Chamber and committees

What do you say to the comment that

“We do not see the logic of area-based ... payments—payments which do little more than reward land ownership and inflate land values”?

That appears to have exhausted questions from the committee.

Ross, you are here just in time to vote.

That is fine.

Agenda item 2 is formal consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to move motion S6M-11928.

Motion moved,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Order 2024 [draft] be approved.—[Tom Arthur]

Motion agreed to.

Good morning, and welcome to the seventh meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Agenda item 1 is an evidence-taking session with the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance on the draft Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Order 2024. The minister is joined by Laura Parker, land and buildings transaction tax policy lead, directorate for tax and revenues, Scottish Government.

I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

What would be the financial impact on the Scottish Government of the SSI?

It is important that the Scottish Police Authority is able to provide housing, particularly in rural and island areas. Do you have any idea how much relief would apply if, for example, they were included in a future SSI, or has that not been calculated as yet?

Thank you for that very helpful and informative introduction.

I had intended to start where we left off on Tuesday. I still intend to do that in a couple of minutes, but I notice that you said that there was some misreporting of the finances in relation to our deliberations on Tuesday. Could you provide some clarification of that and put the position correctly on the record?

I have a few points to finish off. We have discussed the £3.9 billion, which I again make clear relates to what the bill previously included. Will you confirm that, under the revised financial memorandum, we are looking at a variance of between £631 million and £916 million over the 10-year period?

No—I am not asking about value. On this occasion I am asking about actual numbers. You are phasing the legislation in over 10 years, so you are looking at costs over 10 years. However, if you shift implementation forward three years, you are looking not at 13 years but at three dead years, effectively, plus seven years. You are making a comparison with 10 years under the old financial memorandum. A few million pounds is a lot of money, but when we consider what it would have been in that three years, plus the first seven years of implementation, we are not comparing like with like.