NICOLA Sturgeon shut down Tory troll Murdo Fraser yesterday, after the Mid Scotland and Fife MSP tried to give credit for the Chancellor’s U-turn on Police Scotland’s VAT bill to his new MP colleagues in the House of Commons.
During a noisy First Minister’s Questions, Fraser asked Sturgeon to accept that the single service police force and the Scottish Fire and Rescue being the only territorial services unable to reclaim VAT was “a mess entirely of the SNP’s own making”.
He then went on to say the Government knew the forces would lose the VAT exemption at the time.
“It went in to the police and fire services mergers with its eyes fully open, fully aware of the consequences of its actions.
“Will the First Minister now take the opportunity to thank the Conservative chancellor for clearing up the SNP’s mess for it?” he asked.
Sturgeon did not want to thank the Conservative Chancellor.
“I increasingly love it when Murdo Fraser gets to his feet,” she said.
“It is like Christmas come early every week. I remind the chamber what one Murdo Fraser—I assume that he is the same one we have just heard from—said about a police and fire VAT refund, not eons ago but just a matter of weeks ago.
“On 31 October, 2017, Murdo Fraser got to his feet in the chamber and said, ‘there is no justification for a VAT refund’ for police and fire services.
“I think that it was really, really cruel of his Tory colleagues at Westminster to prove him so completely and utterly wrong — but then, he is often completely and utterly wrong.”
The First Minister said Hammond’s change of heart was proof that the Tories had conceded “they have been wrong all along on this issue.”
“The Tories knew that they were in the wrong and in an indefensible position, but refusing to do the right thing until they thought that they could somehow wring some party political advantage out of it just shows how small-minded and partisan the Tories are,” she added before calling for a refund of the £140m paid by the services.
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