Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have a final question for Derek Thomson and Liz Cairns. Going back to a question that the convener asked, I note that your submission mentions

“a deliberate lack of clarity”

particularly on union access to workers in the freeport zones. I think that the word “deliberate” is really charged, so can you say a little bit more about why you think this is deliberate rather than just an oversight or something that neither Government is prioritising? Do you think that there is a deliberate attempt to leave the fair work stuff pretty vague while pressing ahead with the tax breaks, and, if so, what makes you think that?

For clarification, you mentioned that there is not enough self-assessment data for Scotland. Is that unique to Scottish self-assessment data, or is it a UK-wide issue but one that matters more to us because of scale and the way that our public finances work?

Surely those other forms of investment will, inevitably, be drawn to the east and the north now. I accept that you are saying that there are strengths to greater Glasgow’s economy—of course there are—but the depopulation and relative growth in income and earnings show that there has been a clear shift from the west to the east. Do the freeports not just exacerbate that to the disadvantage of your members in the west?

On a somewhat similar point, about the challenges of the short period in which we are doing this, I am going to ask the same question that I ask every year at this point about the work that you do to look back at behaviour change estimations that are related specifically to changes to income tax. We started making significant variations to the UK from 2018. Given that we are now getting somewhat further away from that point, and recognising that it is hard to disaggregate that from all the other changes that might result in a change in the revenue that is eventually raised, do you have any further observations about whether your estimations on behaviour change related to income tax rises have borne out?

I go back to the convener’s original line of questioning about displacement and the request for evidence. The theory behind freeports has been tested in the UK. In the 1980s, freeports were one of Thatcher’s signature economic policies, and studies have been done on displacement as a result of freeports. I think that the study that I am looking at just now is regarded as the major study in this area but I could be wrong about that; I have certainly seen higher figures. Larkin and Wilcox’s 2011 study said that there was 41 per cent displacement—that is, 41 per cent of the jobs in the UK’s freeports of the 1980s were not new jobs but were displaced from elsewhere.

David Melhuish, you acknowledged that there will not be 100 per cent new jobs at the freeports and that there will be some level of displacement. Would 41 per cent displacement be unliveable? Would that be satisfactory, or would it be too high a rate of displacement if we saw that happen again this time round?

One of the growing areas of economic inequality in Scotland is between east and west. Given the location of the freeports, a lot of concern has already been expressed, particularly by local authorities in the west of Scotland, which are already dealing with significant challenges of deprivation and depopulation. I take Inverclyde and Argyle and Bute as examples. They are concerned that, as a result of the expected economic displacement resulting from the freeports, there will be further depopulation and less investment in the economy in the west of Scotland, which has already seen far lower growth and income, for example, than the east coast.

Would it be of concern to the Scottish Property Federation if we saw further displacement from west to east aggravating those existing inequalities?

Are there any particular examples of completed actions that you want to highlight, which would illustrate matters for the committee? I recognise that it has not been that long since the latest revision, but is there anything that has not yet been completed and on which you would have hoped more progress would have been made by this point?

That sounds excellent, in principle; I do not think that any of us would disagree with that approach. However, how far can it go? The range of additional needs is so vast that not every teacher can be comprehensively trained in how to support every kind of additional need, even annually. Teachers might have children with one particular need one year and have to retrain the next year. That feels, ultimately, like quite a burden to put on a classroom teacher every single year, as opposed to there being a model that is more about having a plethora of specialist staff being available to be redeployed to the right setting each year.

I will move on to the action plan and the progress that has been made since it was revised last year. How is that progress being monitored, and what would you highlight as evidence of the progress that has been made since that latest revision?

One of Angela Morgan’s overarching recommendations is that we move towards a system of universal, instead of additional, provision. You have all touched on that point in your various answers this morning, but it would be useful for us if you could provide a summary of what that principle means in practice in the classroom. What would be different if we were to take that approach instead of the approach that has been taken until now?