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MARGARET Thatcher reaped a massive Scottish tax windfall while her policies wiped out 250,000 jobs north of the Border, it was claimed last night.

Extra Scottish revenues handed to the UK Treasury during the Iron Lady’s 1980s heyday would be worth a staggering £130billion at today’s prices.

New analysis published by the SNP showed the booming North Sea oil industry meant Scotland consistently contributed substantially more tax per person than the UK average throughout the decade.

Effectively, it meant that Thatcher’s destructive agenda was bankrolled by Scottish cash – despite the country’s contempt for her policies.

SNP MSP Kenneth Gibson said: “These figures confirm that Scotland’s wealth was used to support the policies of a Thatcher government Scotland hadn’t voted for.

“No wonder the UK Government are so keen to talk Scots out of our oil wealth now.

“It is the final insult that Thatcher’s economic agenda – which caused so much harm to communities in Scotland – was funded by the very people it hurt.

“Scotland’s wealth was used to bankroll the Tories in the 1980s and continues to be used to underwrite their damaging economic agenda instead of being put to use for communities across the country.”

Finance Secretary John Swinney claimed the figures proved that Scotland’s oil wealth had been wasted by the Thatcher government.

He said: “The additional revenue paid by Scotland totalled £130billion during the 1980s – or an average of £2541 per person each and every year.

“That Scotland paid in this extra revenue at a time when we faced severe industrial decline and unemployment under a Tory government shows just how much of our oil wealth was squandered

by Westminster.”

Thatcher’s rule coincided with some of the most lucrative years of the North Sea oil industry.

The figures show that while the Tories presided over the destruction of our skilled manufacturing and heavy industries, money was flowing from Scotland to the UK Treasury.

The research comes from a detailed historical analysis of Scotland’s financial position – part of Alex Salmond’s campaign to convince Scots to vote Yes to independence.

It claims that Scotland has contributed today’s equivalent of £222billion more in tax revenues

since 1980-81 than if we had simply matched the rest of the UK.

That means that when adjusted for inflation, tax revenue per person has been £1350 a year higher than in the UK as a whole.

But a Treasury spokesman said: “Without oil, tax revenues would be lower than the UK average.

“Scotland is better off as part of the UK where it can share the risks associated with volatile oil revenues.”