That is very helpful. However, you quoted three definitions, and it would be good if we could boil things down to one specific definition, because, if we do not do that, it leaves room for ambiguity, which we want to reduce as we move forward.

Another issue that came up was the timescale that will be available for investors. Unite the union and David Melhuish from the Scottish Property Federation felt that five years was not long enough. Unite said that the period should be as long as possible, and David Melhuish said that it can take up to nine years for investments to come through. If we want to ensure that green ports are impactful as early as possible and that they attract as much investment as possible, is the Scottish Government thinking of extending the period beyond five years? What is the logic behind choosing five years?

Indeed.

The question is, that motion S6M-09584 be agreed to. Are we agreed?

Members: No.

One of the conclusions that came from the committee’s meeting on 23 May was that efficiencies made as part of managing budgets are not a genuine reform. I am sure that you would agree with that. What role do efficiencies such as sharing data or making use of artificial intelligence and digital technologies play?

Thank you. That concludes the committee’s questions.

Item 2 is formal consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to move motion S6M-09584.

Motion moved,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Green Freeports Relief) (Scotland) Order 2023 [draft] be approved.—[Tom Arthur]

I thank the minister and his colleagues for their evidence. We will publish in due course a short report to the Parliament setting out our decision on the draft order.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a change of witnesses.

That appears to have concluded the questions from the committee, but I will just point out that, ironically, the council tax was meant to be a temporary fix when it came in more than 30 years ago. One of the difficulties that we have not touched on is that, if we did have a new system, whatever that system would be, the number of appeals would run into the hundreds of thousands, because that is what happened when the council tax came in, as I remember from my days on Glasgow City Council.

David, do you want to make any points that we have not touched on?

I was quite keen to have a freeport at Hunterston, in my constituency, so I will certainly support the motion. The reason for that is primarily that, if we do not get the jobs and investment in Scotland, those will simply move to south of the border. Teesside would be a major threat to jobs in this part of Scotland if it were not for the fact that Leith is one of the green ports.

Engagement is important. We have to take on board what the unions also said, which is that the City of Edinburgh Council is not engaging with them. That is a Labour-led local authority. Other political parties as well as the Scottish Government have to think more about engagement with trade unions and others.

However, I will support the motion for the pragmatic economic reason that the alternative would be a drain of jobs and money to elsewhere in the UK.

Minister, do you want to sum up before we go to the question?

At a time of static budgets, how difficult is it to disinvest in programmes or services in the public sector that are less effective, in order to invest in more effective services?

Scotland has an ageing population and declining workforce and the Scottish Fiscal Commission has said, based on current projections, that the funding gap is likely to remain for years. In a paper submitted last year, you suggested that the Scottish Government should look to increase tax revenues by around £3.3 billion, which is hugely significant if we think of Scotland’s current tax burden. For example, someone earning £43,662 a year would pay 42 per cent income tax and 12 per cent national insurance and a lot of the money that they have left would probably go on fuel duty, excise duty, value-added tax and so on.

What would be the impact of raising that sum? I realise that it would not all be done in one go, but what would be the impact on behavioural change? The Scottish Fiscal Commission has expressed concern that increasing taxation to a certain degree results in behavioural change whereby people do not work as hard or move somewhere else.

I will give you an example. Under a previous Conservative Government, Chancellor Osborne limited pension pots to £1 million. As a result, a lot of doctors, including general practitioners and consultants, realised that they would end up paying more in tax than they would gain, so they decided that they would retire early. That was a detrimental behavioural change, and the UK Government is now looking to reverse that policy—and has reversed it, to a degree.

What would be the behavioural change in this case? Last week, we heard that there are only 18,000 top-rate taxpayers in Scotland.