Malcolm Offord pledges to cut taxes as he sets out Reform's Holyrood manifesto

Reform UK’s leader in Scotland has pledged to cut income tax as his party set out its manifesto ahead of May’s Holyrood election.

Speaking at Reform’s conference at Bishopton near Glasgow, Malcolm Offord said he wanted to create a “wealth economy” and that Scotland was “broken” and languishing in “middle-table mediocrity”.

He pledged to cut the number of Scottish tax bands from six to three and cut taxes so that Scots pay a penny less than their English counterparts on the remaining three bands.

Offord said that the measure would cost £2bn or roughly three per cent of the Scottish Government’s budget.

“We can find that three per cent without any need to cut frontline services,” he told delegates.

“We’ve had a record amount of spending, and we don’t have the reward for it. That’s what Reform UK wants to change.”

The manifesto outlines plans to reduce the rate for each band by up to 3p lower than in England by the end of the parliamentary term.  

Offord, who defected from the Conservatives earlier this year, is standing for his party in Inverclyde.

A series of national polls has put Reform ahead of Scottish Labour but a long way behind the SNP in the run-up to the vote on 7 May.

Offord said his party would “reverse the madness of net zero” and cut energy bills and he told journalists he would shut all of Scotland’s quangos – which includes NHS health boards – “to begin with until we find which ones can justify their existence”.

He described the banning of North Sea drilling for oil and gas as “the biggest act of self-harm” and said net zero policies were “doing great harm to the country and should be reversed”.

Offord said he did not primarily join the party because of immigration, but he had now “taken the time to see with my own eyes why a growing number of Scots are so fed up with immigration, especially in poor working-class communities”, adding that he was concerned “local people” are being “gaslit” by politicians and the media.

He said: “Local people are tired of their concerns being brushed under the carpet because politicians and the media find it uncomfortable to talk about this.

“I will not hold my tongue because they deserve to be held.”  

He pledged that Reform would immediately reinstate the local connection rule for local authorities, which gave priority to local people for housing services but was removed by the Scottish Government in 2022.

Offord also said that “police are overstretched to deal with a record number of strangers coming to Glasgow” who have made the city “less safe for women and girls”.  

Other manifesto pledges included appointing an independent health care reform commission to review delivery in the NHS, and a “reboot” of the Curriculum for Excellence with a “knowledge-based core”.

Meanwhile, Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage said his party was “unafraid to challenge the Holyrood consensus” and would become the biggest opposition party in the Scottish Parliament.

He said: “What is without doubt is that Scotland is in a very bad way. The economics, the education, the health delivery, the drug deaths – whichever way we look we see social decline.”

Farage said the UK was committing “economic hari-kari” by turning its back on oil and gas to cut climate emissions.

He said: “Under Alex Salmond, the SNP understood that oil was a very strategic national asset for Scotland, but they now believe that somehow Chinese-made wind turbines will solve Scotland’s future.

“Through a result of net zero lunacy we have closed down the North Sea and given ourselves the highest industrial energy prices in the world. And you wonder why the country is deindustrialising?”

“We are committing economic hari-kari in the name of saving the planet.”

Farage said Glasgow had become the “asylum capital of the United Kingdom” and that there was an attempt by Muslims to “overtake, intimidate and dominate our way of life”.

He added: “We are the only people who will stand up and defend British culture. There was a myth for years that no one in Scotland cared about immigration but it’s just not true.

“We will, as a party, stand firm for the Judeo-Christian principles on which our country was built.”

SNP depute leader Keith Brown said: “Nigel Farage and his band of mercenaries couldn’t care less about Scotland.

“We know Reform would sell off our NHS in a heartbeat, who knows what they’d do if they got their hands on our schools and other public services.

“Millionaires like Nigel Farage and Malcolm Offord are the beating heart of the Westminster establishment and they have no interest in what’s best for Scotland.”

Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Jackie Baillie said: “It’s clearer than ever that Reform simply is not in this race.

“This manifesto has been scribbled on the back of a cigarette packet and the sums don’t add up.

“Reform Scotland has already poached its leader and dozens of candidates from the Tories – now it has pinched their half-baked policies too.”