Chamber and committees

Okay, but from our perspective, we also direct some of those criticisms to the Scottish Government. I accept that we are talking about an HMRC publication, but if the Scottish Government has had access to it, why was it not prepared to share that with the Scottish Parliament?

But the ministers make proposals to Parliament, and the decision on income tax rates and so on is made by the Parliament as a whole, not just by the Government.

I am going to move on now, because we have other questions that we want to put, but Graham Simpson wants to come in on a quick point in that regard.

I will bring in Colin Beattie shortly but, before I do, I turn your attention back to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s “Administration of Scottish income tax 2022-23” report. He says something in it that he has said in previous years. He notes at page 9 of his report that HMRC does not have Scotland-specific data on compliance risk. Furthermore,

“HMRC has limited performance data available about its compliance activities in Scotland.”

The report adds that that

“may not be sustainable in the longer term”.

Alyson Stafford, you mentioned in your opening statement that you were establishing a joint compliance working group. Is that working group going to tackle those deficiencies?

That is an estimate, presumably.

Thank you very much. I do not know whether Willie Coffey has one final question to put.

Our main item of business this morning is consideration of the report “Administration of Scottish income tax 2022-23”. I am delighted to welcome our witnesses. We are joined in the committee room by Alyson Stafford, director general of the Scottish exchequer; Lorraine King, deputy director for tax strategy, engagement and performance at the Scottish Government; Jonathan Athow, director general for customer strategy and tax design at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs; and Phil Batchelor, deputy director for income tax policy at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

Good morning to you all. We have a number of questions to put to you. We will get to those shortly but, before we do that, I invite Alyson Stafford and then Jonathan Athow to give short opening statements.

Thank you very much indeed. Before I invite the deputy convener to come in, I think that it is fair to say that the committee is disappointed that the two reports that you have produced came out less than 24 hours before your appearance before the committee. My understanding is that one of the reports was due to be published back in January. Will you explain the timing of the publication of these reports?

Without overstating the obvious, publishing them before the committee’s meeting could have involved them being published a week ago, two weeks ago or a month ago. As I understand it, you did not even give us the courtesy of informing us that you were about to publish that information.

Night school, Mr Simpson.

Could you share with the committee the joint compliance working group’s terms of reference and make-up? I do not necessarily mean right here, right now, but it would be useful if you could furnish the committee with a bit more information and outline some of the areas of work that you have just told us about. Going back to my original question, the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General addressed some clear areas around compliance where further work could be done. There might be gaps that could be closed.

I go back to a point that I made in a previous year, which is that the Scottish Government pays £600,000 for this service level agreement, and we are talking about a tax yield of up to £15 billion. Our view, as a committee, has been—I think that this is still our view—that, if that agreement was revisited and a more generous settlement was reached, a lot more useful data could be produced and shared with the Government, the Parliament and those of us who have to scrutinise what is going on with the administration of Scottish income tax.