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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?

The result of the division is: For 6, Against 1, Abstentions 0.

Motion agreed to,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Green Freeports Relief) (Scotland) Order 2023 [draft] be approved.

With regard to that pressing urgency, I find the numbers that have been suggested to be quite fantastic: 25,000 jobs for Cromarty and 50,000 for Leith. With regard to Cromarty, you will be expecting people to move to those jobs, but what is being done to build the schools and homes that those people will need? You are talking about trying to get those people in early, so how is the infrastructure being upgraded to ensure that that can happen? You will have to provide a huge level of support in terms of the infrastructure behind the green port, to ensure that people have somewhere to live and take their kids to school, apart from anything else.

I will open it out to colleagues. The first person to ask questions will be our deputy convener, Michael Marra.

One of the issues is that the United Kingdom’s standard of living is much the same as it was in 2003. We have been left behind by a lot of other countries. We have obviously had a financial crisis, with austerity, the pandemic and so on. Is economic growth not the answer? What does the STUC propose to stimulate economic growth so that the cake is bigger, which will of course generate additional tax revenues?

Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Before we start, I congratulate all members of the committee who contributed to ensuring that we won the powering change award at last week’s Holyrood awards. It is a committee award, not an individual one for me, as convener, so I thank everyone. I doubly thank Michelle Thomson, who won the political hero award on Thursday night. [Interruption.] I named everyone on the committee to ensure that you were all recognised, including new members such as you, Jamie—you also got the nod.

Let us get on with the meeting and the matter at hand. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session with the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance on a draft Scottish statutory instrument—the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Green Freeports Relief) (Scotland) Order 2023. The minister is joined by Scottish Government officials Laura Parker, who is the land and buildings transaction tax policy lead, and Laura Duffy, who is head of the green freeports policy and delivery unit.

I welcome our witnesses and invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

As you will probably know from reading last week’s Official Report, there was quite a lot of discussion and deliberation regarding all aspects of the green freeport proposals. One issue is the importance of attracting green jobs into green ports. I felt that there was an element of frustration from our witnesses last week that there does not appear to be a definition of what a green job is. For example, on two occasions, Derek Thomson from Unite the union asked whether someone making deliveries on an electric bike counts as a green job. Does the Scottish Government have a definition of what a green job is? We do not want to be comparing apples and oranges in our discussion, with everyone around the table having a different view of what a green job might be.

Thank you. That concludes my questions for now. I open up the session to colleagues around the table. First, we will hear from John Mason, to be followed by Liz Smith.

Assuming that every single job created in the green ports is in a completely new industry, a new manufacturing business or whatever it happens to be, people in other parts of Scotland and beyond who are highly skilled will still want to move there. Will that not exacerbate labour shortages and create inflationary pressures in other parts of the economy?