Chamber and committees

I have one brief point of clarification. You clearly set out the role of borrowing in relation to investment and financial shocks. We hear comments from different parties—my own included—that suggest that borrowing brings some sort of infinite possibility for public expenditure. Do you agree with my view that, in broad terms, borrowing should not be used for current expenditure but that it should be there to provide flexibility around shocks or to allow for investment? Prudent financial management should not use borrowing either to fund tax cuts or to expand public spending.

I am sorry—I was not going to make it easy just because I like retail.

One thing that struck me was the fact that 20 per cent of business rates revenue is being paid by retailers when they make up, crudely estimated, about 10 per cent of the economy. That sets the context in stark terms.

I have another question. I understand your wariness of things such as a tourist tax, but I think that individual levies such as that can be useful levers for local government. To be candid, my worry is that introducing them one by one encourages local authorities to put them up to the maximum. I would rather see a basket of different levies. If we could design those correctly, could they not be beneficial by ensuring that money from local economic activity gets invested in those towns, cities and local environments? That should be beneficial for both the businesses that want to operate there and the people who want to live there. Is it about getting those levies right rather than them being wrong in principle? I would be interested if you or other people have a view on that.

I just wanted to make a wee observation to Catherine Murphy.

Your point about the systemic nature of inequality is absolutely spot on. It is disproportionately women who work in social care, for low pay. However, we are also seeing the costs of people who are stuck in hospital spiralling. I am constantly hearing stories of elderly people who cannot get home. The systemic aspect can be considered from a big or macro point of view, but also specifically. It would be interesting to hear your reflections on that.

I have a question for Stephen Smellie but, on the previous point, I think that one of the key issues that we have at the moment relates to how not just the private sector but the Scottish Government conceives of productivity and growth. They view public services almost as not being part of the economy, but the fact is that such services make up about 45 per cent of the economy and they are—or, at least, they should be—driving innovation and productivity. They should be the foundation for growth. One of my criticisms of NSET is that its vision of productivity and growth does not have a clear space for public services and the public sector.

Stephen, I completely agree with you about public sector pay. In particular, the very long-term squeeze on local government has had a direct impact on the pay of some of the most critical workers. We are now facing a real crunch, but I do not think that we are discussing it actively enough. The public sector pay bill is about £21 billion out of a total budget of £44 billion, and we have had vague suggestions from the Scottish Government that it wants to reduce public sector head count to pre-Covid levels.

To be blunt, I am really worried that there is a big crunch coming and that people are not being honest about it. There is, at the very least, one genuine challenge that needs to be met: people in the public sector need pay increases if they are to pay their bills, but that sort of pay bill at the macro or high level makes things difficult. Does Unison have a view on that? Do you share my fear about the lack of frankness on the things that are being considered with regard to public sector head count?

I want to make a brief comment about something that Stephen Smellie said earlier. It is important to note that a lot of Scotland’s higher earners are in the public sector. We have a different profile of higher earners, so some of the tax points do not have the same impact in Scotland and England. It is important to understand that.

Before I ask my question, I remind the committee of my entry in the register of interests. I am a director and sole shareholder in a company that has retail interests, which is probably understating the level of bias that I have towards the retail sector, frankly.

I have some key questions for David Lonsdale. I was interested in the point in your submission about non-domestic rates and the proportion that retail pays. Could you elaborate a bit further about the impact that non-domestic rates have on retail? Critically, to echo the drift of some of my colleagues’ questions, what do you think should replace it? It is one thing to say that non-domestic rates do not work, but should we be looking at something that is levied on revenue, or should it be a property-based or, indeed, a land-based tax?

Does the SRC or the British Retail Consortium have a view on what might be fair and, critically, what might be more in line or synergistic with economic growth, helping businesses and driving the investment in their local environment that rates might not?

Indeed. That raises some very big questions that go way beyond this committee’s remit.

Moving on, given the complexity of what needs to be done and managed, I note that the ability to track what is spent against what is pledged in the budget is critical. Again, that brings me back to my experience in small business. I have posed this question before, but let me pose it again. The lack of clarity that exists on the public record is one issue, but to what extent are the Scottish Government’s internal systems able to provide clarity? Those are two distinct questions. The lack of clarity is frustrating for us and there are public accountability issues, but there will also be delivery issues if systems and processes are not in place within the Government to enable it to track its spend against what has been budgeted for. Are such systems in place, in your view?

I will pitch one last question to both Susan Murray and Charlotte Barbour. I am interested in what you have said in your written submissions and this afternoon about things such as public transport and impacts on tax. We have had reference to the unemployment rate in Scotland, but the detail that is missing from some of that discussion is that we still have lower labour market participation rates in Scotland, among both younger and older people.

Is there sufficient thinking, in policy terms, about the linkages between what programmes the Government undertakes and their impact on tax receipts? In other words, given that we are now much more dependent on income tax growth, is there sufficient joined-up policy making that looks at how we both get more people into the labour market and grow wages for those who are already in it? Does that lie at the heart of the public transport question and the helping people back into work question that the David Hume Institute raised in its written submission?

I will put that to Susan Murray first, then to Charlotte Barbour.

I put the same question to Charlotte Barbour. Does the Government think of tax as money in and spend as money out, and not make the link between the two?

I will keep to one question, but it will have two strands. COSLA’s submission states that, in real terms, local government budgets have been cut by 7 per cent since 2013. Mr Manning pointed out that, within that, two thirds has gone to ring-fenced areas. Further on, the submission states that those ring-fenced areas have to be cross-subsidised from local government discretionary budgets. Does that imply that a sum comes out in addition to the 15 per cent real-terms cut, in that you have ring-fenced funding that impacts on core and then you have to cross-subsidise? If so, can you attach a quantum to that cross-subsidisation?