Chamber and committees

It is a chicken-and-egg situation, is it not? If the economy does not grow and we are not able to attract inward investment because people feel that they will be taxed disproportionately highly, we will not have the money to provide those services. Scotland could become more of a backwater, with more young people leaving and the population stagnating and declining. We had the lowest population growth in the entire world in the 20th century. For example, two million people emigrated in the half century after world war one.

There are real issues to address in the whole package. It is about trying to get the optimum right, not the maximum or the minimum, so that we can achieve what most of us want to achieve.

Does that answer your question, Michael?

I was going to ask you about capital expenditure. I do not like to interrupt you in free flow, but I also asked about behavioural change. For example, what would the impact on people be if the Scottish Government decided that, because, politically, it would be very difficult to cut spending or whatever, it would have to hit the 1 or 2 per cent of the highest taxpayers? You talked about people who are just over the threshold of the higher marginal rate. What impact would it have on them?

Will that be impacted by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020?

I think that it will be a theme that everyone will talk about areas that we could spend more money in but no one will say that we should spend less on other areas.

Stuart, you have been very patient.

Philip Whyte is the only other witness who has indicated to come in. If anyone else wants to come in, do not be shy. Put your hand up.

Philip, you were nodding a lot at what Ruth Boyle was saying. One thing that the economists said was that wealth taxes are complex and can take several years to implement. We are looking at the budget for 2024-25. Even assuming that we thought that wealth taxes were appropriate and could be implemented, what kind of time are we talking about and what can be done for the forthcoming tax year, which is the one that is staring us in the face now?

I have a few other things that I would like to ask about, but I want to let colleagues in, so I am just going to ask one more question, which is on an issue that we have not touched on yet: transparency.

João, I will stick with you. You said in your response that

“A more forthcoming approach from the Scottish Government to the publication of financial memoranda for the Committee’s scrutiny”

would be an improvement. I wonder whether you can talk about that, as that clearly has a direct impact on the committee’s work.

I am sorry—I was asking that question to Professor Bell.

The obvious one is the additional room supplement or bedroom tax. The Scottish Government has been mitigating that for years, but I do not see much transparency in that respect. That is just one thing that it is mitigating. What should it do to try to make that sort of thing more transparent in the budget?