BEFORE the Christmas recess, the SNP revealed their draft budget for the next financial year and, this week, the Scottish Parliament shall debate their plans.

As the Scottish National Party failed to retain their majority at the last election, they will have to reach out to either the Greens or the Liberal Democrats in order to get it through.

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Derek Mackay, announced that Scotland would become the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom because he has taken the decision not to match the increase in the threshold of the 40 per cent rate of income tax that will be introduced in the rest of the UK. This is utterly short sighted. To ensure that we have sufficient tax revenue to fund our public services, we need to increase our number of higher-earning tax payers - not shrink it.

This is exactly the point made by Nicola Sturgeon’s own head of her Growth Commission.

At the same time as whacking up taxes, the SNP have set out to impose savage cuts on Scottish local government.

The draft budget outlines a planned reduction of £327 million in funding for Scotland’s 32 local authorities. The SNP have tried to hide this fact by suggesting that more centralised spending on services will make up the shortfall but, in fact, their budget double counted the allocation for the National Health Service by also including it as local government funding. Furthermore, in order to make their figures add up, the SNP have, in effect, banked a three per cent council tax rise across Scotland despite the fact that any increase is a decision for each democratically elected council to take themselves.

This financial situation will have a particularly negative impact Clackmannanshire Council, which is the smallest local authority in all of Scotland. They have signalled that in order to maintain the services that they are required to provide by statute, they will need to make further savings by cutting back other services currently enjoyed by our communities.

This is on top of the roughly £30 million of savings that Clackmannanshire Council has already made in recent years.

As has become the norm in Scottish politics, the SNP talk of having to implement ‘Tory cuts’ in Scotland but their rhetoric is quite simply untrue. The Scottish Government’s budget for the coming financial is just over half a billion pounds more than last year.

In fact, Derek Mackay has more money to spend than any of his predecessors in the role and therefore any cuts that he implements simply make clear what are his government priorities and, more importantly, those services that are not.

The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party will not vote for a budget that will hit hard-working families in Clackmannanshire and across Scotland through increased taxes and poorer provision of public services.