Chamber and committees

As we have heard and discussed, the high street is under pressure and there has been a 50 per cent increase in online sales. If the UK Government decided to tax online retailers to try to create a balance in the high street, would you support that? If so, should some of the revenues that would be raised be assigned to the Scottish Parliament?

I was not sure about that, but I thought that I would give you the opportunity, anyway.

We have come to the end of our time. I thank our guests for their evidence, and particularly Kevin Robertson for coming in today.

We will have a two-minute break to allow our witnesses to depart, and then we will continue with the rest of the meeting.

It is compulsory sales orders. Basically, they are for the sort of situation where someone has owned a derelict building for 20 years—perhaps an old primary school, a pub or a house or whatever—and planning permission has long since passed away with nothing being done. Under compulsory sales orders, in effect, if nothing was done within three years to refurbish a building, the owner could be forced to sell it at auction. We explored the idea at the Local Government and Communities Committee in the previous session and there was cross-party support for it. Has the Scottish Property Federation considered that measure, which might help high streets and make them more attractive? I also ask Joanne Walker whether she has any comments on that.

Yes, I think that the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations said that retrofitting homes for energy efficiency would cost about £6 billion. It is one of the long-term issues that we will have to deal with.

I am keen to let members ask their questions, and I am aware that, with a panel of four witnesses, it is often hard to make sure that everybody gets an equal chance to respond, so my final question is for Polly Tolley.

In your submission, you talk about non-repayable grants and council tax rebates being popular. I suppose that giving people additional funds is always popular. You also talk about the need for advice provision to be protected and, if possible, enhanced as a preventative measure. Again, prevention seems to be a fundamental part of what we are hearing.

You have set out your position in your paper but, for the record, will you give a bit more detail about how much additional advice provision you would like there to be? You have talked about a £16 return for every £1 that is invested in core services.

You touched on the removal of the £20 a week increase in universal credit that was brought in during the pandemic. Will you say a little bit more about the impact that that will have?

On the point that Mr Robertson made about planning, I once read an article by a retiring chief executive of West Lothian Council, in which he was asked how the council was able to attract a disproportionate amount of investment, given that, post-mining, it had been one of the poorest authorities. He said that the council had a strong focus on turning round planning applications—saying yea or nay to them—within four weeks, which gave it a competitive advantage over other local authorities. Therefore, the point is well made.

This morning, members of the committee received a detailed letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy. No doubt colleagues will ask questions about that in the second session. She says in that letter:

“there is logic for publishing the MTFS alongside the Scottish Budget and thereby basing it on the updated SFC and OBR forecasts. Publishing it before the OBR October forecasts would mean having to use OBR forecasts from March, the effect of which would be to give a misleading sense of the fiscal outlook.”

Does the commission agree with that statement?

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I think that some members are having a wee bit of difficulty in hearing you clearly. Perhaps we can make some technical adjustments. If that is not possible, we will have to soldier on. Please bear with me for a minute.

I have been advised that broadcasting is trying to improve communications but that we should plough on in the meantime. I hope that you will be able to hear me, cabinet secretary. I will try to enunciate and to not sound as west of Scotland as I normally do in asking these questions, you being a poshie and all that. [Laughter.] You will probably be able to translate what Daniel Johnson is saying much more clearly than I could.

Thank you. SPICe produced an interesting document, which you might have seen mentioned in the press. It says that because of the Scottish Government’s tax policy, some £500 million was raised in taxation, but only £148 million benefited the Scottish budget due to block grant adjustments. We have an explanation from SPICe, but will you talk about that a wee bit?

I thank members of the committee.

I have a couple of questions to wind up with. One relates to capital budget. Raw material prices are growing by between 5 and 15 per cent a year. You said that the agreement with the Greens would not threaten the delivery of Scotland’s capital projects that are already committed to but, clearly, if there is significant pressure on the capital budget because of inflation, that may make it more difficult to deliver some of those projects. What discussions have you had with the UK Government regarding an uplift to the Scottish Government’s capital programme budget?

Straight in at the deep end.