Chamber and committees

We have exhausted questions from members—

I am sorry. John Mason has a question, which I had a note of.

Anecdotally, it seems to me to be a bigger issue than the cross-border issue. We visited a secondary processor of recycled aggregates in Livingston, and the people there said that, because of the cost of transport, they would not even sell to Edinburgh, because it is too far away from the point of view of the money that they would make. Given that the land on both sides of the border is fairly depopulated and there is not much use of aggregates there, it would cost so much to export there that the cross-border issue is a bit of a myth. It would be an issue only if aggregates were being shipped from big quarries, such as Glensanda, which was referred to in the previous session.

How much of an issue is the cross-border issue? In section 4.15 of your submission, you said:

“We are working with stakeholders, the Bill team and HMRC, to identify the different types of cross border arrangements in order to establish the most effective and efficient way to administer the tax in those situations.”

What are those effective and efficient ways to administer the tax, following your deliberations?

I mean the impact of tax changes in Scotland relative to the rest of the UK on our revenue streams.

I just wanted to clarify those numbers.

My last question also concerns the clarification of numbers. The example in table 3 of the financial memorandum gives a summary of estimated Revenue Scotland running costs for the first year of the SAT. The numbers are all rounded. For example, amortisation—which is a great word that means

“the spreading of the cost of an intangible asset such as an IT system”—

is £200,000, operational staff costs are £645,000 and operational non-staff costs are £60,000. Once that is all done and dusted, the costs would be about £905,000 a year.

What are the parameters for that? How accurate are those figures? Are they within 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 20 per cent limits? How confident are you that the figures in the financial memorandum for the set-up costs and, importantly, the continuing operational costs are accurate?

From my perspective, “comfortable” isnae very numeric. That is why I asked whether the confidence limit is 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 20 per cent. What kind of ball park are we talking about? Obviously, financial memorandums have to be best estimates, but how confident are you?

That figure will have been set on the basis of today’s prices, obviously.

Yes, and 5.5 million tonnes was the total figure in the submission, but I imagine that that will vary from year to year, so it would be a ballpark figure.

Justine, your written submission states:

“It is vital that Revenue Scotland polices compliance with the tax effectively, hopefully by liaising extensively with SEPA and ensuring that SEPA has the powers and resources it needs to regulate the aggregates sector and ensuring that appropriate sanctions are in place for non-compliant behaviours which affect fair competition”.

You obviously have concerns about the way that the system is operating at the moment. Can you give us any specifics on how that could be improved through the bill?

It is not a key focus.

I am going to open out the session to colleagues. I call John Mason, to be followed by Michelle Thomson.

I invite Michael Marra to ask the next questions.