Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 09 March 2021
I look forward to Mr Rennie deploying that argument on the doorsteps in North East Fife to all my Conservative friends. We will see how he gets on in the next few weeks.
It was good to see some progress being made on the introduction of free school meals for all primary pupils, although it is being done over two years when it should have been introduced over one. Again, that was a key budget ask of ours that was not delivered.
Yesterday, at the Finance and Constitution Committee, I raised the issue of land and buildings transaction tax. The finance secretary is insisting that the threshold for LBTT payments, which was temporarily raised to £250,000, must return to £145,000 next month, despite the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has extended an uplift for the equivalent tax in England, as, indeed, has the Government in Wales, and that the block grant adjustment would provide additional resources to extend that tax cut if she wanted to do so. That means that, from April, house purchasers in Scotland will be hit with a higher tax bill than those elsewhere.
Yet, as we know, revenue from LBTT in the period from September amounted to £39 million more than was generated in the same period last year. That means that reducing the tax burden delivered a higher revenue. That is perhaps an illustration of the Laffer curve that Mr McKee is always so glad for me to explain to him. I hope even now that the finance secretary can think again about that issue, because she might find that she is depriving herself of tax revenue and that, by extending the increase in the threshold, she might take in more tax, as we have demonstrated over the past few months.