Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thanks very much for that opening statement. I open up the session to questions from members. I will begin.

In your opening statement, you touched on the 32 specific property classes for which additional information will need to be provided in respect of the valuation. Can you explain the rationale for the selection of those 32 property classes?

Amendment 2, in the name of the minister, is grouped with amendment 3.

That ends consideration of the bill at stage 2. I thank the minister and his officials. Mr Arthur will remain at the table for our next item of business.

I suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses.

Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2022 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee.

Annie Wells, Marie McNair and Mark Griffin will be joining us remotely. I ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are set to silent and that all notifications are turned off during the meeting.

Agenda item 1 is stage 2 consideration of the Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Tom Arthur, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, who is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Sandra Reid, who is the bill team leader; David Smith, who is a lawyer; and Gavin Sellar, who is parliamentary counsel.

Members should refer to the marshalled list and the groupings for stage 2 of the bill, which were circulated last Thursday.

Section 1—Effect of coronavirus on net annual values and rateable values of lands and heritages

Amendment 1, in the name of the minister, is in a group on its own.

Good morning, Mr Eustice. You have said that there will be more freedom for Scotland and that our committee has an important scrutiny role. The Scotland Act 1998 clearly states that protecting Scotland’s environment is a devolved matter and a core responsibility of the Scottish Government, yet your Government’s United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 has repeatedly prevented this Parliament and its committees from doing their job to protect our environment, from approving the introduction of GM crops to the UK market and from implementing a ban on plastic wet wipes. The 2020 act has allowed you to overrule us repeatedly. Why does your Government have such a blatant disregard for devolution?

Thank you. Perhaps somebody from the Wheatley group can comment.

Thank you very much. Mark Rodgers, do you have anything else that you want us to hear?

Thank you very much for those responses to the question about the challenges that you face, which also touched on some other areas.

It is great to hear your articulation of the new procurement, business and economic models. We have heard from this panel of witnesses and the previous one that the land issue underpins everything, so we must tackle that.

We will have to leave it there, for now. We have had another very useful conversation about affordable housing, which the committee is keen to continue pursuing. Thank you for joining us and sharing your perspectives.

I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.