Extra powers must be accompanied by retention of tax revenues

Your editorial ("Labour must be bolder on powers for Holyrood", The Herald, November 17) states that "income tax must be fully devolved and Holyrood should be responsible for raising most of the money it spends". But income tax would only be a relatively small proportion of the total needed for that. According to the latest Gers (Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland) Report income tax represents only 20 per cent of taxation raised, the main other elements being corporation tax, oil revenues, national insurance, VAT and council tax. Only the last remains in Scotland, while all the rest go direct to the London Treasury. Yet all except VAT could be devolved and kept here to allow us to actually implement the additional powers we are promised.

It seems that most English people are convinced that Scotland is totally subsidised by their taxes, and are unaware that the annual block grant under the discredited Barnett formula is only returning a proportion of the tax revenue originally raised in Scotland and handed over to the UK Exchequer. In 2012-13 total taxes raised in Scotland was £53 billion, but Barnett returned just £37bn. The London-dominated press and broadcast media does little to correct that misunderstanding and in fact often perpetuates it, either deliberately or through ignorance of the true position.

I hope the Smith Commission Report due out in two weeks will set out the true position clearly, and will recommend not just more devolved powers but also the retention of the tax revenues needed to support these powers.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.

AS David Torrance found Alex Salmond's SNP conference valedic­tory address "strangely under­whelming" ("Salmond's valediction was not really the most poetic", The Herald, November 17), I wonder if he understands why, post-September 18, Scotland has "changed, changed utterly". Why is it that the 45 per cent Yes vote felt like a victory?

There is a striking parallel between the referendum result and that of the Conservative Party leadership election of 1990 which ended Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Even the numbers are similar. On November 20, 1990 at the first ballot, Mrs Thatcher won 54.8 per cent of the vote. The remaining 45.2 per cent either voted for Michael Heseltine (40.9 per cent) or abstained (4.3 per cent). Mrs Thatcher appeared to have won.

But because of the electoral rules, she needed to achieve a lead over Mr Heseltine that comprised at least 15 per cent of all Conservative MPs. She was only four votes short. She vowed to fight on, but over the next few days her colleagues called on her to inform her that she was finished. I wonder if this is why Johann Lamont stepped down, why Alastair Darling indicated his imminent departure, why Gordon Brown said he would not be returning to front line politics. It is as if they are sitting in a lounge bar on board the Titanic, when a slight judder rattles the ice and lemon in the G and T. It seems like nothing at all, yet in three hours the Titanic will sink; it is "a mathematical certainty".

We really have change. Utterly.

Dr Hamish Maclaren,

1 Grays Loan,

Thornhill, Stirling.

William Thomson (Letters, November 18) says he is "bewildered and bemused (sometimes amused)" over correspondence on the position of the SNP. Allow me in turn to echo these sentiments at his extra­ordinary mind-reading powers when he advises us that the reason for the failure of the Yes campaign was that the poor 55 per cent were "duped" by the promise of further devolution.

It never seems to occur to Mr Thomson and others of his persuasion that the reason for the fairly emphatic rejection of separation might rather be to do with an unwillingness to have any truck with nationalism and all of the divisiveness that it brings.

R Murray,

28 Maxwell Drive,

Glasgow.