 Good morning and welcome to the 22nd meeting of the committee in 2018. I'd like to remind members and the public to turn off their mobile phones and any members using electronic devices to access committee papers should please ensure that they're switched to silent. Today we have received apologies from Tavish Scott MSP. The first item of the agenda is a declaration of interest. Annabelle Ewing and Kenneth Gibson were appointed to replace Mary Gusion and Richard Lochhead respectively as members of the Culture, Tourism and External Affairs Committee. I'd like to welcome both Kenneth and Annabelle to the committee. I now invite Annabelle to declare any interest relevant to the email of this committee. Thank you, convener. Good morning. I'm not entirely sure that it would be relevant, but to adopt a built-in braces approach, I would say simply that I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland. I hold a current practicing certificate, albeit that I'm not currently practising. Thank you very much, Annabelle. And now, Kenneth, would you like to declare any interest relevant to the committee? Thank you, convener. I have nothing to declare. Thank you very much, Kenneth. We now move on to our second item of business today, which is an evidence session with COSLA and local authority representatives on proposals to introduce a transient visitor levy, perhaps better known as a tourist tax, in Scotland. This is the committee's first evidence session on the transient visitor levy. I would like to place on record that we will be having a further evidence session with representatives of the tourist industry in due course. I would like to welcome our witnesses today, councillor Gail MacGregor, the resource of spokesperson for COSLA, councillor Bill Lobin, the convener of Highland Council, councillor Adam MacVey, the leader of the City of Edinburgh Council and councillor Jenny Lang, the co-leader of Aberdeen City Council. Thank you for coming to speak to us today. Can I ask you briefly to say whether, perhaps just in a couple of sentences, before we get into the detail, whether you support a transient visitor levy? On a personal level, I will make no comment. I am here representing 32 local authorities who have unanimously agreed that we should pursue a transient visitor levy. I personally support a transient visitor levy. Thank you. Edinburgh has had a long-standing commitment to a transient visitor levy, and I would like to think that my administration in the past year has taken a slightly more business case-led approach, probably, from what was traditionally a campaigning approach. Our council has had a long-standing support for it in our programme. Just in the last few months, the council overwhelmingly passed a paper in principle in support of it, and with a process to take it forward. Aberdeen, like Edinburgh, has been looking at this for some time. We had it within our statement of intent when we went into negotiations with Scottish and UK Governments back in 2015. We have obviously brought forward reports and various aspects to council around what that might look like. We have brought it into Scottish City's Alliance, too. We have obviously had other councils come on board in cities in relation to that going forward. Thank you very much for that. I would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who have submitted written evidence to the committee, which is very useful. Can I ask why a transient visitor levy, in your view, is needed? How much it would raise and how, practically, it could be levied? Perhaps we could start with you, Councillor McVey. Yes, absolutely. In terms of the scale of funding, it is probably something in Edinburgh's case of around £11 million. In a grand scheme of £1 billion budget, that might not seem like a lot, but when you think of another key pledge that we are trying to do to build 20,000 affordable homes and you think of the council tax revenue that it is going to bring, it is going to bring something like £20 million to £25 million, so putting into context a transient visitor levy against building 20,000 homes in the council tax revenue from that actually starts to look like a significant amount of money. The crucial thing for Edinburgh is that it is additional funds to go towards the additional pressures, the additional costs, the additional aspirations of our city in regards to tourism and the hospitality sector in particular, because we have one of those vibrant hospitality sectors anywhere on the planet. It is a fantastically successful thing and it is sustained by a fantastically successful tourism industry, but we would be kidding ourselves if we said that that did not come with significant pressures. The cost of those pressures is £1.5 million, for example, just to keep the city centre clean and bins emptied during the summer period, the millions of pounds that we put into supporting the festivals through that period. There are additional pressures that come with it and for us it would be, I think, fairly crass and fairly wrong to start making budget decisions around continuing that support to enable us to continue that growth, continue that success against decisions in areas such as health and social care and education. I just don't think that that would be appropriate. That is a way of us finding additional revenue to sustain what is an absolutely crucial and hugely successful part of Edinburgh's economy. When you think 15, 20 years ago, when those things weren't in the condition that they were now, when you track things like Edinburgh's unemployment rate, when you track things like other elements of success, like inward investment, that a lot of it is going into hotels being built in the city, everything is garnering more and more success, but we need to find a way, I hope, of sustaining that and I don't want to be in a position as leader of the city of Edinburgh where anything is threatening that growth, that success and that vibrancy in our economy and culture. Councillor Langdon, does Aberdeen take a different approach? I think that from our perspective, when we look at Edinburgh and, indeed, probably the highlands as well, they are looking to sustain the tourism that they have already got. I think that in Aberdeen we are slightly different because we are looking to build up our leisure tourism. We have very much around hotel occupancy and things in the past. It has been dominated by oil and gas, they have obviously blocked booked. When we saw the downturn, we saw the reduction in our occupancy rates, so we were looking as part of our regional economic strategy to diversify our economy. You wouldn't be surprised by that, and tourism is a main element of that. It is about us trying to build up that leisure tourism aspect. What we have seen is that we need to invest. I think that we have done as a local authority, we have led the way, we have had major investment in infrastructure, I am thinking about our £30 million in the art gallery, we have got a new TECA, £330 million exhibition centre, various cultural events that we are supporting within the city, whether it be the great run, new art, spectra. We understand that we need to invest in order to achieve that economic growth. However, as a local authority for us, we are dealing with the same pressures as Edinburgh. I would argue that a little bit more is the lowest-funded council in Scotland. My grant is probably on a par with the Western Isles, which is a tenth of the population. We have to look for innovative ways in which we can make sure that that investment continues in the city of Aberdeen to support that sector and others. From our perspective, we believe that that is a way that locally we can raise revenue, which can then be ring-fenced and invested in the areas that will help us to support that leisure tourism going forward. Thank you very much, convener. Obviously, your authority is very different from the city authorities. Do you have a different approach? Well, I think that, basically, although we may have a slightly different approach to some of the major cities, we still have the same sort of problems. Obviously, we have not formally yet considered whether we should have a transient visit to the tax or not, but there is massive cross-party support throughout the Highland Council chamber for the introduction of what everyone now calls a tourist tax. However, tourism is our main industry, unlike other areas of Scotland. Tourism brings £1.2 billion per annum to Highland. We get 6 million visitors and it supports 20,000 jobs. However, that increase brings pressures on our infrastructure, including roads, parking, public toilets, at a time when council resources are challenging. It is therefore difficult to sustain tourism funding alongside the breadth of essential services that council has to deliver, children's education, etc. We cannot spend money just on tourism in preference to something else. Our infrastructure is deteriorating and it will lead to a negative impression, and that will cause reputational damage. The tourism sector is highly competitive and it needs to improve constantly just to keep pace with the rest of Europe. We face similar issues to the rest of Scotland, but in the cities of Scotland, 50 per cent of people come to look at the view. In Highland, it is 87 per cent. It really is quite a massive difference over our similarities. Facilities that we provide, such as parking, etc., are exacerbated by the tourists. In some areas, there is more tourist traffic on our roads than there are residents. That makes an immense difference. What happens is that the local residents are paying for the tourists and yet they are not providing us with the income. We believe that we need to increase sustainable resources and move to a more dependable long-term solution for funding that supports our tourism sector and makes a higher-quality visitor experience. Otherwise, we are on the risk that visitors just will not come back. Council budgets are so constrained now that they are the only way of delivering additional resources to look at alternative means of funding. Many other countries around Europe charge a visitor levy. Just a few days ago in Paris, I paid €2.53 per person per night. Did it not be going there? No. Personally speaking, I do not accept the argument that visitors will be deterred from visiting the Highlands if we charge them a £1 a night bed levy. In Highlands, we have some of the best food in the world, the best accommodation and the most magnificent scenery, but all that can come to nothing if the tourist wreck pulls a wheel off his car or has to go and go to the toilet behind the bush. To conclude, the growth in tourism is very welcome, but we are looking for some of the way of funding it. Councillor MacGregor, taking on those points, the tourism sector has made the point that, yes, it is a great success story, but we have to be careful of biting the hand that feeds us. The point that they make is that the level of that that is charged in the UK is higher than other countries. Therefore, the tax burden on their industry would be far greater if a transient visitor levy was imposed. The key thing with this is that we all consult with all stakeholders. I think that the tourism industry is engaging very strongly, certainly with Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Highlands, and we need to take them with us and allow them to appreciate the benefits that could come from this. I think that the reality is that it is very much about local consultation, so there is not going to be one size that fits all that is going to cover all 32 local authorities. It would be very much down to local consultation from local individual councils, with their stakeholders, with their partners, with their businesses and with their local population. I think that the driver for that has to come from the pressures that Adam has highlighted, the issues that Jenny has highlighted and certainly the massive pressures in Highlands. It has to be locally led. I think that we are buying an appropriate consultation with the tourism industry. If they see the benefit going back into the community and they see infrastructure and car parks in the Highlands, which may enhance the visitor experience and all the things that Jenny has highlighted, I am sure that we can take them with us, but that is part of the conversation. We are in the early stages of the conversation. A lot of work has been done behind the scenes and now we need to go out and really consult with everybody, but it has to be local consultation done on a council-by-council basis, because this is not a one-size-fits-all. Okay. Thank you very much. I will now move to Clare Baker. Thank you, convener. Councillor McVeigh said that she did not want to do anything that was threatening the vibrancy of tourism within Edinburgh. We can see tourism being a success story in Scotland at the moment with increased visitor numbers. I know that local authorities have done quite a bit of research into European comparisons. I think that the UK is only one of nine countries that do not have a tourist tax out of the EU 28. Do you have any evidence of whether there has been a positive or a negative impact at all on any countries or cities that have introduced tourist tax? How would you respond to John McAlpine, the convener, to touch on representation of what is from the tourism alliance? How would you respond to concerns that the tourism tax would have a negative impact on visitor numbers? Do you think that that is a justifiable concern? It is a justifiable concern for the industry. It is a concern that is easily overcome. When we have looked to impact post-introduction in other areas, the impact is negligible. We are talking low-single-digit percentages and increase in terms of demand. When we take a city like Edinburgh, our tourism sector is growing each year. The number of people going through the airport is growing each year. The number of people wanting to stay in hotels is growing each year. As part of our engagement with industry, one of the things that we did was head around table in one person industry. Our revenue manager said that we need to be careful about the timing of that. We are down this year from last year. When we pushed that a bit more of what she meant, the growth that she was experiencing in her room occupancy and her room rates had slowed. She was not saying that the growth rate is down. Any impact of low-single digits in terms of tourist numbers in Edinburgh will be absorbed easily with one year's growth. I would make the argument very strongly that the £11 million of it is around £11 million that we end up investing will go to not only counterbalance that but sustain that level of success. The threat to the tourism industry in Edinburgh is not a transient visitor levy of a couple of pounds. The threat to the tourism industry in Edinburgh is that, frankly, the city gets to the point that the city starts taking policy decisions to try and mitigate the impact, not in terms of sustaining that success and mitigating the impact of it that way but mitigating the impact of it by looking at the numbers. That, for me, as someone who doggedly supports the industry in Edinburgh, is my main concern. I can ask Jenny Lyon, because Jenny described a different set of circumstances in Aberdeen about trying to grow the tourism sector, but the solution that you are arguing for is the same. How does the tourism tax help with growing numbers when you are not experiencing the same pressures from tourism numbers as Edinburgh? It is the argument around the devolving of the powers and what will happen locally may vary depending on what your circumstances are. However, as far as Aberdeen goes, I mentioned about the switch that we have had very much from the business tourist to the leisure tourist aspect, particularly the dominance of oil and gas. We have seen a rapid reduction in our room nightly rates already. In actual fact, we are much more competitive now than we had been previously, but we are managing to attract and grow economically in the sector to increase because we are making that investment around the tourism offering. Whether that is about marketing the place and what is on offer or whether it is about the actual investment in the infrastructure and the events that will attract people, we have to raise that revenue in the first place. My concern, as it is across the table here, with reducing budgets year on year, is how local government will be able to sustain those things when our statutory duties are increasing and the revenue that we are taking in is reducing. There has to be a local flexibility, and it is the wider argument around the devolving of powers and the local accountability in how those moneys are spent. I think that this is just one aspect of it, and that is why it featured very much in our statement of intent when we put that forward around the city deal. Can we provide the levers for local government in order for them to stimulate economic growth going forward? That is what will allow cities such as Aberdeen and others to be buoyant in the future if we have that investment. As far as putting people off, I do not see that at all. We have heard here about aspects of people going and paying. I have done that myself. The other aspect is that we have the argument with the VAT and the transient visitor levy on top. When you look at other countries, their VAT levels might be lower, but when they are combined, they are on a par with what is being suggested by people here when you bring the two together. However, you have the opportunity to spend that money locally on the issues that might affect your local authority, which might be different in Aberdeen than it would be in Edinburgh and indeed in the Highlands. Kenneth Gibson, do you have a supplementary? He was a question looking at the way that this impacts across Scotland. In the causal submission, you have said, and I quote, that we need to be innovative about funding for public services. It looks like this is additional money for public services. You say that this is not a replacement for existing funding, which will provide important additionality over and above existing funding streams. In paragraph 4, you say that non-domestic rates are not devolved to a local level. Non-domestic rates were pooled in Scotland because cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow benefited disproportionately from rates. People from, for example, Glasgow, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire all went in and spent their money in Glasgow, so it was decided to pool them so that those resources could be more evenly spread. The issue about tourism is something that has been touched on so far. Any of the submissions is that some local authorities such as, for example, Highland, Galloway, Aberdeen, Edinburgh will probably benefit significantly. However, will North Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire or Clackmannshire, and this could create a disproportion in terms of the resources available to some councils relative to others? I am pretty sure that I know the answer to that question whether you feel that, like non-domestic rates, there should be an element of pooling or, indeed, you take the view that, while the issues of congestion, for example, in Fort Augustus or in the grass market or in Dumfries High Street, are for our local authorities to resolve their work, we should keep all the revenue. It seems to me that it does not provide much flexibility for some councils, only for the ones where there is already a large tourist income coming in. I think that the importance of this, as I said earlier on, is about local discretion. So we have 32 local authorities, all very different, all with very different challenges, but we do have areas that are incredibly pressured through tourism such as Edinburgh and the Highlands. The principle of this is to enable them to offset some of the pressures they have as a consequence of tourism. It is incredibly important that local leaders and local communities are able to make that decision to raise additional income, which can then be spent directly back out in their communities to enhance the tourist experience. In the other areas, probably about 25 plus local authorities, it may never be implemented, never, but we need to have the local power to implement it if it would work for a local area. I think that the pressure that comes particularly in Edinburgh—you speak to taxi drivers, I spoke to one coming in this morning—and the pressures in Edinburgh are immense, and therefore the pressures on the council are immense. Borders do not have the same pressure with tourism. Argyll and Bute have a different type of pressure. It is not particularly hotel-related or rooms-based. It is more use of roads and camping sites. I think that the whole principle is about local consultation, local discretion and the ability, if it fits, to enable that local authority to levy a transient visitor tax. Indeed, the amount will be at the discretion of the local authority. I do not think that there is any requirement to have a national pot as such. It would be very much down to local accountability and Adam's neck on the line at the next election if it does not work. That is the reality. It is about local accountability and local consultation. If it is going to work for that authority, it should be able to implement it, and if it is not going to work for an authority, it simply will not. It is not about whether it will work, but whether or not it will get the tourists turning up that it will actually make it work. The point that I am trying to make is that this will increase the disproportionality that we already have in Scotland between prosperous areas and less prosperous areas. That is why I was just wondering whether pooling would be a way of resolving that to some extent, because otherwise some areas will not benefit. To say that, although there is all talk about pressures and so on, I fully understand that. We only have to walk up the royal mile any day of the week. You can see the number of tourists and all that. Sometimes you cannot walk on a straight line for them and buff it in the street. That is a success. 35,000 jobs are already provided in Edinburgh and colossal amounts of money come in to Edinburgh through tourism. That would surely widen that gap between Edinburgh and other surrounding authorities, unless there was some kind of pooling. That is the only point that I was trying to make. People from Western Batteries and North Lanarkshire, etc., themselves go on holiday in Edinburgh and the Highlands and other parts of Scotland and already spend some of their hard-earned money there. I am just wondering if that is something that would perhaps be given for the consideration. It is a useful question, particularly in relation to the 35,000 jobs that I wanted to make a specific point, because what the industry has not been good at in Edinburgh, frankly, is doing the hard work in terms of skills generation, linking the communities that need access to those jobs most with the highly transient workforce that is in the economy, and an additional £11 million with the industry, saying that they would love a proper skills programme that took more local people into to give them a career in the industry. That is one of the things that we would absolutely be open to discussing, but this is about the why. I think that your question really speaks to the why we are progressing this. We are not progressing this as Edinburgh just so that we can get an additional £11 million in funding for our local authority. We are progressing it because we think that that is the best way of funding the continued success of that. If we are going to pull the revenues, let us pull the costs, and the costs that are on Edinburgh in terms of sustaining that economy. If you said to my colleagues in Midlothian and Eastlothian that you want to start paying a bit more towards Edinburgh's funding for the festivals and Edinburgh's crowd management and place management, I am sure that I know what their answer would be. I am sure that the vast leak exceeds the costs. I have a few different questions that I will try to keep in brief. Councillor McVein, in your submission, you said that local authorities should have the power to and discretion to raise additional income by levying tax in addition to council tax and non-domestic rights on either resident, property owners or visitors in the local authority or within the discrete areas of that local authority. Which additional tax-raising powers are you thinking about? This one, but we also have in our programme, for example, our programme in Edinburgh a workplace parking levy, which we do not have the ability to levy now, but because of the way Edinburgh's transport system is structured, because of the movements from the north of the city, the south-east and west, that is something that we are progressing to make sure that people make the right choices coming into the city, to relieve traffic pressures, to also give us the ability to take space, frankly, away from car across the city where possible and create more valuable space with it, be it that active travel or just generally public space. Can I ask what the various councils think they are going to do with the money? 11 million pounds seems a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things to Edinburgh, and I suspect probably much less and potentially intake for smaller local authorities of less tourists. Are you going to A, ring fence the money to be reinvested back into the tourism industry? Or B, is it going to be used to build affordable homes or filling pot holes, other infrastructure projects that should be funded perhaps from other areas of local authorities' budget? Or is it just going to get sucked into the wider local authority budget and just be seen as a top-up tax? You do not need to press your buttons, by the way, just to the benefit of the sound man. From the point of view of Highland, tourism is our main industry. We estimate that £1 a night would generate roughly £12 million. If we take that as revenue funding, it is £12 million a year. If we capitalised it, it would give us something like £120 million to spend on capital projects, toilets, car parks, roads, etc. There are many, many things that we would wish to discuss with the public and the industry as to how we should spend that money. There are a wide variety of projects, but the tourist uses the same sort of facilities that the public does. However, the public pays, but the tourist does not. That does not matter whether the tourist comes from North Lanarkshire to Highland or whether they come from Spain or Switzerland. The simple fact of life is that the provision of those services costs money. We have to find a way of making the tourist happy to come and spend their money. For me, it is as simple as that. As far as the information that we have supplied to you and when we have gone into discussions with various groups, it has always been that we would look to ring-fence the money, specifically for the tourism sector and the investment that we are making in the city in order to attract visitors. I need to point out that, currently, we have about half a million well—almost £600,000—going into our Visit Aberdeenshire organisation, which is there to promote the destination around marketing and various other aspects. We have money on top of that that goes into different events, but that money actually levers in private investment and investment from Aberdeenshire. My concern would be that private investment is predicated on the investment that is being made by local authorities. It is very important to us, particularly as our budgets get tighter, that we have that money available in order to invest in those areas, because it would not just be the local government investment that could be lost, it could be the investment coming from the private sector as well. I mean, it sounds to me that there is some disparity around how each individual council would look to spend that money reinvesting it back into promoting the area, for example, into marketing schemes. That sounds like a very positive one, using it to reverse closures of public toilets or fixed roads, which one could suggest should be being done anyway from your existing budgets or asking for more budget elsewhere. The idea that the tourist does not pay for those things. In your opening statement, you said that it brings over a billion pounds of revenue from tourism into your area, so would you not say that they already are paying for the services by the additional income that they are bringing? I think that there is no doubt about it that the tourist brings additional income, it brings additional income to tourist operators, etc. However, what it does not do is to bring additional income to the local authority to provide the services that we provide for the tourist. There are areas in Highland, for example, the North Coast 500, the famous road route, which has seen an exponential increase in the number of visitors. Highland Council are responsible for maintaining that road. They are maintaining that road in general in previous years for the use of local residents, whereas now it is for the use of massive numbers of tourists. I do not think that it is unjustifying to expect the tourists to contribute towards that. However, it is not unjustifying that we would spend a lot more money in promoting the Highlands to bring even more tourists. It is such an important subject to us. On my final question, it is no huge surprise that, if you ask a local authority, would you like an additional tax raise in power to generate more revenue? The answer is yes. I am not huge of a surprise to hear that. However, if you ask business, especially small businesses who are actually generating revenue from tourism, they seem to be hugely against this prospect. Two thirds of respondents to an FSB survey said that it would be negative to their business, and three quarters said that it would have not just a negative effect on their business but on the general local economy. How do you respond to those businesses? We respond because we have done quite a lot of work with the industry. We have had a very mixed bag of comments. Even today, we are doing a session with the industry, including the federation of small businesses, including the Association of Self-Caterers, for example, on the mechanism that we would use. What we heard very clearly from business was that, if the amount that is charged is fairly small and it is easy to administer, a lot of the problems that some of the businesses fear dissipate. One of the things that we are doing right now is, literally today, our polish officers are working with the industry to say, how do you want it best administered? What is the easiest for your business so that the administrative burden is at an absolute minimum? Just to pick up on the FSB survey that you highlighted, one in four businesses that responded to that said that they supported. That is a pretty good starting point. When you ask any business, do you want to pay more tax? The answer is usually no, but one in four in this case is quite a high rate of businesses willing to pay more. In the research that we have published today from our Mark and Edinburgh body, a vast majority of tourists say that they would be happy to pay the charge in Edinburgh. It is not often that you ask individuals whether they would be willing to pay more tax, and they respond, yes, especially tourists who are here for a couple of days, a week, etc. However, those people have responded in the affirmative to say that they would be happy to pay it. I think that it is an important point to mention things such as roads and public toilets. It is important to recognise that the priorities for local authorities in terms of residents and sustaining our public services could be different for sustaining and investing in our tourist economies. In Edinburgh, we are looking at some financial challenges, as everyone is, and the decisions are being motivated by our guiding principles. Our guiding principles are an inclusive fair economy that works for our communities. Obviously, the success of tourism is a huge part in that, but it is very difficult as a local authority to balance sustained investment for mass availability of high-quality public toilets, for example, and social care services. It is just a difficult decision process to be in, and this speaks to a process that is an alternative to that, which I think sustains our success and gives us a revenue stream to invest in the future. I feel that we have almost skipped a stage in this debate, because the first stage is about the principle of, is this a power that local authorities should have the ability to exercise before we have a debate about whether or not any individual authority should exercise it, but, given that we are the tourism committee and not the local government committee, I suppose, that was inevitable. That being said, Councillor Wobans detailed the pressures on the Highland Council on roads, parking, public toilets, etc. I wonder if Councillor McVane and Lan could detail the pressure on city councils, particularly for Edinburgh, where it is a unique situation, if there is a different kind of pressure on the services that you provide as a result of mass tourism being an international city? Yes, absolutely. Placemaking and making our city function the way that it should. Managing that number of people takes an incredible amount of effort, not all that is seen, not all that is particularly visible, but managing those core services, the things that you do not notice until the bin is massively overflowing, for example, the bit of public realm control that you do not realise until you are absolutely swamped with pedestrians on a pavement that is one and a half metres wide. Those are the things that we need to provide additional support to, and if we are going to continue to grow and sustain this industry, grow and sustain our tourist economy, those are the things that we need additional revenue to put towards. A lot of that is quite intangible, it is quite difficult to, it is a difficult sell, and I appreciate that it is a difficult sell to the industry as well, but it is absolutely crucial if we are going to talk about increasing the capacity of the city. To give you just one example, in our budget last year, we put £1 million in capital to a new venue in Leith Theatre. The motivation for that was to create a vibrant cultural centre. It just happened to be in my ward, but it was to create a new additional vibrant cultural centre. This year, in the international festival, they put on a programme there, which spread their cultural offering throughout our city. That is really helpful if you are going to manage to grow your tourist numbers, to continue to grow that level of success. It is helpful to spread that impact across the city, but that will take additional investment to do. It will take additional capital investment and additional venues, and it will take additional revenue investment to how best you manage that spread of visitor population. There are a whole host of costs, and some of them are quite acute. Some of them are not particularly visible, but there is a whole host of things in Edinburgh. I would say that some of them are the same. I do not anticipate necessarily the roads of Edinburgh being the first thing that this revenue is spent on, but there may be acute areas where the industry is saying that that is what we want you to spend it on for the good of X and Y. It will be a very business-led, business case-led decision-making process. There are unique challenges in some local authorities. Highland and Edinburgh are very good examples of short-term lets, the Airbnb model. How would you envisage a mechanism for collection that ensures that those who are visiting your areas using short-term lets in this more informal economy are still paying at the same rate as someone who would use a traditional hotel or Airbnb? It is worth saying that we have engaged directly with Airbnb, who are supportive of what we are trying to do. They make up more than 50 per cent of the market in Edinburgh, so they have more than 50 per cent of the control. They would be happy to apply a transient visitor levy. I think that it should be applied regulatory to the industry so that it is not reliant on Airbnb's goodwill, although we are very pleased to have their goodwill. The impact on that industry will be absolutely negligible and very easy to control because it can be controlled through particularly the booking platforms, but that has to be done on a regulatory basis. Airbnb is also taking part in our discussion today as we are discussing the mechanism. Thank you, convener. Before I get into my questions, Mr Bowman, you mentioned something if you want to go regarding the north coast 500 and the additional level of traffic and tourists. Does that additional revenue that comes in cover the cost of the maintenance of that particular road? No, it does not. There is no contribution towards the cost of the additional road. There is obviously direct taxation, where the VAT et cetera will come to central government, but there is no direct input due to the additional traffic. Unlike unfortunately some countries, we do not have a tax on tourists to use our roads. In terms of the additional take that will come into the economy and money that will be circulated around the economy and within that particular part of the Highland area, does that have an economic benefit? It is a fantastic economic benefit. I must stress that in other parts of Scotland you have massive industries. In Highland, our massive industry is tourism. The one thing if you just take that specific road, you could have a small village of 100 or so people. It is right next to a massive tourist visitor centre, but you would not build a toilet for 150 or 200 people, but you will build one or keep one open for 50,000 tourists. There has to be some way, surely, of tying the cost to the revenue, and at the moment I do not believe there is. Certainly, the discussion today has been about hotel beds. Areps, Inc, Greenock and Inverclyde, and, certainly in recent years, there has been an increasing number of cruise ships that have come in. Obviously, the folk come in on cruise ships that they do not stay overnight. Has there been any discussion regarding any type of mechanism to go forward? Could it be considered that anyone who disembarks from a cruise ship could pay a particular tourism tax or a £1 on a hotel bed? At the moment, we have focused on local authorities who have done a lot of legwork and an awful lot of consultation to get to this stage. Again, we are going back to the principle of local discretion. What would suit Edinburgh, which might be room-based, and that would be the model that they would use? It would be down to your local area to maybe look at another model that would apply to your cruise ships coming in. The point here is that it is about local discretion. It is about local people making local decisions for the betterment of their area. We certainly have a similar issue on Orkney as well. That is the beauty of something that is not set in stone, that all 32 local authorities can do something or they can do nothing. You are not going to have a model for Aberdeen that is exactly the same as Edinburgh. Certainly, in your area, if there is a pressure with cruise ships, that is potentially something that your local council could look at and develop and consult on and develop further if required. If not, they would not implement it. We have pressures in land and around the coast, but the key thing here is giving local people the discretion to raise income, to deal with those pressures, as is fit for that area. It is just to reiterate what Gail has said. I think that that is where it is very important about the local flexibility, because I think that there will be different circumstances for different places. I do not know whether you are aware, but we have currently got a large harbour infrastructure investment going ahead in Aberdeen, which is one of the prime intentions to bring in cruise ships for the first time providing that deep water. We are obviously looking at that and how we shape up that going forward. It would not be our intention now to look at levying any kind of tax on the cruise ships, because we do not feel that that would be the way to go for us at the moment, but it may be that, in other places, they feel that that would be different. However, I think that that is about the local accountability as well, because I think that everybody sitting round the table understands that if the powers are granted to local authorities, that is when the legwork then starts. Obviously, we are not going to bring forward anything that I feel will have an impact on the economic growth of my city in the region. I will not bring anything forward that I do not feel cannot be fully embraced by business and residents in the city, because we will need to be accountable to them moving forward. It is about us having the power in which to go forward with those negotiations and then shape things up that suit your local economy. Certainly, just to be clear, there are no pressures in terms of the cruise ships coming in. I warmly welcome them. Where my constituency office is, we tend to be a really busy office when the ship comes in, because it is just an ideal location for them and the more that comes in, the better. However, in terms of that offer and also any revenue that could be generated, I suspect that I know what the answers could be from all four of you in this, but do you genuinely believe that local authorities are the best body to then invest that money? Could it not actually go to maybe a DMO or some other organisation within a particular area to actually invest it in the tourism take and the tourism offer? Because, I think that there are comments from Jamie Greene earlier just regarding some of the investment, it could be seen that anything could then be badged up as well. That would certainly help tourism, whether it is toilets, roads or whatever else. Are local authorities really impartial enough to make sure that money is invested in the tourism offer? Local authorities understand through success where the pressures are lying at the moment, and I think that it is usually incumbent on them to deal with it as well. There are authorities who are looking at perhaps having an overarching board or body to disperse those funds. I will let my colleagues from Edinburgh and Aberdeen because I think that you have done a bit of work on this speak. Again, you are bringing in income to plug a gap that we have in local authorities budgets at the moment. We simply do not have enough budget across the piece to cover all of the services that we would like to cover. We have a lot of statutory duties now within education and social care, where we have massive pressures. I think that this is an opportunity simply to enhance our local areas and to do something to help them to flourish, bring in a little bit of additional income and then make sure that at local level—because yes, we do know best at local level—that that money is spent where it absolutely needs to be spent. If it is done from a higher level, I think that you get into a situation where it maybe wouldn't be getting spent where it needs to be spent. We have done a lot of work on the governance of it. I have concluded that the council making that final decision is the best place for it to sit. However, we have explored how we best engage with key stakeholders, the industry, the sector to get the right actions from it. We have explored things such as sounding boards and using the Edinburgh tourism action group, for example, as a sounding board for those actions. However, to be clear on why I do not think that the decision should sit with a body like that rather than the council, many of the pressures that come are certainly driven by the tourism industry and the tourist economy. However, some of the biggest effects are on the residential population and there will be a balance in some actions. All actions will be about supporting and enhancing the success of the tourist economy, but not all might be exclusively for the tourist. It will be about relieving and addressing the pressures so that we can continue to grow and sustain what is an incredibly vibrant part of our economy. The balanced approach that councils will take—councils are the best people to understand where that is—will understand where, for instance, they need to invest in new areas of tourism development, for example. Think of Edinburgh as an example around Craig Miller Castle, which is not as accessible as Edinburgh Castle, for example. However, if we wanted to develop that as a real tourism destination to spread that benefit, we might get some vested interests from the hotels that are in the city centre thinking that might not be the best thing to do. However, the council would be best placed to make that decision. Ultimately, there has to be strong input from the industry, strong input from key stakeholders to ensure that there is a voice very strongly held through the process to ensure that there is, ultimately, additional funding for additional purposes. However, that is exactly what that is tailored to. I think that councils are absolutely best placed to decide that. Annabelle Ewing Good morning, councillors, and thank you for coming in. I think that we have been having a very interesting discussion. References have been made by all of you about engagement, which is extremely important. However, could I perhaps quote from a letter that the committee received, I believe, yesterday from the Scottish Tourism Alliance in the UK hospitality? I am sure that this will be available publicly, so you will get to see that. On the subject of engagement where they say, local authority interests have thus far failed meaningfully to consult with the industry on their proposals. It would be interesting to hear if you feel that that is a fair statement or not, and perhaps if you feel that notwithstanding your initial response to that, there may be more work to do as regards engagement. I am aware that the STA did have comments about Edinburgh's engagement, which I have to say that I do not recognise. Members of the STA have sat in the roundtables that we have led. The STA itself had a rep just two days ago at the Edinburgh tourism action group, where one of my senior policy officers went through those proposals in detail to get feedback, so I do not recognise if they have sent that yesterday. I think that that is unfortunate timing for them to put that in writing, because I do not recognise that situation at all. Our door has been absolutely open, so some of the organisations, for example, the Association of Self-Caterers, as well as taking part in a roundtable event, followed up with me directly afterwards, and I had a meeting with them to go through some of the more specifics and hear their voice, their concerns and also some of their issues that they were bringing forward. I am more than happy to do so with anyone else, and I say that this is a two-way process of engagement. The event today is looking at—howver many people from the industry will take part in that and help to shape it—that requires the industry to take part and engage. Where there are people in the industry who think that they can just pretend that we do not exist, avoid engagement and therefore make all that go away by refusing to take part in it, is potentially quite an unfortunate route for some organisations to go down, so we are absolutely keeping the door open. We are doing as much outreach as we can. The process that we have led today, as much as it has been open and trying to engage with as many people as possible, has been an informal process of engagement to try and best shape our proposals. The next phase is taking a report to the committee that I chair in the council, which will then lead to a widespread consultation in the city. That will be looking in a much more mass way to engage with literally every resident, every tourist who wants to take part in that and every person in the industry who wants to directly have their say on what we are proposing. I do not recognise what the committee has put in writing at all. I also think that the process that we have lined out has given plenty of opportunity to date, and we will give a really robust opportunity for engagement as we start our consultation process going forward. We are not actually as far down the line as Edinburgh is, and there is no doubt about that. However, the engagement with not just the industry but members of the public is fundamental to the whole process. We cannot take that forward in any way unless we consult it at every possible level. Our tourism working group and its next proposal will be how we engage with both industry and especially with members of the public. It is quite simple and we cannot progress unless we consult. However, it is a two-way street. We have been in dialogue with some of our larger hotel groups, one of whom already charges a bed tax, which he denies to charity, his own charity. However, there are differing opinions out there, and we need to hear them. I think that, just further to that, from a costly perspective, the local authorities that we are working with have done, as Adam says, an awful lot of the informal legwork, if you like. That was really important in shaping what we took to leaders a couple of months ago in the mandate that we were given to progress this. Following the press launch a couple of months ago, it has obviously ramped things up slightly. It means that we are now going into a far more formal process of consultation, but just to give reassurances, because, again, I do not recognise this, COSLA has met both those bodies over the summer and they are both invited to a round table at the end of the month. Where we have got to up to about June-July was a lot of work that has been done by individual local authorities. COSLA now has a mandate with 32 leaders behind us and we now move into a far more formal process, ensuring that every stakeholder is consulted along the way. However, we have met them and we are meeting them again at the end of the month. We have obviously had informal discussions and meetings with the local representatives of the different bodies. I have to say that it is more positive than we are seeing coming from the national level. They have obviously come forward with issues around where their concerns may lie. I think that Adam mentioned earlier about the administration and how that would work. Obviously, as a local authority, we have gone away to look at how that could be done to address those concerns. They have raised the issue about the amounts that might be involved. Again, that is probably what shaped up the proposals that we have brought forward. From our perspective, I have to say that the local negotiations have been far more positive than perhaps we are seeing from correspondence and things that are coming out at a national level. It highlights the fact that we were raising earlier that there will be different circumstances in different places in Scotland, and that is why the argument that I suppose is coming from us is that it is about the devolving of that power and then up to local authorities to make and determine whether they wish to use that or not going forward. They will be determined by what people in the localities are saying, whether it be the business side or the residents, as we have heard from others. That is very interesting to hear. Obviously, there seem to be certain differences in view, but it is encouraging at least to hear that you feel determined that you recognise, certainly, that engagement is a key part of this process. Can I just ask very quickly to follow up in terms of the nature of that engagement? Obviously, we have seen from the submissions that a concern that has been raised by industry relates to the interplay of what is a very high VAT rate on tourism imposed by the UK Government, double that on average of all other European Union countries, and the interplay of that tax burden with a potential tourist levy. To me, that seems an assumption of what consumer behaviour will be, because it is the consumer who will pay the consumer levy. I wonder in that regard what has been done already, or what you may plan to do, to try to get an evidence-based to that in terms of consumer behaviour, looking perhaps at other international examples, because it is the consumer who will pay. Therefore, I would have thought that it would be key to this issue, as to what likely impact on consumer behaviour a tourism tax would have. I do not know if there are any comments, Adam. I mean, in the research that we have published today, or marketing Edinburgh has published today, 97 per cent of visitors in Edinburgh who were surveyed said that they would come back to Edinburgh if there was a... To say briefly, I mean in that regard, where there has already been, because it is all very well to take a survey of people walking around the high street in Edinburgh, but where there has already been the introduction of a tourist tax in other countries, presumably they have taken stock and there have been analyses conducted as to what impact, if any, there has been on their tourism numbers. I do not know whether there has been work done in that regard. Yes, I apologise. I mentioned, I think, in my first answer that the research points and it depends, because different places have brought in different rates, for example. Having been in Italy last week, I paid four different tourist rates and one was six euros a night per person, and one was one euro fifty a night per person, so it depends what rates people have brought in. However, the cumulative effect is in the low single digits. You are talking about one, two, three per cent if you are getting up to the higher rate. That is mirrored by the information that we have got by asking people who are visiting Edinburgh. Interestingly, when you ask them the question, would they pay a pound a night and come back? You get almost everyone. When you start increasing that number, you start to see it affecting demand, as you would expect. When you start asking them, would you pay £10 a night? That number starts to tail off and it starts to very clearly have an impact on people's decisions about whether they would stay there or not. There has to be a business case-led process that says where is the price elasticity within this and making sure that we end up picking up a number in a regime that does not negatively affect that supply, so I completely agree with the subtext of your question. What I would say in relation to Edinburgh's market, which is, again, I think, different to what might be quite similar to the Highlands in a way, is that the elasticity of price is absolutely enormous. Rooms can go, and if you walk down Southbridge you will see a hotel with a room rate that is digitised and on their front door. It is a very clear visible on-street reminder of how elastic our price is, because it can go from around £50 quid to around £300 within the space of a couple of weeks. It is very much driven by where the market is. During the festival, people are paying a lot of money for fairly basic rooms. During low season, people are paying not very much or a lot less for some fantastic rooms in Edinburgh. It is a great place to come to get a bargain if you want to come in January or February. The elasticity of price is absolutely key, and we need to stress test exactly what we are going to picture at Edinburgh's proposal for a fairly low rate. People will not pay more than they would pay for a cup of coffee during their visit at the end of their bill, and we are proposing to cap that at 7 nights as well, meaning that people who are here for business on a more long-term basis would only pay for the first 7 nights of their stay, for example. The fairness element in it will mean that we end up with something that hits that equilibrium point of not affecting the market. I think that evidence has shown that there is a very low impact. We have mapped a lot of countries across mainland Europe as a comparison. As an example, Rome has a 10 per cent fat rate, but by the time you apply the overnight charge, it takes up to 26 per cent, which is in excess of our fat rate. I think that we see that across many other major European cities who do have the benefit of tourism. I think that what has come up in the evidence is that it has a very low impact on visitors, because they are going there for a visitor experience, and it is far more than just price. Adam is absolutely right. Further to that, the local authority will work out what that particular industry in that area can cope with, and it may even be seasonal. It may only apply the levy from April to October in the busy periods. The entire point here is about local knowledge and local discretion, but it is certainly a low impact in other European cities. We have already touched on many of the research that you have done so far. You have yet to persuade the industry that this is a good idea. They see it as a burden, or an extra burden on them. It would appear that you are yet to persuade the Scottish Government also that this is a positive thing that should be introduced. Can I ask about how you would envisage the Scottish Government managing to deal with legislation to ensure that this could happen? In terms of the legislation, I am quite comfortable that this is a business case led process. I am quite comfortable, and I think that we would all be with that of some form of scrutiny to ensure that things are not being brought in ideologically, if I can phrase it that way, rather than in terms of a robust, sensible and professional business case that sustains the success of an individual economy. In terms of the legislation, I am not going to tell the Scottish Government how to write it. That is entirely a matter for them. My job is to outline and take forward as robust a Edinburgh proposal as possible and feed that into the legislative process so that MSP colleagues and the Scottish Government can then put forward legislation to hopefully give us that power of implementation. I think that it is really important to hear from Adam, because he is very much at the front of this, but the reality is that in my role at CosLive, I have been engaging with the Scottish Government for about a year now on this, specifically with the Minister for Finance and the Constitution at the time. We have had many discussions across party with all political groups in Holyrood, and I think that the important thing here is that we have the conversation. It is not about us saying, we must have, we must have, it is about us all getting together around the table for the betterment of our local areas and having that discussion, and we will continue to do that. We are just at the beginning of the process, as Annabelle has pointed out. There is far more consultation needs to be done, but the key thing is that we take everybody with us, and we eventually persuade everybody that it is a good idea for those who do want to use it, but it is not for everybody, and I think that those discussions with both Scottish Government and all political parties across the entire Parliament are absolutely essential. You cannot make a decision without the full list of information. You have made some very strong cases for Edinburgh, and that is one of the strongest cases that we have seen and some of the evidence that we have looked at, where others are still working their way through that process as to how they would manage that. Do you think that it should be yourself as the council that negotiates, or should it be COSLA, who takes that lead role to ensure that all local authorities are covered in this process? Under our current governance structures—which are quite clunky at COSLA sometimes—we have a mandate from 32 leaders, and leaders are behind the process of the principle of local discretion for all local authorities. I think that it is incumbent that COSLA is the driver and pulls everybody in, but obviously the wealth and the value that Adam brings to the table and Jenny brings and Bill brings is incredibly important as well. We have to look upon it as an entire local authority discretionary tax, and then the hard work behind the scenes is done by those who wish to implement it or not. You have touched on the idea that it will maybe only happen in a few, if it does happen. The majority may not choose to go down this route because they would see that as an extra. Then thinking about the businesses that may have some difficulty, they see themselves because they are marketing and managing their business, trying to cut costs to ensure that they give the best experience that they can to. Do you understand why they feel nervous about the process, because they see that as an extra burden? How are you going to try to convince them that it is not? In our process, it has been involving them in that decision making process. Today, I am expecting businesses the outcome of that meeting with the industry to come up with their best model of how it would be implemented. I want to make sure that it is as easy for them to operate as possible. Nobody wants every hotel in Edinburgh to have to take on additional administration staff to administer it, so it is about making it absolutely as minimal as possible of an administrative burden on them. It also involves them in everything from the governance and how it is spent and the rate in that process. Engaging businesses throughout the process, as we have done to date and continue to do, will make our proposition much stronger. In something like Aberdeen, as you have indicated, it has struggled a bit to regain its confidence within the business community. Are you finding it even harder to engage with the business community? No, I do not think that that is the case. It is about having the dialogue and selling it to them in effect. At the end of the day, we have to show people that it will be advantageous to the area. I think that we can do that from the evidence that we have. We cannot get away from the fact that it is a consumer tax. It is not a business tax, it is a consumer tax. I realise that with the business we have to look at how it affects them and the collecting of it. At the end of the day, local authorities collect tax already. We have revenue and benefits staff who deal with those aspects. We have from our research shown that we believe that we can deal with it in that way. Businesses are paying various taxes to different Governments at different levels quite easily nowadays, particularly with the digital age that we live in. I do not think that that is surmountable by any means. We need to get back to the question around the causala support. I think that local authorities are reaching out to Government to say that we require the devolving of powers, whether that is what we are talking about today or other things, because local accountability is what it is all about going forward. We are on the ground in our local areas knowing where the priorities lie and where we need to put that investment. I have put my case for Aberdeen as to why we want that in other areas. However, we have to get back to the fact that we have to trust local authorities to be able to make those decisions on the ground. In our case, the three councils that are sitting around the table today, we believe that that is the way forward for us. If we had the powers to do it, we would be bringing it in, obviously in conjunction with the business discussions that we would have, but we see it as a way forward in order to meet the needs of our communities. There will be other local authorities that have a different perspective on that, but that is what local authorities should be about. It should be about us being able to deal with the situations that we have locally, to make sure that the investment that is required is going into those areas, because that is what will stimulate the economic growth that will support the communities that we are elected to represent. Can I just come in on that? This country does not have a very good history and real experience in terms of hypothecated taxation. It does not really happen in this country, but what we do have a debate around is ring fencing. Certainly, since I was elected to this Parliament in 2011, one of the constant themes that our debates are around is that central government has to come in to ring fence certain things, otherwise local authorities will not prioritise them. This committee is a culture committee, and the cultural sector often complains that, because they are not statutory, local authorities often cut their funding. Can you say that, because of this, there might be a lack of confidence that, despite what you are saying, that the money will not go where it is needed? That is why it has to be determined locally, because we are the ones who are accountable to our local communities. If that money is not being invested in the areas that are required for your local community, you will not be on the council for very long, as I would argue with you. We are accountable to the local community. I have argued that we are looking to build up our cultural sector, we are looking to invest in tourism, because we see that as a way of boosting our economy going forward, others will see that their areas of priority may be elsewhere. However, if statutory duties are increasing year on year, our finances are reducing year on year, there is less money to put into things that are non-statutory. That is why we need to look for ways in which local government has the ability to raise money that can then be invested in the priorities that we have. I will make a point on the ring fencing and priorities nature, because that is such a disparate picture across the country. Highlands tourism market is very different to Edinburgh's, to Aberdeens and Dundee's. We all have similarities but incredible differences. It would be impossible to go down a road of ring fencing the priorities to deal with the pressures in each individual area, because they are so different. Some of it is about place making, some of it is about infrastructure, some of it is about cultural support in the case of Edinburgh and others. It goes beyond any ability to say that it is this or that, it is a whole host of things. I think that the key point here is that, certainly for Edinburgh's to be successful, it is going to have to have that flexibility of change. It is going to have to have that flexibility of year on year, the industry and key stakeholders saying to us, last year it was really important that we invested in festivals to make a big show of that, but actually this year it is something else and we can redirect funds towards that. It is that flexibility of approach that gives us an ability and an opportunity to really sustain the success that we are aspiring to. I think that we have a couple of members wanting to come in with supplementaries, Jamie Greene and Kenneth. The UK hospitality and the STA submission to us said that local government, both individual local authorities and COSLA, has singularly failed to listen to the informed views of an industry that is close to and understands its customers. I quoted the FSB report that said that three quarters of businesses think that it would have a negative impact. Even the cabinet secretary for tourism herself said that we need more investment infrastructure, but we need to do it in a smart way and not do it in a way that does not hammer the tourism industry. If the industry is not in favour of it, if small businesses that it will affect are not in favour of it, it sounds like even the Government itself is not supportive, do you feel that you are fighting a losing battle in this? No, absolutely not. I will reiterate that we have been engaging with industry bodies and we will continue to engage. We are at a very early part of this whole process. We only had our launch two months ago and we are now going into a formal consultation process. I think that knee jerks need to be relaxed on both sides ever so slightly at the moment and let us have a much wider discussion, but no, absolutely not negative about it. Can I say, listen to the plethora of voices from businesses who are supporting, because in Edinburgh's case you have international players like Virgin Hotels that are entering the market, they are not operating right now, they are entering the market right now and they support our plans. Airbnb, covering a different set to the market, are supporting our plans. There are big Scottish-based businesses that do not have the international dimension of having experienced this levy elsewhere, who are supporting big players in our market. Although the industry bodies and some of the industry bodies are keen to play up this consensus, it actually does not exist. There is not a consensus in the industry and, while it might be one in four, it might be 50, 50, it might be two thirds, one third, but there are industry voices who understand the impact that this could make to supporting the sector. There are industry voices who understand the long-term concern that this is what is needed if we are to sustain that level of success, because for the industry themselves—and that is a point that has not been made—in Edinburgh right now, there are three hotels that have either just opened or being built on St Andrew's Square alone. There are hotels being built across our city. The market is expecting continued growth. If anything threatens that continued growth, the industry itself will suffer and it takes sustained investment to prolong that. I think that the longer-term view in the industry, those taking that longer-term view and those who understand the benefits to the community and the industry of that investment, are taking a far more pragmatic and positive and supportive approach. However, I have to say that, similar to Jenny, the industry behind closed doors, especially one-on-one with individual businesses, are taking a very different approach to the less-than-measured contribution by some of the industry bodies, which you will hear. Just to touch on the air, it has not been covered already. In its submission, UK hospitality says, in a quote, imposing an additional tax on visitors who choose to stay in commercial accommodation and make the greatest economic contribution to destination, ignores the pressures created by day visitors. In the case of Edinburgh, there are 18.5 million such visitors per annum. Those day visitors contribute to congestion. They use public toilets, drop litter and impact the roads as well. How would you address that particular issue? On the back of that, you talked about trying to make Edinburgh, Council McVea and all-year-round destination more. We have more people in November, understandably, in January and February. Is there a possibility that such a tax could even be seasonal to try to attract people in quieter times? I think that there is any doubt that, in some areas, the tax could be seasonal. If you go to some parts of the Highlands and you look for a tourist in the middle of December, you may not find one. However, with regard to simply the day visitor of which we have many, many thousands, the cruise ships provide day visitors after day visitor after day visitor, and the season is extending and extending. Maybe there are some discussions to be had with the shipping industry as to how we could levy some form of payment for these day visitors. You talked about your roads being churned up, what about camper villains? Whenever I go to the Highlands, that is where I tend to get stuck behind them. How do you levy the charge on them? Obviously, it is quite difficult. There is no doubt about it. You pick up your camper van in Edinburgh and yet they are driving away from Edinburgh airport and heading for the islands. It would be very difficult for us to form some form of tax—maybe Edinburgh can form a tax—and they would benefit from it, but we would not. However, the simple fact of life is that their costs on our roads are massive, their use of our toilets is the fact that they are dumping or they are having to dump their toilet waste in remote communities when there are no facilities for them. I think that we would just have to compensate for them by using different tourism funds. I was just going to say that we have covered both those issues in direct conversations with industry. In terms of seasonality, it was one of the things that we put on the table, asking them, would they prefer when room rates are £300 a night as opposed to £50 a night to apply then? The industry very clearly said that they wanted it to be as simple as possible, and they found it as simple as possible to apply all year round. That was a case where we were open to either suggestion, we listened to the industry, contrary to some industry bodies saying that we were not, and we progressed on that basis. Day visitors also became quite a big part of the conversation, because our industry quite rightly said that there is a big pressure caused by people coming in to the city of Edinburgh. The problem I think gets to when you try and look for an international example of this working anywhere in the world, and I can't find anywhere, and I think that everyone else was struggling to find somewhere as well. What we have done, though, is engage directly with the attractions of Edinburgh. The castle, for example, was part of our discussions with the industry and key stakeholders, so were the airport. We have continued those discussions with a number of people who have those visitor numbers going through them to explore what options there are. However, it almost speaks to the point about camper vans. There will be 101 things thrown into the debate as reasons that, unless it is squared off, we should not proceed. My view, and it is a broadly personal view, but I think that it was shared by most people, is that we need to establish the bulk of the issue in a pragmatic and sensible way, and that is to find the path of least resistance, which is night-time visitors at a small rate applying as simply as possible. That gives us a platform, and if we want to build on that in five years' time and ten years' time, that is absolutely fine. However, in the interim, I think that it is about making sure that we have that investment to invest in the industry. There may, for instance, be incentives for parts of the industry, not covered by immediate legislation, to voluntarily be part of it. If we are saying to those who are contributing, you get a bigger say in the priorities that the fund is going to. You may end up with people operating in the city of Edinburgh and other places who voluntarily start applying to get trying into that decision-making process. Exactly on your point, which was a very good point, will be very brief. We have local authorities who have pressures with camper vans and such like that, and COSLA is working with them and has been looking at the possibility of local discretion, where the hotel room rate fee per night would not apply. If they are using camping sites and areas like that, perhaps a model of that nature could be brought forward. Again, it comes down to local discretion. What would work in Edinburgh will not work in Argyll and Bute. It is all in the round, but, as you say, it is not a reason not to do it. It is a reason to find solutions to allow our communities to flourish. Thank you very much for those many more questions. I am sure that we would like to ask you. Unfortunately, we are out of time. Thank you very much to all our witnesses for coming along to give evidence today. We will be returning to this soon, taking evidence from the sector. Thank you very much.