Hansard

It would have been good to have had this debate in the chamber with interventions. I would be happy to take an intervention, although I realise that the system is not favourable towards that.

I, too, thank the citizens assembly for a very interesting report and for the opportunity to interact with its members on Monday. In particular, I commend the members for reaching consensus on so much of the report. I asked whether they thought it was realistic for a Parliament to be so consensual in its debates and activities. Claire Baker pointed out that a lot of what happens in Parliament is consensual, which is true, but I think that the panel accepted that that would be more difficult on big contentious issues such as independence and taxation.

I suspect that most of us would agree with the 10 points in the vision. The topics covered included integrity, honesty, job creation, health and social care services, a realistic living wage, tackling poverty, education, skills, and opportunities for young people. Not many will argue with those. I was intrigued that the assembly members wanted taxes to be simplified and understandable. A lot of us would like that, but it is pretty optimistic to think that we can achieve it—we have some way to go to do so.

I was also interested that they saw humility as a desirable quality for leaders. I am not sure that everyone at Holyrood would agree with that. It seemed to me that there is a suspicion of paid politicians and an assumption that we MSPs are out of touch with people. I accept that that may sometimes be the case, but I hope that it is not always so.

The start of the members’ introduction says:

“We, the people of Scotland, present this report”

to Government and Parliament. That is a big statement, suggesting that the assembly is either more representative of, or more in touch with, the general population than elected MSPs are. We should take that kind of statement seriously. The assembly is a cross-section of society, but it is not elected, so are we questioning democracy if we follow that logic?

Some of the recommendations go down the same route. Recommendation 2 suggests that

“Government and Parliament should: ... make decisions jointly with citizens”.

That raises a number of questions for me. Who are those citizens? Are they elected? If it meant more use of referenda, I would be open to that, but I am not sure that that is what it means.

Recommendation 3 suggests that there should be

“a ‘house of citizens’ to scrutinise government proposals and give assent to parliamentary bills.”

It goes to say:

“There should be an oversight body to ensure this.”

I accept that our system of democracy is not perfect and that—as other members have said—there is plenty of room for improvement. However, I think that, in general, this Parliament has engaged much more with ordinary citizens than Westminster has. For example, I was on the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee during the passage of the bill that became the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018. We spent a lot of time out and about and met a very wide range of people. We should absolutely listen more and engage more. However, we should be a little wary of introducing new bodies, which could actually undermine the democracy that most of us prize.

Recommendation 8 suggests that MSPs should do more

“to act on the views of … constituents”

and should act less along party lines. We touched on that point at Monday’s meeting. However, I have some issues with that. Generally speaking, voters vote along party lines and the individual candidate probably makes a marginal difference in most people’s minds—they are expecting a package of policies that the party stands for.

There are also practical issues, such as how I can find out what my 70,000 constituents actually want, rather than simply hearing from the usual round of vociferous chairs of community councils. Even if I can find out what my constituents want on an issue, what happens if they want lower taxes when I ask today but they want more to be spent on the national health service and local services when I ask tomorrow? People’s wants can be inconsistent with one another, and one of our jobs as MSPs is to get the balance right between competing priorities.

The party system has its disadvantages and I believe that we all need to stand up to our leaders and whips at times and just say no. However, I struggle to see a better way of working. When I lived in Nepal in the 1980s, political parties were banned, so theoretically everyone who was elected was independent. However, that did not work.

I could have spent my whole speech talking about democracy in general, but I would like to go on to the “Tax and Economy” section of the report. I agree with a lot of the general points and aspirations and I think that some of the things that the report suggests are already happening—or we are at least trying to make them happen. For example, recommendation 29 proposes investing in specific industries and I think that the enterprise agencies and the Scottish National Investment Bank are aiming to do just that. Similarly, recommendation 31 talks about centres of excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects and recommendation 32 refers to the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises. I whole-heartedly agree with those points.

There is a clear theme in that section, which is that taxation is not well understood; that is mentioned in recommendations 23, 25, 26, 27, and 28. We need to take that point seriously; perhaps a future finance committee could take the issue up. We need to be more up front with citizens in saying that, generally speaking, better services mean higher taxes. If we want a national care service with better paid staff, which I do, let us be honest and up front with folk and tell them that it will cost 1p or 2p—or whatever it might be—on income tax.

To finish on a point of complete agreement with the assembly, we absolutely should clamp down on tax “evaders and avoiders”. I fear that that is easier said than done, but it ties in with the desire for a simpler, more understandable tax system. It would mean fewer loopholes for rich individuals or rich football clubs to try to sneak their way through.

I very much appreciate the time and effort that the members of the citizens assembly have contributed in producing the report that we are debating. The topic has been very big and wide ranging and I agree with Patrick Harvie that it would be interesting to see how the assembly would tackle a more specific topic, as I think has happened in Ireland.