Chamber and committees

I am not arguing about whether businesses are happy with it. My point is that the legislation is enabling legislation and there is now a duty on councils to consult well. I get a little bit sceptical when colleagues demand that central Government does not interfere with local authority decisions but then, when they are not comfortable with the way that things are going with local authorities, they come back to central Government and say, “You must change this”, or, “You must put a stop to this”.

The legislation is very broad and it allows for a number of flexibilities and exemptions that businesses are calling for. It will be the decision of local authorities as to how they design a scheme that works. There is a lot of flexibility in there. I am very alive to the fact that different local authorities and different business groups asked for different things. Some asked for a percentage, some asked for tiered rates and some asked for a flat rate. There were also other ways. Ultimately, we needed to take that into account and design a scheme that would work for the most people.

Ivan McKee is currently engaging with tourism businesses on whether anything else could be done to the legislation to make it even more flexible. There is an openness to engaging with the tourism industry right now on whether anything further could be done on the legislation. There will be a challenge if it requires primary legislation, but there is an openness there.

I go back to the consultation responses and the fact that there was a broad range of views on whether the levy should be a percentage or not, particularly as small businesses felt that a flat rate would be a disproportionate percentage of their nightly rate. That is why having as much flexibility as possible in the enabling legislation is important, but I stress that it will be for local authorities to determine whether to introduce a tourism levy and to design one that takes into account the strong feedback from businesses in the Highlands. I am very conscious that that feedback has been very strong.

I am interested in hearing Dr Malik’s thoughts on that. By and large, however, my experience of Scottish businesses is that they want to do the right thing. They see themselves as critical to the local economy, but they are very interested in how they do their business and not just in what they do. Perhaps the difference is that, in Parliament or in the public sector, we have a tendency to use terms to define a lot of things that businesses, by and large, want to do themselves. An example is single-use cups. I am very conscious that a lot of coffee shops have already made decisions to try to contribute to environmental sustainability irrespective of legislative changes. Irrespective of how people define the work that they do and the duties that you outlined, businesses want to do the right thing.

No, there will not be. The point of the new deal for business was to make systemic change. That is slightly different from setting policy outcomes; it was about processes. The next stage is that those processes should work, be effective and lead to different outcomes for Government with regard to what happens and what does not happen.

I hope that extensive engagement will continue, and that there will be different and better means by which different businesses can feed in to processes. That would be my objective.

It is a good question, and I would like to hear responses from the people on either side of me. What happens next, Judith?

I hope so, yes. That is the aim; that is the ambition. There are particular flash points where that is tested with new policies and so on. With the previous budget and the programme for government, we tried to give some breathing space, with no surprises for businesses or anything that has caught them out and so on. There is something about this being a particularly tumultuous time, and giving business some space to be able to respond to those challenges is a good thing for Government to do.

I disagree fundamentally with the point about their incentivisation. I think that local authorities are incentivised to take such action. There is an extensive focus on what the Scottish Government is or is not doing to incentivise economic prosperity and growth, but a lot of levers lie with local government, and I do not think that there is always the same level of scrutiny of local government in that respect.

The visitor levy is one of the first examples of a measure in relation to which a local authority needs to consult extensively with local businesses before implementing a new economic intervention. Although it might be easy to keep coming back to the root, I invite all members to work with local government, too. Often, on planning, local taxation and local consultation, the levers lie with local government, and if we keep coming back to central Government, that undermines local government’s responsibility and duty to take action on those things.

This is a good bookend. In response to your first question, I said that the key for the new deal for business is the extent to which it filters down to other organisations. With things such as local taxation, there is a duty in law on local government to engage and consult well with local businesses. I will be quite bold and say that it is, therefore, the lazy option to keep saying to Government that the problem is with what we have or have not done on the legislation, given that there are extensive flexibilities in the legislation and there is a new responsibility on local government through which it is incentivised to engage well on these points.

Part of the answer is that when there is a new opportunity and a new responsibility on local government, local citizens should hold the relevant and appropriate level of government responsible for what it does. In this case it is local authorities. The same goes for planning and local transport decisions.

That is fine.

You were cut off at the beginning.

The amendments make very minor corrections that will ensure that references to the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 follow the style of the act into which they are being inserted. That will ensure consistency and remove any possible ambiguity.

I move amendment 59.

Amendment 59 agreed to.

Amendment 60 moved—[Kate Forbes]—and agreed to.

Section 16, as amended, agreed to.

After section 16