Seòmar agus comataidhean

Okay. I have hogged the floor enough. I open up the session to colleagues.

I asked about it because the tax gap is one of the contentious issues. I was looking for a ballpark figure; I was not looking for you to say that it is £10.3 million or £4.5 million. Is it about 1 or 2 or 3 per cent? If we do not know what the gap is, it is hard to tackle it. I know from your accounts that more than 99 per cent of the money that is due is being collected, but it seems to me that there might be a gap outside of that.

That is great. Indeed, that, in itself, is a very helpful comment.

Thank you for answering our questions so fully and frankly. There is one issue that you said that you would get back to us on, so we look forward to receiving that information.

That concludes the public part of today’s meeting, as our next agenda item is discussion of our work programme, which will take place in private.

But why is the figure only £6.7 million on 1 April in the year 2021-22, and more than £66 million on the same date a year later, when the net funds appear to be pretty similar? I am just wondering why that was.

As well as the institutions that I mentioned, the Chartered Institute of Taxation also participated in the round table. In the briefing before the session, HMRC told us that the volatility in the current financial year is of the order of 9.81 per cent. It would be a real shock; who knows where we could be. That is the highest that it has been in the past 12 years. There is also the bureaucratic cost and the politics of who would gain and who would lose and so on. The committee is clearly of the view that it is simply not worth the candle for all the stress and distress that it would cause. We cannot see any real gain for Scotland—or, indeed, the UK—in it. It would simply be a bit of a nightmare.

I will now open up questioning to colleagues.

The next item is an evidence session with the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance on the Scottish fiscal framework independent report and review and VAT assignment in Scotland. Ms Robison is joined by Scottish Government officials: Matthew Elsby, deputy director of fiscal policy and constitution; and Niall Caldwell, corporate treasurer. I welcome all of you to the meeting and invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.

I am just going to ask a couple more questions and then open it out to colleagues around the table. We have a summary of the changes to the fiscal framework. They are all pretty straightforward and I think that the committee has a good grasp of most of them—no doubt my colleagues will ask for further clarification. However, I am a bit vague about the coastal communities fund. It says in the table of changes that

“A baseline addition was made equal to the UK government spending on CCF in the year immediately prior to devolution.”

The next column says that the CCF is now going to be absorbed into the Barnett formula, with

“no immediate impact on funding.”

The important word there is “immediate”. What will that really mean as we move forward? I ask that as someone who represents a coastal and island constituency.

The indexed per capita methodology was crucial to securing the deal in 2016. Because it came out at the last minute, it is important that it has been consolidated, so I think that that is a significant gain. Inflation linking capital borrowing is also important. When I looked at the projected increase in capital available as a result over the next four years, I was concerned that it seems to be tied to the gross domestic product deflator, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to inflation in the capital sector. So, even if those limits go up by the amounts that are predicted, will it not still mean that there is a real terms reduction in the capital that is available to the Scottish Government?

Yes, indeed.

We are in a state of flux, in a way. There has been a settlement that consideration of the fiscal framework will come only once in every five-year term but, as John Mason pointed out, that five-year term could be upon us relatively soon—in a year, or 18 months at the most, I think. That is why I wonder whether the Scottish Government is looking at those issues now, whether it is looking to the next stage of a fiscal framework and whether it is looking at other devolved administrations around the world.

A previous committee that I served on visited the Basque Country. Only about 6.29 per cent of its revenue is handed back to the Spanish Government; all the rest is devolved. Pensions and social security are devolved, and only the monarchy, civil guard and defence are reserved. Everything else is dealt with locally, so there are other models for us to look at.

What modus vivendi do you think we might be able to reach in the future, and are you in contact with political parties that could potentially form a future UK Government?