I am pleased to speak in favour of our motion, which calls for lower bills for workers, who are suffering as a result of the cost of living crisis, and for an end to the SNP’s high-tax agenda.

The devolution of extensive taxation powers to the Scottish Government was an opportunity to create a tax system that supports Scottish businesses, incentivises growth and delivers for the Scottish public. However, it seems that the current SNP Government only ever saw those powers as a chance to hike taxes on hard-pressed Scottish workers. Making Scotland the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom is hardly a legacy that the Scottish Government would have hoped for, but that is exactly what it has created.

Stakeholders such as Scottish Financial Enterprise and the Confederation of British Industry continue to highlight the impact of those taxes on Scottish businesses. The CBI has said that higher Scottish taxes mean that businesses are struggling to compete for highly skilled staff, and that current income tax policy is acting like a “handbrake” on Scotland’s economic growth.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has called Scotland’s income tax system “unnecessarily complicated”, and that was before the SNP introduced the sixth band to the tax system. IFS analysis also shows that the behavioural changes caused by the tax policy mean that it is unclear how much revenue those changes have raised, and it says that the Government should be open to “reversing course” on its tax policy.

Regardless of what the Scottish Government might say, it is unlikely that it will be changing direction any time soon. Not content with keeping the higher-rate threshold significantly lower than elsewhere in the UK, the SNP raised the higher rate to 41 per cent and then raised it again in 2023. The SNP’s income tax strategy has been a never-ending series of tax rises, with the tax burden creeping up year on year. Scotland is therefore left with a tax system that is too complicated, too damaging to growth and too costly to the taxpayer. The SNP has played this game for many years, and it would be naive to believe that it will stop any time soon.

Our solutions to the problem are clear. We are calling for the SNP to increase income tax thresholds in line with inflation in the forthcoming 2026-27 budget and in future budgets. We also want to see a simpler Scottish income tax system with a single rate of 19 per cent applied up to the higher rate. Those are proportionate and reasonable policies that would bring us towards closing the current tax gap with the rest of the United Kingdom. They would ensure tax cuts—which could be up to £600—for the vast majority of Scottish workers. We should be trying to put more money back into the pockets of hard-pressed Scots and workers in our country to support them.

Our policies would help to undo the damage that the SNP’s high-tax agenda has already done to the Scottish economy. They would also make Scotland an attractive destination for top talent. We should be trying to attract talent, not send it elsewhere, which is what we are doing on a daily basis.

Good morning. How will the Scottish Government spend the funds that it had set aside to mitigate the two-child limit and that are now freed up? It would be good to get an idea of which options you might be looking at for where the funding could be placed.

You have identified that demand may increase for certain benefits in Scotland for which funding has already been set aside, so you have opportunities and options to develop that. That gives the Scottish Government flexibility to look at where that funding could have an impact in the poverty strategy that you have set out.

Thank you.

With recent statistics showing that the number of house building completions is at its lowest level since 18 September, it is clear that companies need more support to build the homes that Scotland requires. What action is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that the funding and regulatory certainty that those companies require is being addressed in order to tackle the housing crisis?

Good morning. Each council has an ambitious target to achieve; you have explained some of that in relation to the framework and the delivery plan, and you have touched on collaboration—it is welcome that that seems to be working well across a number of the regions.

You have all touched on investment. If sustained investment is not put into making this work, not much will be achieved. By having a regional support network, you can share some of the cost and some of the burden on the budget but, without continued investment behind that, the aims are not going to be achieved.

You have made it clear that there is good collaboration, there is a good network and there is a good framework, but it would be good to get a flavour of how successful the work could be if such channelled investment existed. We have talked about multiyear funding and processes along those lines, which would help to make that happen, but if that does not happen, how successful or unsuccessful will this be?

Another major area is support for heat networks, which involves another rural and urban dilemma. People are being asked to put that into the system, but such targets are unachievable in certain areas—it will be easier for councils that have the support or a bigger network. You have identified that the rural aspect makes it really challenging to create collaboration and partnership working. We know that, across the piece, it is not the case that one size fits all.

How can we square the circle to ensure that we invest in specific areas and bring on the talent and resource that we have across local authorities, partners and sectors that are trying to infiltrate such work? That will ensure that they can work hand in hand and get down the road towards the target, even if the target cannot be met completely.

Officer time is vital. You have huge demands on your time and your talent, but dealing with climate change is a major aspect of the Scottish Government’s way forward, and I have no doubt that that will continue to be the case in the next session of the Parliament. It will take up a huge amount of your resourced manpower and management time. How do you balance that when you are trying to fit everything else into the equation?

We have already identified an existing skills gap; the witnesses have gone into that in some detail in response to some of the questions this morning. However, it would be interesting to get a flavour of the routes to upskilling and how we ensure that there are opportunities and incentives for workers—especially younger people—to get into these careers. How do we manage things if the gap already exists and we are struggling to find individuals to reskill?

Ian Hughes touched on that this morning when he gave us some of the figures. What is required to make it happen? If it does not happen, we will continue to see the skills gap grow.

You have identified that we need to be realistic about where we go with this. The Government believes that you will get there but, to be realistic, I think that you cannot achieve the aims without sustained investment, without a plan and without the long-term and medium-term support mechanisms; otherwise, we will be setting ourselves up to fail in some locations, which is not the goal of the process. The goal is to work together to make things happen but, as we stand today, I fear that we are nowhere near some of the processes that are needed.