Tory leader Annabel Goldie yesterday launched an audacious bid to out-manoeuvre the SNP government with a plan to cut £150 from every household�s annual council tax bill.

Tory leader Annabel Goldie yesterday launched an audacious bid to out-manoeuvre the SNP government with a plan to cut £150 from every household's annual council tax bill.

Conservatives are using the device to undermine the Scottish Government's case for a local income tax, saying the cost of introducing the new earnings levy means there must be enough money in the system to introduce a simpler and more popular measure.

Yesterday was not the first time Miss Goldie has made that point, but it was the first time it became firm party policy. The idea is to take the SNP's £281m estimated cost of capping local income tax rate to three pence in the pound, and then to split it equally between council tax payers. They argue this would peg council tax rates to 2002 levels.

The Tories also claim that they would then cut the bills of single pensioners or pensioner couples by half, taking them to the lowest level since Conservatives introduced the council tax in 1992.

Miss Goldie said yesterday: "The £281m that Alex Salmond says he can find to subside the SNP's unfair, unworkable and totally discredited new national income tax would be much better used to cut the council tax bills of every one of the two million households in Scotland."

A Scottish Government source said the Tory plan was "economically illiterate", adding that it would mean other budgets being cut by £281m.