Meeting of the Parliament 09 October 2024
I agree with Ross Greer that it is certainly a good thing that we are going to have the long-awaited fiscal sustainability debate. There are real challenges in our public finances in Scotland that we need to get to grips with. In eight weeks’ time, the cabinet secretary will be on her feet in the Parliament to announce the budget for the coming financial year—or, more likely, the budget for the following six months.
There are significant pressures on the public finances, not least the pressure that is applied by an incompetent Government that has been wasteful with taxpayers’ money and has refused to plan for the future. However, I am sorry to say that the measures that the Scottish Greens set out today—some of which are certainly worthy of investigation—will not be able to close the gap in the coming budget.
Last week, the Parliament passed the Aggregates Tax and Devolved Taxes Administration (Scotland) Bill, and the Scottish Government plans to introduce the Scottish aggregates tax on 1 April 2026—a decade on from the Scotland Act 2016, in which the power to introduce that tax was devolved. It has taken 10 years to devolve a tax that, to a large extent, mirrors a pre-existing one.
A range of independent experts say that they are sick and tired of the idle talk of wealth taxes. They want Government to get on and reform the wealth tax that we already have—the council tax. However, the SNP has spent 17 years not reforming the council tax.
Last year, Professor David Bell pointed out that it had taken
“six years to implement social security in Scotland.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 19 September 2023; c 7.]
That is giving people money, not taking money away.