Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Official Report 1046KB pdf

Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Bill: Financial Resolution

The next item of business is consideration of motion S5M-04995, in the name of Derek Mackay, on the financial resolution for the Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Bill.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I apologise for giving you only very late notice of my intention to raise this point of order about the financial resolution.

Rule 9.12.3 of standing orders requires that a financial resolution be passed in respect of certain bills before the bill can progress past stage 1. I do not think that we are in breach of that rule in any way, but I ask the Presiding Officer to reflect on it. The rule states that a financial resolution is required

“Where a Bill contains provisions ... which charge expenditure on the Scottish Consolidated Fund, or ... the likely effect of which would be to ... increase significantly expenditure charged on that Fund ... give rise to significant expenditure payable out of that Fund for a new purpose; or ... for an existing purpose”.

However, we are debating today a bill whose principal financial impacts will be through taxation revenue, not increased charges on the consolidated fund. The existing rule is, indeed, triggered in respect of the bill, but the financial memorandum that the Government has provided addresses only additional expenditure aspects, and the Government is not required to produce a financial memorandum that goes into the taxation revenue impacts of the financial impacts of the bill. Will you consider whether that rule in our standing orders is still adequate, now that we are in the era in which we legislate on bills such as the Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Bill, whose principal financial impacts are on tax revenue?

I thank Patrick Harvie for giving me some—albeit that it was very little—advance notice of the point of order. In this particular case, there were other considerations about the bill that I had to take into account, which triggered the need for a financial resolution. In this case, we will be able to go ahead this evening.

However, Mr Harvie raises a very interesting point about the wording of the relevant standing order, which I will take under consideration.

Thank you.

Having said that, I ask the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Constitution to move motion S5M-04995, on the financial resolution for the Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Bill.

Motion moved,

That the Parliament, for the purposes of any Act of the Scottish Parliament resulting from the Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Bill, agrees to—

(a) any expenditure of a kind referred to in Rule 9.12.3(b) of the Parliament’s Standing Orders arising in consequence of the Act, and

(b) any charge or payment in relation to which Rule 9.12.4 of the Standing Orders applies arising in consequence of the Act.—[Derek Mackay]