Chamber and committees

Your submission says:

“savings might accrue from reducing the number of local authorities, rates assessors, quangos, and planning authorities.”

Are you not worried that some local authorities, such as Argyll and Bute, Highland or Edinburgh, would benefit disproportionately from such a tax, as opposed to authorities such as North Lanarkshire or Clackmannanshire?

I was planning a holiday in Coatbridge.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Nobody has indicated that they want to come in, so I turn to Stephen Smellie. In contrast to that, Unison Scotland states in its submission:

“An IPPR Scotland report last year indicated that reducing the threshold for higher income tax to £40k (from the current £43k) would raise £690m.”

In fact, Unison has made a number of suggestions about how tax should be raised. What is your view on how we move forward from the point that we are at following Friday’s statement?

I am sorry, but so many people now want to speak and I am trying to get in as many folk as possible. My next question is for Aaron Hill. The SFHA written submission states:

“we believe that funding for affordable housing should be prioritised alongside health and social care and social security spending in the coming budget.”

I think that there is a lot of sympathy for that. The submission goes on to say:

“Investing in high quality, affordable housing should be understood as preventative spending which saves money in health and social care, social security and other systems”.

It also calls for

“increased investment in advice services”,

which no doubt was music to Polly Tolley’s ears. However, how do we do that? How much additional investment are we talking about? Are we increasing investment by 1 per cent, 5 per cent or 10 per cent? What do we deprioritise to be able to afford that, given the financial straitjacket that the Scottish Parliament faces?

Yes, but if the budget is shrinking in real terms, where should that come from? Should it come from additional taxation, as we have discussed, or from other budgets—and if so, which? Alternatively, should it be a combination of the two? The committee faces this issue every year, when everybody suggests that we should have more money now and for investment in the future, but the difficulty is the financial straitjacket that we are in. Therefore, we are looking for real suggestions on how we can prioritise as well as on what we deprioritise.

We will be covering other areas as we progress.