 Good morning everyone and welcome to the sixth meeting of the local government and communities committee in 2018 because I mind everyone present to turn off mobile phones and his meeting papers are provided in digital format tablets may be used by members during the meeting. I have one apology to Kenneth Gibson who unfortunately can't make it but we are delighted that he has taken the MSP in his place as a substitute. Thank you for coming along, David and we moved to agenda item 1 which is the decision in taking business and private. Cymru mewn cyfaintwyr wedi gw bankruptio Ε Wand, gyfaintwyr yn drewlau'r cymotier deall hwn mae fawr iawn am y cyوںflu llawer. Foyn yw. Uwm yn losiol y gweithio. Oni насwmpud wirionedr math cyfaintwyr' i würd yn ail-goffi Gwness 이후, qued mercy Gun? Fe dod bryd Cymru ei ddysgu i chi gsinodwch yn gwy dlaadd i virtu, fe gen eelume y Gwmp gan hynny, iddyn nhw inspire. Rhyw i yn ateb yn he morality yn eilandn也. Mae Gouwil aiscernil yn tua teuluad o bragf? Scotland Federation of Small Businesses, Ian Melton President and Alistair Kirkwood Vice President, Scottish Assessors Association, Marianne Barker, non-domestic rates policy manager, Ross Henderson, assistant economist and Marina Curran statistician, Scottish Government and Richard Marsh director for consulting. You are all very welcome. I am sure that you will appreciate that so many witnesses were not going to ask any opening statements from you, but perhaps I will just start off with a really obvious question to ask in relation to the small business boning scheme. What measures would you actually use if you wanted to evaluate the impact of the small business boning scheme in relation to, for example, boosting economic growth? What kind of measures would you be looking at to evaluate that scheme? Who would like to go first on that? I think just briefly in my submission what we've asked the question what's the objective of the small business boning scheme. So you've raised the point they say how would you measure its contribution towards economic growth. I think before we start to go into the details of specific questions of what the scheme's achieved it's important in any evaluation to set out what was the scheme meant to do. So if the scheme is meant to boost economic growth then that's a very clear objective and if it's meant to help small businesses survive longer, thrive, establish themselves in rural communities then that's something we can evaluate as well. So before we went into the date and say how would we actually measure these things it's important to say what is it we're trying to measure. In terms of the contribution towards economic growth there's a vast reservoir of data that the Scottish Government has access to which links the performances of businesses and the different units within businesses, their turnover, their value added, their contribution towards the economy of Scotland, investment, the wages paid and how much they pay in business rates. Now we can access that data and we've tried to give you a couple of short examples how you can do that to say we can measure the characteristics of the businesses and the receipt of the small business boning scheme against perhaps those that don't, against those that might cross above or below the threshold and see what differences can be recorded. That would be a good first step. Anyone else? We'll have a discussion about what you believe the purpose should be of the small business boning scheme but two specific things to bear in mind is the impact positive or otherwise it's had in small businesses at the margins to keep them trading or expand or economic growth more generally. What would other witnesses be looking at to evaluate to see if it's been successful but you're quite right, Mr Marsh. We have to identify what outcomes we're trying to achieve at the outset before we can quantify some of that. Anyone else? I think that we welcome the committee's interest in the small business boning scheme. I think that we have to recognise the work of the Barclay review and what good work they did looking at ways to improve the rate system at large. I think that we have to remember that small business rates were one of the first things that the Parliament implemented. The reason for implementing such a measure was because there was evidence that business rates made up a larger proportion of smaller firms turnover than their larger counterparts. It was introducing an element of fairness into the system. We then saw similar schemes being established in England and Wales but we accept that it's perhaps about time that we look at the scheme and see if it's working as well as we can. We would encourage any reviewer of evaluation not just to be backward looking but also to look to the future. I ask the question how best can we support our small business community. If you look at our submission, we suggest three principles. First of all, the small business boning scheme should always be about small businesses. How do we best help small businesses to thrive? How do we ensure that as many businesses as possible thrive? We also would highlight that that this is a measure that directly affects local communities and local town centres or high streets, which are very important to MSPs around the table. How do we best ensure that this scheme and other elements of the rate system help our local town centres and local communities to thrive? Lastly, we would argue that any reviewer should have the broadest possible perspective. Consider where we are with the rise of the digital economy, with the rise of new ways of trading, with the rise of home-based businesses and in the context of a likely difficult economic period on the horizon. Can I ask someone else to quantify what success would look like in some of those things? Looking back as well as looking forward, you mentioned that a greater fairness vis-à-vis tax relief and support for small businesses and larger businesses was one of the key things for this form of rates relief. I think that you are saying that you believe that that has been achieved, but you have to look again at how you sustain that. I do not have the words again, but I will let you come back in relation to that. You also mentioned how small businesses survive and thrive. I think that that was the expression that you used. What data would we look at to make sure that those small businesses have survived and thrived? We could look at business population statistics. We know that the number of small businesses in Scotland is at a record high in the past few years, although they have just come down in the past year. We could also look at occupancy rates in town centres and high streets, as Mr Marsh mentioned. We could also, from our perspective, it will be really important in any study that we get qualitative data from real business owners to try and understand what difference the scheme makes to them. Okay. Thank you. Some other comments on that would be helpful. Marianne? By what the actual original intention was behind the small business bonus when it was introduced in 2008. It is, as Stuart said, because non-domestic rates constitute a higher proportion of overheads for smaller businesses than they do for larger. It was about introducing fairness into the rates system, and it was also about sustaining and growing small businesses. That was the original policy intent in 2008. Okay. How would the Scottish Government measure the success of small businesses in receipt of this relief, surviving and thriving? We have not about the evaluation. We have not made any predetermined decisions on how we will evaluate. I know when Mr Mackay was before the committee on 17 January, he made an offer for the committee to feed into that. We have not made any decisions on how we will evaluate. My analysis of colleagues might have some views as to the different methodologies that they could use, but we have not made any decisions as to how we will actually evaluate it. I mean, I see Ross Henderson wants to add to that, so I will leave my comments. Can you add on to what Richard was saying? I guess the approach that you take to any kind of policy decision is to do a cost-benefit analysis. You want to compare what were the results against the original objectives, maybe establish some sort of counterfactual in terms of if we hadn't implemented this policy, what might have happened. You probably want to establish maybe some non-market benefits of the policy, so if the committee considers it important to look at the importance of keeping high streets alive, people might value the existence of shops in their high streets, and you might look at that through qualitative measures, maybe like a survey of businesses, and that might be a kind of approach that you would take to evaluate it there. I suppose the thing that I am hearing is the approach that you would take. The small business bonus has been about for a few years, and I am a huge supporter of it, but all my support comes from anecdotal information. I apologise, Mr Marsh, for not having the evidence that you are looking for, but let me give you one bit of anecdotal information that I don't know if it will be captured anywhere. I have a new large gym set up in my constituency called New Life Gym. It did qualify for the small business bonus in Fineson, but, given the commercial rents and the success of that area, it wanted to expand and could not afford it. It did not qualify for the small business bonus, so it has moved to a fantastic new gym in Maryhill, which is breathing a bit of regeneration into an area of my constituency. I welcome that that has allowed that business to move from one part of Glasgow into my constituency and boost my constituency, but I do not know whether to view that as displacement or a success or how I view that within small businesses, whether that is relevant in the slightest or whether that is tracked more generally in the business response from companies out there who move about to seek those reliefs. Who is monitoring that kind of stuff? That would seem to be a reasonable and disoff success in my constituency that has happened. For Fineson, that is now thriving, but who is capturing that information? I can speak to the survey work that the FSB has done over the years. We have taken evidence from our members on a couple of occasions about the value of the scheme. It is great to hear about a business doing well in your constituency, but I highlight that most businesses are not mobile. They do not move about. They are rooted to their community and their high street. Our most recent survey work is detailed in our submission to Barclay, which I highlighted to the committee. We asked our members what would happen if the scheme was cancelled. About a fifth said that they would amend their plans for growth, and another fifth would consider downsizing. A similar proportion said that they would cancel plans for investment. Obviously, we are a small business membership body. We campaign on behalf of our members, but if evidence from small businesses is what you are looking for, we have done our bit. Plans for growth could mean taking on a second employee or a third employee, or a new part-time member of staff. Is any of that monitored, Mr Marsh? Your example about the gym is superb. We were talking earlier about an example that I had from my home town in Cacoddy, which is very similar to a larger small business on the high street that moved to a different property on a side street, because the rates were too high for them to expand where they wanted to. We need to do at the outset of this, is to put all this anecdotal evidence down. It is the vital part of the evaluation to set down what are the stories across Scotland of how that has the system worked in reality. I will put forward some disagreement in the panel, but one of the issues is will the scheme help to small businesses survive and thrive? Possibly. By far, the biggest impact I would suggest would be to encourage them to take a different property than they otherwise would have taken. They might be rooted in their community, but it was certainly encouraging to take a different unit to operate from a different premises than they might have otherwise done. Given that, what is the impact on their business? Does your gym actually operate better in that different unit than it would have taken if it was just an open market? That is a question to you, Mr Marsh. You would have to ask the gym. I am sure that they would have been delighted. I do not want to explore the anecdotal story that I gave, because that would have been diligent of myself with the constitution CMSP. It is just the point about their anecdotal story after the success of the small business bonus scheme for individual businesses, but it does not seem to be captured in a systematic way to make sense of the story across Scotland. There could be anecdotal stories but it has not been successful. Perhaps those are not being captured. How is the Scottish Government trying to capture some of that information? I have not done any formal evaluation of the small business bonus scheme since it was introduced. Again, we have a lot of anecdotal evidence in support of the scheme, but we have not done a formal evaluation. We have accepted the Barclay recommendation to do so. Before I let some other members in, can I ask the panel what would success look like? I am mentioning that it could be a business being able to expand, such as the anecdotal evidence that I gave to the committee. It could be taken on a second employee. What would success look like to the witnesses then? If we work out what success could look like, we could start to work out how we are going to monitor some of that stuff. There are two examples. Would you all accept that those could be two positive examples, allowing a business to grow rather than be squeezed out because of a market heating up on one part of the economy or taking on additional members of staff? Those could be some measures of success, but I would highlight that it is not all about growth. In an upcoming difficult economic period, we might need to play defensively with the economy. There are an awful lot of businesses out there that are single-person enterprises that do not have stratospheric plans for growth but should still be treated fairly by the rate system. One of the key measures for us is to introduce fairness into the system and make the rate system easier for small rate payers to navigate. There is clear evidence from our members that it helps our growing members to expand. We would caution against growth being the only measurement in the review. That would be there. Resilience during tough economic times and ability to continue to trade might be one of the—how you capture that, I am not sure, but that is one thing that we could use to capture evidence of the success. Fairness could be an overarching principle. What else are we looking at? What would success look like? The point that you raised is that the scheme has been in place for around 10 years, and it is probably fair to say that there has been no systematic evaluation of the scheme. That is deeply worrying. All the data that we have to look at what happens to these businesses has been sat there for 10 years. We have the data, as I said, to look at what are the wages paid by some of these businesses. Do they differ from businesses that do not receive the small business bonus scheme and so on? What I would say to you is that because the small business bonus scheme is almost a universal benefit, it is just given to businesses based on the rateable value of the property, I would actually be quite surprised if you saw things like wages rising or other good things happening to the businesses because you do not put that in as a condition of the scheme. If you actually wanted to put something in to say a condition of you receiving the small business bonus scheme would be you must pay your employees a living wage, it does not have to be anything traumatic in terms of form funding. You would just say, I would do it and have some kind of light touch with doing it. If you would do that, then you could measure whether the wages of businesses in receipt of the scheme increased more quickly than those who did not. Before I bring some of my colleagues in, and I am holding back, there are lots of technical questions that we think we should ask with the collection of data and the analysis of data. We will ask those, but I was just trying to take a few more generally from the scheme, but there are no additional comments before I bring some of my colleagues in. OK, give them some. I am just wondering why this scheme has not been evaluated until now. I do not get that, it has been around for 10 years. Why have we not monitored it? There has not been any big call for an evaluation and we have not done one, but we have accepted the Barclay recommendation to do so. Are you handing out an awful lot of money? Are we not even seeing if we are getting value for money? Surely some work has been done. Of course, I am going to leave that hanging a bit longer in case someone wants to grapple with that comment. Monica, I will take you in. It is just that Alexander Struth is quite patient, so I will go to Alexander first and I will take you in. Specifically on that point? It was just to ask Mary Ann further to Graham Simpson's question. Is this typical for Government policy of the scale in which not to be evaluated at 10 years on, or is there a particular reason why this policy has not been evaluated? I lead on rates policy in the Scottish Government, so I can only really talk on that. I am not an expert in any other policies of government where expenditure has been committed but not evaluated. Is that a good practice in terms of the treasuries green book? It sounds like evaluation is a fundamental part of policy making. I think that that is why Government very readily and very quickly accepted the Barclay recommendation to evaluate the scheme. I suspect that those are questions that we are going to have to ask with the political leads on this, as much as the officials as well. I think that we will certainly be returning to Alexander Struth. Like others, I am amazed and staggered that we have not had a review of this, because we have heard already in the evidence shows that it has helped businesses to thrive and survive. It has been a lifeline to some organisations and groups, and there is no real evaluation to be with that. However, my question is about business start-ups. Have we got anything with them, because they have been seen as the growth over the last decade to try to ensure that the small business start-up gets something going and that it is supported within its first years or five years? That kind of bonus scheme must have had a massive impact on that sector and that business organisation that is trying to be a small business start-up. I think that we know that Scotland has a lower start-up rate than the rest of the UK average. We need to try to address that problem. We need to understand that not every business will immediately leap into premises, but making more premises affordable and suitable for businesses is going to be a benefit for those starting up. We need to recognise that it is a property-based relief, so that it is not a property-based system. From our point of view, a measurement in relation to the number of businesses that are starting up could be a part of any review. Just reflecting on the calls for an evaluation, I think that I would highlight that ahead of the last revaluation, FSB was looking for the rate system to be examined in the round because we felt that there were many parts of it that could do with reforms. We welcomed the Barclay review. Naturally, we accepted its recommendation to look at the small business bonus scheme, but we would also say that there are other parts of the rate system that could be looked at more urgently than necessarily the small business bonus. Following on from that, it has been seen as an incentive for a business that is looking at property to try and then go into that process because it gives them the advantage over other businesses that would not necessarily fall into that category, that are looking at a specific premise. If you manufacture a keen baker and you are doing it out of your kitchen and you are making a decision about whether you are going to leave your kitchen and go and get premises, rates will be a factor. I think that if we want more people to take the leap from the home into the premises, then we need to keep this policy. The whole idea of reviewing it for them, what benefits do you think would come out of that? In our submission to Barclay and in other bits of representation that we have made to Government, what we are hoping is that, A, the value of the scheme is recognised, that we can try and address some of the imperfections of the scheme. From our point of view, we are aware of some smaller businesses that occupy more expensive property and who do not get help. We would like to see more help for them. In our representations to Barclay, we made the suggestion that businesses could keep their relief as they grow. In Mr Doris's case, at the point of revaluation, that particular business could have stayed in the premises in Finiston and kept their relief despite the revaluation. That has slightly changed into the business accelerator relief, but I think that the principle is the same. We would like to minimise any disincentive to the growth as a consequence of the SBBS. I will run through a few technical questions before the broad themes that I know that members want to explore. The Scottish annual business survey is one of the key ways that data is collected. That is why data is collected. It is an important survey. How should that be improved? The annual business survey is a UK-wide survey that is run by the Office for National Statistics. The Scottish Government fund has a boost to that to improve the results for Scotland. The survey contains information on, as Richard Marshall said, turnover, purchases, costs to business and rates. We do not publish the business rates figures, because we have carried out some comparison work between what we get from the survey against the actual rates income figures. Although, at the headline level for Scotland, the figures are what we would expect, given that the SBBS is not full economy, excludes the financial sector and parts of the agriculture and public sector. At the headline level, they are what we expect, but we would break it down by local authority area, for example. There are some stark differences between what that show rates income figures show for local authorities and what the SBBS figures show for rates. I would like other witnesses to think about that as well. You could ask additional questions or you could further boost the sample size to get a much greater understanding of what is happening regionally and locally. Have either of those things been considered by the Government? We already boost the sample. What could be driving the differences? It could be down to modelling. How the annual business survey works is that businesses are asked at the UK level for their company information, so they are asked to say that it was a big supermarket. They would be asked, what rates are you paying as the PLC? They will come back with that figure, and then it is modelled out to say the shops. There could be issues to do with the modelling, so there is that to be contained with as well as the sampling effects as well. Anyone else has any suggestions on how to improve that data or get a better understanding? I will make a very quick point. The annual business survey is a standalone survey that can produce results for you now. We have highlighted in our submission that it is fairly straightforward to get some results. They are imperfect. The other one that is not included in the annual business survey is things like car parks, which are in the rateable system that do not quite come into the system. There are also other surveys like the interdepartmental business register, which is a far broader survey. Instead of dragging data out, what you can do is link different sets of data together, so that you can take data from the assessors, from local authorities, and link the sets of data together to have a bespoke database for you to do your evaluation on. That is in addition to everything that Marina has just outlined. I will take your words for that, because that is it with my knowledge and expertise, but I would appreciate a Government response on that, Ross Henderson. We have had a chat with that, and we think that it is theoretically possible that we could link the assessor's data to the interdepartmental business register. At the moment, there is no unique identifier that lets us really easily do that. We think that there is some potential that we could use postcodes to try to link data that we have on the interdepartmental business register to the valuation roll data that we have around using the annual business survey. Because the annual business survey does not survey the same businesses every single year, so you would not be able to see if a business received relief in 2007, you would not be able to follow the result of that business over time. In terms of linking it to the annual business survey, I am not sure how much benefit would be there, but in terms of the interdepartmental business register, because that is a comprehensive list of all the businesses in the UK, you could probably do some analysis around business start-ups if they received the relief. How did that affect employment or turnover in that business? There is probably some potential around there, but it would probably require some sort of large manual exercise if that is ourselves at the Scottish Government and does that at our independent contractor. It would probably be quite a bit of work to do it, but we do think that it could potentially be possible. That is encouraging. I have now learned something today that looks like a suggestion that the Scottish Government is open to. We are going to ask about issues with the valuation role and how that could be improved and how that fits into all those kinds of things. We have got some assessors here today, so I am just wondering whether there are any issues with the valuation role and its challenges in assessing business rates and what do the assessors maybe presently think would need to be done to get more sophisticated and collect the data for better analysis? Yes, we have been silenced up till now. Essentially, we are providers of the base data on property assessment for taxation purposes, and that is where our role starts and finishes, I am afraid. The valuation role consists of the details of the 233,000 non-domestic properties in Scotland. It has an address, a unique property reference number, the proprietor tenant and occupier data, and the rateable value and the effective date that that rateable value came into effect. Really, that is it. It is a very property-related database. The issues around that are that if you are trying to compare that to business data, your business data, as has been referred to in earlier evidence, might relate to groups. A business will have more than one property, and I suppose that the challenge for those who wish to evaluate any sort of success or otherwise in relation to businesses is to link property data with business data. I will ask one more question and then we will move on. I want to make sure that we are covered all the ground. I am using terminology that I am not totally familiar with, but, to what extent would the Office of National Statistics virtual microdata lab a secure research service provide secure access to sensitive data? I do not know that links to what Mr Marsh was already talking about or not. How could that be used for assessing non-domestic rates? Are we talking about the same thing, Mr Marsh? It is a vehicle for accessing what we have talked about. I will move on now to Graham Simpson. It was really a question for Richard Marsh. Are you able to assess non-domestic rates using the information that is publicly available? With the significant caveat to say for what purpose are we evaluating this, what was this scheme trying to achieve, once you set that out, I do evaluations and appraisals of public policy and for the private sector all the time. You have to start with the data that you have, with the best data that you have. What I put forward here today is we have not used the data as well as we could have. I think what was put forward there was to say we could use the annual business survey, but that does not serve as the same company year on year. If you are moving from a longitudinal survey of tracking the same company over time, that is the premier league of evaluation. We are starting from nothing. What I would say is, the point that you made to say there has been no call to evaluate it, every penny the government spends should be evaluated at some point. The question is, given how much resource is going into a particular scheme or a policy, how often do you evaluate it and how much resource do you put in the evaluation? It could be a fairly light touch exercise, it could be something more in depth as being described. We could have at any point over the last 10 years drawn some simple data from the business survey, some simple data from the assessors, and drawn together to breach a broad conclusion as to what roughly is happening. So, yes, you could do some evaluation now on the data that we have. Would it be perfect? No, no evaluation ever is. You make the point that all the information is there, it's just nobody's collecting it or putting it in one place. How would that be done? Because it seems to me if you're going to evaluate a scheme, that's what you need to do. I think as the convener said, I'm going to try and steer away from any wider issues. I focus on a practical one. You have here a scheme that's important and is well resourced, but as Ian said there that the assessor's job quite rightly starts and finishes with the base data for commercial properties essentially. The people responsible for delivering the scheme effectively are local authorities. The people responsible for setting the broad policy is the Scottish Government. There's very little connect between those three areas. The Barclay review, and I think probably like most people, I was pleasantly surprised about how good the Barclay review was. I was pleasantly surprised by the response by the Scottish Government, which I think they deserve some credit for taking on board most of the suggestions. But one of the criticisms that was made was of the way the assessors put their data out, and I actually think the point Ian's say to say our position starts and finishes with this process that we're here to do, that's part of the problem. The assessor's data could be far better linked with the data local authorities hold and with the policies put forward every year by the Government, but because you have three different parts of the policy delivering their processes and delivering them well and professionally, the broader picture is simply missed. Just to develop that point that Richard made, I'm not sure about the criticism of how we put the information out. All the valuation roles for Scotland are available in a combined format through our joint website that the assessors operate through the saa.gov.uk. All the information is available in terms of our assessments of addresses and reference numbers and prior to tenant and occupier. That's available to private individuals and also to corporate bodies, and we also have a private area where we offer the facility for public institutions to download the whole valuation role for Scotland or parts of it, and they can then analyse that how they see fit. The information as I set out originally, just the address, prior to tenant and occupier, it also gives the rateable value and effective date that comes into place, and also the description of the property as well, so it'll say whether it's a shop, a workshop, a warehouse, a museum, whatever. Does anyone think that there's any value in the Government publishing a breakdown of total taxes in this scheme? Total taxes? Total taxes, total business rates paid? Some of those statistics are available already. I think that there are some statistics just reflecting on what's being said here. One of the key points for us in relation to Barclay and data sharing more generally is that more effective data sharing between tax authorities could have a range of benefits for ratepayers as well that you could see more accurate valuations in relation to statistics about the cost of this policy versus the total rates pot. I think that one thing that I would be careful about is talking about the notional cost of this policy. The assumption is that if you got rid of this policy, you would get every single penny back. There would be no additional administrative cost and we wouldn't replace it with anything at all. I think that we have to bear in mind that a relief of this kind exists elsewhere and everywhere else in the UK. Andy Wightman wanted to follow up on some matters in relation to the assessors. Do you want to take that forward just now, Mr Wightman? I haven't had a broader range of questions yet. It seems to me that there's a distinction between evaluating a scheme of tax relief against the objectives that were set for it at the outset and evaluating a scheme as to the impact that it has had, regardless of what the objectives were at the outset. Mary Ann, you said that the objectives of the scheme and why it was introduced were that it was noted that smaller businesses paid a higher percentage of their turnover in property taxes. Presumably, a formal evaluation of the scheme would simply look at whether that differential still exists or not. Has it been evened out and that would be the end of a formal evaluation against policy intention? Or am I missing something that was set at the beginning as well? No, so I also mentioned that it's about sustaining and growing small businesses as well. So the sustaining and growing is the tricky part in essence. I mean, the national audit office produced a report in 2014 called Tax Reliefs, which highlighted the quantum of tax reliefs provided by HMRC in that instance. It was very critical of the lack of evaluation that had been done as to the benefits of those, some of which have been around for decades, in fact. In fact, it's nothing unusual that the Government doesn't evaluate tax reliefs. I've got a few questions. The first is, how should we do it? I mean, I was sitting in the economy committee yesterday talking to people from Scottish Development International about their recent evaluation of foreign direct investment. They were evaluating relatively small sums of money, quite comprehensively, and they did that through a tendering process with the private sector. The private sector came in and evaluated it and told them how much benefit it was to the Scottish economy and all the rest of it. Should this be something—this review of the SBBS that's done by Tender, the private sector? Should we involve Audit Scotland in this? Or should it be done wholly internally by the Scottish Government? I don't think that I've got any strong views. I think that the way that those sorts of exercises are usually done in my experience is that they are put out to Tender. If the Scottish Government, I would imagine, would feed into that exercise, we could also have, even before that, there could be a formal Scottish Government consultation on the methodology of any review. I think that there are a number of ways that the Government could go about it. Okay, that's helpful. I'm also interested in evaluating it because it is a property tax, so taxes, tax reliefs and taxes on property have impacts on properties, they have impacts on property values and rental values. One of my anecdotal stories is that a retail property in Musselborough, when the threshold for the 100 per cent relief was raised to £15,000, it was an empty unit, it just charged the new owner £15,000 in rent because they were paying no rates. There were no better off than there were before when they were paying £10,000 in rent and £5,000 in rent. They were still paying £15,000, it's just that the little £15,000 went to the landlord. I'm just wondering whether we could include an evaluation of where the millions of pounds that the Government is spending to give local authorities compensation for not receiving those rates, where that money is going, how much of it is just ending up in the pockets of landlords. Is that something that we could do with the assessor's data and with data from the registries of Scotland possibly? That's certainly an area that I think is worth exploring. There has been research in the past elsewhere in, for example, England, on the impact of enterprise zones, where a rating relief for 100 per cent was granted for five years, and the research suggested that a significant amount of that benefit actually passed to the owner of the property rather than the occupier of the property. Now, there's no research that I'm aware of in Scotland as to whether a similar outcome takes place, but that would help to inform any debate on any evaluation of any relief scheme, in my view. Just to reflect on the point of view of Tyler, many small businesses own the property in which they occupy, so they wouldn't be inbound in that sort of scenario. Occasionally, the argument that landlords are getting benefit from the small business bonus comes up. We've not seen any evidence of that on any sort of wide-scale. We would make the point that, if the small business bonus was going to be abolished tomorrow, I don't imagine that landlords would cut their rents in half, that we need to be careful that, when we make those particular arguments, any evaluation needs to recognise the difficult situation that smaller firms have when they're dealing with their landlords. That might be an interesting area for the committee or another to look at, which is the position of smaller firms when they're dealing with large landlords. I agree with Stuart that I think that I'll be slightly sceptical about the benefits being passed to landlords, but, at the broader point, we shouldn't just focus on the occupants of the commercial property. I think the point in evaluation should look at the impact on landlords and how it's impacted on commercial property markets is absolutely vital. Yeah, just really coming back. My position as a lands valuation assessor is just that I assess property for local taxation purposes. I am aware that this research has been carried out elsewhere. If the committee are interested in evaluating the impact of a particular relief scheme, then that might be an area that they wish to follow. The point that Stuart made about many small businesses are owner-occupied is very true, but, of course, you've got to remember that at each revaluation for non-domestic rating purposes, we are assessing the annual value of all properties, whether they're owner-occupied or not. If, for example, SBBS does mean that the benefits of some or all of that relief do pass to the landlord in way of higher rents, if that is the case, then the next revaluation, those higher rents, will inform the assessors who determine the rateable values. There is possibly a cycle of cause and effect here that might be worth exploring. Okay, that's helpful. As I understand it, the valuation will also include whether the rate payer is the occupier or the landlord. That's narrated in the role. So we know all that information. Just some technical questions on the role. You mentioned that it's available online, and I've analysed it. In fact, you've been very helpful in sending me some of the raw data to do analysis on short-term lets and non-domestic rates. Is there any reason why it just can't be made available as a block download for anyone to look at? It seems to me that when we're evaluating public policy on things like tax reliefs, as many people analysing the data as possible is a no-bad thing. Yes, we do provide bulk download facilities to bodies who approach us on that. I'm not just talking about making it available on the website for any citizen to download it. I think that we do actually. You've caught me at a point here where we do have selective download procedures available to the public. I'm not quite sure precisely today how much information, whether there's any limitation on that. We've obviously got a quarter million records, so there might be, you know, capacity issues as well on that. I don't know why. We're really just to say that it is available. I should qualify this that we have been researching some of the data protection issues associated around the valuation role. However, the current position is that we will make the valuation role available for minimal costs, whether it costs to provide a CD or whatever data format that is available. There isn't, for the general public, a general download facility within the website, although there are facilities of that sort available to government users, et cetera. Okay, then. Okay, then. Mr Marston's work on that. Mr Marford's had something there. This is the point that I was making about the data. The portal that the assessor has, the Scottish Assessor's Association with the Portline, it's very good. And if you're involved in the assessing of commercial property, it's a great place for you to go. But there are real limits in how you can analyse that database. So it's based around the address, the addresses of the property. That might not be the way you want to start. Someone might want to say, well, my valuation of my pub in Fife, I want to know how do I stack up against pubs in Glasgow or somewhere in the Highlands? And then I might want to know something about the ownership. Am I getting a fair deal? I'm going to say that because these are the kind of questions that occurred to me in the kind of some of the limitations. Now, as you said, it's the metadata set behind it. All of it is available and anyone can download it tomorrow, but they'd have to go in section by section, address by address. There shouldn't be any reason why I couldn't click a button and get the metadata and download the whole thing. Throw it out to some university's hackathon. The kids seem to love playing around with this kind of data, but the real value comes when you have as many people as possible crawling over the data and drawing out interesting messages. And that might have nothing to do with commercial properties. It could be something actually no one around this table is actually thought of yet. But that's when the real value comes in and possibly these, the bright young things that go to these hacking events, they come up with really good ways of presenting the data in a fresh way that's kind of quite visual and stimulating. Lester Moulton, yes? We do already have a download facility so you can download all the details of all the pubs or all the shops or whatever it is in a particular locality. That's available already, but it's still restricted to the data that the law requires us or mandates us to publish, which is the description of the property address provided that occupy a rateable value. So that is already available. But we are also working on ways of actually widening access, but again, it's a resource. And there are also data protection issues. For example, once you get into the sole trader position, you're in a personal data situation. So, you know, we're working with, we've certainly been working with the information commissioner to and also advisers on how much data we can make available, because in my view, our view of the association, the more data that we have is available, the better. Just a small point in relation to this, you know, the assessor's data will show you how many properties could notionally apply for the small business bonus, but we'll not have the data that is held by the local authority about the number of properties. So, for any meaningful analysis of the kind that we're discussed, you would have to have multiple datasets combined. From a rate payer's point of view, that has been a bit of a frustration. The gap, as Mr Marsh puts it, between the various parts of government involved in rates policy. Okay, and just finally, is that where the other members want to come in? Oh, sorry, Mr Henderson, you need to be more clear than you want to speak. I said it's a small point just on the terms of the transparency of data. As a convener will know that we had committed to publish details of relief recipients as part of the Barclay review, and that'll be in terms of kind of providing details of more transparency around the data on reliefs provided to rate pares, that'll be something that we'll publish as forthcoming. That was going to be my final point. I noted that, and is it my understanding as well that it's intended that information then be displayed on the role? The evaluation role has a set statute. Requirement relief isn't part of that, you need to change the law if you wanted to do that. If you wanted to do it relatively quickly, which I think it's fair to say that the Scottish Government wants to implement Barclay quickly, it would not link to the valuation role, it would be a separate entry. But there is a unique identifier for each property, which would allow a linkage to be done. That's what I was going to say, because when you publish this data, it'll have that, you can identify it. If anyone's got the evaluation role, they can link it out. Yeah, we're not sure exactly how the format is, but certainly we would envisage that there should hopefully be a linkage across with the valuation role data. Okay, thanks very much. Kei Gery Gwynorth Good morning to the panel. Stuart McKinnon, in terms of the FSB's own research, you alluded to in your opening remarks that nearly 20 per cent of your members said that if the scheme was cancelled, they would cancel any planned investment. On the same data set, 18.3 per cent would amend plans for growth, which is obviously quite concerning in the context of town centres. That survey was conducted in August, September 2016, with 960 responses. Can you just talk us through the process for gathering that data, how you gather it out with your members? Is it done online? Do you go door-to-door? How is it done? As FSB membership organisations, 17,000 or so members in Scotland, we have perhaps about two thirds of our members, we have email addresses for them, we invite them to take part in surveys on any number of issues for that particular survey. We invited our members that occupied properties to give us views on their overheads, looking at the small business bonus specifically. That particular data set went to inform our submission to Barclay, and we followed that up with some qualitative work with individual business owners, asking them about what would happen if it was cancelled. In those sorts of discussions, our members often talk about the very tight margins that they are on. While average savings of £2,000 to £7,000 might not seem a lot to some people, it can really be the difference between continuing business and closing down. What you have to remember is that, for a business to make £2,000, it could have to turn over up to £6,000 or £7,000. In those strained economic times, with limited household spending, that would be a real challenge. FSB has carried out a bit of research on how bank closures are affecting town centres. I know personally from one of the towns in particular that I represent, that bank closures had a detrimental impact on the town itself. I know that you have made a recommendation to the UK Government earlier this year to stop communities from being left without a banking service in your submission to the work that is on-going in the commons at the moment. With regard to your recommendations, you talk about the review needing to look at ways to ensure that all sorts of smaller operators get proportional help. Interestingly, you also point to looking at how it can support local places. Do you think that a review needs to look at the local economic conditions in an area? For example, does an area suffer from adverse rates of deprivation? What about child poverty levels? What about new towns? Do we need to target any appraisal of the scheme as it currently stands and look at how it is helping to drive inclusive economic growth? We could absolutely take a place-based approach. What we have to recognise is that, because it is a relief on lower value properties, areas that are poorer will have more lower value properties and will get disproportionate help already. If you are going to go further and look at ways of injecting new life into high streets and town centres that have perhaps lost a bank branch or another local community, you could look at either changing the small business bonus or topping up the small business bonus. I know that, in some of the follow-up work from Barclay, they are looking at additional measures that could help to augment the effectiveness of the small business bonus to try to address town centre and high street issues. For instance, could we look at problem units in town centres and say that, in these exceptional circumstances, we will give a rate relief for this empty bank branch so that a local business or a local group of businesses could take it over and run a business incubator? I do not know if we are going to build this local amenity. If we talk about town centres, one of the key issues that public bodies point to in relation to relocating services in town centres is that they argue about business rates too. Could we ensure that our business rates policy encourages more of our public bodies and people like banks, for example, to continue to have a presence in our local communities? Can I just ask a final point on that? This is a very specific local point with regard to how the policy works in new towns, whereby you might have, as I do in Glennothys, a private company that owns the new town itself. Has the FSB carried out any research with regard to how new towns specifically can be supported in terms of driving that growth and getting the startups that Alexander Stewart alluded to? Or is it something that you might do in the future? I will see what we have in terms of feedback from members in new towns and see if there is any data specifically. Of course, this is not just a relief for shops, and it is not just a relief for high streets offices and all sorts of other properties. We cannot just get fixated on the high streets, but it is so important that whenever there is an empty unit, we must stretch every city to make sure that it is filled. If we can stick with town centres, over the period of policy, you have carried out a lot of surveys with your members at 17,000. Are you getting a sense in that period where members have been recipients of a small business bonus scheme? Are they more or less optimistic about the vibrancy of their high street or town centre? Are you getting that kind of feedback in your survey work? In our submission, we highlight that we cannot look at this policy in isolation. The world is changing. We have seen the rise of the digital economy. We have seen a range of challenges, bank branch closures, a range of large and public and private bodies pulling out of our town centres on our high streets. Independent businesses cannot win the fight for the high street on their own. They need the support of big organisations and efforts, such as the small business bonus, to make units in our town centres more attractive in comparison to staying at home or a warehouse on the edge of town. It is not a silver bullet for town centres on high streets and not every property in a town centre or local high street will get the small business bonus. However, it is a tool in our armory and that many of our retail members have spoken about how important it is, especially when they face enhanced competition for online businesses. What has been quite encouraging is that, when Derek Mackay, the Cabinet Secretary, came to the committee, he is quite open to the remit and the breadth of analysis. We have touched on other policies that affect small businesses and town centres. I am mindful that the Scottish Government has a policy of town centres first. Is there anything that the panel is aware of in terms of how tax policy sits within the overarching policy of promoting town centres and if local government and other public bodies are playing their part? I suppose that what I am saying is that we have a policy of town centres first, but how do we actually drive that? The Scottish Government's town centre review talked about many believers that the Scottish Government and other public bodies had to turn around our town centres or high streets. One element of that was business rates. Disappointingly, we still see a lot of public bodies not investing as we might like to, both reserved and devolved in town centres and high streets. If we are going to turn around our town centres and high streets, we need to make them affordable, accessible, clean and safe, and that requires an awful lot of work. I think that the rates policy in isolation is not going to turn places as well, but a sympathetic rates policy is a necessary but not sufficient condition to turn around our town centres and high streets. One of the themes that have been raised with me in my past as a local councillor and now as an MSP is that for those very small businesses where you have maybe got one or two people, it is about having the capacity to train staff, to engage in social media, to be involved in marketing. I know that in many towns across Scotland, business improvement districts have been seen as a vehicle, so Hamilton, where I am based, is a big town. From your survey work with members, are you able to look to see any synergy between the benefits derived from small business bonus scheme, where your members are also part of a bid area? You will still contribute to the bid, even if you pay the small business bonus. We broadly support bids where they are business led and where the businesses are making the decision about where the money is spent. Bids have an important role in town centres, in high-street areas. Obviously, they do not necessarily need to be geographic. They could set up a sectoral bid. The relationship between bid functions and local government functions is a bit of a grey area. I suppose that is where some of our members have voiced concerns, but I think that you could make the argument that bids are more attractive for smaller firms if they are getting this relief, because ultimately paying the bid levy is more affordable. Last point for now. FSB has 17,000 members. There must be about another 87,000 or so. Businesses and small businesses benefit from the small business bonus scheme. We have an indication of your members. Is there anything that the panel can say about non-FSB members? If we get any idea of their views on it, would we perhaps see different results and feedback if we were able to capture the views of everyone who is a recipient of the scheme? Can I put in the Government here to address that? Anecdotally, the Scottish Grocer's Federation, for example, was recently in touch because they were interested in the evaluation. They have a lot of smaller members, too. Obviously, we engage with the bigger business organisations as well as the smaller ones to get their views. Obviously, their membership can be quite broad and quite wide. Even though FSB has 17,000 members, some of those may have several properties as well. The way that the small business bonus scheme works—someone with maybe three or four properties—could be getting a small business bonus on that. The 17,000, although I know that some of those might not have properties, could represent a disproportionate number of properties as well. The difficulty is the link between properties and business, which we have talked about at length already. Andy Wightman, did you want to close on the back of some of that? Yes, just a few supplementaries on that. The FSB, for the Barclay view, was a 960-year respondent, so out of our membership of 17,000, that is about 5 per cent. Did you wait for that? Or was that just anybody who wanted to could reply to it? Or did you try and wait for geography type of business? No, we did not wait for that particular survey. We wanted a good response rate, so we did not wait on that occasion, although I can provide the full survey data to the panel if that would be useful. It might be of interest—I am sure that it would be of interest to the review of the small business bonus scheme, because my concern would be—if you take 960, you take a 5 per cent return, that might not reflect the broad views of the small business bonus scheme, but it might reflect disproportionately people in Glasgow or people with shops or whatever. Absolutely. There are 360,000 businesses in Scotland and 100,000 recipients of the small business bonus scheme. As Mary Ann points out, only a share of them will be our members. I think that if you were going to do an evaluation, you would get as many businesses as possible. I would highlight that the FSB has more members than any of the other business membership groups, and that regularly we see data sets presented that are far smaller than that. I think that a sample size of 900 plus is a reasonable one in that particular circumstance. Okay, thank you. Okay, David Torrance. Okay, I will ask a couple of questions. I want the follow-up point, but before I ask any other questions from the committee members just now. Yeah, just briefly, thank you, convener. I think that one of the reasons that Barclay review gave for saying that there should be a review of SBBS was that there is some misuse of the scheme as apparent. Is anyone able to say a bit more about that? How widespread it is, and what we, is it misused? So, I can explain the rationale. One of the things, they made a recommendation on a particular one around self-catering properties, that there's an abuse there. For example, if I have a second home, I may claim that it is a self-catering property to avoid payment of council tax, get it put onto the non-domestic rates rule by the assessors, and then claim small business bonus. Barclay suggested a particular reform, which the Scottish Government has accepted, to close off that potential loophole. They also Barclay made a separate recommendation about empty property relief, whereby if I have a small empty property, I would tend to claim small business bonus and not pay rates, whereas a neighbouring property that was larger and out with the small business bonus would be paying a greater proportion because it would only qualify for empty property relief. So, again, Barclay made a recommendation that properties that are under a certain threshold and empty should not be able to claim small business bonus. I'm sure that there are other loopholes that possibly other people may wish to talk about. Mr Milton, just before you came in on that, because that was really helpful, Monica. That's exactly what I was going to ask about. I would contend that there might be businesses out there where you, in the property, are getting 10 per cent rate relief in empty properties, so you open a business but you're not really trading. You really are just doing it as a sleight of hand to get the small business bonus. That's a legal abuse of the system, but it would still be an abuse of the system. Is that a situation that anyone would recognise, or anyone would be keen to have either assessors, local authorities or government interrogate? Mr Milton? I think that abuse might be a strong term to use. I think that there may be some restructuring of some business operations to benefit from a small business bonus scheme, but I don't have any quantitative data on this, but assessors have experienced situations where a single business entity with maybe a large property has subdivided and restructured into several smaller separate entities that are separate rateable occupiers, and therefore what was a large assessment to say some warehouse at £40,000 RV rateable value would end up in several smaller units with lower values that would then possibly benefit from relief through a small business bonus scheme. There is some acknowledgement that that has happened, but we can't quantify that in terms of numbers. Perhaps you should have rephrased that to gaming the system rather than abuse, but I've heard anecdotal information again. If you're not collecting the data a certain way, it can only be anecdotal information that you receive in relation to that. I'm also just wondering about the thresholds in relation to the current rate relief system. I was just having a quick look there, and it was much more tapered and graduated. I was looking back in 2014, what was the rate relief in 2014, and it was up to £10,000 for rateable value. It was 100 per cent relief and then up to £12,000 it was 50 per cent, up to £18,000 it was 25 per cent. It's currently 100 per cent, up to 15 per cent and 25 per cent, up to 18 per cent. That's much more of a cliff edge, if you like. I'm just wondering if anyone's given consideration or done an analysis of those thresholds and the tapering of the system and how that does or doesn't distort the small business bonus scheme and how it's meant to work in practice in supporting sustaining and growing businesses, surviving and thriving. Has there any consideration been given to why it's now everything or 25 per cent or nothing rather than more graduated approaches that used to be by the Scottish Government? In designing any scheme, any tax relief, any benefit, you have to balance affordability with helping the maximum number of recipients, so that's one of the reasons why the 50 per cent band of relief disappeared. Elsewhere in the UK there are different variants of the scheme, for example in England there is a taper, so you could get anywhere from 100 to 0 per cent relief, you could get 56 or 47, but I suppose the payoff is that their scheme, the 100 per cent relief, ends at a rateable value of £12,000, so there's various models that could be in place for the scheme. Obviously, as part of an evaluation, we would be open to considering any recommendations made. What about Mr McKinnon? I'm just wondering, or even the assessors, because if you're assessing a property it can't possibly be an exact science, so it's £15,000 and £20, I bet it's not, I bet it's either £15,000 or it's £15,500, because when you get to those good areas and margins there's a significant difference in the benefits to the property or the property owner or business that you're assessing, so would tapering be more helpful either to small businesses or to the assessors in having a more finesse system? We would have to go and do some research with our members about a preferable system. Intuitively, tapering sounds like a sensible idea. Maybe tapering upwards from our current thresholds rather than tapering below the current thresholds. One key point that I would make though is that we need to get the administration of the system right and working. When the Scottish Government introduced measures to try and cushion the revaluation last year, local authorities across the country had a huge amount of difficulty implementing those measures, primarily because of their relationship with their IT supplier. We can invent the most perfect tapering and make all sorts of tweaks to the system, but if we don't have the capacity to implement them, it's going to be a paper exercise. Mr Milton, Mr Cipp, I'll take you in a second, Mr Marsh. If you don't have to comment on it, I'm just wondering if you can do any comments on it. I would say that the convener is quite correct that there is a very sharp focus at the thresholds and, in particular, assess or see that regularly in appeal situations, where there is a focus on appeals at that threshold and clearly an ambition to have values below the threshold. The cliff-ed nature of the relief is one that we do see on a regular basis from the rate pairs that we speak to. There is clearly a significant difference between receiving 100% relief if your value is just below the threshold or a rates bill that you would receive if you are just above the threshold. The other aspect that flows from that is that rate pairs below the threshold tend to lose sight, if you like, of the rating system and perhaps not appreciate the impact of thresholds. We do meet with rate pairs who were perhaps below the threshold at the previous revaluation are now above the threshold and did not appreciate the impact of that cliff-ed nature of the scheme. We do see those effects on the people that we meet on a daily basis. I appreciate that you put that in the public record. Mr Marsh, my apologies to what you have done. Very briefly, the point that was made earlier by some of the members was that anything that we do on this policy has to take into account the very much wider issues for town centres. The small business bonus scheme has the ability to make a dent and that is pretty limited against some of the stuff that is going on. I was quite caught by what was said earlier with the guys at the point you are making now. I am not sure if I caught this correctly, but there was a reference to say the assessors, I am not trying to be too critical of what you do, but the assessors have a mandate and we are talking about we need more legislation to make people put stuff out into the public domain. When you do the work to look at the rates when publishing recipients it will have a unique property reference number, which is also on the assessor's roll. My head just spins with this only in Scotland. If we were sat around a table and this were a limited company, we have got these guys that have this fantastic set of data with a property reference number. You are going to be publishing recipients with a property reference number. People have a legal obligation to produce a certain type of data in a certain way, but could we not just say that the biggest benefit to helping to improve public policy is published in quite a different way and for those data sets to be linked up? If you have a second point to make, I am absolutely going to let you make it, but I just want for clarity, is that going back to Mr White's line of questioning about having all the information out there in a systematic way? We were going to ask before we wrapped up questioning here as if all that information is already available and is not breaking data protection rules. How does disaggregating that information into more localised, usable, bite-sized chunks? How can that compromise data protection? Is it that area that you were focusing on about that release of information, Mr White's line of questioning? It absolutely is. The data could be released. There is very good work done by the assessors, so I do not want to try to point to that. No, we should let them answer, but is it that area? We should let them answer if it is that area. I will let you back in, but it is that specific area. What are the barriers? If the information is out there already, it is all publicly available, but it is not user-friendly, it is not disaggregated, but it is technically all out there. Mr White was asking the question whether data protection protocols were a barrier to release, but if it is already out there, where are the barriers? The situation is at present that we do not have the facility to do a bulk download on demand. People can download data, but at present there are limitations on that. I think that we need to do some more development. Of course, there is always a resource issue on that, but in terms of the reference number, all our properties bear what is the corporate address gazettears code. Local authorities are responsible for maintaining the master list of addresses for properties throughout Scotland, and that includes a corporate address gazettears reference number. That number is also carried on our database and should be carried on other public databases. There should be reasonable read across on that. It may be that there is still a little bit of research or rather a resource required to open it up to complete download facilities, regardless, but I do not think that there is any real barrier to doing that. A technical resource is not restricted by legislation or data protection, it is restricted by the technology that is there, the system that is there and the resources to interrogate that in a way that we could get the information that Mr Whiteman was referring to. Is that a reasonable… Yes, for the valuation role data that we are applying to publish. Mr Marsh, I apologise, you wanted to make an additional point there. My point was that there was a limited company and you were in charge of the board. You would be saying get together and produce that database next week. The cliff edge and the valuations when we have £12,000, £15,000, it is because they are nice round numbers. Because the system is disparate, we produced a chart on the back of our submission just on the very basic annual business survey data showing the burden of business rates is higher for smaller companies in the hospitality sector. The medium-sized companies are at a squeeze level, but no one has got a joined up set of data to say when we set the thresholds at the following levels, this is what it did to the burden to businesses based on their profitability, their turnover and the business characteristics. Those databases are separate from one another because the system is ministeried by three separate entities. Okay, it was your line of question, Mr Whiteman. My apologies, was your answer? It was just a couple of slightly different points. On that point, Mr Marsh, I am struck by that. I think that when we set income tax rates and things, we look at who benefits and all the rest of it. On the broader point of the evaluation, which is what we will look at today and how to do it, I noted that Northern Ireland has evaluated its small business rate scheme. It is not exactly the same. What other evaluations have been done specifically of tax relief systems—it need not be non-domestic rates, it could be other tax relief systems—in the United Kingdom that we could learn from in terms of how to do it that represent best practice. Is anyone aware of any? I made reference to an HMRC study into enterprise zones. I could provide the committee with a reference for that. That would be helpful. The other point that I was going to note—and this is not so much to do with the evaluation, although maybe it is—is that we have been talking about thresholds for reliefs. Obviously, another way of doing that is to get rid of all reliefs and just change the rate setting, the rate itself, instead of being a flat rate of 48.6 pence or whatever it is now. Have it like we have income tax, 10 pence for the first £10,000 of rateable value, 20 pence for the next £10,000 or whatever. Those are tax design issues. Do you think that tax design issues should be included in an evaluation? Or do you think that the evaluation should strictly look at why we set that up and have achieved the ambitions that we set for it? In our submission to Barclay, one of the ideas that we suggested was an idea like a tax threshold for a business or any business. The first £1,000 of its RV would be rates-free and everything above that. That, as a concept, was scouted by Barclay. I think that if we are going to try and get on, then we have to accept that we are probably going to have to try and narrowly look at the small business bonus as it is, and not look at absolutely every opportunity to change the tax system into another sort of tax system. I think that we would, in relation to all the various… I do not think that, certainly, I have heard no indication from the Scottish Government that they are up for a large variety of poundages. It will be up to the Scottish Government to decide what is in scope when they develop this particular review. Mr Henderson? On that, part of the Barclay review that we did was considered, or in Annex C, there was some modelling done on setting marginal rates of tax within business rates. The Barclay review did not make that a recommendation, so I guess that would be the position on that. Just getting back to the question of data, my understanding was that the Scottish Government announced the creation of a thing called the Scottish Land Information System that Regards of Scotland is going to do. It has launched something that is very minimal, but that was I think conceived to try and link up planning data, land use restrictions, ownership, occupation, valuation, et cetera. Is that the kind of system, Richard Marsh, that you were alluding to, a set of joined up data that would allow more sophisticated analysis of properties in this instance and businesses? I am not hugely familiar with the source that you have said, but in principle, yes, that is what I am alluding to. Our website senior responsible officer has been engaged with a project called Unify. I forget all the various acronyms, but we have been at the table and we wish to continue to be at the table. We know that we are guardians of very valuable data, and our position is that, if that data can be used legally and effectively, the public person is paid for it to be produced, so there should be benefit providing that we can tick all the legal boxes. Can I just check before we close up the session here, the data that you have that does it allow the assessors to ensure that someone is not inappropriately making small business bonus because the aggregated value of their businesses and properties takes them above that threshold? Is there a cross-check done on applications to make sure that that is not the case? That would be the responsibility. I do not want to say to a passing sort of answer, but I am afraid that that would be the responsibility for the living authority who actually does award the relief. The relief is granted on application and it would up to the directors of finance of the 32 local authorities. I am not familiar with exactly what arrangements they have to make sure that fraud doesn't take place. I think that Government officials are going to come in on that, but can I just check before I pass to Mr Henderson? Do you have the data that would allow you to cross-check that, or allow someone else to cross-check that? Does the data exist to let you do that? I think the assessment role that the living authority uses, which is a mirror of the valuation role, but it will have the actual responsible person for paying of rates. That can sometimes be slightly different from the occupier data that we have just because, for some reason, there could be a difference between the occupier and whoever is being assessed for the rates. The assessment roles are the source. I believe that Barclay made recommendations about information on reliefs being available, and assessment roles might be published. That is the direction of travel to avoid fraud. I would support that, Mr Henderson. Just to answer your question about whether the bill likes—we have a dataset of all the individual properties in Scotland and how much relief is awarded to each individual property. Can you check if a business has a combined value of over £15,000? What happens is that the valuation role does not really have a consistent set of business names. It varies across different local authorities, the naming conventions that are given to different businesses. We will know that Morrison's, for example, uses a different name across different local authorities, but you can use various methods of checks to look into whether a business is claiming a small business bonus scheme where it should not be. That is something that we could ultimately do. I am not raising it as an issue, but I am just raising it to find out if it is an issue, as there is any concern in relation to that or am I just—I have got that wrong. There is an issue with not just the small business bonus, but generally there is no Scotland-wide database of ownership and ownership of property, which causes all sorts of problems in the allocation of relief, as I understand it, not just the small business bonus. We were talking about High Street and Town Centre issues earlier. Who owns that ghastly falling-down property in our High Street is as much of a concern to many small businesses. At present, many local authorities simply do not know, and that is a related problem to the issues that we are talking about today. Just before we end this session, I will give people the opportunity, because Scottish Government review is going to happen. Any thoughts, last opportunity, what the remit of that should be, what stakeholder should be actively involved in that review and what the timing of that should be? There are three separate things. I am absolutely Scottish Government officials who might wish to comment on that, but I also appreciate that that might be a decision that is made by the Government, the Cabinet Secretary, rather than yourselves. I am happy for you to comment on that if you wish, but are there other witnesses, any comments in relation to that, just before we finish this evidence session? The points that I make is that we want any review to focus on the best ways to support Scottish small businesses, the best way to ensure that they are treated fairly by the rate system. In terms of timing, I would make an argument that there are more urgent elements of the rate system that need to be addressed before we look at the small business bonus. We talked today about some of them. We would suggest that the timescales that Barclay initially recommended would be sensible. Okay. Any other comments on that? No, Mr Milton. If I may, just… No comments, but yes, I will see something anyway. If I may, just that the SA is willing to work with partners to assist as they can. Okay, thank you, Mr Milton. Mr Marsh. Very briefly, it was a comment made raised earlier about the form that the review should take. I think I am fairly open as to what, as to how the review should be done, but the only form of the review that it shouldn't take is for it to be solely done within the Scottish Government. There has to be an element of external involvement, because clearly this is a flagship policy. Any evaluation could come out with some pretty difficult, challenging messages, and it is important that they are appropriately adhered. Okay, thank you. I certainly wasn't excluding our Scottish Government officials. Any comments you want to make? I have taken on board all of their views as well, ministers. Okay. I thank everyone for attending. That concludes that particular aspect. Before we move on from the suggest item for anyone watching at home—we are referring to the suggest item, there are no more questions for yourselves—before we move on to the private session, I know that Graham Simpson and Andy Wightman attended a fact-finding visit in the Lithgow on Monday to be with those who had worked on the Lithgow plan for the future, a local plan developed by community groups that also met the representatives of West Lothian Council. As we have done with previous community visits, I can invite Graham and Andy Wightman to make any remarks on how some brief remarks, hopefully, but some remarks on the public record in relation to how that event went. Graham Simpson, do you want to go first? Very briefly, convener, you are right. We went to Lyn Lithgow, and we met community groups who had been involved in drawing up their own local place plan, a very impressive and thorough document that they shared with us, their experience of producing that. I think that it is fair to say that there are frustrations around the reaction to that from the local council. On behalf of Andy Wightman, I would like to thank those who came along. I would also like to thank representatives of West Lothian Council who met us later to give us their perspective. Overall, it was a very useful session. There will be a paper produced for the committee, so I am not going to go into chapter and verse on what we discussed, but I think that you will be very interested to see the paper that comes out of it. It was a very useful session, given that local place plans form part of the planning bill that we are going to be scrutinising. Andy, do you want to add anything? Okay, thank you Mr Simpson for putting that on the record. We are now complete with agenda item 2, and we now move to agenda item 3, which we are previously going to take into private session.