Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2015
Many of my constituents have contacted me to express their opposition to the bill. They are absolutely right—it is unfair. No matter the spin that is offered, it cannot in any way be fair for some people to be excused of their obligations while others are not. I have said before and I will say again that hard-working taxpayers should not be forced to subsidise other people’s tax avoidance and the SNP’s irresponsible rhetoric.
For the policy to have any semblance of equal treatment, those who paid the tax would have to be reimbursed. That, too, is a fundamental point. The Government’s retort might be that such remuneration would be unaffordable—yet surely that only underlines the bill’s recklessness as a whole.
The only practical, affordable and fair thing to do is to scrap the bill altogether. That is obvious to many of my constituents and others throughout Scotland.
It is important that we fully understand the bill’s consequences for local authorities’ finances, because the compensation that is on offer—£869,000—is only 0.2 per cent of the total uncollected £425 million. Despite the Government’s protests about collection, the compensation is far from adequate. It still does not accommodate informal payments made to local authorities. As has been said, the taxes are still being collected, albeit slowly. The approach also ignores the potential knock-on effects on future tax payments to local authorities.
The risk of losing council tax as a result of people expecting their debt to be cancelled at a later date has been highlighted repeatedly, yet the Government has explicitly ruled out giving compensation to local authorities that suffer from a knock-on effect in council tax collection. With that in mind, Gavin Brown’s amendment to require reporting on the effect of the provisions on council tax revenues would have provided much-needed information.
At a time of significant financial difficulties, the last thing that councils need is a Government that removes debt that they are owed, however difficult collecting it is. The Government offers only a tiny settlement in compensation—that is an important point—and encourages tax avoidance. The people of Scotland deserve to be treated fairly, which means that the honest majority should not be discriminated against in favour of tax avoiders and made to cover the cost of compensation. The only fair thing to do is to scrap the bill. Accordingly, I will vote against it.
16:46