Chamber and committees

Ms Henderson, do you have anything to add?

Thank you very much for that opening statement. I will begin by asking a couple of questions before opening up the discussion to colleagues.

Overall, I think that it is a very useful report. It is quite refreshing to see a report that makes proactive suggestions in a relatively concise manner. I thank you for that. It struck me, when reading it, that it reflects a half-full version of the world, as opposed to a half-empty one, in that it talks about what could happen and how your organisations could contribute more. However, I wonder whether you should be having to think about those things, given that the national performance framework is a creature of Government that has set out how it wants to measure itself, with policy being guided by it. The fact that you are suggests that it is not doing that, especially given that your organisations are largely fulfilling functions of Government through various mechanisms, including contractual mechanisms. It suggests that the Government is not using the national performance framework as a means of conducting that engagement and as a yardstick for its interactions with your members and the organisations that you work with. Is that a fair assessment?

I believe that Douglas Lumsden has an additional question.

Thank you, and with that, unless there are any other questions, I draw the evidence session to a close. Can I thank both Anna Fowlie and Jennifer Henderson hugely for their contribution? I think that it has been a very interesting discussion and there have been a number of themes and issues that we have alighted on that we will certainly follow up in our own inquiry work on the national performance framework. Thank you very much for your contributions.

That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. The next item, which will be discussed in private, is consideration of our work programme. We now move into private session.

Good morning, and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I am afraid that I must relay the convener’s apologies. In his place, I will be chairing the committee meeting. I welcome Dr Alasdair Allan, who is attending remotely in place of the convener. Michelle Thomson is also joining us remotely.

The first item on our agenda is evidence from two members of the Scottish Leaders Forum’s accountability and incentives action group in relation to their recent report on the national performance framework. This is incredibly timely for our committee, given that we are embarking on an inquiry into the same matter.

I welcome to this morning’s meeting Jennifer Henderson, the keeper and chief executive of the Registers of Scotland, and Anna Fowlie, the chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. Both are here in their capacity as participants in the Scottish Leaders Forum’s accountability and incentives action group—which is a very pithy and succinct title, if I might say so. I welcome you both to the meeting and invite Ms Henderson to make a short opening statement.

The point about measurability is very important. I believe that colleagues will come back on that.

I now hand over to John Mason.

That would be great.

I have a second question. You said that the Scottish Government would seek full devolution of income tax, VAT and national insurance contributions. Are you talking about full devolution of not just the setting but the collecting of those taxes? Would you limit the approach to those taxes—the top three taxes in the United Kingdom, in terms of receipts—or would you go further down the list? The next tax on the list is corporation tax. Are there other levies that you would seek to devolve?

When we consider the total tax revenue that is levied, I estimate that you are seeking the devolution to Scotland of around 70 per cent of taxation, if we include the three taxes that you want to be devolved with the taxes that are already devolved. Is that roughly what you estimate?

By definition, you are talking about very broad areas that have a huge number of metrics attached to them, especially wellbeing. Are you saying that each one of the measures is of equal value? How are they compared? How do you even compare the different objectives? There is no reference, not even at a high level, to how you will balance or compare the different objectives in your framework. Is that not a fairly fundamental point of a framework?

But that is my point. The growth of the average receipt per capita determines significantly what we have to spend. I would need to double check but, from memory, it is about 20 to 25 per cent of the revenue that we have to spend in Scotland. In terms of the overall tax policy that the Scottish Government controls, you correctly say that there are a number of taxes and this is about all tax, but the lion’s share of that is income tax. It dwarves all the other taxes that we have at our control.

Given that that is such a fundamental dynamic, which is so important for determining whether we have more money to spend compared to pre-devolution or less, I wonder why that is not explicitly stated. You said that the fiscal framework is complex; I do not really understand why it is not baked into the tax framework.

That is sort of my point.

I want to go back to a specific point that the convener raised about non-domestic rates. You are saying that the framework should be responsive to societal shifts. Surely, everything that is going on—including the fact that, depending on the point in time that you pick, online sales now account for between a quarter and 30 per cent of total retail sales—would suggest that you need a fundamental review of non-domestic rates, especially if you are using the framework properly.