Thursday 29 January 2015<\/p>\n
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SNP MOVE TO SCRAP POLL TAX CLEARS MAJOR HURDLE<\/p>\n
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The SNP\u2019s move to abolish outstanding Poll Tax debts cleared a major hurdle today as the Scottish Parliament voted in favour of the move at stage one.<\/p>\n
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Following a surge in voter registration during the referendum, several councils began to indicate that they would use the new data to pursue ancient unpaid poll tax debts. The Scottish Government has acted to prevent this move which would act as a barrier to democratic participation by introducing the Community Charge Debt (Scotland) Bill.<\/p>\n
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Commenting, SNP MSP Mark McDonald said:<\/p>\n
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\u201cToday\u2019s vote is hugely welcome and represents a major step towards righting the historic wrong that the Poll Tax represents.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe referendum helped to involve people in politics who hadn\u2019t voted in decades and that is something that should be celebrated \u2013 not something that should see people hounded for ancient debts as some councils indicated they wanted to do.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe Poll Tax was a disastrous experiment that the Tories inflicted on Scotland – only made possible because of the lack of a Scottish Parliament at the time – and its toxic legacy should not be allowed to undermine democratic participation today.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMany councils freely admit that the bulk of outstanding Poll Tax debt is uncollectable and several local authorities have already written off the outstanding debt in their area.<\/p>\n
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\u201cProtecting people from being pursued for these ancient debts is the right thing to do and I am delighted at the progress towards this that has been made today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday 29 January 2015 SNP MOVE TO SCRAP POLL TAX CLEARS MAJOR HURDLE The SNP\u2019s move to abolish outstanding Poll Tax debts cleared a major hurdle today as the Scottish Parliament voted in favour of the move at stage one. Following a surge in voter registration during the referendum, several councils began to indicate that they would use the new data to pursue ancient unpaid poll tax debts. The Scottish Government has acted to prevent this move which would act as a barrier to democratic participation by introducing the Community Charge Debt (Scotland) Bill. Commenting, SNP MSP Mark McDonald said: Read More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}