Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have enjoyed watching the stage 2 proceedings so far from my office and I was waiting to swoop in when the moment arose. I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests in relation to my regional office receiving rates relief under the small business bonus scheme, which is somewhat relevant to some of the amendments that will come later on.

In lodging amendment 466, I am trying to require ministers to set a surcharge rate in the land and buildings transaction tax for transactions of large landholdings—that is, as the bill is currently drafted, landholdings that exceed 1,000 hectares. There is a regulation-making power in the amendment to vary the surcharge rate and the definition of a “large holding of land”. The intention of the amendment is to discourage the acquisition of large landholdings and to therefore encourage the break-up of large estates and reduce the concentration of land in very few hands.

The bill, particularly in relation to lotting arrangements, aims to promote the diversification of land ownership, with more people owning small landholdings and fewer people owning large ones. If that is the aim, we should be using more levers to achieve it, as Mercedes Villalba said. Our tax system is an obvious way in which we can achieve that.

Amendment 446 would mean that someone who buys up a large landholding would pay proportionately more than someone who buys a smaller one—not just more in absolute terms. That would prompt behavioural change, as it would discourage the acquisition of swathes of Scottish land by a wealthy few. Frankly, if you are in a position to buy up 1,000 hectares or more, you can likely afford to pay more in tax. Anyone who is not put off entirely would make a substantial but fair contribution to the funding of public services in Scotland. However, to be clear, the primary intention of the amendment is behavioural change, not revenue raising.

In the policy memorandum that accompanies the bill, which was published in March last year, the Government said:

“In relation to taxation, the Scottish Government is giving careful consideration to these complex matters and intends to explore them more fully as part of its commitment to producing a longer-term tax strategy.”

In December, the Government released its tax strategy, which specified one of the Government’s priorities as being

“Tax as a lever to encourage positive behavioural change”.

Specifically on land reform, the Government said:

“We are also taking forward work with the Scottish Land Commission to consider the role of taxation and fiscal interventions in supporting land reform and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land.”

There is a positive intention but we have got ourselves trapped in a process of talking about having further discussions with key stakeholders and the issue never really moves forward. I have lodged these amendments to try to move the conversation on.

My amendments 479 and 480 are intended to prevent shooting estates from receiving non-domestic rates relief through the small business bonus scheme. Amendment 479 would mandate that assessors categorise crofts separately from shootings and amendment 480 would prevent landholdings that are listed as shootings from being eligible for rates relief.

Views on the value of shooting estates will vary across the committee and the Parliament. I would say that they are some of the least economically productive ways to use land, that there are vanishingly few jobs for the amount of land that is used and that they are ecologically totally counterproductive. They effectively create sterile monocultures by eradicating native wildlife that does not suit the purpose of hunting for sport what is usually a single species.

The small business bonus scheme gives rates relief to businesses on the premises’ rateable value. It is a blunt tool and it does not meaningfully target small businesses. There are hundreds of shooting estates across Scotland that get the small business bonus scheme relief and that is subsidising the operating costs of blood sports that contribute to the biodiversity crisis and the degradation of too much of rural Scotland.

In 2020, there was research that showed that nine out of 10 shooting estates received such relief, possibly up to a value of about £10.5 million. In 2023, ministers said they would consider the issue through their NDR reform work. In the Finance and Public Administration Committee and in a letter to the committee this January, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government again expressed interest in exploring ending rates relief for shootings and made clear her and the Government’s sympathy for the proposal.

However, she noted an implementation issue whereby crofts are listed on the valuation roll under shootings. That is where amendment 479 comes in, as it would require crofts to be categorised separately on the valuation roll. I note that section 75 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 inserted a requirement for shootings to be a specific valuation category. So, it is normal—

The cabinet secretary said that agreeing to the amendments might prejudge work that is going to take place. Can she outline specifically what work she is talking about and when it is going to happen? I have lodged the amendments, as she has indicated, because the Government has made commitments on this issue in recent years and yet, from what I have seen during my party’s time in Government and since, no progress has been made. I can understand that as an argument against amendment 480—and I would be happy not to move the amendment on that basis—but I do not understand it as an argument against amendment 479, which simply seeks to resolve the categorisation issue that the Government has already raised.

Yes.

That all sounds good, but my frustration is that there is a lot of talk about work that we need to do or will continue doing. The cabinet secretary has just reflected on the fact that she was sitting at this table talking about this almost a decade ago with me, Liz Smith and others, and that it was an issue before then, when she was a teacher. Why is it such a perennial issue?

It is ultimately resource constraint that underlies a lot of the issues that we talk about, such as additional support needs or the need for schools to have administrative support staff. However, a lot of the issues about the bureaucratic element of teachers’ workloads either have no-cost solutions or would generate savings if the workload was reduced. I accept that some of that would involve national Government being far more prescriptive to local government than it currently is—and doing so in a way that would cause a lot of tension.

However, without getting into the specifics of that, I cannot understand the lack of priority that is given to reducing teacher workload, particularly given that it is essentially a no-cost area of work that would generate good will among teachers as well as leading to improvements in the quality of learning and teaching.

I am afraid that my questions are probably all for the cabinet secretary. I will start by asking about teacher workload.

It is about a decade since a real drive was made to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for teachers. That was just before the cabinet secretary and I were elected to Parliament and it overlaps with that period. Cabinet secretary, you directly experienced that bureaucracy as a teacher before you came here. We can all point to examples of specific areas in which bureaucracy has been removed, but every teacher that I speak to and every union that represents them says that, overall, the bureaucracy issue has got worse over the past decade. Do you agree with that? Is there too much bureaucracy for classroom teachers and those in management positions?

You say that there is a clear focus on that, but you accepted my opening premise, which was that teacher workload has not got any easier in the past 10 years and that the bureaucracy around it has not reduced in those years. If there is a focus on that, why are things not improving?

I agree with the broad thrust of your answers. A lot of the additional and unnecessary workload—in particular, the bureaucratic workload—is being driven by local authorities, but not all of it is. There are some areas where it is driven by the Government, and there are some areas where local authorities are only able to add on all that bureaucracy because of a particular Government initiative.

I will use as an example the Scottish national standardised assessments, which is a very politicised matter. There is a parliamentary majority against primary 1 SNSAs. In a vote in the previous session of Parliament, Parliament decided that there should not be a continuation of primary 1 SNSAs, yet the Government has continued them. When I speak to teachers, they give me examples of the unnecessary bureaucracy that they have to deal with, and SNSAs come up a lot. That is not because the test is, in and of itself, particularly time consuming—although the cabinet secretary will be aware of my position that it does not add much value and causes a lot of stress and anxiety—but because of the bureaucracy that schools and local authorities add on top of that. A number of local authorities have bolted on significant additional reporting requirements to SNSAs. Will you reflect on that?

As much as a lot of the bureaucracy is driven by local authorities, there are many examples where they would not be able to do that if it was not for a particular Government policy. In the case of primary 1 standardised testing, Parliament told the Government to stop, yet it has continued with those tests.

The solution is more prescription for education authorities and more professional autonomy for individual teachers and schools. The cabinet secretary will be aware that I submitted to the Government a paper that I commissioned Dr Joseph Smith and Professor Mark Priestley to write. In essence, it involved a series of focus groups and some research work with teachers on their suggestions for how to reduce their workload, specifically in relation to bureaucracy. I submitted that to the Government nearly two years ago. Has the Government reflected on it? Will there be a response to it, or will the Government in some other way reflect on the feedback from teachers who have provided specific examples of areas where their bureaucratic workload can be reduced?

One of the areas on which I was proud to work with the cabinet secretary and her predecessor was the expansion of access to counselling in school for children and young people in Scotland. The Government produces a six-monthly report on that, which I think shows the success of the policy in meeting what was previously an unmet need. However, there has been an increasing delay in those six-monthly reports coming out; the most recent one that we have is for January to June 2023, which means that we have now got to the point where there is a 18-month or so delay before those reports are published. That makes it quite hard to scrutinise the implementation of the policy.

There is some really useful data in those reports. For example, the most recent one, from the first half of 2023, shows that twice as many girls are accessing counselling in school as boys. I would suggest that girls do not have twice the mental health issues that boys have and that there are other underlying factors that it would be worth our looking into.

If the cabinet secretary or her officials have the information to hand, that would be great, but given how specific my question is, I am not expecting that to be the case. Will the cabinet secretary look into why those reports have become so increasingly delayed that there is now an 18-month delay in the publication of the next one—at least, I hope that it is 18 months, as that would mean that the next one will be published soon—and look at whether we could significantly cut down that delay to ensure that we get more timely information, so that we can start to analyse the situation and look at what the barriers to access are?

I entirely agree with that point. I would like to ask about some other issues, including school psychologists, but I am conscious of the time. I am happy to come back to those at the end of the meeting if there is time.