Chamber and committees

The absence of a pay policy is not an impediment, but such a policy might be a useful context for those discussions. If all parties understand the broad parameters that the Government is working within, it allows for more constructive negotiations, does it not? I will push a little further. You have made absolutely no commitment around the timetable. May we have at least some indication of whether we should expect a policy within months? Do you acknowledge that having that context might be useful?

Professor Muscatelli, I have a follow-up question to the answer that you just gave and your previous answer about property tax. You have twice said that that would require Westminster approval. I assume that you are talking about reform of council tax and non-domestic rates, and I think that a property tax or a land tax is a very good candidate for replacing one or both of those. Why do you say that that would require Westminster approval? The power is fully devolved if we use it as a replacement for those sources of local taxation. Will you clarify why you say that?

You also stated that the budget was about dealing with the short-term shocks that we have had and, potentially, their medium and long-term consequences. Do the witnesses consider that there is sufficient focus on those? There has clearly been a real focus on trying to create the envelope for pay awards, but we are also dealing with labour market shocks and utility price shocks.

If we look at the budget, we see reference to the warmer homes Scotland scheme. That is one of the budget lines that was cut in the September emergency budget review. Likewise, on pay and the consequences in the health service, we know that delayed discharge is one of the key issues and there was a 3.8 per cent increase in the minimum pay. It is fair to say that the focus has been on creating the envelope for pay increases, but is there sufficient focus on getting people off gas or to be less reliant on it, dealing with labour market shocks and dealing with the short-term issues that we face in our most fundamental public services, such as the health service?

I take the point about your remit.

You said clearly in your May forecast that the Government should be stating its budget on COFOG principles. To what extent has it taken steps towards doing that? To what extent would having such clarity help with the issues that we are talking about?

I have one additional question. Audit Scotland has stated that the Government needs to set out clearly in its budget the contribution that that budget makes towards specific policy commitments. Would you add that to your point around COFOG?

My point was that the £25 has been carried over, so I was looking for clarity on what changes could have been made in this budget.

I will round off my questions by asking about income tax calculations. I wonder how variable they are likely to be. I noted that the IPPR suggested that an additional 1 percentage point on the top rate of income tax would raise £50 million. Given that your forecasters are suggesting that the totality raised by the 1p increase on the upper and top rates will be £129 million, you are much more pessimistic. Does that reflect a genuine degree of variability and, if so, should we be keeping a very close eye on what we actually get in compared with what has been forecast, or is there a bigger difference of opinion in relation to how you calculate it and how the IPPR calculates it?

We have discussed a number of times Scotland’s relative position on per capita income tax receipts, which is the fundamental driver of the fiscal framework. In your report, you suggest that that position is improving. To what extent is that because employment and earnings growth are improving relative to the UK average and to what extent is it because of the difference in the policy decisions that are being made on fiscal drag and the additional pennies on the upper and top rates of income tax? It would be useful to clarify the balance of what is contributing towards that.

I will follow up on one of John Mason’s questions regarding figure 1 and your assumption about what will happen to utility prices. Is it your position, as of December 2022, that we will see a fall in utility prices? If so, what assumptions is that based on? It strikes me that we have a classic supply and demand situation. Supply has been reduced because, in essence, the taps in Russia have been switched off, so the only way in which there will be a significant fall in prices is if there is a replacement for gas or if that supply increases or alternative supplies are found. Those seem to be big counterfactuals. Are falling utility prices factored into the forecasts?

That is a helpful clarification.

You went quiet there, but that is fine. I will ask a further question.

We recently had an interesting—it was certainly interesting for us—conference on taxation, which was held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. If we are going to reform council tax and non-domestic rates, I would want them to be reformed hand in hand. They are both property-based taxes, but they have diverged significantly and council tax was only ever a temporary fix. Would you want to reform them hand in hand? Would they both need to be based on the same underlying principles—that is, if you went for a land value tax for one, you would do the same for the other—or could you have a property-based tax for residential taxation and a land value tax for commercial? Does it need to be done in the round and do we need a consistent approach to commercial and residential taxation?