Chamber and committees

David Melhuish’s point about planning led me to think of a question. I am interested in folk’s thoughts about reform of the level at which Government power is set. Planning is a good example. Planning fees are not set by councils; they are set nationally, and many councils make a loss, which does not incentivise them to resource their planning departments properly. That has a knock-on effect of significant delays for developments. The issue has been consulted on recently, so we might well see progress on that.

There is perhaps a wider question, however. If we are talking about public sector reform and efficiency, do you have any examples around tax spend, a final levy or a charge such as planning fees and whether those powers are at the right level of government to get the most efficient return?

I want to pick up the point about the danger of a tick-box exercise. I think that Sarah Davidson mentioned it most recently, but everybody has mentioned it at some point. I wonder whether a tick-box exercise would at least be better than where we are now. At the start of the evidence session, Max French listed various Government strategies and policy documents that have been published recently without so much as even a tick-box reference to the NPF. As much as I accept that the ideal situation would be something more like what happens in Wales, where such an approach is deeply culturally embedded in Government, if we at least took some mechanistic approaches, it would move us a little further on.

The Scottish Government has handbooks and protocols when it comes to the drafting of bills. I find it hard to see how it would not be possible to say that, if, for example, a strategy document is significant enough that it needs ministerial sign-off, the protocol for that would include a requirement that the relevant NPF outcomes are referenced. Yes, that would be a mechanistic exercise, but, given where we are now and the fact that we are not even doing that, would a mechanistic approach not at least represent progress?

Thank you very much.

That is a fair point. I would like to expand on that in a huge amount of depth, but I have questions for other witnesses as well. I may come back to that later, if that is okay.

David Lonsdale, your initial point of complaint about the public health levy was, essentially, that the retail sector felt blindsided by it being included in the budget. I want to explore that a bit more. The language in the budget was simply a commitment to consult on its possible reintroduction. Is your position that either the retail consortium or the sector more broadly should have been informed in advance that that would be in the budget—that is, that they should have been informed before Parliament that there would be a consultation?

I checked and that figure of £30 million came from Alcohol Focus Scotland.

I would love to go into more depth about that, but I am conscious of how much time I have taken up. My final question is for Vicky Manson. Does the FSB have any thoughts about the small business bonus scheme as it is currently constructed? Is it fulfilling its objectives or would you like to see reforms to the scheme?

My question is for David Lott. I will pick up on the convener’s question about university reserves. The University of Glasgow’s reserves come to £1 billion but it does not have £1 billion in cash; its reserves are not liquid and a lot of it is in the form of properties. The University of Edinburgh has reserves of about £2.7 billion, which is the largest of any university. A billion pounds of that is cash, although £1.7 billion is largely the university’s property portfolio. Where a public institution has such substantial cash reserves—more than the Scottish Government has been allowed to have in its reserves, historically—do you acknowledge the challenge in providing even more public funding to that institution?

I acknowledge that no other university is in that position and that you are here to represent the whole sector, but has there been discussion in the sector that the inequality of reserves makes taking a blanket approach to public funding that bit more challenging?

It is about alcohol and tobacco—that is, it is about health-harming products. I would know—I wrote that line of the budget. It is a tax on the retailers of alcohol and tobacco, which I think is pretty timely today, given that we have the excess alcohol death figures showing that almost 1,300 people in Scotland died of alcohol-related conditions in the past year.

In the first instance, I am confused about your position that you should have known about the proposal before the budget announcement. Obviously, we have different views on the policy, which is fine, and I would understand your position more if the announcement had been about the introduction of the policy, but it was not; it was a commitment to explore whether the policy should be reintroduced. I am aware, through the answers to written questions, that you have subsequently been engaged in that process, as have others from the business sector and alcohol harm reduction charities as well as health experts and so on.

What I am struggling with is that you apparently have a problem with the fact that, at the budget, it was announced that, without your being informed ahead of Parliament, there would be a consultation and that a policy would be explored. If it had been confirmation that the policy was going to be implemented, I would completely understand that, as policies should not be implemented without consultation, but it was not that. The announcement was just to say, “We are going to consult.” You have subsequently been consulted, as per the Government’s commitment to engage with business. I am struggling to understand what the issue is.

Do you have any concerns that the scheme, as it currently stands, benefits not only small businesses? The Scottish Parliament information centre estimates that shooting estates get between £3 million and £5 million-worth of relief each year from the small business bonus scheme, but most people would not regard shooting estates as small businesses. Is there a need to refine the scheme to ensure that it does what it says on the tin and is a relief scheme for small businesses?

The proposal that the Fraser of Allander Institute has developed for Alcohol Focus Scotland is that the money would be ring fenced for drug and alcohol partnerships, or at least for health and social care partnerships. There would be some element of ring fencing to ensure that the money goes into prevention, treatment and so on that are specifically related to the harms caused by alcohol and tobacco.

At the moment, the value to retailers of minimum unit pricing is about £30 million a year. I think that it surprises quite a lot of people when they find out that the additional amount that is paid as a result of MUP does not go back to the public sector or the health service but is retained by the retailers. Given that we are talking about health-harming products that have not only a significant impact on people’s lives—that should be the focus today—but a really significant cost to the health service, is it not only fair to have a consequential levy or surcharge, or however it is phrased? That is particularly the case given that, at the moment, with MUP not being in place in the rest of the UK, retailers in Scotland pocket an additional £30 million a year as a result of MUP that they would not get otherwise? The proposal is that that money—we could set it at a rate that generates about that amount—goes back into the health service.

I think that it is from Alcohol Focus Scotland.