Chamber and committees

When Opposition members such as myself ask questions or ask for additional budget, the first thing that ministers say is, “You need to identify where that funding is coming from.” What discussions have the minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance had with other cabinet colleagues to identify where the funding for the potential council tax freeze will come from?

Okay, thank you.

I am not asking you to put a figure on it. I am asking what your definition of a fully funded freeze will be? What does it mean for it to be fully funded?

The First Minister has also said that the commitment to fully fund the freeze means that councils would be able to maintain their services. Now, obviously, financial planning means that councils will have already been planning what level of council tax they might set, in advance of the announcement. If the funding falls short of that and councils have to either reduce services or make redundancies, what would be the Government’s response?

I apologise to you, Presiding Officer, to the chamber and to the cabinet secretary for missing a chunk of his speech due to my late arrival in the chamber. I was facilitating a meeting of the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health with mothers of premature babies, who were putting forward powerful contributions to her. I felt that I could not curtail that discussion, and I hope that the chamber understands.

Earlier today, the Social Justice and Social Security Committee started taking evidence on my bill, which would establish an employment injuries advisory council for Scotland. The bill would put workers at the heart of our new industrial injuries benefit, because the council would be an expert panel made up of those who best know their workplaces and the dangers that they face. The bill is key to embedding fair work principles in our social security system.

It is also key that the bill would do something that we should be doing with the powers that Parliament already has—delivering on the shared ambition to, as the Government’s motion says,

“make Scotland a fair work nation”.

That has not yet happened.

The Fair Work Convention, in its support of the bill, agrees that it would ensure that

“the principles of fair work including effective voice are underpinned in the delivery of this benefit”.

Although the Department for Work and Pensions is still delivering the UK benefit and has not kept pace with the world that we now live in, the convention went on to say that the new Scottish benefit,

“at its most basic, recognises the health, safety and well-being of others in the workplace”

and that it

“aligns with the fair work principle of Respect”.

The fact that my bill would give workers their effective voice through that role in the new benefit is why it is backed by the STUC and 16 trade unions, as well as a range of organisations including Close the Gap, Action on Asbestos, Scottish Hazards and Long Covid Scotland.

Key workers with long Covid—care workers wrestling with back and joint problems; firefighters, who are more likely to get cancer from toxic contaminants; and women workers—are outright ignored by the current UK benefit. They all want answers as to how Scotland’s new industrial injuries benefit can help them, but they have no voice in the current process and no seat at the table in what the Government says it is setting up.

This is an area where the Government could be using its powers now to extend our ambitions to be a fair work nation. It is one of the final pieces of the jigsaw required to fully establish Scotland’s new social security system. Earlier in the week, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice confirmed that not enough progress has been made on delivering that system. The committee had asked for a timescale but did not get it. Timing and the need for yet more consultation is the key reason why the Government says that it will vote down a bill that would secure an effective voice for Scotland’s workers.

Truth be told, although current stock responses contemplate it, asking whether a council is needed at all, I do not think for a second that the cabinet secretary or the Government would create a workers’ benefit without giving workers a seat at the table. I also do not believe that the Government would consider it possibly being the right solution to leave that task to the UK council, which has no Scottish voices on it and which this Government is not allowed to ask for information.

The Government has left until last the benefit that it considers to be the most complex. Promises of consultations have been and gone, and workers are still no wiser about when they will get their voice heard and their seat at the table.

The Government is short of an opinion on whether there should be a council at all, but Government-established organisations—the Fair Work Convention and the disability and carers benefits expert advisory group—and responses to my consultation and the committee’s call for views all concluded that there absolutely should be one. In addition, the Government’s consultation, which led to the recently introduced Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, said that there was a preference for splitting off advice and scrutiny, and, in an independent review, the Scottish Commission on Social Security said that it is very clear that it “would not be appropriate” for it to have an advisory role. There is a risk that the Government will run out of time to include workers and, from the outset, give them an effective voice and their place around the table with regard to the new benefit.

In its legal agreement with the UK Government, the Scottish Government has agreed that it will deliver a business transition plan and a case transfer plan a year ahead of the contract running out and a year ahead of agency agreements coming to an end. Given that ministers now have just short of 17 months in which to set out something that they have failed to set out in the past five years, the Government should urgently set out to workers how their voice will be embedded in the design, advice and scrutiny of the new injury benefit.

The industrial injuries benefit was built on the backs of workers before us who were lost, injured and disabled. This Parliament owes it to them to ensure that workers who are injured or made ill at work can continue to turn to a no-blame social security scheme and have an effective voice in shaping its future.

The cabinet secretary will, no doubt, be aware that there was cross-party support, including from Government party back benchers, for taking forward compulsory sales orders. Can the cabinet secretary give a timeline for delivering the potential new powers so that councils have the ability to address the blight that empty homes are on rural communities?

My entry in the register of members’ interests shows that I was previously an owner of a privately rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area.

To ask the Scottish Government what continued engagement it has had with the Scottish Land Commission about its proposal for compulsory sales orders since it first proposed them in August 2018. (S6O-02687)

The committee is grappling with the simplicity and transparency of a flat rate versus the fairness of a percentage rate. I want to delve deeper into the concept of the percentage rate. If the percentage rate is applied purely to the accommodation provided and not to breakfast, spa and gym facilities, for example, is there potential for avoidance of the levy? For example, a hotel that offers those extra services could essentially minimise the accommodation price on a bill and inflate the other services, but still maintain parity on the price. Is that a mechanism for avoidance of the levy, or at least for minimising the levy, if we go down a percentage route? Does anyone have views on that?

Leon Thompson, you have also flagged concerns about how the levy would interact with online travel agents and third party booking sites. Do you have any more clarity or information to provide on how that will work in practice?

I have a final question for Leon Thompson. Has UKHospitality Scotland done any modelling of the impact of a levy on non-accommodation businesses—on bars, restaurants and entertainment venues? Do tourists come with a fixed pot of money that they have to spend? Will taking money out of that cost those other non-accommodation businesses?