Former Aberdeen City Council leader Callum McCaig has dismissed a call from the local authority for control over property and business taxes as a “back of a fag packet” move.
The SNP MP said a shift to fiscal independence would require “very careful thought” and could not be done on a city-by-city basis.
His comments came after Jenny Laing, the current council leader, wrote to Nicola Sturgeon urging her to devolve power over non-domestic rates and council tax levels to the Town House.
Mr McCaig, who represents Aberdeen South, said there was “some merit” in considering the situation across Scotland as a whole, describing the funding formula as “far from perfect”.
But he added: “You can’t do it on an Aberdeen basis alone. What they are asking for is a fundamental review of how local government is funded.
“If they are asking for fiscal independence for Aberdeen, I think that’s something that needs to be done with very careful thought and not just as a reaction to the failure to get as much money out of the City Region Deal as they had hoped for.
“It’s completely reactionary and it’s typical of the Willie Young playbook – ‘we don’t get something we want from the UK Government so we will blame the SNP for it’.”
Mr McCaig, who became council leader in 2011, suggested the Cities Alliance could consider a Scotland-wide proposal, adding: “It’s up to them to come up with one that works, rather this back of a fag packet approach.”
ACC finance chief Mr Young welcomed the suggestion, declaring: “Let’s see what we can do for the whole of Scotland in terms of double devolution.”
But he accused the SNP of wanting to always hold “everything within their own purse strings”.
Scottish finance secretary John Swinney, who was in London for fiscal framework talks with the UK Government, said revenue from both council tax and business rates was already retained by the council to be used locally.
But Mr Young said Aberdeen was a “victim of its own success” because its big take – some £215million – in business rates means it only gets a small grant from the Scottish Government.
In her letter, Ms Laing said control over levels could potentially raise hundreds of millions a year to be channelled into local infrastructure.