Retailers will be hoping Finance Secretary Shona Robison is more Santa Claus than Ebenezer Scrooge when she reveals her Scottish Budget this week.

Dickens’s wonderful story isn’t the worst parallel for the Finance Secretary to consider. We have the ghost of Christmas Past in last year’s Scottish Budget. Hidden in the small print was a shock commitment to consider a business rate surtax on grocery stores. Elsewhere in the Budget was a massive £31 million rates hike for medium-sized and larger stores, the shops which help underpin the vitality of our high streets. A terrifying enough tale in itself.

So retailers are haunted by the past, but also by the present. Shops are still counting the cost of the Chancellor’s Budget. The eye-watering hike in employer’s national insurance contributions disproportionately hits retail, as it’s the country’s largest private sector employer and because it employs large numbers in entry-level and part-time roles. So great has been the concern that many of Scotland’s leading retailers wrote to the Chancellor, including the likes of........

© Herald Scotland