THE pernicious attack on private pension funds by Rachel Reeves ("‘Major uplift’ for Scotland’s coffers in Reeves Budget", The Herald, October 31) should come as little surprise to people. She is now subjecting remaining pension funds to potential inheritance tax by now having to include the remaining fund within one’s estate. Why should this be unsurprising?

The answer comes when one looks at from whom she sought counsel. That counsel came from Gordon Brown, erstwhile Prime Minister and Chancellor. The same Gordon Brown who in 1997 single-handedly destroyed UK pension funds when he launched the tax raid on dividends paid to pension funds. Until this action, pension funds received a tax credit. One of the consequences is the much lower allocation of pension fund money to UK plc.

Rachel Reeves is following in his footsteps and confirming, if such confirmation was required, that “tax and spend” is in Labour’s DNA.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

What Reeves should have done

WITH taxation in the UK already at a 70-year high, Chancellor Reeves has increased it further. With the national debt over 100% of GDP she has increased that too. Instead of cutting government spending she will recklessly spend more billions which the UK does not have, on projects which are not needed.

There are billions to be saved if she were a prudent Chancellor, which she is not. A red pen and a ruler could be taken to some or all of the following: HS2, whose costs are already over £100 billion; the net zero project which according to National Grid ESO will cost £3 trillion; supporting foreign wars overseas, of which Ukraine has sucked £13bn from the public purse; £7.2 billion a year on foreign aid, £4bn on illegal immigrants, and £300bn annually on social security.

When you consider in view of all this expenditure that Chancellor Reeves is emphatic that cutting the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners was essential to save only £1.4bn you begin to worry about her competence in high office, or her empathy with senior citizens who have worked all their lives and paid the taxes which Ms Reeves is now squandering.

William Loneskie, Lauder.

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Narrow-minded clones wanted

AS 23% of our population works for government, they are OK no matter what. As a calculated insult to manual workers, a penny off a pint of beer is hard to beat. VAT on private education is because Labour doesn’t want children to be taught anything that widens their knowledge and understanding. They want narrow-minded Labour clones from Labour schools.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinross.

Give funds to palliative care

PALLIATIVE care needs are projected to rise by 25% over the next 25 years, with around 10,000 more people dying each year in Scotland. The £3.4 billion the Scottish Government will receive from the Chancellor’s Budget provides it with the opportunity to put its warm words into action, and ensure equitable access to palliative care.

Whilst we welcome record additional funding for the NHS, the Government must ensure that this reaches palliative and end of life care services to enable charities like us to help build an NHS fit for the future.

Without urgent action, more people will die without the care and support they need. Scotland’s forthcoming palliative care strategy must be supported by a clear delivery plan and a new funding solution that ensures equitable access to palliative care and reduces providers’ reliance on charitable donations.

Amy Dalrymple, Associate Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Marie Curie Scotland, Edinburgh.

Over to you, Shona Robison

SINCE an extra £3.4 billion has been promised to Scotland in yesterday’s Budget, surely Shona Robison can make a popular move in her own budget by reinstating the winter fuel payment to the pensioners of Scotland?

Michael Watson, Rutherglen.

• THE cash allocated to Scotland in yesterday's Budget is good news for everyone requiring the services of Edinburgh's Eye Hospital. I imagine Shona Robison is on the phone this morning cancelling the tradesmen booked to undertake the remedial work on the evacuated old building in Chalmers Street before contacting the architects to finalise a new building at Little France. Or maybe they will just demolish the present Eye Hospital and rebuild on the same site.

Either way, the future for all of us with failing eyesight looks good. Looking forward to attending the turf-cutting ceremony wherever it is. Go for it, Shona.

George Wright, Edinburgh.

Towards the new Jerusalem

THERE has been some comment about Rachel Reeves being the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer. In some ways it is a surprise that it has taken so long when one considers the advance by women in representation within the vocations, professions and the workplace generally over the generations, particularly since the post-war Attlee Government.

It is interesting to recall that the only female in the Attlee Government was "Red" Ellen Wilkinson, who served for a short time as Minister of Education before her untimely death in 1947. She once remarked in 1931: " It was no good building Jerusalem in perorations, the average voter wants to see the blueprint of the city".

In advance of the recent General Election there was much criticism about the Labour Party keeping its powder dry, as it were, in advance of the election. The Budget, as set out by the Chancellor, has certainly provided a number of sketch plans describing how quite a few projects in the New Jerusalem will take shape.

Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

Badenoch calls it as it is

NOW to the next big political event. I have no more than a passing interest in the UK Tory leadership contest other than, as with all parties, I would like an honest, pragmatic, non-dogma-driven person in charge.

However, I was struck by Kemi Badenoch's recent remarks about Scotland. She clearly stated an unassailable fact about something that has grown into a kind of legend in Scotland over the past decade or so of nationalist prominence in our politics: a prominence I must say now happily and rapidly disappearing.

Scotland, she said emphatically, is not the SNP. That is the kind of leader I appreciate.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

Kemi BadenochKemi Badenoch (Image: Stefan Rousseau)

MUP policy is backfiring

RE your article on the review of alcohol and drug services by Scotland’s Auditor General and the Accounts Commission ("Alcohol warning over focus on drugs deaths", The Herald, October 31), minimum unit pricing, the brainchild of the Holyrood incompetents, is increasingly backfiring. Home-brewing is undergoing a renaissance (my own stuff is 7%), and booze-cruising from the central belt to Carlisle and Berwick is bound to be on the rise.

Another point from the article: why is the Auditor General indulging in political comment? Surely Audit Scotland should be sticking to its core work, checking the Scottish Government's books? These are, by the way, grossly deficient, since in the absence of any cadastral survey the balance-sheet cannot state the true value of our primary asset: land.

Audit Scotland would be better focused on addressing that deficit.

George Morton, Rosyth.

Wasteful survey

TO the waste of public money mentioned by Gordon W Smith (Letters, October 30) can be added the letter I received today to take part in the Scottish Climate Survey.

I attempted to access the website mentioned in the letter but was directed to others dealing mainly with past surveys. After wasting 10 minutes searching, the letter went in fragments to be recycled.

The Scottish Government, which has commissioned this will be asking, I hope, for some of the (that is, our) money to be returned by Ipsos which has been contracted to carry out the work. If my experience is common then the survey will be less complete/effective than it might have been.

Ewan Henderson, Haddington.

Where Iran and Israel differ

I’LL state the obvious for David Crawford (Letters, October 31) regarding Israel, Iran and nuclear weapons Iran’s leaders are dangerous lunatics who execute people for playing sport, singing, being Christians, being women or being foreign.

Israel currently has the worst leaders it’s ever had; their stupid negligence left their country and people open to attack, and their war conduct does not appear forensic. That said, Israelis can change their leaders.

Israelis are fighting to survive on the face of the Earth for the fifth time since 1948. They do not stalk and murder innocent people on the streets of European cities. Not innocents at least.

Israel has a bomb and does not use it. Israel methodically dismantles nuclear assets in the hands of madmen, like the Iraqi reactor in 1981.

Israel is the only working democracy in the Middle East and is developing mature coexistence with her more serious neighbours. That’s what enraged Iran and Iran’s terrorists so much.

Tim Cox, Bern, Switzerland.