COUNCIL tax bills for around 550,000 households across Scotland are to rise after the SNP was forced to sign up to criticism of its own policy.

Legislation that will see the multiplier increase for those in bands E to H, costing between £2 and £10 more a week, was approved at Holyrood but only after opposition parties united to register hostility to the overall package of changes to local government finance.

The Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens successfully amended a Government motion approving the band changes to add that they believe wider reforms "undermine local accountability and autonomy" and ignore the recommendations of an expert commission established by Nicola Sturgeon.

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Holyrood's left leaning parties oppose the overall policy as they believe it does not go far enough, calling on the SNP to deliver on a previous long-standing commitment to scrap the council tax entirely. Meanwhile, the Tories support increases on only the top two bands and oppose a proposed mechanism to indirectly redistribute additional council tax nationally.

With the Tories and LibDems vowing to vote against the legislation in a final vote, SNP MSPs were forced to swallow their pride and back a motion that included criticism of their own policy in order to get it passed.

The party hierarchy is understood to have been highly reluctant to sanction the move, with finance secretary Derek Mackay proposing his own amendment and offering concessions that included revisiting his own policy. Opposition parties said Mr Mackay had been frantically seeking to strike a backroom deal with a rival party to avoid embarrassment.

However, the SNP was left with little option but to put its name to the criticism, with even an abstention meaning the tax rises which it says will raise £100m for schools would not have gone through.

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Labour and the Greens backed the changes in the final vote believing they are "better than nothing", but are expected to continue to push for more far-reaching reforms.

Green MSP Andy Wightman, who proposed the successful amendment which was included in the motion that eventually passed by 92 votes to 35, claimed the Scottish Government's reforms were a "tepid reheat of a discredited system". He said the current system is the "most regressive in the UK", and added that the changes will only make it a "little bit less regressive".

Following the vote, he said: "It has been bizarre to see SNP Ministers threatening to vote down their own policy simply because they don't like fair criticism.

"Level heads prevailed tonight and educational attainment will be boosted by £100million. But what has also prevailed is an agreement by all Holyrood's five parties that the current system of local taxation is broken and that in this five-year Parliament we have an opportunity to fix it."

Tory finance spokesman Murdo Fraser said: "With this vote, the SNP has condemned its own council tax plans. Not only does it hike tax for hard-working families, the policy completely undermines local accountability and autonomy too."

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The changes are due to take affect from April next year. As part of wider reforms the council tax freeze is also set to end, with increases capped at three per cent a year. The extra money will effectively be redistributed across the country by the back door, which critics say breaks a link between local taxpayers and services in their area.

Mr Mackay defended the changes, saying: "Our reforms ensure that while those who can afford to pay more will rightly see a moderate increase in their bills, all households will pay less on average than under council tax regimes in England, and less than they would have done if the Scottish Government's council tax freeze had not been in place."