Meeting of the Parliament 19 March 2026 [Draft]
As Murdo Fraser has said, the amendments in this group relate to the practical application of the visitor levy and whether the legislation will properly recognise the realities of how accommodation is provided across Scotland.
My amendments in the group are straightforward but important. They address situations in which there is a risk that the levy will fall on forms of accommodation that were never the focus of the policy in the first place and where its application could produce clearly disproportionate consequences.
Amendment 25 concerns small-scale accommodation that forms part of someone’s principal residence. In practical terms, that means a classic single-room bed and breakfast, a spare room that someone is letting out in their own home or single-occupancy self-catering accommodation. Those are not large commercial tourism operations. In many cases, it is a case of individuals or families opening part of their home to visitors to supplement their income.
That distinction matters, because, although they are small businesses—even microbusinesses—they form an important part of the overall strategic market offering. Across Scotland, particularly in rural and semi-rural communities, such small providers form an important part of the fabric of the tourism sector. They offer flexibility, local knowledge and the kind of personal welcome that visitors come to Scotland to experience. For many of those households, the income is modest but meaningful. We should be careful not to design a system that places additional administrative burdens or financial pressure on the small operators that I am talking about.
One of the lessons from the development of the original visitor levy legislation is that policies that appear straightforward in principle can produce complicated and often unintended consequences once they become operational in the real world. We are debating this amending bill today precisely because, as Murdo Fraser said, aspects of the original legislation required further thought.
I acknowledge that some members—perhaps even the minister, given that we had an exchange about a similar idea in the stage 2 debate—might have concerns about adding such an exemption to the visitor levy at this late stage without wider consultation with the sector. Therefore, I have lodged amendment 32 as an alternative to amendment 25, should the latter not be accepted by the minister. Amendment 32 would apply the same principle to the statutory review of visitor levy schemes. It would require a local authority, when carrying out a review of its scheme, to consider whether exemptions or reimbursement arrangements should apply in cases such as those described in amendment 25. In other words, it would create a clear moment of reflection by requiring consideration of whether the scheme, once in operation, was having unintended effects on very small accommodation providers who operate from their homes.