The Chancellor’s first budget must reverse a Tory tax hike on whisky to "protect one of Scotland’s most important industries", union leaders have said.

GMB Scotland is urging Rachel Reeves to undo the 10.1% rise in duty imposed by her predecessor Jeremy Hunt last year to safeguard whisky sales.

The union said industry research suggested the rise in excise duty damaged sales, reduced the Treasury’s take from spirits and stoked inflation.

(Image: Getty) Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary, has written to the Chancellor and Scottish secretary Ian Murray, to call for the increase in duty to be reversed to increase sales and revenue to the Treasury while helping underpin an industry supporting thousands of skilled and well-paid jobs.

She warned workers already fear the recent rise in Scotland’s minimum unit pricing on sales will hit sales and investment while an advertising ban being considered by ministers is another potential threat to the industry.

She said: “The Labour government must reverse the Tories’ tax burden on whisky and deliver fairness for a sector that deserves to be supported not sabotaged.”

She urged the Chancellor to be “bold and visionary” in her first budget on October 30 and trigger the borrowing needed to rebuild a country "ravaged by years of cuts".

(Image: GMB) She said: “The chancellor has an opportunity to deliver a genuinely transformative budget but must be brave enough to take it.

“Our country has been brought to its knees by austerity when any long-term vision for our country was sacrificed for short-term Tory tax cuts.

“We cannot keep staggering on from one year to the next without any kind of plan for where our country should be in ten years’ time.

READ MORE:

“We need to restore our public services, we need to start building again, from homes to supply chains, and we need to do it at pace.

“Labour was elected on a promise of change. Only with real courage and genuine vision, can this budget start delivering on that promise.”

Gilmour urged the Chancellor to focus tax changes on wealth – property, land, capital, and inherited - adding: “It is obscene in 2024 that the richest 1% in our country have more wealth than the poorest 70% combined.

“Relatively small changes to how that wealth is taxed could transform the finances and the future of our country. That is real change and it can start right now.”

The union called on the chancellor to introduce a £15 an hour minimum wage while ensuring Westminster delivers the wealth redistribution and public investment needed to increase the Scottish block grant and drag the country out of the “malaise and stagnation” inflicted by austerity.

It also urged Reeves to resist the temptation to increase taxes on oil and gas producers in the North Sea or risk more destabilisation in an already precarious industry which supports thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs off shore and in supply chains.