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To be blunt, that is a pragmatic thing. People might not talk about it publicly, but Conservative, Labour and Scottish National Party Administrations have not done a revaluation because of loss aversion. The people who are better off because of revaluation will shrug their shoulders, but the people who are worse off will hate you and not vote for you—it is as simple as that, to be perfectly honest. Perhaps people should be more honest about that. There is strong opposition in the Parliament to the Scottish Government’s council tax proposals, and committee members have already spoken out against them.

Your submission talks about

“Exploring every avenue to increase tax”.

Surely that sends a signal to people who feel that, with 14 interest rate rises in less than two years and with inflation hitting not just the public sector but the private sector, maybe the time is not right to do that.

There will be a division.

For

Gibson, Kenneth (Cunninghame North) (SNP)
Halcro Johnston, Jamie (Highlands and Islands) (Con)
Marra, Michael (North East Scotland) (Lab)
Mason, John (Glasgow Shettleston) (SNP)
Smith, Liz (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Thomson, Michelle (Falkirk East) (SNP)

Against

Greer, Ross (West Scotland) (Green)

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence in relation to the committee’s inquiry into the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme. This session continues the evidence taking that we started before the summer. I welcome David Moxham, deputy general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. David and I served on Glasgow City Council together a quarter of a century ago.

I intend to allow up to an hour for the session. We have your written submission, David, so we move straight to questions. As well as questions on reform, members may take the opportunity to ask Mr Moxham any questions on the STUC’s pre-budget 2024-25 submission, which has also been circulated with the meeting papers.

I will kick us off on the reform agenda. The Deputy First Minister has said:

“it is for individual public bodies to determine locally the target operating model for their workforces and to ensure workforce plans and projections are affordable in 2023-24 and in the medium term”.

Does the STUC agree or disagree with that?

You touched on Christie. One of the issues that the committee has deliberated over many years has been the preventative spend agenda. How important is preventative spend in relation to reform of public services?

Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to the committee. The evidence that has been gathered from this inquiry, including an evidence session with the Deputy First Minister in early October, will help us to inform the committee’s pre-budget 2024-25 scrutiny.

That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. The next item on our agenda is consideration of our work programme in private.

Displacement is a key issue. For example, Cambridge Econometrics said that, of the enterprise zones that were set up in the UK, which lasted from about 1984 to about 2012, 50 per cent of the 126,000 jobs were, in effect, displaced from elsewhere. In a Scottish context, between 2012 and 2017, there was a net increase in private sector jobs in the enterprise zones that were set up in Scotland of just 16,000, compared to an initial forecast of 54,000, and 34 per cent of those were relocated from elsewhere through displacement.

What lessons are being learned from that? I understand that the UK had seven freeports, up until about 2012, when the last one, Liverpool, closed. Therefore, they have not had a great history of success in doing what it says on the tin.

I turn to issues of pay and taxation. It has been said that the 3.5 per cent pay rise suggested in the public sector pay strategy for 2023-24 is not remotely sustainable. What are the average pay settlements in the public sector now? The details that we have been provided with come from November 2022, but the way that things have been going in recent months puts us in a very unstable situation. Inflation has declined, but where are we with public sector pay in Scotland?

I appreciate that.

Behavioural change came up a lot last year. The Scottish Fiscal Commission said that, of the £30 million raised from top-rate payers, 90 per cent would be lost to behavioural change. The commission said that it was not about folk movin fae Edinburgh to Newcastle, for instance; it was about somebody who had been working five days a week saying that they will now work only four days a week, because they pay too much tax. That impacts on productivity and so on.

We all want there to be the optimum level of expenditure in our public services. The difficulty with the fact that both the main UK parties have said that they will not have a wealth tax and will not increase top-rate tax is that it leaves Scotland a wee bit exposed, within the United Kingdom, not so much for retaining people but for attracting people who might want to invest here or come and live here.

I imagine that you are right that not many people want to move—I certainly wouldnae want to move south of the border, whatever the tax rate was—but other folk might think, “Do you know what? I don’t know if I want to go there,” because of the direction of travel.

Do any members wish to comment?