IT has become fashionable to question the amount of expenditure by the Scottish Government on benefits, most recently by Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives ("Free prescriptions policy costing lives says Davidson", The Herald, October 9).The situation facing the Scottish Parliament has been neatly summed up by Susan Deacon, the former Scottish Health Minister, as powers being limited to spending, a failure to identify priorities and an over-emphasis on inter-party rivalries.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, for Holyrood to act responsibly, it must have total control of Scottish material resources. Only then can it make choices on the available options. The Scottish Government would have to justify its decision to those who elected it. These are the sort of decisions that have to be made by a home owner. Such a degree of financial control might involve a constitutional change not far short of independence.

The operation of the Holyrood Parliament is not helped by the way its political parties are polarised; nothing but a venomous bickering between pro and anti-Unionists, leaving domestic Scottish issues inadequately explored.

What would we really like? What can we afford? What has to be sacrificed? The best interests of the people of Scotland must always be borne in mind. Disappointingly, Scottish Labour seems focused on Westminster. Equally disappointingly, the SNP seems set on behaving like an efficient sales organisation concerned exclusively with votes and funds, displaying little interest in talking to the Scottish people or preparing them for the important decision they must make.

Ian Ross,

3 Kenbank Crescent,

Bridge of Weir.

THE attacks by Ruth Davidson and Johann Lamont on Scottish public service policy have at their core a clear Unionist message: Scotland cannot be different and better; if it dares to try, it will end in failure and financial collapse and every other disaster that can be imagined. We are "something for nothing" junkies dependent on hand-outs, unable or unwilling to pay our way. The message is that we had better get back into line with the sound, sensible decisions that have been taken by Westminster and stop getting ideas above our station.

Quite a lot of Scots might not think that the quality of decisions on public services or economic management made by Westminster under present and past governments has been so impressive. Westminster's record on elderly personal care has been deplorable and it is to the credit of Scottish governments past and present that they were not so negligent. An English hospital is said to be about to go bankrupt, unable to pay its PFI costs. England is wasting millions of pounds in administrative costs for prescription exemptions and imposing a high sickness cost on those on modest incomes. The marketisation of universities has cut the number of student applications and created serious financial pressures on many universities.

It was Labour at Westminster which was in charge of the shop when it floated the economy on a sea of private debt and set the conditions for the financial crisis. The Tories think that increasing unemployment and reducing demand will solve the economic problems. We don't need to take lectures on economic management and policy priorities. What we are lacking in Scotland is control over all fiscal policy so that we can have a genuinely progressive tax system.

Isobel Lindsay,

9 Knocklea Place,

Biggar.

RUTH Davidson claims that 12% of households contribute to Scotland's wealth ("Davidson says only one in eight Scots contributes", The Herald, October 8). The Office for National Statistics estimates that 34% of Scottish households make a net contribution to the UK Exchequer. How does Ms Davidson reconcile her figure with the official one?

Paul Crankshaw,

3 North Neuk, Troon.