Christian Aid Tax Justice Bus
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-04217, in the name of Neil Findlay, on Christian Aid’s tax justice bus. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament commends the work by Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty in taking their Tax Justice Bus around the UK and Ireland raising awareness of tax dodging; notes Christian Aid’s estimate that the global culture of financial secrecy costs the developing world $160 billion every year, which is one and a half times what is delivered in international aid; understands that, in the UK, the poorest people are also worst affected by the impact of tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance; notes that the Tax Justice Bus is in Scotland between 1 and 5 October 2012, stopping in Dumfries, Alloway, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Inverness and Inverurie, including a stop outside the Parliament on 3 October to allow MSPs and parliamentary staff to meet campaigners, and welcomes the opportunity for people to get on board the tax bus and find out why tackling tax dodging is so important in the fight against local and global poverty.
17:05
I thank the Christian Aid tax justice campaign for doggedly maintaining a focus on the issue. Raymond Baker, the director of the organisation Global Financial Integrity, has called corporate tax avoidance
“the ugliest chapter in global economic affairs since slavery.”
That is a fairly big claim, so it is incumbent on us to examine it and what it means for Scotland, the United Kingdom and the wider world.
The debate takes place against a background of unprecedented austerity across Europe. Today, general strikes are taking place in many countries. Tax justice simply cannot be separated from what is going on. In Britain, at the same time as our public services are being starved of funds, we have the biggest tax gap in our history, which is estimated to be £120 billion. That figure is made up of avoidance, evasion and unpaid taxation. The issue is not about small businessmen or sole traders; it is about some of the largest household names and companies such as Pfizer, Starbucks, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Vodafone, to name but a few. A conservative estimate is that those companies are dodging £35 billion every year in unpaid tax to the UK Exchequer.
In recent budgets, the top rate of income tax has been lowered to 45 per cent and corporation tax rates have halved. The use of tax havens by multinational corporations has been officially sanctioned and even encouraged by tax law, while at the same time VAT has been raised to its highest-ever rate. Successive Governments throughout the western world have accepted the agenda or been complicit in supporting it.
What is the result of all that? About $160 billion has been lost to developing countries through a range of increasingly dodgy practices, including the practice of transfer mispricing, which is when multinational companies export their goods from developing countries at lower than market prices, thereby reducing their book profits and therefore their tax liability. That deprives the poorest nations of desperately needed tax revenues for services. The goods are then sold on to a subsidiary that is based in a tax haven, which then sells on the goods at inflated prices and with the lower tax rate that is applied in the tax haven area.
To put that $160 billion in context, it is three times the amount that is given globally each year in international aid. On top of that, £13 trillion—yes, trillion—has been squirreled away in tax havens beyond the reach of the authorities. That is a scandal of monumental proportions, yet we have allowed it to happen. Another scam involves companies in the industrialised world selling to developing countries at inflated prices to enable the seller to shift large amounts of capital abroad while reducing profit margins and thus tax liabilities. There are many further tricks in the companies’ armoury.
Current international accountancy standards require countries to report only consolidated accounts on a global basis, which means that no one knows where taxable activities occur and/or where profits are declared. That makes it easy for companies to shift capital and pay tax—or not—wherever they choose. We need country-by-country reporting to establish exactly what is going on.
I am one of those saddoes who watch the proceedings of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. On Monday, it took evidence from Starbucks and Amazon executives, and I urge everyone to watch the footage—it is a mixture of comedy and tragedy. Starbucks has been operating in the UK for 15 years and has a 35 per cent market share, yet it claims to have made a profit in only one of those years despite a turnover of £3 billion. How much tax has it paid? It has paid only £8 million in 15 years. Amazon—which, let us not forget, was welcomed to Scotland with open arms by the First Minister and was given a £10.8 million grant—is even worse, having paid no tax at all in the UK in the past three years. Amazon’s business model is one of brazen tax avoidance, poor-quality and insecure employment and predatory pricing that squeezes suppliers and affects the whole community. Is that a business model that we should be falling over ourselves to welcome into our country?
The question is, how do we change things? There are global issues and there are local ones. We need a new global tax consensus that is based on fairness, transparency and accountability. In the meantime, there are things that we can do here in Scotland. We could follow the seven regions of France, including Paris, that have declared themselves tax haven-free zones and will not do business with companies that avoid their liabilities. We could follow Helsinki in refusing to award public contracts to corporate tax avoiders. Currently, the Scottish Government and local government engage with a range of companies that do not pay their way. We could introduce a set of legally binding procurement rules that subject companies that deliver and bid for public contracts to high ethical and environmental standards and anti-tax avoidance measures. That approach was supported by Scottish National Party members Mike Weir and Angus Robertson at Westminster, among 115 other MPs, and I commend them for it.
The procurement bill is yet to be introduced and we can take action in Scotland now. I urge all members to look closely at that. I hope to hear how the Scottish Government intends to play its part in ending this global scandal and in ensuring that Scotland does not just sit back passively while its public services are deprived of the funds that they need. I thank Christian Aid for continuing with its campaign. The debate is moving in its direction, and I urge it to keep up the good work.
17:12
I congratulate Neil Findlay on securing the debate. I hope that it is an indication that Labour has rediscovered its soul.
Tax justice is the idea that everyone in our society should make an appropriate contribution to society, reflecting their personal circumstances. In Christian terms, it is a social obligation that is akin to loving one’s neighbour. Yet, over the past few decades, there has been a widespread perception that there are fundamental problems with our tax system and that not everyone is paying their fair share. That perception has been exacerbated since the financial crisis in 2007, which has brought draconian cuts to public sector jobs and welfare spending while billions of pounds of public money has been pumped into banks to keep them afloat. Those cuts to welfare and public sector jobs have a disproportionate impact on the poorest in our society, who are least able to defend themselves. It is commendable that Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty are trying to raise awareness of the issues with our tax system. I was delighted to visit the tax justice bus when it came to Edinburgh.
The scale of the problem is massive. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has estimated that the UK tax gap for 2011-12 was £32 billion, although Neil Findlay says that it was £120 billion once everything was aggregated. That is absolutely massive. Just imagine what we could do with all that dodged tax.
The current coalition Government has slashed public spending on welfare through its austerity programme, which is having a massive impact on public sector jobs. While the press is filling up with stories of the banks returning to large bonuses, the vast majority of families in the UK are struggling with huge increases in energy and fuel bills as the state withdraws its support.
The perception that we are not all in it together as a society is furthered by the stories of large corporations and the wealthy employing imaginative tax avoidance systems. It is striking that the poorest 10 per cent of our society contribute 39 per cent of their incomes in tax, while the wealthiest 10 per cent contribute only 35 per cent.
The Church of Scotland described paying tax as a social obligation, but our tax system distorts that by creating two different understandings of tax—the poorest tax payers must pay in full, while the wealthier have a range of options to lower their tax bill. However, that is an international problem: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that the amount of corporation tax that is avoided in developing countries is about $160 billion annually, which is equivalent to three times the global aid budget.
I have hardly disagreed with anything that Dave Thompson has said, and I am pleased that he has contributed to the debate. Does he agree with my point about the procurement bill and would he support clauses in that bill that ensure compliance in this country?
I will come to that.
Multinational companies employ creative methods to dodge tax, leaving Governments to pick up the pieces through aid. A fairer, more transparent international financial system in which companies must report results country by country would greatly help developing countries in collecting the corporation tax that they are due, and it would help to reduce their dependence on aid. Governments’ aid budgets could then be redeployed to support disaster relief, when necessary, and used to offset the damaging welfare cuts at home.
The Scottish public has always been very generous in donating to charities, and the UK remains one of the largest aid donors in the world. However, family budgets are squeezed and public donations have fallen by as much as 20 per cent. It is unacceptable that multinational companies whose turnovers are greater than those of many of the world’s developing countries continue to funnel their wealth through tax havens and deprive countries that so desperately need greater tax income. Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty’s campaign for a more transparent financial system would help to reduce the incidence of that and the devastating impact that it has on the tens of millions of people who are living in the most desperate poverty. That includes the likes of the Scottish Government looking at procurement to help with the campaign, and both the Scottish and UK Governments must respond to the campaign and bring tax justice to all.
17:17
I congratulate my comrade, Neil Findlay, on securing this important debate. Unfortunately, I was unable to visit the tax justice bus, but I fully support Christian Aid and the Church Action on Poverty’s aims in alerting people to the importance of tackling tax dodging and in the fight against poverty, both at home and abroad.
Neil Findlay told us that the tax gap was estimated to stand at £120 billion, and Dave Thompson pointed that out, too. However, that figure of £120 billion is worth repeating because it is seriously undermining public services and the development of a more equal society, both in the UK and globally. Of course, that is partly due to cuts in HMRC—since 2005, it has shed half of its staff and it is set to lose 10,000 more over the next few years. I contend that more, not less, tax officers are needed if we are to deliver tax justice at home.
Alongside Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty, the Public and Commercial Services Union is campaigning against global injustices in the tax system. The economies of developing countries are being hit hard because essential public services rely on the taxes collected by their Governments. It is estimated that about £250 billion is being denied to those economies because of corporate tax dodging.
World-wide, big businesses are undoubtedly making a huge success of dodging taxes. Every year, poorer countries lose three times more money to tax havens than they receive in aid. Those funds are urgently needed to pay for things such as education and healthcare and to fight poverty. That is an absolute scandal.
At home, multinationals have been lobbying hard for some time to have the anti-tax haven rules watered down. The Treasury seems to be sympathetic to that, because—I imagine—it hopes that multinationals that have moved their headquarters to tax havens abroad will move them back to the UK.
However, the Government does not have to offer such concessions to attract business, because tax is only one of a number of factors that determine where a company locates. In fact, the level of corporate tax is rarely the deciding factor when a company decides where to locate its real headquarters. I say “real”, because that is where hundreds or thousands of high-quality jobs are. The only companies that are likely to be attracted by such reforms are small outfits that would be just big enough to qualify for UK registration, but just think how much would be lost.
It is undoubtedly the case, around the world and in this country, that ordinary people are getting poorer while the rich get richer. In this country, much time and effort is put into attacking so-called benefit cheats. I certainly do not condone benefit fraud, but if as much time and effort were put into tackling tax dodging and closing loopholes, we could go a long way towards tackling poverty and deprivation at home and abroad. At the moment, the poor are paying for tax breaks for the rich, which is completely outrageous.
I again commend Neil Findlay for bringing the debate to the chamber and for offering alternatives to the current arrangements.
17:21
I, too, congratulate my comrade Neil Findlay on bringing the matter to Parliament.
I must confess that I was not aware that the tax justice bus had visited the Parliament. Members might well be aware that the Conservative Party makes a point of ensuring, whenever possible, that we put up a speaker for members’ business debates. I believe that someone sat quietly at their desk one night, looked through the motions and saw that tonight’s one mentioned a bus so, naturally, they put up the transport spokesman to discuss it.
That said, I am delighted to be able to take part in the debate and to support the broad principle that lies behind it. There are significant differences between my perception of how tax should be dealt with and the perceptions of other members, but the situation that Dave Thompson ably described, whereby the low-paid have no choice but to pay tax while some of the highest-earning companies in the world can avoid their tax responsibilities, is one that we have a common interest in condemning.
However, there is a consistent failure at certain levels to understand the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The fact that reports on the BBC this morning that discussed many of these issues naively compared the amount of tax that some companies pay not with their profits, but with their turnovers indicates the extent of that failure in understanding. Sadly, in these difficult times, there are many honest, hard-working companies in the UK that have substantial turnovers, but which deliver no profit whatever.
I appreciate the member raising that issue. I refer him to the evidence that was given to a House of Commons committee yesterday. I think that it was Amazon that stated that out of revenues of £200-odd million that it declared for the UK—these figures might be out—it had paid £1.8 million in tax.
I clarify that I do not question that at all. My concern was about inaccurate and inappropriate representation of the issue in the media. The explanation that the member has given is the sort of explanation that we need to hear more of in the public domain.
There are differences between my perception of tax and that of other members. I believe that, as a country, we pay too much tax. However, I also believe, as Dave Thompson said, that the wrong people are paying it. He asked us to imagine what we could do with all that dodged tax. One thing that we could do is give it back to some of the low-paid taxpayers we have in this country today. We have heard it suggested that we could use the extra money to underpin the benefits system in this country; a system that in many cases is made necessary by virtue of the fact that too many of our low-paid people pay too much tax.
Whatever angle members come from to the discussion and whatever their understanding of the need for tax and what they can do with it, we have a common understanding that many, many companies that operate in our economy today are not pulling their weight or paying the tax that they ought to and that those who suffer most by whatever means are those who are paying tax at the low end of the economy. Despite the fact that we will disagree about some things, we can come together around that principle and begin to work towards a situation in which everybody pays their way.
17:25
I will resist the temptation to launch into a rendition of “The Internationale” but I, too, congratulate Neil Findlay on securing this important debate. I add my support to the campaign that Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty have organised against tax dodging.
Tax evasion and avoidance are some of the most significant challenges faced by developing economies in the world today. I whole-heartedly support the efforts of non-governmental organisations and the grass-roots, student-led bollocks to poverty campaign, which involves a group of committed students from the University of Edinburgh, in their fight for tax justice. I pay tribute to their efforts to raise awareness of tax justice among a new generation of young people.
The tax justice bus has become an effective and highly visible campaign that raises awareness of the terrible damage that tax dodging inflicts on developing countries around the world. Tax is the most important, beneficial and sustainable source of finance for development. Tax revenue in Africa, for example, is worth 10 times the value of foreign aid. Putting a stop to tax avoidance is critical to securing long-term change and a sustainable future in the developing world.
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have described tax avoidance as “morally wrong” and “abhorrent”. Despite that rhetoric, this year’s budget contained an announcement on relaxing controlled foreign company regulations. According to evidence given by ActionAid to the International Development Committee, those changes will cost developing countries more than £4 billion a year. The CFC rules were put in place to deter UK-owned companies from moving profits to countries with a lower corporate tax rate than the UK, and they are specifically designed to curb tax dodging and the use of tax havens. After the changes, a UK-owned company will no longer have to pay a levy on any profits moved from a developing country to a tax haven.
That is likely to have a significant detrimental impact on the tax revenues of developing countries and I urge the UK Government to urgently rethink its plans. The chancellor should not make it easier for companies to use tax havens, especially when developing countries stand to lose billions in revenue.
The Tory Government denies the claims but does nothing to refute them, so the UK Government is undermining its own efforts to make provision for international aid and development. I fully endorse the call from the International Development Committee, urging the Treasury and the Department for International Development to conduct their own analyses of the figures. We need such scrutiny and we should not allow UK-based multinational companies to shirk their tax responsibilities at the expense of the poorest people in the world. Developing countries are precisely the countries that are most in need of our support and they will suffer as a direct consequence of the chancellor’s actions.
The Scottish Government, with the support of the Parliament, has doubled Scotland’s international aid budget to £9 million since 2007 and it remains committed to our global responsibilities. Scotland can play an active role in alleviating poverty, which will contribute to the achievement of the millennium development goals. However, although international aid has a role to play, action on tax has the potential to deliver far greater gains.
A more sustainable way of promoting development should be considered, giving countries the freedom to pay for their own development by raising their own revenues. One way to do that is to fight against tax havens—again, I pay tribute to Christian Aid for the work that it is doing.
Tax dodging affects us all. It means less money for our roads, policing, schools and hospitals, but the impact is felt hardest by the people most in need, as essential services giving access to education, adequate medicine and clean water and sanitation are starved of much-needed funds. By putting an end to tax dodging, we can create not just a fairer, better Scotland, but a more equal and just world for everyone.
17:30
I congratulate Neil Findlay on bringing this important issue to the chamber for debate. I have a brother. We are not that close, so I will not use the term.
Momentum has been growing among many people, including those in Christian Aid and other organisations, who campaign on the issue. I refer to the comments at the opening of the living wage debate last week. We should also recognise that poverty pay at the bottom and tax avoidance by the wealthiest have gone on for far too long, and we should recognise that a great deal of work has been done by many campaigners to raise those issues up the agenda.
Greens in this country and around the world constantly bang on about economic growth and the shortcomings of gross domestic product. Otherwise amiable fellows such as Alex Johnstone then usually wrinkle their brows and sometimes get to their feet to intervene. However, whether or not we see GDP as being an inadequate measure of economic progress, it is abundantly clear that tax avoidance, and tax havens specifically, are among the key mechanisms that have been used to ensure that the economic proceeds of growth are hoarded by the wealthiest while the social and environmental costs of economic activity are borne by those who are least able to defend themselves. Unless we can close down the opportunities that have been afforded and which are, as Neil Findlay rightly said, actively facilitated by HMRC and Government, we will see the same crisis of inequality repeated.
My colleague at Westminster, Caroline Lucas, made a contribution to the debate by launching the Tax and Financial Transparency Bill, which, sadly, Westminster, in its wisdom, decided not to support. That bill proposed that
“the Secretary of State ... require banks, corporations and trusts to provide information on their status, income arising and tax payments made in each jurisdiction”.
That would have gone some way towards providing the transparency and information to which Neil Findlay referred.
Michael Meacher has reintroduced a private member’s bill on anti-avoidance measures in the House of Commons, which I am absolutely sure Caroline Lucas will support.
Indeed. Several attempts may well need to be made before Government is finally willing to act on the issue.
I wanted to mention the Tax and Financial Transparency Bill particularly because it mentions trusts alongside banks and corporations. We in Scotland should be aware that, in some instances, trusts are used by people who own land that, as campaigners such as Andy Wightman have shown, was basically stolen in the first place and is held in trust simply as another form of private property. Many trusts use tax havens to avoid paying their share. That is another aspect that we should bear in mind.
I am delighted that Humza Yousaf will respond to the debate. I have not heard him respond in a ministerial capacity in the chamber before, so I am looking forward to that. I want to make him aware of an exchange that I had with his colleague, Derek Mackay, during the living wage week debate. I suggested that, as well as taking a bullish approach to procurement, which will raise legal issues that the Government needs to resolve, we should look at regional selective assistance grants. We could say to the likes of Amazon that they should not expect to qualify for regional selective assistance grants unless they pay the living wage.
We could take the same approach to the use of tax havens. No company that uses tax havens should expect to be able to apply for grants or any other form of business support services, and they should certainly not expect to have friendly photo opportunities with ministers when they make announcements in Scotland. I encourage Mr Yousaf to take that suggestion to his colleagues in Government. Mr Swinney may be persuaded that we can take that approach right now, and also invite organisations such as the tax justice network to co-operate with him in the tax consultation forum that was announced when he set up revenue Scotland.
We have the opportunity now to begin to set the tax culture that we wish to see in Scotland, whatever range of tax powers we will have in the future. That tax culture should have zero tolerance for the use of tax havens and other tax avoidance measures.
17:35
I congratulate Neil Findlay on bringing this debate to the chamber. The reason why Mr Harvie has not yet heard me respond to a debate is because this is my first response to a debate in a ministerial capacity. I hope that I will not disappoint him too much.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, which quite rightly commends the work by Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty on their tax justice campaign. I am sorry that I, too, missed the opportunity to go on to the tax justice bus as it toured around Scotland. As the popular phraseology goes, if we miss one bus, another three will come by. I therefore look forward to future visits by the tax justice bus to Scotland.
During last week’s debate on Scotland’s relationship with Malawi, which was my first debate in the chamber in my ministerial capacity, we heard about the importance of development projects to the world’s poorest countries. I am pleased that the Scottish Government has funded a number of Christian Aid projects in recent years, such as the empowerment for health and livelihoods project in Malawi and the inclusive economic development project in south Asia. However, the tax justice campaign clearly recognises that development is about more than just aid—Jim Eadie eloquently made this point in his contribution—and is about the rules of the financial system and the loopholes in them. Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty should be commended for highlighting those issues and pursuing them over a number of years.
Colm Regan is the editor of “80:20 Development in an Unequal World”, which as soon as I got my ministerial position I was told I had to read. I must say that those who read the book find it a real eye-opener. In it, Colm Regan looks beyond tax avoidance to consider financial flows between the developed and the developing world in the round, pointing out the problems in the current rules of the game.
The United Nations secretary-general produced a report in July 2010 that revealed that, in 2009, developing countries provided net financial resources to the developed world of $513 billion. That figure included interest payments on third world debt, the cost of trade barriers, the cost of the brain drain and the cost of corruption and capital flight, to which we can add tax avoidance. However, the figure does not include the environmental costs associated with climate change. We know that climate change is caused by the actions of the developed countries, but it is those in the developing world who suffer the most from it.
It is easy to think simply about giving aid to the developing world and to ignore the money that flows straight back to the developed world in the form of debt repayments. We should therefore try to change the way in which we think about development work and frame it not as charity but as a contribution to global economic justice. We need to make a weighty contribution in that regard, because taxation is at the heart of global economic justice.
We have heard in this debate about the $160 billion—£120 billion—that Christian Aid calculates is lost to developing countries through tax avoidance, which is one and a half times what is delivered in international aid. That calculation has been accepted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. As Dave Thompson rightly said, imagine what developing countries could do with that $160 billion—imagine the progress that they could make towards the millennium development goals in health, education, energy and sanitation.
Christian Aid also highlights the other negative impacts of tax avoidance. We are seeing an increasing number of transactions by multinational companies taking place across borders, which makes tax avoidance easier for such companies than it is for a small or medium-sized enterprise in Malawi, for example. That leads to a situation where a tax-avoiding multinational has an advantage over a local company.
I am pleased that a survey that Christian Aid conducted found that people support action to reduce tax avoidance. Consumers should take a look at the tax habits in developing countries of the companies from which we buy goods and services.
The Scottish Government supports the Scottish Fair Trade Forum and fair trade products, as members will be aware.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will come on to the points that Neil Findlay made, but of course I will take an intervention.
The minister has addressed a lot of overseas issues and I am thankful for that, but will he address some domestic issues? Does he regard it as morally or economically sensible of us to pay grants to multinational companies that come in to use our educated workforce, use our roads to transport their goods and all the rest of it but then pay no tax back to the system? Does that make sense?
I was going to come on to the points that Neil Findlay and other members raised. Of course, in attracting jobs to this country, the Scottish Government has an incredibly difficult job in the most difficult of circumstances. That is not to say that we should wilfully turn a blind eye to the tax implications.
The obvious point is that the legal loopholes for tax avoidance are not in our power to control. We have an impact—we absolutely do—and we have a duty and a responsibility to try to influence the UK Government. I share Neil Findlay’s disappointment at the UK Government’s approach. In a press release that came out yesterday, Christian Aid was incredibly unimpressed that, on the day after the Public Accounts Committee grilled the multinationals—the Starbucks and the Amazons—the UK Government
“ignores vital proposals that would deter multinational tax dodging”.
The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government have a responsibility to use whatever weight we can use to put pressure on the UK Government.
In recent years it has been suggested on a number of occasions that corporation tax be devolved to Scotland. Does the minister envisage that such a move could be the first step towards turning Scotland into a corporate tax haven?
No, I do not accept that at all. When it comes to his proposals on corporation tax, John Swinney has made it clear that the framework would include measures to tackle tax avoidance. He said that on the public record in answers to parliamentary questions from Patrick Harvie’s colleague Alison Johnstone, and he had said so previously.
Will the minister take an intervention on that point? I am sure that the Presiding Officer will be generous.
I must make progress, because I want to respond to what members said about public procurement. There is potentially an opportunity to do something through the forthcoming procurement reform bill. A number of NGOs responded to the consultation on the bill, which closed on 2 November, and I am sure that they made the points that members made. The Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2012 allow public bodies to exclude from bidding for a contract a company that
“has not fulfilled obligations relating to the payment of taxes under the law of any part of the United Kingdom”,
or indeed of the country in which it is based.
Elaine Smith, who has been fighting injustice for many years, spoke with typical passion when she made the point that we can consider other incentives and ways of attracting headquarters to our country. She talked about the workforce, and her point was well made.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I am running over time, Presiding Officer. Do I have time?
Yes.
I do have time. I will take the intervention.
I am grateful to the minister and to you, Presiding Officer.
I urge the minister to respond to something that I said in my speech. Mr Swinney has established the tax consultation forum, which I hope will set the culture that we expect in taxation policy in this country. Will the minister join me in asking Mr Swinney to invite the tax justice network and other social justice and anti-poverty organisations to be full members of the forum?
Mr Harvie is doing nothing but trying to get me into a little bit of trouble—he knows that for me to lobby my own Government goes slightly against the notion of collective responsibility. However, he has every right to make that call. In the answer that John Swinney gave to Patrick Harvie’s colleague Alison Johnstone, he was very open about exactly what the tax consultation forum will be doing and when it will next meet, and I encourage him in that work.
Patrick Harvie made a very good contribution—he slightly insulted Alex Johnstone’s wrinkly brow, but other than that he made some good points about the need to consider other incentives and to redefine economic growth and the question of what we are trying to achieve as a society.
We are committed to establishing a fair and transparent corporate tax system in Scotland, and transparency should be at its heart. Neil Findlay correctly pointed out in his opening speech that we have allowed the situation to go on for far too long. However, I add the caveat that, in the past couple of years, there has most definitely been a groundswell on these issues. Part of that groundswell includes Neil Findlay bringing the debate to the chamber, and it also includes UK Uncut, Christian Aid and the various NGOs and other organisations that have clubbed together.
The minister might want to consider winding up now.
All those issues will be examined as we develop our proposals for international development and our economic framework for inclusion in next year’s independence white paper. It is vital that an independent Scotland’s policies do no harm either to the developing world or domestically.
I am pleased to have had the opportunity to speak on this important subject, and I wish the campaign every success. Once again, I congratulate Neil Findlay on bringing the debate to the chamber.
Meeting closed at 17:46.