abroad.

“What’s Reform’s bright idea to fix this? To part nationalise oil and gas. Let me tell you… the last thing the oil and gas industry needs is politicians running their businesses.”

She said the Conservatives have a plan for cheap, reliable British energy. The party would rip up the net zero targets and replace them with a “strategy that works”.

Her party would overturn the ban on supporting oil and gas technology exports, scrap the Energy Profits Levy, or windfall tax, and scrap the ban on new oil and gas licences.

“When I was in Aberdeen I was horrified to hear the SNP are costing Scotland’s oil and gas sector one thousand jobs a month.

“This has got to end. Under my leadership we are going to champion our own industry and we are going to put Scotland at the heart of our energy industry for the next generation.”

Addressing the row over the Lord Advocate giving First Minister John Swinney a tip-off about the details of the charges against former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, she repeated Mr Findlay’s assertion that it “smacks of corruption”. 

She added: “It is an absurd state of affairs that the Lord Advocate is currently in charge of an organisation prosecuting a case against a senior SNP figure whilst being in the SNP Government’s cabinet.

“So, today I can announce the Conservatives would end this conflict of interest and split the Lord Advocate’s role so this can never happen again.”

Responding to the speech, Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “This weekend Scottish Tories are flooding in their dozens to what could be their most dismal conference yet.

“Despite Kemi Badenoch’s best effort to stir up some enthusiasm, there is no escaping the fact the Scottish Tories are a spent force.

“The Tories can’t stop the SNP – they can’t even stop their own politicians from abandoning them in their droves.

“Scots are being let down by an SNP government that can’t even get the basics right, but only Scottish Labour can get rid of this failing SNP government and deliver a better future for Scotland.”