Meeting of the Parliament 01 April 2015
Jackie Baillie passes by the caveat that the IFS included, which is that the economy’s performance can be influenced as a consequence of exercising the responsibilities that we are talking about and having control of the levers that we seek.
Another point that I will make in response to Jackie Baillie relates to how fiscal autonomy will come about. Let us consider the process by which the Scottish Parliament has acquired additional fiscal responsibilities. The new taxes that have today come into operation in Scotland—land and buildings transactions tax and the landfill tax—were provided for in the Calman commission proposals, which were published in June 2009. They are now being implemented, a number of years later.
My point is not that that is the ideal timescale—I think that all of us would agree that it has taken too long to get us from the conception of those proposals to implementation—but that there is a period during which we must take steps to implement new arrangements and new mechanisms. If we look at the approach that is proposed to be taken on the Scottish rate of income tax, there is an unreserved acceptance that it is necessary to operate within the parameters of the UK fiscal framework.