Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 20 May 2020
I was going to start my comments by saying that I agree with Patrick Harvie, but he rather spoiled it with the nonsense that he came out with at the end of his contribution.
It is not true at all to say that all economic activity is propped up by the state at the moment. Huge sectors of the economy are still operating—for example, the production and sale of food, DIY shops and the finance sector. Huge sectors of the economy continue to operate as they did before.
Mr Harvie and I should not fall out, though, because I agree with him on the principle. I agree that companies that are not paying tax have got an impertinence to expect the taxpayer to support them if they fall on hard times, as we are now seeing. I do not at all dispute the principle of what Mr Harvie is trying to achieve with amendment 93.
However, there are issues with the wording of the amendment. Perhaps Mr Harvie, as he winds up, or the cabinet secretary or the minister in their contributions, can assist with what the amendment is proposing. My colleagues in local government have raised concerns about the wording of what is being proposed in both amendment 93 and amendment 94.
Amendment 93 states that grants should not be paid to persons—or, presumably, companies—that are
“based in a tax haven”
or that are
“the subsidiary of a person based in a tax haven”
or that have
“a subsidiary based in a tax haven”
or are
“party to an arrangement under which any ... profits are subject to the tax regime of a tax haven.”
14:45The difficulty with that is that many of the grants that we are talking about are administered by local authorities. How do we expect the officers in a local authority who receive an application from a body with an address in the local area to be able to make that assessment of all those detailed matters? How will that information be made available to them in the short space of time that they might have in which to deal with an application?
The problem is even more acute when it comes to amendment 94, because those tests will have to be met as well as further tests about whether that
“person’s company has adopted country-by-country reporting of financial, economic and tax-related information for each jurisdiction in which it operates.”
How a local authority finance department is meant to have access to that information is beyond me. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can give us some comfort on these issues.