THE Chancellor will be told by MSPs to allow Scotland’s police and fire services to reclaim their VAT during a debate in Holyrood today.
The SNP, Labour, LibDems and the Greens have all now called on the UK Government to scrap the anomaly that means the Scottish emergency services are the only in Britain to pay VAT.
SNP MSP Ben Macpherson said not only should the charge be scrapped, but the UK Government should give back all money paid by the forces in the “illogical and totally unjust” tax.
“We know that it is possible for the required changes to be made – the UK Government have already done so for Highways England and academy schools – and yet the Tories continue to drag their feet when it comes to supporting Scotland’s emergency services,” he said.
According to Scottish Labour, the total amount spent by Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue between April 2013 and March 2017 on VAT was £140 million.
They say £23m of that could have paid for the hiring and training of an additional 547 police officers.
Shadow secretary of state for Scotland Lesley Laird said that the fact Scotland’s police and fire services are having to pay VAT was “a mess of the SNP’s own making”.
The anomaly was known about when the single service force was being taken through parliament. Policing and fire services were previously controlled by local councils, which can claim back VAT, but the new national forces are controlled by the Scottish Government, which cannot.
Laird said: “They were repeatedly warned that their rush to centralisation would lead to our emergency services having to take millions out of their budget to be spent on VAT, yet despite this advice they did not listen and pressed on regardless.
“Now we see the true cost of this shambles. This tax on our emergency services could have paid for more than 500 extra police officers and more than 200 additional fire fighters.”
The LibDems had scrapping the VAT charge in their last manifesto.
Scotland’s 13 Conservative MPs have also written to the Chancellor asking him to ditch the controversial tax on the police and fire service.
One MP commented: “We have been strongly led to believe this is happening.”
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