Seòmar agus comataidhean

As I said, my colleague Màiri McAllan is taking that work forward. I will perhaps ask officials to comment on some of that, because they are closer to the detail, but there are fundamental differences in the market in Scotland. For example, the ownership structure of the buildings is different. Their nature is such that they will have many occupants. In Scotland, that would obviously be a situation where there are many freeholders, whereas in England it would typically be a leasehold environment, so finding the single owner—the freeholder—of the building is much easier. In Scotland, that is much more complicated.

There was also a gap in legislation. To enable ministers to engage in the process, legislation had to be put in place to get us to the stage where we could engage with building owners or occupants. There is also the question of how you marshal that in order to take forward the delivery of the remediation, because, again, you are in that freehold environment—multiple freeholders compared with a leasehold environment makes for much more complication.

In the stage that we are going through, funding has been put in place for the assessment works. I think that it is £24 million, but, as I said, that comes within the portfolio responsibility of the Cabinet Secretary for Housing. Following that work, as the assessments are completed, the remediation work will start. That will be funded through the Scottish Government’s capital programme; we expect the bulk of the work to be funded in that way.

The numbers all start from the same place. Our £30 million comes from our pro rata share of the amount that the UK Government is intending to raise from the levy, and everything is a twelfth of the size. In that regard, the numbers that will flow through will be the same.

Clearly, the shape of the housing market in Scotland will have different characteristics, but the housing market in England varies a lot, too, depending on where you are or what part you are in. The exemptions and reliefs in Scotland could be different at the margins from those in England—there could be some differences in that respect. However, there are 580-odd different rates in England, so there is quite a wide range, and the Scottish numbers will fall somewhere within that range.

In relation to the housing market, the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and I regularly meet Homes for Scotland, developers and others in the sector to understand their issues and concerns. We recognise that, to tackle the housing emergency, everyone needs to play their part, so we are very conscious of the feedback from developers in that regard.

I go back to the point that the funding has to be raised from somewhere, so if it is not raised from developers through the mechanism in the bill, it would have to come from other parts of the Government’s capital expenditure. That would have an impact on other capital programmes, public services or taxation, which could, in turn, have a detrimental impact on economic growth. Whichever way you look at it, there are potential impacts.

A case could be made for many different exemptions. We have tried to work the issue through in a way that reflects the Government’s priorities on affordable housing and some of the other uses that you have mentioned—I am referring to refuges and so on. The islands exemption takes into account the parts of the country that are generally reachable only by boat, which is the definition that is used for those remote areas.

In addition, the approach that we are taking to a threshold on the levy, by giving each developer an allowance, will disproportionately support small and medium-sized developers. We also expect that it will disproportionately support rural communities, where smaller developers are more likely to build. Impact assessments have been done for the bill.

If you take that over the lifetime of the 12 to 15 years, you are talking about the levy contributing 20-plus per cent; it is in that range. If you take the number that you have and multiply it by 12 or 15, you end up at 20 to 25 per cent of the total cost environment. The Scottish Government funding for the remediation as it gets identified and requires to be done will be a balance, and that balance will obviously change over time.

The date we picked gives a 22-month period, which is important. It is set at April 2028, because it is the start of a new financial year. You could pick another date, or do what you suggest, but our approach gives clarity on when the date will be.

We have committed to taking forward the secondary legislation, which we believe is perfectly doable. If the bill goes through stage 3 prior to the end of March, the new Government will be in a position, when it comes back after the election, to make decisions on those rates.

Just to be clear, we will be in a position to be able to give the 22-month notice to developers on the rates and reliefs but not necessarily complete the secondary legislation. That is a point of legal clarification—we will not have all the secondary legislation, but we will have the parts that relate to the reliefs and the rate of the levy.

I think that we can consider that. Clearly, if a future Government or Parliament decided that a sunset clause should be repealed, it would have the ability to do that. At the moment, we have not put in such a clause, and I do not think that the legislation down south has a sunset clause, either.

I am always interested in talking to people about solutions.

Clearly, there are tax collection measures at the Scottish Government and UK Government levels, and mitigations and processes are in place to prevent people running a business, making money, folding a business and running away with the money. You are not allowed to do that.

There will be issues to be worked through in that regard, but it is not as though we do not collect tax from companies at the UK level or Scottish level at the moment. There are mechanisms for doing that, and I am sure that Revenue Scotland has gone through the technical parts of that with the committee. Do you want to say any more on that, Hannah?