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Thank you. Something that the committee has discussed quite a lot recently is the challenge that the convener pointed out, which is the financial gap that the SFC has identified. Even if we were to have substantial tax rises, such as those that you, and even my party, have proposed, that would mitigate or prevent potential cuts in public services, rather than expanding those services.

Do you have any concerns about public consent for that? Polls have consistently shown that people in Scotland, including those who are on higher incomes, are willing to pay more tax if that results in better, or more, services. If we embarked on tax rises in the next few years, we would simply be preventing cuts and it is hard for people to identify something that they have not lost, as opposed to something that they have gained. How would you manage public consent around that?

The STUC deserves commendation for that. Other organisations, bodies and representative groups come to the committee every single year wanting more money, but they are unwilling to say where it should come from or, indeed, they say that they want more public spending but they do not want tax rises—some even want tax cuts.

My final question is about the public sector estate. The union movement has been a champion of flexible working, remote working and working conditions that suit the needs of workers. Post-pandemic, that genie is not going back into the bottle, and that is true in the public sector in particular. However, that has resulted in a number of buildings that are either owned or leased by public sector organisations being largely empty or certainly significantly underoccupied. Does the STUC recognise that that is inefficient and not a good use of public money, and that therefore there needs to be reform in the public sector estate?

That should be done not simply as a cost-saving exercise, in the way that it was off the back of 2010 austerity, but in recognition of the fact that we no longer work in an environment where everybody is in the same office from Monday to Friday, nine to five.

I absolutely agree that there is a need for greater cross-party consensus on that and I am always happy to speak to cross-party colleagues about tax policy.

However, there is an understandable public cynicism about politicians. If my party, or the Scottish National Party, made a real push with an information campaign to sell people the public services that already exist, people would understandably point to NHS waiting times or say that we are just saying that because we want their votes at the next election. Much as I think that we should still do that, my question for you is about the role of the trade union movement in getting a buy in from wider society.

The STUC has more than 500,000 members, but we have a working-age population of about 4 million. What role can the trade union movement play in getting wider societal buy-in, or not even buy-in but just recognition of the financial reality right now?

The emergency measures that the Scottish Government put in place during the pandemic excluded companies that are based in recognised tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, from benefiting from Scottish Government emergency relief. The Scottish Government is therefore clearly capable of recognising what is, and is not, a tax haven, and whether a company is based in a tax haven for the purposes of—albeit legally—avoiding tax.

The Scottish Government is allowed, within the devolved settlement, to make policy decisions to exclude such companies from, for example, public procurement grants or tax relief. It has chosen not to do so in this case of tax relief, so I am simply asking for the rationale as to why.

The premise of the relief is about providing companies with advantages so that, in exchange, they will pass on those advantages to the wider economy and their workers. Why, then, are companies that have, for the purposes of avoiding tax, based themselves in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, still allowed to benefit from this further tax break when they could have been excluded? That is entirely a matter for the Scottish Government.

I recognise that employment law is a reserved area and that power over it is not devolved. For years, we were told that, under schedule 5 to the Scotland Act, it is not legally possible to require businesses that bid for public procurement or which receive business grants from Government agencies to pay their workers at least the real living wage. That is now a requirement that the Scottish Government has delivered on—it is a legally binding requirement—so it turns out that we can do that within our devolved competences.

Let us put aside trade union recognition for a moment. I recognise that that area is untested, although I encourage the Government to test it.

It is clear that we can require businesses to pay workers—in this case, within a freeport—at least the real living wage. We have just done that with procurement and public grants, so why are we not doing it with the freeports?

I have plenty of other questions, convener, but it is probably time for other members to get a word in.

You mentioned that you have been speaking to the Treasury about that. We can ask ministers about this when they come to give evidence, but are you aware of whether the Scottish Government has engaged with the Treasury on those points?

You have given us plenty to ask the minister when he comes to speak to the instrument.

Thanks very much.

I get why you say that, but given the evidence that we have from the last time that the UK tried freeports, the massive displacement that happened then and, indeed, the gap that we already have between the east and the west, it is reasonable to see this as a risk that, at the very least, needs to be mitigated.

I am interested in the part of your written submission where you talk up the fact that investments in the freeport zones

“will meet strict environmental and social ... criteria”,

which will mean not just economic benefits but wider social and environmental benefits. However, going back to what Liz Cairns touched on a moment or so ago, I understand that, although the tax incentives are very clear and have been laid out in the statutory instrument, a lot of the environmental and social criteria ultimately depend on voluntary agreements. Is there not a significant risk that organisations that invest might fulfil those environmental and social criteria for the first few years and then not do so over the long term? After all, there is no way of guaranteeing they will do so, because there is no clear enforcement mechanism in the instrument to ensure that the criteria are met in the long term.