Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2015
I support the bill, which feels very much like the last nail in the coffin of the poll tax, but we should remember—keeping things in perspective—that that actually happened in England more than 10 years ago.
Although I support the bill, I think that we should recognise that there are some genuine concerns and take them seriously, and we should also question some of the details of the bill.
Having heard the evidence in the Finance Committee, I think that the main concern is about the possible effect of the bill on council tax collection. I therefore think that we have to send out a very clear message that this is a one-off bill because of the particular circumstances of the poll tax and because, to a large extent, there is not much left that could be collected, given that many local authorities recognised that and have stopped collecting already.
We also have to recognise, although Conservative colleagues may not agree, that the poll tax was a completely unacceptable tax—certainly by far the most controversial tax of my long life—because it bore no relationship to the ability to pay. The bill is already in a unique category, which means that we should not draw analogies too much between it and the council tax.
I also recognise that some people feel that it is unfair that they have paid and others have not. We have all had letters about that. Again, however, I think that we have to repeat some of those points to them about the uniqueness of the tax, councils not collecting, there being not much to collect and so on.
The Finance Committee report raised certain questions, and to some extent the cabinet secretary has already responded to most of them. The first was whether the bill is necessary at all, since we did not find evidence about the use of electoral registers either currently or prospectively. We have had two examples quoted—by Alex Rowley and Mark McDonald—of politicians saying that they were going to use them. I had not heard that before. It may well be that that was the trigger for the bill, but equally the committee heard Glasgow City Council saying that it did not believe that all the new people on the register were around at the time of the poll tax. There are obviously conflicting views on that, but given the evidence that has been mentioned today I think that we have to accept that there was perhaps a certain trigger that the First Minister was responding to.
The point about consultation is important as well. The Finance Committee put it quite delicately and tactfully, saying that consultation should take place prior to legislation. I think that the cabinet secretary suggested that that is not always the case, but I think it is a feature of the Scottish Parliament not just that committees consult on bills when they are published but that Governments tend to consult on the contents of bills before they appear.