Chamber and committees

That was a very useful session that we had with the Deputy First Minister just now.

The instrument deals with a number of areas. I could be content with some of them, but there is one that I am really not comfortable with, which is the power to close student accommodation and boarding accommodation. As we heard during the earlier discussion, the power has never been used during the entire pandemic—the Government has relied on guidance—so I can see no justification for hanging on to it for another six months. I do not think that Mr Swinney made a compelling argument for doing so. If the Government did not use a power—which was an emergency power—during the height of the pandemic, I can see no justification for hanging on to it now that we are in a much better place than we have been.

The instrument throws up the issue of what happens when we, as parliamentarians, are asked to approve instruments that contain a number of provisions, some of which we like and some of which we do not. There needs to be some flexibility in the system to allow us all to pick and choose. If that could be reported to the lead committee, that would be useful.

On the basis that I do not like one of the provisions, I will vote against the instrument, but I would much rather have the ability to pick off any provisions that I do not like. However, that option is unfortunately not available to us. On that basis, I will vote against it.

So this just gives people the option to register a death remotely.

Okay. I thought that it might be useful to go through the instrument in question, which contains a number of provisions, and to hear your thoughts on each of them. I might not cover them all, but I will go through them quickly. Some are quite straightforward.

The first provision relates to the ability to register deaths and stillbirths remotely. Does that give people a choice? Does it have to be done remotely, or can people still pop into an office to register a death or stillbirth in person?

The instrument gives councils a power over public outdoor spaces, and we could describe parks in that way. Why would councils need powers to do anything in public outdoor spaces for the next six months?

You have not, however, used those powers.

As we heard earlier, the instrument extends the powers given to councils for another six months in relation to premises, events and public outdoor spaces. Given where we are with the health situation, I cannot see a justification for councils hanging on to those powers for another six months. In the circumstances, I will vote against the instrument.

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to ensure that islanders are not left without food supplies due to the reported lack of resilience of the ferry fleet. (S6O-00783)

EY’s project Neptune report into the flawed tripartite structure for procuring and running ferries has been with Transport Scotland for five months. Will the minister commit to publishing it now and making a statement to Parliament?

Yesterday, I moved in committee a motion to annul an instrument that brought in provisions in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to allow councils to introduce the hated workplace parking tax. Not surprisingly, thanks to the SNP and the Greens, my motion was defeated. The motion gave the Minister for Transport the chance to do the right thing—to step back from the precipice—but she did not take it.

The SNP and its coalition of chaos partners have chosen to ignore business, they have chosen to ignore the entire public sector, and they have chosen to ignore shift workers and people who are low paid. If they want to get people out of their cars, they could have used the 2019 act to introduce provisions on public transport partnerships, but they have not done that.

It has surely not passed anyone by that we have been through a tough time in the past two years. It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that work patterns have changed, and even the most anti-business person would accept that our town and city centres have been particularly hard hit.

Liz Cameron, who is the chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said that businesses are “incredulous”. They are. I have been contacted by a number of businesses, all of which are too nervous to go public. What a sorry state of affairs. Unlike the minister, I have spoken to the business sector, including in the east midlands, where people are worried about what is to come in Leicester—the home of Walkers Crisps, which has a big car park. This could be Leicester’s crisp tax.

It is not as though companies that have parking spaces for staff and visitors are not already paying for them: the Scottish Retail Consortium has made the point that they pay through business rates.

The tax is a double whammy on commuting. The workplace parking tax is simply a money-raising tool for councils, which—let’s face it—need everything they can get. In order to bring in the levy, a council needs merely to have a local transport strategy. The car park tax must go towards helping with that strategy, which means that it does not need to be about reducing motor vehicle travel—it can be used for anything. The money will go into a general pot.

It is no wonder that SNP councils that have been denied funds by their own Government are gearing up to bring in the tax. Anti-car City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council cannot wait, although Susan Aitken, who has one eye on the council elections, is trying temporarily to distance herself from it. In the unfortunate event that Ms Aitken remains as Glasgow council leader after May, we can expect her to get back on track. Her official, connectivity officer Deborah Paton, excitedly told councillors that a levy could raise as much as £30 million, but that was before Jenny Gilruth confirmed that there would be no limit on what councils can charge.

Once again, the minister refuses to say what she thinks would be an acceptable limit.

It is not clear what the workplace parking tax is meant to achieve. If it is meant to persuade people to use public transport, public transport first needs to improve. We know that the SNP is no good when it comes to running things. When it runs the ferries, islanders are left stranded. Now it wants to run the trains, but cannot tell us what it wants to do with them, apart from cut services and increase fares. From nat sail to nat rail, it all adds up to a big nat fail.

That is what happens when you give the Greens influence or—even worse—bring them into Government. A party that wants to take us back to the stone age has two Government ministers. It is like having the Flintstones around the Cabinet table, with Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater as Fred and Wilma.

The tax will hit workers. We have seen that in Nottingham, where more than half of affected employers pass on the cost to their staff. However, when we tried to exempt groups including the police, the fire brigade, ambulance staff, teachers, shift workers and people who live or work nowhere near public transport, the SNP and the Greens blocked that. Yesterday, Ms Gilruth refused to do anything about those sectors, and confirmed to Liam Kerr that the Government has done no modelling on what effect the hated workplace parking tax might have. It is her rather strange view that we do modelling only once something is already in place.