Three-year freeze on Scottish council tax...and England pays

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Nationalist leaders in Edinburgh pledged to keep tax rates unchanged until 2011 after receiving a record £85.1billion settlement from Chancellor Alistair Darling.

The three-year deal allowed Holyrood's finance chief John Swinney to make the promise - but critics condemned the freeze as a Scottish National Party bribe to voters.

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Bribe: Critics say SNP leader Alex Salmond is bribing Scottish voters with the tax freeze

The SNP decision will fuel resentment in England over the way Scotland's devolved government has used subsidies from south of the border to offer voters advantages denied to the rest of the country.

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "This is yet another example of how Scotland gets away

with having fantastic public services that are funded from the pocket of English taxpayers."

The Scots already get free eye care and dental check-ups, free access to cancer drugs and free care homes for the elderly - all denied to the English.

Ben Wallace, the Tories' Scotland spokesman, said the freeze is a deliberate ploy to stoke English anger.

"This is another example of SNP spin designed to tweak the nose of the English to serve their own political goal to break up the union," he added.

Earlier this week, SNP leader Alex Salmond predicted that Scotland would win independence by 2017 - gaining the freedom to set taxes and laying claim to North Sea oil.