Chamber and committees

Is there anything that could and should be in the bill that would offer further clarity in that respect? I also want to get Martin’s view on that. Obviously, things such as equality impact assessments should not be in legislation, but is there a lack of clarity in the bill on the specific issue of staff transfer?

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

I am grateful, cabinet secretary.

At this point, I should put on the record that I have previously called for every member of the SQA board to go. However, given that the recent changes to the board, particularly the appointment of Shirley Rogers as chair, have had a dramatic and positive impact on board culture, I think that it would be counterproductive to throw away that progress by agreeing to amendment 351. My worry is that that would send the wrong signal, given that the change of culture at the top that many of us have called for has begun to happen. Indeed, I would be disappointed if the Government waited until we had the new body before making those cultural changes via new board appointments.

I wonder whether the cabinet secretary sees any value in the purpose behind Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendment 309, which seeks to set out in statute some kind of floor but with a recognition that, in policy terms, we would be aiming for something more regular. There might be quite a long duration between inspections, but there would still be a floor that it would be a breach of statute to go beyond, even with the recognition that something a bit more regular would be desirable. Would such an approach give flexibility while still providing some underlying reassurance?

On that point, does Mr Simpson share my confusion at the minister’s line of argument that he cannot come to a position on these amendments until the review group has come to a position on them, when many of the amendments are aimed at implementing the recommendations that the review group itself made 15 months ago?

Does the minister agree that a consultation, engagement and listening exercise has been done before? The most substantive exercise was completed a decade ago in 2015. It is perplexing to argue that further consultation is required on an issue that is as specific as revaluation when everyone agrees that 1991 values are inappropriate and that revaluation is required. What are the minister’s expectations of the current consultation exercise versus the myriad of other consultation exercises that have all said the same thing, which is that we cannot use 34-year-old values for a modern council tax system?

I am sorry, minister, but I am still not clear on your position. I agree that this is a complex area and that there is a need to work with Revenue Scotland and so on. Does the Scottish Government agree with the policy objective that ADS should not be applied in those circumstances? If the Government agrees with the objective and will work with me on a different means of achieving it, I will not move the amendment. However, if the minister simply responds again to say that the issues are complex and require further consideration, I will move it. I am genuinely not trying to be difficult; I am just looking for clarity on the Scottish Government’s position on the policy objective.

Will the minister take an intervention?

I will briefly address some of the points that have been raised in the debate. However, given the temperature in the room and how time has gone on, I hope that members will appreciate that I might not catch everything.

I recognise that I have maximised the potential for amendments to LBTT within the scope of the bill and that most of my amendments would be more appropriate in a dedicated tax bill. However, the Scottish Government does not introduce such bills. For example, there is no finance bill introduced each year that is associated with the budget, which is normal in many other Parliaments. Given that, I have taken the opportunity to try to better understand the Scottish Government’s position on a number of these issues.

It is frustrating—and not for the first time in this group—when the minister’s position is that he cannot speak for the Government more widely. Given that I notified the Government of the vast majority of my amendments in January, I would have thought that the minister would have been able to come to this meeting with a position and with more information.

For example, it is not satisfactory to use the LBTT review to avoid addressing the fact that Scottish Government policy, as it currently stands, is to not apply LBTT to two particular types of company, one of which is infamous for tax avoidance. Those are regulations that the Government has had in place since 2012. It sounds as though the minister said that regulations have been made in regard to one of those types of company. However, that is not SPICe’s understanding and nor is it mine.

The reality is that, as things stand, the Scottish Government has specifically exempted from paying this tax a company type that is infamous for tax avoidance yet it cannot justify why that is the case, despite the fact that I raised the issue months ago. It is frustrating that the minister is not as prepared to discuss these issues as would be appropriate.

I hear what members are saying on council tax revaluation. I heard members say that we need more time to consider that. We have had 34 years to do so, and we have spent most of the past 34 years discussing council tax in one way, shape or form. I heard suggestions that we should consider council tax revaluation in the next parliamentary session. We said that in the previous session, particularly on the back of the 2015 commission on local tax reform and the comprehensive piece of work that it produced, which is still sitting largely unactioned.

When the commission came up in a recent meeting of Parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee, I discovered that the domain name for the website that was set up by the Government for the commission has expired. Therefore, all the documents have been lost, and the Government needed to use the wayback machine—the internet archive—to recover them. That was a poor example of document handling, but there you go.

There was a suggestion that we need to do more work. The 2015 commission did the vast majority of the work on this for us—it was cross-party but led by the Government and included other stakeholders. That was not the only group to have done such work; a huge amount of work has been done outside the Parliament by many people who are frustrated at the lack of progress.

There has been a suggestion that revaluation should be dealt with in a separate bill. I will take that as an indication that, if I am fortunate enough to be re-elected, Mark Griffin will encourage me to immediately announce my intentions to introduce such a bill and that he will support it.

I have heard suggestions—particularly from the minister—that we have not yet decided how revaluation should work. That is fine, because my amendments do not specify how the revaluation process would take place; they just specify what the deadline would be and that there would be consideration for reliefs.

Fundamentally, the problem that members have been quite candid about is that this is often regarded as an issue that is just too difficult to solve. However, the longer that we defer addressing the issue because of the difficulty, the more difficult it becomes. We are now at a point at which, as I and others have said, most people are paying the wrong rate of tax. That is absurd, and we all agree that that is absurd. We all have the opportunity to do something about it.

Putting aside the various positions that we would take on the more substantial issue of reform and the potential replacement of council tax, revaluation would just update the valuation rolls to make sure that they are accurate. That is also a prerequisite for any substantive discussion about council tax reform and replacement. No one is suggesting that, if we replace the council tax, we would stick with 1991 valuations for whatever we replace it with.

I am frustrated about this point, particularly because, as I have said, this is—as far as I am aware—the first time that the Parliament has had the opportunity to vote on revaluation.

I will move on briefly to the various proposals that I have put forward on the additional dwelling supplement and non-domestic rates, which are my collective efforts to address the imbalance of second-home and holiday-home ownership and short-term lets relative to permanent housing.

Rachael Hamilton said that the biggest impact would be on landlords with a small number of properties, not large investors, and that is who we are talking about. We are talking about landlords, but I am really talking about the people who cannot get a home, because in communities such as the ones that I represent—particularly on Arran and up the west side of Loch Lomond—so many people have purchased houses as an investment opportunity and have become a small landlord, perhaps to provide a pension or an extra income during their working life. However, that has come at the cost of people being unable to live in the communities that they grew up in.

There is a perfectly legitimate argument that we have not built enough affordable and social housing for decades. Absolutely, we have not. I suggest that there is very little value in building more affordable housing if that housing is then purchased by those who will use it as an investment opportunity. There is no point in building more affordable housing in a community such as Luss, in Loch Lomond, if it is going to be bought by those who want to use it as a holiday home or to rent it out through Airbnb. That does not solve the housing crisis in those areas. We need to combine the construction of far more homes with measures to ensure that those homes go to the people who need somewhere to live.

I was particularly confused by what the minister said in relation to a lot of those issues, because I think that he contradicted himself. The minister said that there needs to be balance and that the situation is varied across Scotland. Of course it is; there is a significant divergence across the country. Rachael Hamilton pointed out that, nationally, we are talking about less than 1 per cent of properties being used as second or holiday homes, but, as I mentioned, in Lochranza it is 40 per cent. There are communities in the Highlands where the percentage is above 50 per cent. Why oppose amendments that would give us flexibility in the tax system to recognise that nuance? Surely, if we believe that the situation is varied across the country and that a localised approach is required, it would be appropriate for us to set a different rate for the additional dwelling supplement in a national park that is experiencing significant difficulties, versus the rate that we set nationally and in areas where there is not that challenge.

I do not quite understand the Government’s position, because it is saying simultaneously that a blunt national approach is appropriate and that a localised approach is appropriate. However, all the amendments that I have lodged that would give the Government the flexibility to take a more localised approach are being opposed. I could understand if the Government was simply opposed in principle to what I am proposing, but the argument that it has made is inherently contradictory.

I am particularly disappointed by the Government’s position on amendment 468, not only because it is an issue that I raised with the minister four months ago, but because I have been raising that issue with the Government for a couple of years now. No one has ever disagreed that the additional dwelling supplement was not intended to catch people who are buying properties on behalf of disabled relatives who can live independently but are not in a position to own the property. If the Government had been in a position to agree to that policy objective and to work with me on a different way of achieving it, I would have been happy to do that. I am always happy to co-operate with the Government, but the lack of agreement on that point of principle is going to force me to move amendment 468 and press it to a vote. The amendment is not prescriptive. It gives the Government appropriate scope to work through the technical issues that are associated with it, particularly in relation to data sharing. Those are not insurmountable or even unprecedented issues.

I will certainly press amendment 519 because the issue has affected a number of my constituents, about whom I have been engaging with the Government for some time. I do not think that I should have needed to lodge that in the bill, but, through lack of engagement from the Government up to and including at this point, I will have to press it to a vote. I hope that Parliament will address what I see as a minor significant issue for the individuals that it affects—a minor issue that the Scottish Government, for reasons that I am still not clear on, has, as of yet, failed to address.

I press amendment 519.

With a lot of the amendments, my intention is to reduce the number of properties that are second and holiday homes or that are used as short-term lets—specifically, I am looking at property that would be appropriate as permanent accommodation. I understand that the Government does not support the amendments. Will the minister clarify whether the Scottish Government believes that the current proportion of properties that are being used as second and holiday homes and short-term lets is an appropriate balance? Lochranza on Arran, Braemar and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park have been cited as examples. Is the balance proportionate or does the Scottish Government believe that further action is required to rebalance the housing sector in those areas? If so, what alternative is there?