Chamber and committees

I will continue Keith Brown’s initial line of questioning. I think that I was the first MSYP to be on a local council education committee, but I did not have voting rights, despite having roughly the same mandate in terms of votes as the councillors did.

I am interested in what you said about education reform. I share a lot of your frustrations about the process, particularly the fact that the Government is, in essence, not taking forward Professor Hayward’s recommendations, which is a massive missed opportunity. Much of the reform cannot be put into law—a lot of it cannot be put in primary legislation, although some of it can be done by regulation—because a lot of it is a matter of policy choice.

However, one issue that has some relation to the Education (Scotland) Bill is, as has been touched on, how to engage with young people who are not already involved or are not naturally interested. I am talking about young people who do not become MSYPs—I think that I can say that as somebody who was one. I am interested in your thoughts on that kind of engagement. The bill sets out proposals to have a learner interest committee and to have someone representing the interests of young people on the board—I agree with Ellie Craig that that must be a young person, not an adult speaking on their behalf. However, that is a very small and, ultimately, self-selecting group.

We can take the example of higher history, on which we are about to take evidence. The SQA has no mechanism by which to contact every young person who sat the higher history exam last year. Particularly through the reform process, how can we create a system in which we get mass engagement with all young people who are affected by such decisions, not just a self-selecting group? We need that group, but those people are not necessarily always representative.

You make a good case for a level of local flexibility. Of course, we are then hit with newspaper headlines about postcode lotteries and how people can get something in one area but not in another. That tension needs to be managed. Fiona, are you looking to come in on that point, as well?

You have all shared with us loads of great examples of the work that you do, whether it is intensive residential support for young mums or even simple but powerful stuff like the example that Claire McGuigan gave about changing language. We hear quite a lot in Parliament about examples of good practice, but one of the barriers that keeps coming up is about sharing it and, when we find that something has succeeded, making sure that it is rolled out consistently.

I am interested in how best practice is shared and whether the children’s services planning partnerships have helped with that, either through sharing best practice within a local authority area or—in particular—nationally. At the national level we hear lots of great stuff all the time, but we go back to our regions and constituencies and find that the great stuff might be happening in some communities but not in others, and that some local authorities are aware of it but others are not. How is best practice being shared and have the CSPPs helped with that?

Linda, would you like to go first, particularly on that second part of the question on CSPPs and whether they help?

Good afternoon. I will start with a question about the public health levy. In 2024, the Scottish Government did some engagement exercises and consultation with stakeholders with a view to considering whether such a levy could be added to the non-domestic rates scheme. That was before the UK Government’s decision on employers’ national insurance contributions, which I presume has played a role in the Scottish Government’s decision not to go ahead with the levy this year. Will you clarify whether the Scottish Government believes that there is a potential role for a public health levy as part of the non-domestic rates system in future years?

I have previously raised with you the issue of the small business bonus scheme. At present, shooting estates benefit from small business bonus scheme tax breaks. In the grand scheme of a £0.25 billion tax break programme, only something between £3 million and £5 million goes to shooting estates, but my view is certainly that they are not the intended recipients. We have discussed disaggregating the data and, in essence, separating shooting estates from crofts. Is the Scottish Government still intent on finding a solution to that? Does it believe that shooting estates should be excluded from the small business bonus scheme if the issue with the data disaggregation can be resolved?

Thanks. That is useful.

There is one point of clarification that I would find useful, given something that the First Minister said last week in the context of an exchange about income tax. He was quite firm in saying that there will be no further tax changes this side of the election. Was he specifically referring to income tax or was that a wider statement about all devolved taxes? If potential tweaks to council tax are identified that have cross-party agreement—potentially to go further on second and empty homes—is the Government’s position that they will not take place this side of the election either, or was he just referring to income tax?

That would be helpful. Thank you.

I take the point that the corporate body is not the employer of MSP staff, but, at the same time, clearly MSPs cannot pay them any more than is within our staff cost provision. I also acknowledge Jackson Carlaw’s point that not all MSPs fully utilise that provision as it is.

However, the core of the objection from the MSP staff unions—the three that wrote to the corporate body—is that the move to using AWE represents a cut. Further, AWE is not directly linked to the cost of living. It relates to the earnings of other workers outside the Parliament rather than directly to the cost of rent, food, energy bills and so on for the staff who work here. Did you take that into consideration when you looked at the basket of measures? I accept that, in any individual year, any individual measure can be deeply flawed, but that was perhaps an advantage of using the basket approach. Did you take into account the fact that AWE does not directly reflect the cost of living? It does so indirectly, but not in the same way as a direct inflation measure such as CPI.

That would be useful.

Finally, alongside the draft budget, the Government published a memorandum on borrowing policy that includes a section on the first phase of due diligence around the issuing of Scottish Government bonds. A list of conclusions is included, rather than any detail on what that first phase threw up. Is there any more detailed documentation on that in the public domain? If there is, I was unable to find it. If not, could the details of that first phase of due diligence be published? What is in the borrowing memorandum document is very high level.

Were the Scottish Government to move ahead with issuing bonds, it would be a significant step and one that would require significant parliamentary scrutiny. At the moment, there is not enough on the public record to allow effective scrutiny to begin. I recognise that it is only the first phase of due diligence, but I do not think that what is there is sufficient for transparency.

That is a welcome clarification. I do not mean this as a criticism of Councillor Hagmann, but, having met her and COSLA on several occasions recently and discussed issues related to this, I was not aware that she, on behalf of the joint working group, is trying to identify points of potential agreement between the parties. It is useful to hear the clarification, given that most of the parties’ finance spokespersons are in this room, that that is one of the purposes of the discussions and that they feed back up to the joint working group.

For absolute clarity, given what you said about the lead-up to the election, is it not your expectation that any substantial reform will take place ahead of the election? There may be reforms around the edges, such as the one that we mentioned on second and empty homes, but it sounds like you are saying that there will not be progress, or even agreement, on this side of the election about things that have been raised before, such as revaluation.