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On that point about the fiscal framework and the incentives that it provides, normally, any Government is incentivised to grow the economy to increase tax revenue. That is not exactly the case for the Scottish Government. If you take two growth sectors in Scotland—video games versus film and television—the number of staff that you require per product in the video game sector is a lot lower than in the film and TV sector. Therefore, the video game sector is much more lucrative in terms of tax revenue when it comes to corporation tax, which is of no value to us, whereas film and TV require far more people on medium-ish salaries and therefore have a higher income tax yield.

Have you ever seen the Scottish Government articulate its economic objectives in terms of—to be cynical—how to game the fiscal framework? In other words, identify which sectors will be the most valuable not just to the Scottish economy, but to Scottish public services in terms of the impact that growth in those sectors would have on devolved taxes versus reserved taxes. We cannot prioritise every sector; one of the criticisms of the NSET is that it prioritises everything. It does not make choices like, “Do we prioritise video games or film and TV, and what would the relative impact on tax revenues be?”

Good morning. I will be happy to be proved wrong on this one because it has been bugging me, although I think that I have I figured it out. In exhibit 10, the two tax policy changes are referred to as changes to the “additional rate” and to the “top rate”. Are you talking about the same rate for both those policy changes? Although the additional rate exists in the rest of the UK, in Scotland we have always referred to the top rate. From what I have been able to figure out, the information is drawn from an SFC report that uses “additional rate” when it means “top rate”. Can I just check that we are, in both lines in exhibit 10, talking about what in Scotland we refer to as the top rate?

On a totally different note, I will pick up on various bits of the conversation about public understanding. Either last year or the year before, I mentioned to you some of the challenges around the media’s reporting of your publications, especially regarding underspend and the difference between technical underspend and the cash-in-a-pot-that-is-still-sitting-there kind of underspend. Have you done any additional work on how that is communicated to the media and to politicians? Obviously, politicians have other incentives to portray certain numbers in certain ways. When we talked about that last year, it was about the impact that that had had on public sector pay negotiations at the time: a headline says, “Scottish Government underspends by £1 billion” while a group in the public sector cannot negotiate to get £100 million for their pay deal.

I take on board that it is a decision for the Government. I would be interested in your view though, on whether you think that that would aid public understanding of the process. Take NDR as the example, because it has the narrowest range of ready reckoners that just look at whether the poundage rate goes up a bit or down a bit. The debate each year tends not to focus on that, however, but more on whether specific sectors should get a relief or a levy attached, and so on. In general, those are the key decisions that are made during budget negotiations. The classic issues are whether the hospitality sector should get relief in any particular year and whether relief applied down south should be applied up here.

Would it be valuable if the Government expanded the ready reckoners into areas such as those, particularly when there are proposals in the public domain that have come not necessarily from the Government but the hospitality sector or the Scottish Trades Union Congress, or whoever it might be? Would it be helpful if the Government then projected those proposals and included them in the reckoners?

Finally, I will pick up on Michael Marra’s line of questioning and the points that you made—I think that it is the very first recommendation in your report—about better alignment between tax and economic policy. I have perhaps asked similar questions in the past. Is it possible to align tax policy with the national strategy for economic transformation? By that I mean, is the NSET specific and tangible enough to be aligned with? It is very abstract and broad brush. If I am thinking, “Right, I am a Scottish Government tax official and I need to align tax policy with what is in the NSET,” I would not be entirely clear what I was trying to align with.

Yes, I think that we have all been guilty of saying additional rate at various points, but it has always been the top rate, since it has been devolved.

I will jump around again. Richard Robinson mentioned the ready reckoners. I am interested in your view of whether what the Government currently publishes as ready reckoners do the job that is needed, particularly in terms of public understanding, to which they are key. The projections around some of the potential changes to income tax are relatively detailed, in so far as they lay out 15 or so scenarios. On non-domestic rates, I think that there are only three scenarios, which is very narrow. Have you had any discussions with the Scottish Government about changes that it could make to the ready reckoners, perhaps by broadening out the range of scenarios?

Will the member take an intervention?

Amendment 128 would encourage public bodies to be open and proactive in their publication of data. That has been a bit of a hobby horse of mine—John Mason will be familiar with that from Finance and Public Administration Committee meetings.

The David Hume Institute did some pretty thorough research on the issue a couple of years ago and found that there was around an astonishing £2 billion-worth of lost value to the Scottish economy each year because of the huge volume of public data that, in practice, is not available to the public, either because it is not being proactively published or because it is published only on copyrighted websites and is therefore often essentially unusable for a lot of the purposes that people would want to use it for. As things stand, the Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland and a number of colleges all have copyrighted websites. There is not a clear rationale for that, but that is the case. They restrict the use of even the most basic information that they have.

To its credit, the SFC has been engaging with my office on the issue, so it is now looking at adopting the same open government licence that the Scottish Government, some councils and other public bodies use, which is essentially an alternative to traditional copyright. As an example of what that means in practice, any information that is on the Scottish Government’s website, other than the Government’s own logo—its brand—is freely available for anyone else to use for any purpose. It is public information, so it is not copyrighted. Amendment 128 would require the council and any fundable body that receives payment from it to take steps to adopt a proactive approach to the publication of data that is appropriate for disclosure in the public domain. It defines “proactive approach” as

“the routine identification and publication of appropriate information without the need for specific requests.”

That means that the information should be accessible without the need to submit a freedom of information request.

The definition of what is appropriate to be in the public domain will vary. For example, universities will have far more commercially sensitive research information. Some information that is held by Scottish universities is also classified under national security legislation because it comes from joint research projects with UK Government departments. That is obviously not suitable for the public domain, and the amendment contains the flexibility to deal with that.

I honestly wish that we could just expect institutions to do what the amendment calls for, but, despite the efforts of the David Hume Institute, myself and others, uptake of even the open government licence, which I think is the lowest rung on the ladder, has been absolutely glacial.

In its report, the institute said:

“The vast majority of institutions make no provision for open data and some have stated vague plans. Universities and colleges play a crucial role in planning the future workforce, understanding population and migration trends and the development of research.”

More proactively published data from higher and further education institutions would have a valuable impact on businesses and on planning for the economy. Even at the most basic level, if we take the example of businesses that require the use of meeting rooms and conference facilities around the country, the fact that most councils, universities and colleges have copyrighted websites means that it is not even legal for any organisation to create a central database of all publicly available meeting rooms that can be booked, the capacity of those rooms, the rate and so on, because most of that information is held on copyrighted websites, despite that not being remotely necessary. It would be much more efficient for the institutions if they were proactively putting appropriate, publicly available data into the public domain and did not constantly have to respond to freedom of information requests.

Will the minister take an intervention?