Chamber and committees

To be specific, how many times has it met since the general election?

I am interested because there has been discussion about the principles and objectives behind the Scottish Government’s tax strategy. Has the issue of competitiveness been added to that overview of the tax strategy?

I understand those principles, but my specific question is about competitiveness. Is that issue in the Scottish Government’s tax strategy?

I am just coming to behaviour. The tax strategy has to deliver economic growth and improve the economy and wellbeing. That all has to be up there. I am asking about competitiveness because a lot of people in the world of business and industry make the point that the competitive side of the tax strategy is extremely important. If we are to deliver much greater economic growth and a much better economic outturn, we need a competitive tax structure. I would have thought that that was central to the Government. I flag up the comment that the Deputy First Minister made at the end of August, when she wrote:

“continually raising taxes is ultimately counter-productive”

because revenue falls, which impacts on potential investment.

The committee has had various bits of evidence from the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which has argued that, at the top levels of tax systems, there is a problem with potential behavioural change. In terms of your tax strategy—never mind the tax rate—are you measuring the different tax elasticities and the behavioural change that is likely to result from the tax policies that you have just now?

Obviously, there are businesses that are concerned about the potential for difficulties with recruitment in the future, because they feel that some medium to high earners are being put off.

When we get the tax strategy, it will be important that you produce the evidence behind what is driving it. In other words, will we get the evidence that allows us to see what the different elasticities are at present and whether the behavioural change is as we suspect it is?

What are you doing just now to identify areas in which the outcomes of the decisions that you make in local government are better than they have been in the past? Is that work not on-going? I would have thought that, with public sector reform, it would be very important to know exactly where there had been successes. Is that not an important discussion for local government and central Government to have?

I understand that, and it is a fair point to make, but is there good collaboration between the 32 local authorities, whereby the work of those who are successful with particular services is fed back to the spokespeople so that you can flag up areas in which there has been a bit more success?

Are those discussions part of the work that you are doing right now with central Government on identifying where we might be able to make savings without causing any detrimental damage to services? I would have thought that that would be a critical question to answer.

How far down the road do you think that work is? If I were a member of the Scottish Government, I would be asking local authorities to identify areas in which they were making efficiency savings while delivering better public services.

Councillor Hagmann, how easy is it for your officers to identify the areas in local government in which you have had the greatest success in making efficiency savings while improving services, despite having to make some tough choices? Is it easy in local government to identify the areas in which you have had the greatest success in delivering better services?