Hansard

I begin with something that I forgot to do at stage 1, which is thanking the Finance Committee. It should be put on the record that it did a good piece of work on the bill and took really useful evidence on it. However, I did say at stage 1 that the Labour Party would support the passing of the bill as speedily as possible because it is right to draw a line under the poll tax.

It is also right to point out that the success of the referendum in terms of the number of people who registered to vote should not have resulted in some of the statements that were made about poll tax debt. The then First Minister was absolutely correct at the time to say that he would legislate on the issue. We are certainly happy to be here today to support the passing of the bill. We have had many passionate speeches in the chamber about how bad and unfair the poll tax was and about the misery that it caused to individuals and communities up and down Scotland. It was a bad tax—the wrong tax—and it needed to go.

I think that it is important for me to make again a couple of points that I made at stage 1. As part of the Finance Committee’s evidence taking on the bill, East Ayrshire Council said that it had taken evidence from people who had struggled to pay the poll tax but had paid it even though they objected to it in principle. It is important that, when we draw a line under the poll tax today, we recognise equally that many people throughout what was a difficult period paid the poll tax. Some of those people struggled to pay it, but they did so because they valued local government services.

I was a member of Fife Regional Council at that time, so I know that the poll tax caused turmoil for local government finance and uncertainty for council services. To all those people who struggled to pay but did pay the poll tax, we should therefore say thank you and that we recognise that they made a sacrifice during that time.

It is right to move on. As the Deputy First Minister pointed out in one of his speeches on the poll tax, by 2013-14 the amount of money that was being collected for poll tax debt was down to £327,000.

A deal has now been agreed with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. We need to take on board the fact that we were getting to the stage at which it would cost councils more money to collect than they would be able to collect. As the minister said, and as we have seen from the evidence, many councils have already stopped collecting and others are at the point at which it is becoming difficult to collect much more. Therefore, although we are taking steps today to formalise the matter, we are already at the point at which very little of the money is being collected, so it is right to draw a line under it.

In evidence to the Finance Committee, Perth and Kinross Council said that having to pursue the poll tax interfered with its collection of council tax. The council said that some of the families who had poll tax debt 20 years ago also have agreements in place to pay back council tax debt. That shows us that, 20 years on, in some communities the same families and individuals are still struggling with deprivation and social inequality. That surely tells us that we need to do more to tackle inequality and poverty.

In the stage 1 debate, the Deputy First Minister said:

“Those paying off community charge debt include some of the poorest and most vulnerable who were unable to pay at the time and are now paying ... towards arrears ... or having them deducted from social security benefits”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2015; c 73.]

That should reconcile us to the fact that, whatever poverty strategies have been put in place, they are still not working for many communities and many people and families. It is a generational thing. We have not been able to break the cycle of deprivation and poverty, which should shame us all in the Parliament. We need to highlight that and consider how we are going to tackle it.

That links to local government finance. The minister talks about council tax, which in its current form is causing major difficulties in communities because it is not a sustainable way forward for financing local government. We need to find a way forward, because the type of budgets and cuts that local authorities have announced this week are biting into local government services across Scotland. We need to find a way of properly funding local government. Some 22 years on from the poll tax being scrapped, we still do not have in place a proper mechanism for funding local government.

That brings me right back to my point about poverty. I believe that we will not be able to tackle poverty and inequality in Scotland unless we have a national poverty strategy that links into a local poverty strategy. At the heart of delivering that locally are the community planning partners, and key among them is local government. Local government is the body that can tackle inequality and poverty at local level and actually change things. If it is not financed properly and if local government finance is broken, that will not work.

It is with pleasure that we will see the bill go through today, as we can draw a line under the poll tax. However, the message is that we have to sort out local government finance.