Meeting of the Parliament 10 March 2016
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the amendments. The fiscal framework requires the Scottish Fiscal Commission to prepare forecasts of tax revenues, demand-led social security expenditure and Scottish gross domestic product. We currently have competence to legislate for commission functions based on the fiscal powers that are devolved to the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Act 1998 and the Scotland Act 2012. We have lodged the amendments to provide that the Scottish Fiscal Commission should prepare rolling five-year forecasts of receipts of fully devolved taxes, which will initially cover land and buildings transaction tax and Scottish landfill tax and, in due course, other taxes that are to be wholly devolved to the Scottish Parliament, including air passenger duty, the aggregates levy, receipts from non-domestic rates and receipts from the Scottish rate of income tax.
The non-statutory commission currently has a role in scrutinising the economic determinants of the Scottish Government’s forecast of non-domestic rate receipts. The agreement that has been reached in the fiscal framework covers the entirety of the NDR forecast: amendment 1 caters for that change in function.
Amendment 22 will ensure that the commission will have direct statutory rights of access to the data that are held by the Scottish assessors and by local authorities, which it will require in order to prepare NDR forecasts.
The commission’s current function in relation to borrowing has been retained. The commission will continue to be required to prepare reports setting out its assessment of the reasonableness of Scottish ministers’ projections of borrowing requirements. We further propose that the commission should retain the general function that is currently provided for in section 2(3) of the bill, which enables it to undertake work on other fiscal matters, in addition to its specific functions. Amendments 2 and 3 are intended to ensure that that flexibility reflects the commission’s new statutory functions.
The purpose of amendment 8 is to require the commission to provide the Scottish ministers with forecasts in sufficient time to support finalisation of the Scottish budget.