Meeting of the Parliament 27 June 2018
I am delighted to speak in the debate, and I place on record my thanks to Michael Matheson and Annabelle Ewing. In particular, I appreciate Annabelle Ewing’s dedication when giving evidence to the DPLR Committee not just on the bill but on previous occasions.
I welcome the bill and, as a committee, we recommend it to Parliament. Paragraphs 52, 56 and 57 of the committee’s report provide a clear indication that the bill is a step forward, that it will provide clarity of understanding and that stakeholders are generally content with its proposals.
For something that started off as a fairly technical bill, it certainly came to life when we received evidence from Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre. We have already heard some commentary on that, and I am sure that Mr Findlay will touch on it in his speech.
The convener and the Solicitor General have touched on the technical nature of the bill, which has been helpful. I will touch on a couple of other areas.
The Scottish Law Commission has brought forward three bills in recent years. I previously suggested that there could be the potential for more than one small technical area of legislation to be brought together, where possible, to make progress in dealing with outstanding issues. I still believe that that would be beneficial on occasion. However, the bill highlighted a different scenario regarding the SLC’s consultation process.
As the bill is technical, the examination of some areas, such as welfare rights, might not have been fully pursued. That became evident once we started our deliberations, which the executive summary of our report highlights. Although the welfare rights sector was contacted during the SLC’s consultation, it was only as we undertook our work that we established some issues that affect the sector. Therefore, I firmly believe that our recommendation that the SLC
“reviews its consultation processes with a view to giving policy considerations a greater level of attention when deliberating on law reforms”
highlights something that would be beneficial.
Section 3 of the bill and its exemptions are the main focus of our report and considerations. We could not agree on whether the exemption for council tax and business rates was appropriate. With councils clearly wanting the status quo but Mike Dailly suggesting that the period for council tax should be cut—and with very little other evidence—we had to try to test what was being suggested. We believe that our action in writing to COSLA and the Society of Local Authority Lawyers and Administrators in Scotland, as well as to four other committees of this Parliament, was the right thing to do to test any new evidence. COSLA’s response was helpful but, as we indicate in the report, it was not signed off politically, so our decision to write to all 32 councils was also the correct thing to do. Attempting to establish the exact debt situation, broken down into five-yearly periods, will be advantageous for further understanding of and deliberation on that section of the bill.
However, COSLA’s response indicated that, if the collection period was reduced from 20 years to five years, higher instalments would have to be applied, which would have a detrimental effect on the debtors, who are the people we all want to protect.
Ultimately, we all want the bill to be right, and I am sure that we all have a great deal of sympathy for Mike Dailly’s arguments, but a few things need to be considered. First, is this the correct bill to attempt to change that part of the law?
Secondly, why should the bill hamper the ability and flexibility of local authorities when they collect unpaid council tax? A reduction from 20 years to five years would be vast, so what would the effects be? I hope that the committee’s letter to the councils will provide some information to help with that. As the minister indicated in her reply to the committee’s report,
“the 20 year prescription will no longer be capable of interruption by a relevant claim or acknowledgment and will therefore act as a true long stop.”
I am delighted that this technical bill is being recommended to progress and look forward to the next stages of the bill’s journey through the Parliament.
15:55