Chamber and committees

Does either Charlotte Barbour or the Auditor General have anything to add?

It will be interesting.

I appreciate that it is difficult.

Susan Murray, you made a comment, with which I agree strongly, about there being

“greater potential for using procurement as a tool to drive change.”

You make a broad suggestion in your submission, but will you give us a wee bit more flavour of your thinking? You simply mention

“standard environmental and social policy criteria”.

Will you give us a few more examples? The suggestion interests me.

Arguably, then, you are suggesting that there should be more transparency and that there needs to be linkage to various outcomes.

I do not know whether the Auditor General wants to come in on that point. It strikes me as an interesting area.

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I thank Rhoda Grant for bringing it to the chamber and for her very good speech.

I have had an interest in taxation issues for a number of years, not only because I have to pay quite a bit of it. Back in 2016, when I was an MP, I was a sponsor of a double taxation treaties bill. The bill sought to right some injustices, such as the fact that if African countries were able to access the corporate taxes that they are due, the money would exceed the total amount of aid supplied by the rest of the world. The bill reached a second reading and, although it was not picked up in full by the UK Government, it brought about some changes.

As has already been highlighted, one problem with the UK tax system as a whole is its complexity and large number of loopholes. There is a huge industry to milk those loopholes, limited resource in Government agencies to plug them and a limited appetite from the UK Government to narrow the tax gap, which stood at £32 billion in 2020-21. I am reminded of the joke about an accountant’s children being told the story of Cinderella and interrupting to ask, “But, Mum, when the pumpkin changed into a golden coach, would that be classed as income or a capital gain?”

Although the Scottish Government has very limited powers over taxation, I applaud its efforts to create a fairer and more efficient taxation system in those areas within its control.

On re-reading Tom Arthur’s excellent Reform Scotland blog post from June of this year on the Government’s framework for tax, I noted that he explained the need for fairness, transparency, engagement and good guardianship. I suspect that those things hark back to the four principles of good taxation that Adam Smith set out in 1776.

One of those principles was fairness, by which Smith meant the ability to pay, and it appears be a guiding light for the framework for tax. Similarly, Smith argued for certainty, by which he meant that taxpayers should be clearly informed about how and why taxes are being levied. In other words, he argued for what we today term transparency. Again, I note that Tom Arthur has taken forward that concern. He knows that there is considerable scope for improvement in that regard, and he has pointed out that 61 per cent of people in Scotland know very little about the tax system. Transparency and fairness are fundamental to further progress. It is fair to say that we are on a journey but we have some way to go before we reach our destination.

A further thought is that it is difficult to conceive of any tax that does not have unintended consequences. That is inevitable, as the way in which individuals respond to tax changes may be very different from the intentions of Government. I am sure that we have all seen examples that we can relate to.

My concerns about the world that we live in include concerns about the growth of shell firms and, not least, the massive abuse enabled by the existence of Scottish limited partnerships—which, despite huge efforts over the years, the UK Government, which is responsible for the relevant legislation, has steadfastly refused to reform.

We are making progress, but we have a huge way to go.

So it is not actually your customers who have said this. You used the term “customers”, but it is a committee of the Law Society that has suggested that approach rather than the customers at the end of the chain.

But surely some customers will not know that there is a problem with cases going back to 2017 until it is uncovered, by which time it will be too late.

I think the convener is going to come in here—

I am sorry—it is not a supplementary question. It is on something entirely different, and it is a quick question for the end.

My question is a supplementary one to that question. Land register completion by local authorities is quite variable. There are some very high completion rates for some local authorities; incredibly, others have a rate below 50 per cent, and some have zero per cent. I want to understand what influence, if any, you have over that completion by local authorities and why there is such disparity in those figures, regardless of whether you separate that from the land register or unlocking sasines.