SNP boasts of low council tax in Scotland were dismissed by a socialist MSP today as “propaganda.”

The nationalist party’s levelling up, housing and communities spokeswoman Anum Qaisar pointed to data showing that council tax bills north of the border have typically been £101 lower in real terms since the SNP came to power in Scotland 16 years ago, compared with rises of £2.62 and £445.60 in England and Wales respectively.

Ms Qaisar said:“These figures show that only the SNP can be trusted to stand up for the people of Scotland — and keep money in their pockets.”

The SNP delivered the relative fall through a controversial decade-long council tax freeze, which was later abandoned amid growing criticism that insufficient funding had led to the loss more than 20,000 council jobs across the country.

Now, in the midst of a pay dispute with Unison and an unprecedented squeeze on council budgets, First Minister Humza Yousaf’s return to the freeze next year has rekindled that criticism.

A Unison spokesperson told the Morning Star: “Boasting about low taxes is boasting about closed and sold-off facilities, under-resourced schools and burnt-out care staff.

“Lower taxes than the Tories manage isn’t a badge of pride, it’s a cause for concern.”

Scottish Labour MSP Richard Leonard was similarly unimpressed, saying: “What this SNP propaganda fails to acknowledge is that imposing a council tax freeze and then not fully funding the revenue shortfall to local councils has led to cuts in local jobs and local services.

“Non-statutory services [have been] withdrawn, social work and care desperately underfunded, library hours reduced, community centres shut, leisure facilities threatened with closure, environmental standards abandoned and education cut,” the leftwinger told the Star.

“It is a policy which has corroded the social fabric of our communities, driving out the collective and heralding in its wake individualism and the market.”