By Steve Bargeton, political editor

ALL COUNCIL tax payers would have £150 slashed off their bills and pensioners would have their bills halved under radical plans presented by the Scottish Tories yesterday.

The Scottish Government is pressing ahead with controversial plans to scrap council tax and replace it with a flat rate 3p local income tax. To do this they accept they need to find an extra £281 million to make up the councils’ shortfall.

The Scottish Tories believe that £281 million could be put to better use and provide immediate help for hard-pressed families by reducing council tax bills by £150 across the board and then halving pensioners’ bills resulting in the lowest council tax bills for pensioners ever.

Under the proposal, an average band D household bill in Dundee would fall from £1211 to £1061—a 12% reduction—and a pensioner household bill to £531 (56%). In Fife, band D payers would be 13% better off and pensioners 57% better off with similar percentage reductions in Angus and Perth and Kinross.

Single pensioners would see their bills slashed by up to 63% across Tayside and Fife.

At question time, Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie challenged First Minister Alex Salmond to say how much he could cut Scotland’s council tax bills with the £281 million local income tax “subsidy.”

She said. “The Scottish Conservatives with that money would cut the council tax bill of every single household in Scotland, two million of them, by £150 each.”

Mr Salmond told MSPs that freezing council tax was cutting people’s bills. “I think the council tax freeze, something never achieved by the Conservative Party who introduced the council tax and then increased it year after year, is a considerably good start in cutting the bills facing families across Scotland,” he said.