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The Parliament will spend some time deliberating that in the months ahead. Further on in your submission, you state:

“Planning and tax incentives to encourage mixed-use developments could support regeneration and help realise the ambition of 20-minute neighbourhoods.”

What planning and tax incentives did you have in mind there? Does Joanne Walker have any ideas in that area?

We will want to explore that in further depth.

Joanne, would you like to reply to the question on tax incentives to encourage mixed-use development?

As we have heard and discussed, the high street is under pressure and there has been a 50 per cent increase in online sales. If the UK Government decided to tax online retailers to try to create a balance in the high street, would you support that? If so, should some of the revenues that would be raised be assigned to the Scottish Parliament?

I was not sure about that, but I thought that I would give you the opportunity, anyway.

We have come to the end of our time. I thank our guests for their evidence, and particularly Kevin Robertson for coming in today.

We will have a two-minute break to allow our witnesses to depart, and then we will continue with the rest of the meeting.

It is compulsory sales orders. Basically, they are for the sort of situation where someone has owned a derelict building for 20 years—perhaps an old primary school, a pub or a house or whatever—and planning permission has long since passed away with nothing being done. Under compulsory sales orders, in effect, if nothing was done within three years to refurbish a building, the owner could be forced to sell it at auction. We explored the idea at the Local Government and Communities Committee in the previous session and there was cross-party support for it. Has the Scottish Property Federation considered that measure, which might help high streets and make them more attractive? I also ask Joanne Walker whether she has any comments on that.

Yes, I think that the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations said that retrofitting homes for energy efficiency would cost about £6 billion. It is one of the long-term issues that we will have to deal with.

I am keen to let members ask their questions, and I am aware that, with a panel of four witnesses, it is often hard to make sure that everybody gets an equal chance to respond, so my final question is for Polly Tolley.

In your submission, you talk about non-repayable grants and council tax rebates being popular. I suppose that giving people additional funds is always popular. You also talk about the need for advice provision to be protected and, if possible, enhanced as a preventative measure. Again, prevention seems to be a fundamental part of what we are hearing.

You have set out your position in your paper but, for the record, will you give a bit more detail about how much additional advice provision you would like there to be? You have talked about a £16 return for every £1 that is invested in core services.

You touched on the removal of the £20 a week increase in universal credit that was brought in during the pandemic. Will you say a little bit more about the impact that that will have?

On the point that Mr Robertson made about planning, I once read an article by a retiring chief executive of West Lothian Council, in which he was asked how the council was able to attract a disproportionate amount of investment, given that, post-mining, it had been one of the poorest authorities. He said that the council had a strong focus on turning round planning applications—saying yea or nay to them—within four weeks, which gave it a competitive advantage over other local authorities. Therefore, the point is well made.

I have one final question. If additional resources are to be invested in advice services, what is the optimum additional sum that you would seek to provide the maximum benefit? Obviously funds are not unlimited and you will get diminishing returns, so what is a realistic increase in advice services that would bring the most return with regard to the assistance that you provide?

My last question is for Kevin Robertson. Compulsory sales orders were a Scottish National Party manifesto commitment in 2016, but it was not delivered in the previous session of Parliament, partly because of the Covid pandemic. I asked a written question about the issue and was referred to a question submitted by Paul Sweeney. When I looked at that, it said that the question had not yet been answered, so that was a body swerve there.

Does the Scottish Property Federation support compulsory sales orders? A lot of high streets and other streets have been blighted by buildings that have been left empty for 15 or 20 years and that have been difficult to get moved on. In the previous session of Parliament, there was cross-party support for the measure.

We are straying a wee bit from budget scrutiny here, Douglas.