LIZ CAMERON
Many businesses across Scotland are having a hard time keeping up with the pace of change in terms of the constitutional responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament. After the Scotland Act of 1998 which created the Scottish Parliament, little changed in over a decade, but now there have been two further Scotland Bills within the space of the last three years and while the political and media attention is on the Scotland Bill that is currently before the UK Parliament, many of the powers contained in the Scotland Act 2012 will not take effect until April next year.
That is a lot for businesses to contend with, especially as next year will see the creation of a new Scottish Rate of Income Tax, with further tax and welfare powers to follow over the next few years. On top of this, we are also awaiting the publication of the UK Government’s Spending Review, which will dictate where the next round of public spending cuts will hit and, of course, the Scottish Government will need to set its future spending plans within this context.
So what of the Scotland Bill that is currently being considered? There are some very legitimate questions to be asked over whether anything has been lost in the translation of the Smith Committee’s recommendations into the Bill itself. This will be one of the first tests of whether the Scotland Office and Scotland’s MPs and MSPs can work together in the national interest and I suspect that compromise will be needed on both sides before a settlement on both the Bill and the associated fiscal framework can be agreed.
In terms of the content of the Bill, Scottish Chambers of Commerce are currently working with the Scottish Government in a number of areas to help ensure the productive transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament. We have long campaigned for the devolution and abolition of Air Passenger Duty, which represents a tax on international trade and connectivity. The Scottish Government currently plans to gain control of this tax by April 2018 and, whilst we would still like to see this accelerated, we are working to make sure that devolution of this tax is not unduly burdensome and that the path to full abolition is as short as possible.
Equally we are working with Scottish Ministers on the devolution of welfare powers to Scotland. These must be applied in harmony with existing Scottish Government powers, particularly in terms of skills delivery, if they are to operate to help businesses to access the skills they need to grow our economy.
The job of governing Scotland is changing rapidly and Chambers of Commerce are helping Government to understand what this means for business.
Liz Cameron is chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce
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