Peter Kelly, the chief executive of the Poverty Alliance, said: “In the midst of a rising tide of poverty across Scotland, yesterday’s budget should have signalled a drive toward economic and social renewal. It contained some very welcome actions like the landmark Scottish Child Payment, but ultimately failed to meet the scale of the challenge that is facing our communities”.
He argued that unfreezing the higher-rate tax threshold would result in lost tax revenue that could have put cash into lower-income families’ pockets.
Scottish Labour’s interim leader, Jackie Baillie, said: “The SNP said that this budget would be the most important in the history of devolution, but all we got on Thursday was baked in inequality. No matter how big the crisis and how deep the inequality, the SNP will continue to plough on with unfair tax policy and pay freezes which benefit the wealthy to the detriment of the vast majority of working people.”