EDINBURGH, October 2 (RIA Novosti), Mark Hirst – The Scottish Government could introduce legislation that would prevent local council authorities from recovering outstanding debt arising from a 25-year-old taxation policy known as the Poll Tax, First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond said Thursday.
"I can announce today it's the [Scottish] government's intention to bring forward legislation to ensure that councils can take no further action to recover ancient poll tax debts," Salmond told members of the Scottish parliament.
"The relevance of information from the current electoral register to the position of debts from 25 years ago is difficult to fathom, except through some misguided political intention," Salmond noted.
The First Minister did mention that it is "within the law for councils to use current information to assess current council tax liability and, given the council tax reduction scheme protects 500,000 of our poorest citizens, the tax is being applied in a proper and fair way."
Scottish councils had given their backing to using information from the independence referendum held in Scotland last month.
Tens of thousands of Scottish voters registered for the first time to vote in the referendum, making it easier for debt collection agencies to track them down. The total number of voters reached a record 97 percent of Scotland's eligible electorate.
The Poll Tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and a year later in England, leading to a mass campaign of non-payment culminating in 1990 with the worse political riots seen in the center of London.
The Poll Tax riots are regarded as being a major factor in the downfall of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who resigned in 1990.
