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Item 4 is consideration of research from the Scottish Parliament information centre on the proposals for a local income tax. As members know, the Scottish Government has not yet published the responses to the consultation, so the report is slightly limited. I suggest that we note the report and thank the SPICe researchers for their work so far. Suggestions have been made recently about how the local income tax proposals might be changed, so the report is already out of date, in a sense, and we will need SPICe to update us.
It struck me that no consideration was given to countries that have local taxation based on income, which is fairly commonplace. I am here as a committee substitute, so I do not know whether SPICe was asked to do such comparative work. Perhaps further work could be done.
That is an interesting point.
I think that every witness who gave evidence today mentioned local income tax and its economic effects, although that was not the subject that we were discussing. It is incumbent on the committee somehow to tell the Government that in evidence on the impact of the current situation on our country, business—in the person of today's witness from Scottish Chambers of Commerce—said, "Please. Local income tax would further destabilise our economy." We should take that evidence forward.
Government must weigh things up. Many people would rather have PPP than the Scottish Futures Trust, but Government must make decisions about the way forward on that and many other issues. Of course we can ask the Government about its approach. It is up to committee members to do that.
The remit that we gave to SPICe was to consider the effect of local income tax on the economy. As Marilyn Livingstone said, consideration has been given to the economic impact. SPICe made the fair point that it cannot fully address the issue until the responses to the consultation—and, I hope, the Government response—are available. It would be useful if we agreed that SPICe should take forward such work as soon as that information is available.
I agree.
The witnesses were not being political when they made their remarks, of course. Local income tax is important, but we should not be getting into the issue in huge detail—it is just one thing among a host of things that have an impact on the economy. We need to be careful about how we take the matter forward.
We have been asked to be consensual and to put party politics aside, for the good of Scotland. That is what I am trying to do. Witnesses have said that at this stage they do not think that the local income tax, which the Parliament will consider, would be a good way forward for the country. I am saying that we should feed in that view, not that we should do major work on the subject. The point that was made in evidence today was sufficiently significant to merit our saying to ministers, "There seems to be significant concern in the business community about the timing of the policy." That is all. I do not think that that creates a big issue or requires us to consider the matter in depth.
We need SPICe to do more work for us, as Lewis Macdonald said. I suggest that we ask SPICe to summarise the responses to the consultation. We should not ask for more than that. The committee's approach from the outset has been to consider the impact of local income tax on the economy. We should leave our remarks at that and allow SPICe to produce its work. If examples from other countries fit into SPICe's remit, their inclusion might address Jeremy Purvis's point.
Meeting closed at 12:10.
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