 Welcome to the 27th meeting of the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee. We remind everyone to turn all electrical devices to silent. May I indicate that we have received apologies from committee members, Jackie Baillie, Gordon MacDonald and Gil Paterson? Item 1 is a decision by the committee to take item 5 in private. Is the committee agreed to do so? Thank you. We now turn to subordinate legislation, the Scotland Act in Solvency Functions, order 2017, which is by the affirmative procedure. We have today again the Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy, Paul Wheelhouse. Welcome to you and also to officials from his team, Alex Reid and Neil McLeod. Welcome to the three of you. I'll first of all invite the minister to make his opening statement on the instrument before inviting questions from members. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to address the committee and bring forward this order as part of a package of measures in an on-going project to update and modernise corporate insolvency in Scotland, in particular insolvency rules for the winding up of companies currently contained in the Insolvency Scotland rules 1986. The project falls on from the recent modernisation of rules for company insolvency in England and Wales, which culminated in the making of the Insolvency England and Wales rules 2016. By way of background, I should explain that under the devolution settlement, the law on corporate insolvency in Scotland and the division of legislative responsibilities between the Scottish and UK parliaments and governments is complex. That is particularly so in relation to winding up, sometimes known as liquidation. For example, in relation to business associations, the general legal effect of winding up is reserved, but the process of winding up is devolved. In an effort to facilitate the efficient, effective and user-friendly modernisation of the Insolvency Scotland rules 1986, it was agreed by both Governments that it would be to benefit all two practitioners for the rules on Scottish company winding up and any further changes to SSIs going forward to be contained in one instrument rather than being split between a Scottish Government SSI and a UK Government SSI, as it would require to be the case in terms of the devolution settlement as it currently stands. Furthermore, due to the complexity of the winding up reservation itself, it is not always clear whether a winding up matter can be said to relate to the general legal effect as a reserved matter or instead to process as a devolved matter. It would therefore have been very difficult for the Scottish and UK Governments to draft separate winding up rules, only dealing with matters that fall within their powers. Accordingly, both Governments have agreed to the preparation of a combined order under section 163 and section 108 of the Scotland Act 1998. Section 63 of the 1998 act enables an order to provide for any functions that are exercisable by a minister of the Crown, by which I mean the UK minister in or as regards Scotland, to be exercisable by Scottish ministers concurrently with the Minister of the Crown, but with the consent of that minister. Conversely, section 108 of the 1998 act enables an order to provide for any functions that are exercisable by a member of the Scottish Government to be exercisable by a minister of the Crown, i.e. the UK minister concurrently with a minister within the Scottish Government, but with the consent of that Scottish Government minister. The order will therefore allow for the mutual conferring of functions between Scottish ministers and the minister of the Crown, so that both have the power to bring forward, as appropriate, winding up rules or regulations for companies, incorporated friendly societies and limited liability partnerships in Scotland, irrespective of whether those rules or regulations relate to reserve matters under schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 or matters that are not reserved. Crucially, each administration must agree to the other administration exercising any function conferred by virtue of this order. This approach will enable each administration to make provision on winding up matters without any doubts being cast on the scope of the relevant enabling powers. As noted earlier, we believe that users of the legislation will benefit as the order furthers the aim of that rules on the winding up of companies in Scotland will be contained in one instrument rather than split between two, thereby easing the transparency of regulation in respect of both the general legal effect and process. This is a view shared by ICAS in the letter of 30 October. The immediate intention is that the Scottish Government will, with the consent of the UK Government, take forward an SSI to make provision for winding up both reserved and devolved aspects as part of the current project to replace the Insolvency Scotland rules 1986 with updated and modernised rules. I hope that you and members of the committee will agree that this is a sensible approach to enabling the modernisation of corporate insolvency in Scotland to move forward in an effective manner. I believe that it provides an excellent example of the two Governments working together to make the Scottish Devolution settlement work for the people and industry in Scotland. As set out in correspondence to the committee that I have issued on the 26th, but I believe that only received by the committee yesterday, this does not have a wider impact on matters having been defined narrowly around the matter of winding up. This order will make worthwhile improvements, making processes more efficient and effective. I thank the committee for its on-going support and for taking time to consider the order, and we are happy to take any questions if that would be helpful. Thank you minister. Are there any questions from committee members? John Mason. Yes, thanks convener. The minister mentioned ICAS and their input. I should say that I am a member of ICAS, but I often disagree with him. They had suggested that they would rather have had the whole thing re-reserved and just let Westminster get on with it and do their own thing. What was the Scottish Government's feeling about that? As you may know, Mr Mason, the Scottish Government objected to these powers being re-reserved under the Smith commission process. We have found a way forward that we can work together with UK ministers on taking forward a more coherent approach to perhaps updating insolvency in respect of winding up. We believe that the mechanism which allows us to take place, but with the agreement of Scottish ministers, if it is being taken forward in the UK Parliament and vice versa, if it is the Scottish Government taking forward regulations through this Parliament with the agreement of UK ministers, I believe that it is a sensible approach to address that clearly. There are different views that perhaps may be held by ICAS and others, but I know that they strongly support the approach that has been taken forward as they have set out in the letter. On that, the Scottish Government might like to just get on with things, but the committee sought and I think that you may have referred to your letter an assurance from the minister that in the event that consent has been given to the UK Government on matters touching on Scotland, you as minister would allow this committee the opportunity to scrutinise whatever legislation or subordinate legislation was being brought forward before a commitment or a decision was taken on that. Absolutely, convener. I am happy to reconfirm that today to the committee. Appreciate members may not have had the chance to read the letter, but I very much want to emphasise that we believe strongly that in consulting the committee and the Parliament on changes that are taking place in advance of giving agreement to UK ministers. Andy Wightman Thank you, convener, for following the convener's question on your letter yesterday. You are giving an assurance about the matters that the convener has just raised. A future Government may choose not to give such assurances. Can you clarify the formal statutory processes that are involved here that give effect to this assurance or is this just an assurance of your administration? Andy Wightman In respect of coming to Parliament to seek agreement, I will ask colleagues to confer the legal aspects of this in terms of the requirements, but certainly this Government believes that it is important to consult Parliament on any such changes in agreement. I am happy to put on record our commitment to that, but I will consult with Neil McLeod who is from a legal perspective and will give the answer that Mr Wightman is seeking with your consent. Andy Wightman I would echo what the minister says in terms of the strict legal position that the order provides for is that it is for the consent of Scottish ministers to any legislation that is to be taken forward by the UK Government. An undertaking or commitment that has been given in the letter and reiterated by the minister today, ultimately, one of the purposes of providing for Scottish Government or Scottish ministers consent to the UK Government taking forward these, is that Parliament can, in whatever way it sees fit, hold Scottish ministers to account for that consent given. I think that that is all that that can add. To be clear, in effect, from a parliamentary point of view, this is the re-reservation of powers, because Parliament does not have any statutory right to be consulted or to have any say in the process whereby ministers do or do not give consent. I think it would be important to emphasise that, should it come to the point that either Scottish ministers or the Parliament itself was unhappy with how this was operating, it is within the powers of the Scottish Parliament to take back or remove this particular order, such that we revert back to the position that we have now. It is still within the Scottish Parliament's powers, if you like, to go back to the current status quo that we have before the order is put through. That is completely within the powers of Parliament. I would expect Parliament to hold Scottish ministers to account if we were failing to consult Parliament on changes that we were agreeing to with UK ministers. I am sure that Mr Wightman among us others would be very vocal in making that point to us, but Parliament ultimately has the power to take back and take this order out at some point in the future if it felt necessary to do so. Sorry, on that question, I don't understand how Parliament would have the power to revoke or repeal an order. Those are ministerial powers to bring forward proposals to repeal orders, are they not? Certainly, I would bring in Mr McLeod if I may be clear. Sorry, I will address that point in a second, but perhaps to address an earlier point, you said that this was in effect a re-reservation of these powers. It certainly isn't that. I would say that this is about a mutual conferral of functions to make winding up rules. It's a very narrow area of executive competence, so it doesn't affect what is and isn't a reserved and devolved matter. In terms of this Parliament's ability to take back this order, once made, this is an order that stands and the processes are in place. As I've said and as the minister has said, this Parliament absolutely retains the power to hold Scottish ministers to account for what they are doing in terms of giving consent under the order. If this Parliament is not happy with that, to make its position known. To be clear, Parliament couldn't revoke this order of its own initiative. Perhaps I can just clarify. I think that the position that I understand it is in undertakings being given, but you are not obviously binding a future Scottish Government. I never can fetter any future Scottish ministers decisions, convener, so it's in that respect that you're absolutely right, but we're certainly giving a commitment from this administration that we will continue to consult this committee in Parliament on any changes going forward. Thank you. Richard Leonard, did you want to come in? Yes, convener, thank you. I just wanted to go back to Mr Mason's question. Just to probe a little bit more about conflict resolution, if there is conflict between the UK Government and the Scottish Government about where power shall lie, how is that conflict resolved? Stress is obviously relating purely to winding up arrangements. I can't comment on wider arrangements around disagreements between UK ministers and Scottish Government ministers in respect of powers, but what we are saying in this instance is that any changes that are being taken forward by the UK Parliament, which have a bearing on winding up arrangements in Scotland, would have to have the agreement of Scottish ministers. We are working in an area where there is a good degree of collaboration already between both administrations, both at an official and ministerial level. Obviously, I can't fetter the future administrations and the approach that they may take to engagement with UK ministers on those matters, but it is a very pragmatic working relationship that we have with UK ministers in this area. I can merely give an assurance to Mr Leonard and other committee members for my part as the minister that we are seeking to work collaboratively with UK ministers on this issue, so it is not a great bun fight if I may put it that way on the issues of the powers being involved here. We have come forward with a very pragmatic solution that is mutually supported by both the UK and Scottish ministers to address this particular issue and make sure that there is clarity of regulations in respect of winding up without the necessity to have two separate statutory instruments dealing with the same matter. It is just a pragmatic workaround if you like, around the position whereby Scottish Government wants to retain competency in this area. Clearly, UK ministers have reserved competencies in respect of issues that affect that, so we are just trying to work around in this case. I know that you are a very pragmatic and collaborative minister, Mr Wheelhouse, but I am just interested in an area where people are talking about power grabs and all of that. I just wondered in a situation if the UK Government asserted that they wish to re-reserve those powers and the Scottish Government's position was to look for a mutual settlement under the Terms of the 1998 Scotland Act. Is there any, with a small C and a small A, court of arbitration, to resolve those disputes? That, from a legal perspective, I cannot answer that question. I might be conferred with Mr McLeod and Mr Reid as to whether there is a court of arbitration in that sense, but clearly this Parliament is established through the 1998 act. The powers in respect of winding up are specified, if you like, and are not reserved in the schedule 5. Therefore, they are devolved, so clearly there would be a wider impact on the devolution settlement if there was an attempt to take those powers away from the Scottish Parliament. What we have done, though, is to find what I hope is a neat solution to a problem that is faced by insolvency practitioners and those affected by winding up arrangements, and hopefully that is one that will be a workable solution. If I may convene, I don't know whether Mr McLeod wants to comment on the arbitration aspects, if there is any. I think that I would just comment very briefly to say that this order, as I said, we're not in the territory of re-reserving powers. This is very much an order about how executive powers for ministers can be exercised going forward in relatively narrow areas of making procedural provision, in particular, about how companies are wound up. I don't think that we're in that territory in this order. All right. Thank you very much. We'll now move to the formal debate on the motion to approve the affirmative instrument. Remind ministers, officials, that they can't partake in the debate directly, but can, of course, confer with the minister. Should that be necessary? I'll first of all invite the minister to formally move the motion, which is S5M-8086. I formally move, convener. Thank you. Does any member wish to speak in the formal debate, in which case I will put the question to the committee, and that is that motion S5M-8086 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much. I'd also invite the committee to agree that myself and the clerks will produce a short factual report just to set out what has been done here and also to publish that. Thank you very much to the minister and his two officials, and I'll suspend the meeting briefly while we switch over to our witnesses for the economic data inquiry. Welcome back to this morning's session, and I first of all welcome our witnesses from the Scottish Fiscal Commission, David Wilson, chief commissioner, John Ireland, chief executive and Mary Spowitch, who is the deputy chief executive. Welcome to all three of you. I would remind members to keep questions succinct and to the point. Our witnesses need not answer every question when we get to that point. Of course, there is the opportunity to submit further information and writing, should there be aspects that you would like to cover in that way following the meeting. First, I'll move to an opening statement from David Wilson. Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to you this morning. We're particularly pleased to be able to assist in whatever way we can with this very important inquiry. We have a shared and strong interest in the quality accessibility of Scottish economic statistics, and we're keen to support you going forward in whatever way we can. Before introducing my colleagues, I'd like to make some introductory remarks, firstly, about the Scottish Fiscal Commission, and secondly, just some comments to frame the further advice that we'll give over the course of the morning. First, as I'm sure you know, the Scottish Fiscal Commission has been in place since the middle of 2014 when it was initially established. It was a non-statutory organisation whose function was to scrutinise the forecasts that were produced by the Scottish Government of the likely revenues of devolved taxes under the new arrangements following the Scotland Act and the Smith commission. Over time, we've evolved as an organisation, and since April this year, we're now slightly different. The one key part of continuity is Lady Susan Rice as the chair of the commission, but since then we have been importantly different. I just wanted to make sure that that was covered and for the record. The first is we're now a statutory organisation. There are three commissioners, Lady Susan Rice, myself and Professor Alster Smith. We have a growing organisation designed to support the work that we do, led very ably by John and Mary here. Our role, rather than scrutinising Scottish Government forecasts, is now to produce the forecasts directly and be responsible for them. Under a remit, we will produce forecasts of Scottish onshore GDP and estimates of the likely revenues over a five-year period of the devolved taxes. We will also make estimates of the likely expenditure on a number of specific social security responsibilities that are being devolved to the Scottish Government. I emphasise the shift in role that we've had from scrutinising Scottish Government forecasts to being responsible for producing the forecasts directly. In taking forward the work that we do, we published a report last month in what we called the current approach to forecasting, which set out how we intend to go about undertaking our function. In doing so, we will be a significant and major user of official statistics and national statistics, which are largely produced by the Scottish Government and the Office of National Statistics. We very much see ourselves as a user of the range of different statistics that are arranged. We're not a producer of statistics in itself. We produce forecasts, which are not in the jargon of the world. They are not official statistics, and they are not even statistics in the way that we understand them. However, we will produce forecasts building on the range of information that is available to us and using a range of datasets and models and information that is available to us. Finally, I wanted to briefly comment about some of the issues that have been raised so far in the inquiry. Clearly, the inquiry that you are undertaking goes significantly wider than our specific responsibilities, so there's a whole range of issues that are very important that need looked at, which probably go beyond the direct remit that we have. However, given particularly the importance of estimating or forecasting the future of GDP, our interest in a whole range of statistics actually ranges quite widely. Your review probably goes wider than us, but we are interested in a very significant range of different data sources that you are looking at. I also wanted to briefly mention that we focused our response and the submission that we have given you on economic statistics issues, rather than perhaps wider and detailed issues around the fiscal forecasts that we will produce. For example, we haven't given you lots of information on how we will develop, for example, forecasts of revenues from landfill tax and some of the other more detailed taxes. We are happy to give you that information, but in the main we focused on the economic statistics side, which feed into overall economic determinants and the estimates of economic growth. That was all that I wanted to say in terms of introduction, but I will just say a bit more about the team here. As the convener has said, my name is David Wilson, so I am a commissioner on the fiscal commission. My day job, if you like, is I am director of the International Public Policy Institute at Strathclyde University. My career has included a number of years working in the Scottish Government on a variety of economic issues, including as director of business and initially starting many, many years ago as an economic assistant working on GDP, labour market stats and issues many, many years ago. On my left is Mary Spourage, she is deputy chief executive of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Mary is a professional statistician by training and experience and previously was head of national accounts within the Scottish Government. I can speak very authoritatively on those issues. On my right is John Ireland, who is chief executive of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. In a previous life, I was also director of the Fraser Valander Institute and worked in some detail on those issues. That was my introduction and I look forward to the rest of the morning. Thank you very much. Perhaps I could start with a question. We have heard from a number of witnesses about gaps and weaknesses in Scottish data. In your evidence, you highlight a number of challenges, for example construction, lack of real-terms GDP data for expenditure and income methods, and the lack of Scottish specific price data. How certain can you be that the figures that you produce and the statistics that you produce and rely upon are robust and accurate? Can I perhaps make some further comments just before answering that question? The first thing is perhaps just to reiterate many of the points that have already been put to you by a number of witnesses about the quality and accessibility of economic statistics in Scotland. I thought that John McLaren made a very good point, saying that, quote, the first thing that we need to finish is a full set of national accounts. I am not sure that we will ever be finished developing a full set of national accounts, but over time, there has been a significant improvement in the range of economic statistics available and the range and understanding of economic activity within Scotland. Just to be clear, we are in a much better position than we were 10 or 20 years ago. We are probably in a better position than other areas of the UK in terms of the information that is available in Scotland. We are also in the strong position that there are a number of things that are contributing to on-going further improvement in the quality both of statistics and of analysis underpinning the work on the Scottish economy. I mentioned specifically the work that the Scottish Government is doing to improve its range of statistics. I think that you may be seeing the Scottish Government. In future weeks, it has set out some clear areas where it is intending to improve. I think that the work of, if I may say so, the Fraser Valner Institute is contributing to greater analysis and scrutiny. Perhaps I should draw attention to our own activities. Our feeling is now that the Fiscal Commission is established as a statutory organisation with a very clear purpose to develop forecasts that there will be an on-going process of increased demand for statistics, increased scrutiny and attention, which will in itself lead to further improvements. To some extent, that is slightly caveat before coming back to your question, but we are in a better place than we were. That said, there are many gaps. I think that the witnesses have already mentioned that I have identified gaps around imports and exports, on trade data is a key one. Issues around the availability of information on investment is a key factor on earnings. I think that David Bell made a good point about the weaknesses around the area of earnings and inequalities. There are areas that need to be touched on and improved. Overall, I have been struck by the consistency in the advice that you have been given about areas for improvement. We wanted to identify specific issues that could be taken forward quickly. We think of reasonable costs that would directly help the work that we do. That is the four areas that we identified in the submission. We are happy to go into those in a bit more detail. Alongside those, there are a number of areas that would improve trade statistics and improve information investment. That would greatly assist the work that we do, but we wanted to emphasise some specifics that would help us that perhaps other people may not have raised, which is why we focused on the four areas. In terms of direct question about our confidence in our forecasts that we will make and initially publish in the middle of December, we will obviously make the best use of the information that is available to us. We will develop our analysis and judgments, utilising all available information and clearly setting out where we see relative confidence in what we can do and where there are upside and downside risks and concerns that we may have about the robustness of the data. We will set that out in our reports. We are confident that we will make the best estimates that we can of our duties, but we will have to do that by taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of the available information. Ash Denham Thank you for your written submission. I will just read a small portion from that. You said that, given the information that is available and accepting the uncertainty inherent in it, the commission strongly encourages the Scottish Government to produce more information in certain instances that would support the commission's activities. Could you explain a little bit further about what you meant by that? If you could also say which areas you think the commission does need more information in order to carry out its work? Can I suggest that we go through the four areas that we identified? Those may appear fairly technical and they are fairly technical, but I would not say in any sense that they are technical and unimportant. That goes to the heart of the need for continuing improvement in the quality of both the Scottish economic statistics more generally and specifically to support the development of our estimates of GDP. In turn, the way that we estimate the devolved taxes, many of which are influenced by our forecasts of GDP and economic activity. The first is on availability of specific information about inflation in Scotland. There is some information that is available about how inflation of consumer prices and producer prices may differ in Scotland, but it is relatively limited in focus and specific in certain areas. That has been long recognised. There has been some evolution of improvement in this area, but in terms of improving the robustness of our baseline estimates of where we think that the current economy is in our forecasts, we think that there is scope for further improvement in this area. To go into the detail of a bit more, can I suggest that Mari gives you a bit more background, a bit more information on the specifics of price deflators? Just before I go into that, you asked about the statement about accepting uncertainty inherent in that. That was referring to the sort of information that is collected from businesses in GB at the moment and the fact that it is at the GB level and that much of the data for Scotland therefore needs to be derived from that through regionalisation in some way, which is normally employment shares. We were trying to separate out the issue of whether that collection should be changed or improved from what you do with that data, given that that is where we are and that is the data that we have. Given that that is the way that it is collected, what could be improved. Given that changing that would be a much bigger investment in the business collection. In terms of price data itself, there are some sources that give you some feel for price differences in Scotland and the UK as a whole, but those have been very limited. The ONS in the past have produced information about different price levels in different parts of the UK, but you are not getting a feel for any change over time or it is really not a very useful source of information for national accountants in trying to estimate differences over time. The national accountants in the Scottish Government build up the view of their economy at a very detailed level, which allows them to take account of different industrial structures in Scotland. Overall, in aggregate, you are going to get different price movements in Scotland and the rest of the UK, but on the whole, it is using UK-level price information. When you get into the service sector, those are so broad brush and they are not very detailed at the UK level, which is one of the things that the bean review has identified as a problem, that you are really not allowing the different industrial structures to be taken account of in a granular way. It is difficult to know if there was data on consumer prices or producer prices in Scotland, how different they would be, because we do not have the data to be able to say what the difference is. Is it suspected that there is a difference, though? It would be reasonable, particularly on producer prices, to say that there would be a difference because there is a different industrial make-up and potentially different import propensities and other things for Scottish companies. Sometimes there are different sorts of companies. I can see that it would be a reasonable hypothesis that, particularly for businesses, there would be a different experience. Whether there would be a different consumer experience in Scotland from the UK as a whole, I am not sure. That is just the gut feeling, I am not sure. I think that it would definitely be something that it should be looked into. One of the sources might be the way that O&S estimates things such as CPI or producer price indices and the surveys that they use to collect that information and construct those indices. The Scottish Government is working with the O&S to look at that data and see if there was a potential of producing Scottish-specific indices—maybe not monthly but annually or something at the start—to see if there was any prospect of using that data for this. I think that that would be the place to start. I suspect that O&S will probably use the powers through the digital economy bill to use more administrative data for prices, maybe compelling companies to give them information so that they can better build consumer price indices. The fact that the Scottish Government has boosted the living costs and food survey for use, particularly for that assignment, provides other opportunities because that is the source of the waiting for price indices, so there will be better data on that for Scotland. There is quite a lot of scope to investigate what is already collected and see if it could be enhanced to produce something for Scotland that would give us some feel for how consumer prices, for example, have evolved, even if it was only on an annual basis over the past few years. It would certainly be something that the analyst in me would be interested in looking into. So are there any further areas? You have mentioned the price index there. Is there anything further? Just touch briefly on the—or just maybe finish a point that the marry was making there around. We would not say that there is a gigantic hole or gap or major profound problem that we know about in terms of derivatives, but it is an area of, as we gradually evolve and improve the information available, it is an area that we think we should look at more. There is a sense, and I saw a reference in the review that has been taken by Professor Giles on overall statistics going forward. There have been a number of discussions about this that it may not pass a cost-benefit test, almost that it might be too costly to develop this, which might be insufficient benefit. To some extent, we are not well placed to judge what the costs are, neither the benefits, but we would like it looked into more. I think that there is certainly a demand from our side that the Scottish Government continue to look at this, as we have already been doing, and we would certainly support that. That discussion leads directly into the second one, which is using the deflaters that could be produced in a bit greater detail and granularity to develop a more accurate picture of the expenditure version of GDP. GDP is one of those things that is talked about in so many different ways, but there are a number of different ways of developing it and developing the expenditure version of GDP in real terms using Scottish deflaters would be something that we feel would greatly assist our work, particularly understanding the spending activity in Scotland, how that might evolve and how that impacts on wider issues, both in terms of the GDP forecasts and also income tax forecasts and the range of other issues. Can I just add as well that this would be valuable to us even if it was done using the current UK-level deflaters that were used at the moment? I think that this would be something using those deflaters that would be fairly straightforward for the Scottish Government to publish alongside their current price information and would greatly assist us in using an official statistic source of that information, rather than having to sort of after the fact deflate it ourselves, which is what we are doing at the moment. That could be quite a quick win, although the issue of Scottish deflaters was being investigated. If it is done centrally by the Scottish Government, that means that everybody who uses the data has access to the same data, so rather than the Fraser of Ireland doing it one way or the other, it produces a standardisation. That adds to the power of the very quick win there. As I understand it, you have explained to me where there are gaps in the data. I was interested in the phrase that you used, Mr Wilson, that you will do the best estimates that we can, which I suppose that, even if you had no data, you would still do the best estimates that you can. I am slightly worried by that phrase. Where do you think the risks are to your forecast from the lack of data or information? Should we be worried or not? Obviously, we will do the best information that we can. I do not want to emphasise that there is a significant amount of information out there. What we are describing is how we complete the picture that we are trying to paint of what is happening in the Scottish economy. I think that there are a number of areas that we have to describe that. We would seek further information. I could touch perhaps and answer the question or go on to it. There are a set of issues about earnings and wages that we would be particularly interested in. In terms of the risks to the forecasts, I think that I would want to distinguish between uncertainty, which perhaps arises from the lack of information about what is happening in the current economy or the past economy. In other words, gaps in data and information are distinct from the risks and uncertainties about the future course of the economy, which are slightly more inherently unknown because they have not happened yet or because you are making judgments about. Obviously, you use the best possible information that you have got, looking at the past, looking at the current activity and understanding how that may influence the future to make your best judgment going forward. That is very much what we will do. Inevitably, your forecasts are going to be compared with one's down south. Even if you have got exactly an even better ability to judge what is happening in the future, you are still very dependent clearly on what has happened in the past. If folk in London have much better data than you have, that puts you at a huge disadvantage, it would seem to me, when the public or the media start making comparisons. I will draw a distinction on your point about that the responsible authorities in London have better information than we do. They undoubtedly have better and more complete information about the UK economy than we do about the Scottish economy. My feeling is that we have at least as good, if not better, information and analysis about the Scottish economy than the authorities do in London about the Scottish economy. We are in a strong position to develop ever-improving analysis and information about the Scottish economy. However, at a fundamental level, and I think that all of the witnesses have said this to you, the range of official statistics and national statistics available about the Scottish economy is inevitably less than equivalent about the UK economy. That is by the nature of, in national accounts terms, sub-national data. Obviously, a lot of the data sources that are key to producing economic forecasts and forecasts of the labour market, which are key for our income tax forecasts, are more challenging for Scotland because the data is more volatile because it is a smaller economy. Things like the labour force survey that those are based on, there is a smaller sample in Scotland. It means that the data is more volatile. Producing forecasts for a smaller economy with slightly more volatile data may mean that our forecasts are more subject to things like data revisions and other things that are outwith our control. Some of the ways that we deal with that are to take a more aggregated view instead of putting too much emphasis on month-to-month movements. We can look over the quarter or over annual movements, which may have its downsides, but that is a sensible approach to take when you are dealing with more volatile information. It will be important for us to present areas in which we have less certainty or to take broad judgments, which is part of producing particularly economic forecasts. We have to take broad judgments about the long-term path for the economy and things like productivity and population growth, which influence economic growth in the long-term. The volatility in things such as labour market data does make it challenging to produce forecasts in the near term, particularly. On labour market data, the surveys are clearly limited, but HMRC is sitting on basically all the data, are they not? Is there a problem getting the data from them or is that the big change in the whole system that you were referring to earlier that is just too much to anticipate doing at the moment? Perhaps I can develop that point a bit more because I think that labour market data is a really good example of that or more specifically income and earnings data. In order to develop our overall modelling about GDP and more specifically our income tax forecasts, we inevitably need to develop a fairly detailed understanding of how much people earn in Scotland. You would think that that would be readily available information, but it is important information that we need to collect from a range of different sources. For example, without going into particular detail, we use what is known as the Survey of Personal Incomes, which is a very detailed sample survey of income tax records held by HMRC, as you have said. That is the fundamental basis, particularly for our modelling of income tax forecasts. In one sense, it is very comprehensive. There are more than 40,000 records in Scotland, and it produces a wealth of detail about the structure and composition of incomes in Scotland. Inevitably, that takes time to be developed, produced and analysed, so the information that we are using is—I would not want to call it out of date, but it is 2014-15 that we are currently using as the basis of our modelling work, but that is the most comprehensive assessment. We currently use the HMRC, what is known again in the jargon, as the public use tape. It is the published data that HMRC makes available. That is the data that we use. As you rightly say, HMRC has much more detailed information, and as all the recent reports about economic statistics have been recommended, there is a big push to using administrative data and analysing it in a bit more detail, and we would love to move in that direction. In order to give a wider and more detailed picture of what is happening in terms of incomes in Scotland, there is a range of other data. There is the annual survey of hours and earnings, which has come out of the latest figures very recently. That is a quite different survey. It is an annual survey, and it is more up-to-date, and that can put some added information and colour on what has happened more recently. There is Scottish information included as part of that. There is an inevitable set of issues about linking together the annual survey with the survey of personal incomes, and that is the challenge of much of what we do. Finally, to make the link back to our four asks in terms of the further information, we also mentioned a set of data that the UK Government develops. There is a work on average weekly earnings, a survey of average weekly earnings, which we feel would greatly assist our understanding of what is happening, not quite so much in real time, but in much closer time and understanding of what is currently happening in the labour market. We would support further information at that more recent and contemporaneous information, and we would like that to develop. At the moment, we do not have access to Scottish specific information, and it would probably require some development of further surveys in that area, but that is something that would greatly assist our work. That is the third ask that we identified. Just to summarise, what we have to do is try and piece together the available information, some of which are stronger than in other areas, but that is the task and role that we take forward. Some of this is quite difficult. I appreciate your answer. Is there any way of measuring the risk? You are saying that 14 or 15 data from HMRC is immediately getting worried by that, because that does seem a bit of a long time ago and a lot of things have happened, but when you are making forecasts, it is only partly looking at the past anyway, so if, however up-to-date your past information was, you are still having to make judgments and forecasts and all the rest of it, is there any way of measuring all of that area in there? It would be very difficult to place a statistical measure on what we see as the ex-anti-risk. I do not think that we will be able to do that and to be clear that other forecasters in other areas try and estimate what they may see as an upper estimate and a lower estimate of their forecasts. You will have seen what is known as fan diagrams in various organisations' documents, but to be clear in terms of our forecasts, we will set out and elaborate what we see as the risks and uncertainties on the upside and on the downside, but our very specific and particular role set-out statute is to produce a single estimate going forward for use in the Government's budget documents, so our emphasis will be producing the best possible single set of estimates while elaborating and setting out what the risks on either side might be. We are also required by our act to produce a forecast evaluation, so we produced one in September for some of our fiscal forecasts and some of the Government's fiscal forecasts, but next September we will look at how our forecast which was produced this December has performed. Once we have a number of those forecast evaluations, we will be able to get a much better understanding of how accurate the forecasts are. Unfortunately, she is going to take a little bit of time to build up that track record. Other forecasting institutions that have been forecasting for longer than us do this already publish it perhaps in slightly shorter form, but that sort of information is available. I will add that it will be important for us where we see key risks or areas of uncertainty to the forecast to set out some sensitivity analysis of those areas so that users of our documents will be able to understand how much different assumptions on key things might make to our forecast. That is really important to be transparent about the sort of uncertainties and risks that you are dealing with when you are producing forecasts. I could go on all day on this and I am sure that you could, but I am sure that the convener wants to move on to something else. Andy Wightman We have heard, indeed, you referring your own evidence to time lags in data. What particular concerns do you have in relation to time lags in data that you require to make your forecasts and how could they be overcome? Without going over the wages and incomes story again, perhaps the obvious one where there is progress being made is about the estimates of GDP that are produced by the Scottish Government. I think that a number of other witnesses have described a situation where the time lag for the availability of estimates of quarterly Scottish GDP has reduced over time. It has reduced from memory, I think that it was 110 days before 2016. It is now 87. It is that sort of number after the end of the reference period. We would clearly like access to the estimates of gross domestic product produced by the Scottish Government as soon as they are able to publish estimates that the Government has confidence in. Reducing the time lag of publication of GDP estimates is perhaps the most important one. A slight caution goes back to the questions from Mr Mason. The last thing that we would want and clearly of great concern to us would be a push to accelerate the publication of statistics that might be published before there is a degree of confidence in them such that they are revised in future to a greater degree. The last thing that we want is early publication with reduced reliability of those estimates, so a balance needs to be found beyond that, but GDP is perhaps the principal one that I'd attention to. I don't know if Mary or John would like to... There are another number of sources on the fiscal side, which would assist us in our forecasts. You mentioned the survey of personal incomes and the fact that we are dealing with 14-15 data at the moment. We have access only to the public use version of that, and we don't have any more information at the moment than anyone else to be able to do that. We have just been approved as a researcher at the HMRC data lab, which means that we have to go to London, but we can look at the more detailed survey of personal incomes data that sits in the background, which will give us a better feel for both years where HMRC hasn't published a public use version of the survey, but also get a better feel for the areas of the survey that are anonymised to prevent us identifying anyone, particularly at the top end, which gives us a better idea of the taxpayers at the top end. That's good progress, but we'd like to be in a position where we can access that information without having to go to the data lab to do that. We're in discussions with HMRC about that, but their principal concern is taxpayer confidentiality, and that's fair enough. We're in discussions about that. The other source of information that would be useful is information about how much income tax is being collected as you go along, such as there is at the UK level on monthly receipts. HMRC is developing what's called real-time information on that. At the moment, it's too early to say what sort of quality that is and how much it chimes with the receipts that are being collected, but that's in development. In future years, that will be a more up-to-date source of the receipts that are being collected. Of course, we can't forget about revenue Scotland information, which we're using for our devolved taxis. They've speedied up the production of monthly statistics on LBTT and massively expanded the analysis that they produce each month, which is in part due to requests that we've been making to them, but they then made that available for all—all of that extra analysis, which has been really useful. They've also significantly brought forward their publication of quarterly landfill tax revenues. The more recent information that we have, particularly for the very new taxis, the easier it is to forecast them for the future. I'd add one thing just to touch on or clarify a point that I made earlier. In terms of the time lag for the publication of GDP, I've found my notes, and it's 97 days as the current gap after the end of the reference period before publication of the quarterly GDP estimates. If you compare that to the equivalent estimates at UK level, they produce their preliminary estimates after 25 days, and what are in effect the final estimates after 84 days. That's again an example of where the UK information is ahead of Scotland, which I think that everybody knows. Reduction in that gap would be helpful to us, subject to the caveats that I said earlier. It's just a couple of other brief questions. Do you have to pay for any of the data that you require, or is it all made available under protocols or openly available, obviously? Yes, we do have to pay for some of the data. For example, we've just paid out, which is the process of paying the Registers of Scotland for data on house prices and property transactions. There are issues for that, so some data is pretty expensive. Outside of Scotland, the Civil Aviation Authority produces some very good data on air passengers, obviously in relation to something like air passenger duty. That would be particularly important to us. Again, that data set is so expensive that we can't afford to buy the full data set and have only bought a very small portion of it. There are issues about public authorities being there in Scotland or in the UK who charge significantly for their data, but it also has to be said that they just don't do this to make money. Statisticians in cost and manipulating data, particularly administrative data and producing it for people like us to use, there is a resource cost in it. The issue is what's the best way in which you can arrange meeting that resource cost, which benefits the whole of the public sector and academics and other people who are interested in using the data. For example, HMRC will also buy this data from the CEA. We're not different from them. My understanding is that the Scottish Government and Revenue Scotland, for example, buy the raw data as well. We're given a statutory right of access to information, but where there's a charging model in place, our statutory right of access doesn't override that. Okay, thanks. I might come back to some of those questions in a later inquiry, perhaps. Just finally, on VAT, can you confirm that you have no statutory role in estimating the quantum of the assignation of VAT in future? According to the fiscal framework, that's not actually going to have an impact on the Scottish budget anyway until the end of this fiscal framework as an operation, but do you envisage having a role in the estimation of VAT receipts from the end of the current fiscal framework or not? My understanding is that it hasn't been decided yet who will be responsible for forecasting VAT receipts in Scotland, so it's not in our remit currently. We're not doing any work on it at the moment, but that's a decision for Parliament and Governments going forward. In the fiscal framework, I believe that it was for the two Governments to decide who would be the body responsible for forecasting VAT receipts, and I understand that the decision hasn't been reached yet, as far as I know. Okay, thanks. Thank you, and now, Gillian Martin. You've talked enough a lot about the income tax powers that are coming up, and obviously that's one of the major areas of your forecasting. Your submission, you say that the statistics on earnings and the NSD income tax carried improvements needed. The assessment of what's going on in the household and the income that's coming in, there's a lot of things missed out of that, isn't there? Certainly you talk about wages and salaries, but there's income that comes into the household that might not go into that category. I just want to know your feelings on that and how you're going to address the gaps that are coming in as you're having to make these forecasts. It's going to be very important. I think that it's a very good question, and the set of issues about what might be said is household income rather than personal income. I think that some of the questions that you've asked previously about gross national income rather than gross domestic product, those are all very important issues, and they're very important to us. Our starting point will be to make the best estimates of the specific revenues that we are tasked to do with and our specific tasks on forecasting income tax revenues. We develop all of the issues that we've already described to put that together. I think that I would say that what we will do is look and try to understand at a level of depth what is happening in terms of hours worked, widers of income, activities within the labour market. There's clearly a lot of what might be seen as complex changes happening in the labour market that is impacting on both personal incomes and household incomes. That would very much be the context within which we will develop our income tax forecasts, but to be clear, without being too heavy handed about it, our immediate task is developing the income tax forecasts. The wider context is crucially important, but we will inevitably focus on the specific tasks. I completely understand that, but one of the worries that we all, as politicians and policy makers, are having around income tax is that there might be a knock-on effect of people incorporating themselves in order to avoid income tax. I want to know how you're thinking that maybe we could address that in our report going forward and our recommendations that we make. Well, tax-motivated incorporation clearly is a factor that we will need to take into account in terms of what might be seen as the behavioural impact of income tax. That is something that is relevant to UK authorities as well as Scottish authorities. We've been working quite closely with the HMRC in terms of its estimates of how incorporation might impact on the data or the forecast on the income. We will also have the potential, at least, if, going forward, there is differential income tax, then incorporation might be a further and almost differential motivation to incorporation. Again, we will need to take views on that. At the moment, we are working with the HMRC explicitly to have that as part of our forecast that we will publish in December. I welcome any comments from my colleagues in this in terms of other specific things that the committee could recommend and do that might assist and support that. I suspect that there may be one that has dug my head at the moment, but I welcome any comments. The HMRC has done a lot of detailed work on that. It has been very open with us and shared a lot of the work with us. It has been quite a good collaboration between ourselves and the HMRC. The OBR has a big interest in that at the UK level. It has done quite a lot of modelling at different levels, not just at the UK level, but in parts of the UK. It is all quite new still. Perhaps that is something that we can have a think about away from the committee and if we can come up with any specific things. Things that have come out from some of the evidence that has been given are that there is data being collected by lots of agencies such as enterprise agencies and business support agencies, but it has not been collected in a way that might be useful to ourselves. When I am talking about recommendations, we could be making recommendations on that. I think that there are a number of areas in which further improvements could be made both about accessibility and the quality of information. Opening up access and greater publication of information from a number of public bodies would greatly help. I am happy to provide a note and a bit more detail on that generally, and perhaps on the incorporation issue specifically. I think that our immediate interests would probably be around some of the information that public bodies hold in Scotland that might assist us with our fiscal forecasts. For example, there is not really a Scottish boy, but John mentioned the Civil Aviation Authority in terms of any future passenger duty issues around housing and property markets, information that is held by registers of Scotland and others. We have very strong links with a number of those bodies that may be further information, and I am happy to provide a further note on that. Thank you. I know my colleagues that I have more questions on this area. As you mentioned, income tax receipts will be increasingly important. I think that approximately one-third of Scotland's budget will depend on income tax receipts. At the moment, I believe that much of the data that you use is based on UK-wide information with respect to earnings and wages. Is there a concern that, because there is a different earnings profile in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK in terms of average salary, basic rate, higher rate and additional rate tax payers, there is a slight mismatch if you are using primarily UK-wide data to extrapolate into Scotland? We inevitably have to make judgments in this area. Generally speaking, we have quite good information about distinct composition and breakdowns of incomes and earnings in Scotland. We have got that data, but, as I touched briefly on earlier, it is not always immediately up to date and it could always be added and improved on. We have got relatively good information. It is making sure that it is fed into our various modelling activities and the trajectory of the forecast going forward takes into account any recent events or recent activities. It is bringing in the more recent information of how things might be changing. It is a much wider discussion. The way that the labour market has developed since the financial crash has turned on its head in a number of our expectations around income patterns and the composition of the workforce. There is some evidence that there are differences in how that has evolved between Scotland and the rest of the UK. What we are keen about is making sure that we have that up-to-date information. Generally speaking, for our modelling work on income tax, we have good information, but, as I explained earlier from the survey of personal incomes, it is not always immediately up-to-date. That is just by the nature of those data sets. Just to follow up on that, there seems to be some different numbers in Scotland about the number of additional rate taxpayers in Scotland. The range is somewhere between 12,000 and 19,000, obviously depending on the numbers that you look at. Why is there such a large discrepancy in terms of people's estimates for the number of additional rate taxpayers in Scotland? I am not least aware of the different estimates that you have described. We use information again based on 2014-15. It is a sample survey. Inevitably, once you get down to a sample survey of up-to-date taxpayers, there is a degree of uncertainty about that. There are different sources of information that we would take into account, but I think that in terms of the overall forecasts that we make, we feel that we have the best information that is available to us. I do not have the numbers off the top of my head, but perhaps it is something that we could follow up on in terms of what our understanding is of the position. It would certainly be something that we would make available through our publications, because we know that there is interest in the distribution of different categories of taxpayers. Thank you. Just one final question. We have heard about leakage in terms of moving from income tax to corporate tax—corporation tax—through dividends. What about leakage in terms of additional rate and higher rate taxpayers in Scotland re-registering elsewhere in the UK if there is a tax differential to encourage that? Could you be able to model that or forecast that? Could you talk us through perhaps the behavioural side of the impact of differential tax regime and what you would be looking at to anticipate any leakage? That is one thing that our building, perhaps initially on some work that the Scottish Government did some years ago, has been the development of what in economic jargon is called the elasticity of how the behavioural impact might work through. In other words, our estimates of how much people may change their declarations and where they may be registered for tax. It is a factor that we need to take into account. We are working with HMRC to further develop those elasticity going forward. It is clearly a factor. We have looked at the academic evidence that is available on that, which is important to take into account. Inevitably, there is no established evidence based on how that will impact in a UK context from differential income tax, because it has not existed so far. Inevitably, there is not actual real information, but there is a number of sources of information of how elasticity might play out for a movement between countries and particularly within states in America. That information has been useful in developing some initial estimates of how that impact might go forward. If we need to make those estimates, as we would expect, we will set out the elasticity that we are using and make clear the basis for those estimates and draw out what impact that has on the overall numbers. The key point that I want to emphasise is that it is a judgment based on the best information that is available to us. We will set out what it is, building on the work that the Scottish Government has done previously, but particularly what we have been developing with HMRC. Under the fiscal framework, has it been settled as to how you would judge someone to be an English taxpayer as opposed to a taxpayer in Scotland? Is it day count fraction, or is it day count numbers, or is there another test? Is it established in the process that is led by Revenue Scotland rather than us to classify somebody as a Scottish? I apologise to HMRC to classify somebody as a Scottish rate taxpayer rather than a rest of the UK taxpayer. That is for them. We will utilise that information, but that is their decision elsewhere. Let us just a brief follow-up on the question of incomes. Obviously, Scottish taxpayers are now meant to be identified with a nice code. In your forecasting, you present the data that you will get will be accurate data in relation to Scottish taxpayers. Although I think that the National Audit Office was concerned that there are still around 420,000 potential taxpayers excluded, I wonder if you can say something about the reliability of the S code. No doubt it is better than at the survey of personal incomes. The second question is on the question of self-employment. I mean that I am yet to make my tax return for the calendar year 2016. It will be well into 2018 before my self-employed earnings will be reflected in any national statistics, and self-employment is rising in Scotland. Presumably, it will be something that you will reflect when you present your forecasts in relation to the confidence that you have about forecasting, given the fact that there is, in this particular instance, a time lag in a certain category of taxpayers who do not declare their income for quite some considerable time after it is earned. Can I touch briefly on the second question and then ask Mary to pick up the first one and any further comments on the second one? In terms of self-employment, inevitably, in terms of detailed tax information, people in employment, there is the time lag in terms of declarations as well. That is by the very nature of taxation, and that is why there are different time periods for the availability of information that I have already been through in response to the question from Mr Mason. The pattern of the changes in the labour market whereby there has been a sharp increase in self-employed workers over the period since the financial crash, that is very much one of the features of the changing labour market that we have to take into account in making the forecasts based on the information that is available to us about changing employment and self-employment patterns. We take that into account with as much information as is available to us. As David said, we are using the survey of personal incomes at the moment to forecast income tax liabilities. In terms of how the population of Scottish taxpayers in the SPI relates to the population of Scottish taxpayers that is being identified with S codes by HMRC, it is too early for us to be able to assess that until there is more information, the real-time information, the monthly receipts and the ultimate outturned information that is published. The self-assessment issue that you raise does mean that you are not going to have the full year's picture for 17-18 until summer 2019. That is one of the challenges because we are trying to forecast liabilities of receipts. However, at the moment that we are using the SPI data as the best available data source, we need to keep a watch on that. As the real-time information develops and we have the three sources together, we will be able to see how well the SPI has been doing, what the real-time information can tell us and how that relates to the outturned liabilities at the end of the period. We will know more in future years, but we have to base our forecast on the SPI for the moment. I cannot comment on how well the identification of Scottish taxpayers has gone. My question was on the availability of localised or regional data within Scotland. Obviously, Scotland's regions themselves are all very diverse. In your view, there is a shortfall in that regional localised data and how it impacts on your forecasting. Again, a crucial and important issue that was struck by the evidence that Himes and I's Enterprise gave you about the challenges that they face in understanding what is happening in the economy of the Himes and Islands. At the risk of sounding slightly unhelpful, I want to emphasise our national remit. Our task is to produce overall GDP and its income tax across the boards. In one sense, our emphasis is on Scotland-wide information, but we are very alive to and very interested in the pattern of economic activity across Scotland because that greatly impacts on and influence our assessment of what is happening across Scotland. As an example of the work that the commission did a year ago or so about what is happening in the Aberdeen economy as a consequence of the changes in the oil and gas sector and the following price of oil impact on the housing market. Regional issues will impact on the national picture. In that sense, I would expect, for example, oil and gas. We touched on construction earlier, which might have a particular regional dimension. We will be very interested in local data for the purposes of developing our overall understanding. That might be slightly different from other users of statistics, whether the Himes are the Enterprise or North Ayrshire Council. We are very perceptive and give useful evidence about the need for that greater degree of information, but that is probably going for purposes and uses that go beyond our activities. Obviously, that information is of interest. Do you find that information available for you at the moment? If it is not, what more could be done to achieve that? We talked about some of the agencies providing more access to their information. Perhaps two things to mention briefly. The first is that, inevitably, if there is the information available at a Scottish level, it is a subset of the UK level and is probably at slightly longer time removed than the UK level. The same applies to sub-regional data within Scotland. Concerns that have been raised about the information on gross value add-ins and the information about more detailed employment estimates, I understand the concerns that are often raised about access to information. The things that I think would potentially be of great interest is bringing out, as Himes are the Enterprise and the Scottish Enterprise are willing to do, its administrative data that is held by local authorities and enterprise agencies, and subjecting that information to analysis and data assessment rather than just publication. That might bring out a greater degree of information at local level that could clearly assist the work of other agencies. It would also be something that we would be very interested in. Perhaps, particularly on the property market going forward, we would be quickly interested in that. I just add that, as David touched on, the issues with using business information at a Scottish level are only amplified when you go down to smaller, you know, when SDU produce regional GVA and GDHI and other indicators, and they're expanding quite a lot, the sort of disaggregation of the data. It's all the same data that's been modelled down to these areas, so it's not using new or different data, it's just cutting it in a different way, so that's just a caution for some of these quite low-level estimates of things like GVA. As David said, we'd be particularly interested in things that can help us to evaluate our forecasts, so if we forecast the LBTT and there's been a shortfall, is there a particular regional dimension to that, which helps us to explain where the economy was perhaps driving some of that difference? That's where it can be particularly useful for us understanding why our forecasts are maybe different from the outturn, which inevitably they're going to be, but to help explain and analyse that difference. Things like regional LBTT receipts, for example, would be of interest to us if Revenue Scotland were able to produce that in the future. Last day, if you were looking at very localised data, perhaps as of interest, I take it that there would have to be a consistency in the methodology of capturing that data. Yes, for us to be able to draw conclusions from it, we're useful at a national level. In your written evidence, you suggest a greater role for HMRC and the Office for National Statistics to help to improve the quality and coverage of statistics for Scotland. You've spoken quite a bit about HMRC and not quite so much about the Office for National Statistics, so could you take the opportunity to fill in any blanks about HMRC and your relationship with them? How would you characterise your relationship with them? If there are things that O&S do that could be improved or gaps that are there that they could help you fill, it would be useful for us to get those on the record, too. I think that our relationship with both organisations is very strong. I think that the various relationships that we are building up with a number of agencies and perhaps another organisation that we haven't mentioned much is the Office of Budget Responsibility, another key factor in all of that. We have been developing that as an organisational development activity. We are developing memoranda of understanding with each of those organisations to make sure that they understand our needs and we understand what might be seen as the wider challenges that they face as organisations. In relation to relationships and links, I think that there is a very positive development. Inevitably, as part of being an organisation with a particular focus on Scotland, liaising with an organisation that has a UK-wide remit, things that are great importance to us might be seen as not less important to them but they have to take into account a wider perspective. There is a constant engagement to further evolve and develop what they may term as regional breakdowns within the rest of the UK. That often comes down to a judgment about the perceived need for regional breakdowns, the perceived costs of breakdowns and a more fine-tuned estimate, which I very much looked to our professional statisticians to judge on, which is whether or not the sample size of a very particular survey or any particular piece of work is robust enough to enable us to use local information. That is the sort of dialogue and negotiations that we have with both of the organisations that you mentioned. Generally speaking, my experience is a very positive evolution. More can happen. There are clearly some datasets that we would like greater access to and greater publication of, but that is part of the evolving process. There is a large role here for the digital economy bill and the new powers that it gives to ONS and ONS to on-world transmit information. I know that it has been talked a lot about at the committee in your previous sessions about access to VAT records, but that has the potential to transform data and information about small businesses in Scotland and the UK as a whole. Those small businesses are not in every business survey, obviously. They are sampled with a fairly large sampling fraction. To have universal coverage of those one-site small businesses would really improve the information that was available for the Scottish Government to be able to produce their national statistics. There will always be a role for business surveys for large entities, for multi-site companies. VAT returns are never going to give you the detail that you need to be able to model them, because they obviously create the biggest fat groups that they can in order to minimise the number of returns that they need to send in. There is a large potential there. If ONS are using this in their national accounts and in their GDP estimates, the digital economy bill allows them to on-world transmit the Scottish slice of that information to the SG in order to improve the Scottish estimates. That would improve the quality of Scottish national accounts, so we would encourage it greatly, but that is for the ONS to do with the SG, and then we will benefit from the fruits of their labour with better quality national accounts. Those sorts of administrative data sets can be used to improve the quality of information, but there will always be an element of regionalisation of large companies and other things, because they are still reporting at that sort of GB level. There are quite a lot of opportunities for the ONS and SG to do things together, which would improve the data that we then use. We are encouraging all of that, but a lot of that will be for the improvement of the national accounts that we are then utilising. Gillian Martin asked about the possible transference of people's self-categorisation between earned and unearned income. Do you have any broad conversations with HMRC about tax avoidance and tax evasion? Again, it is part of the discussions that we have. We are not a tax collection agency, so in that sense we are not actively engaged in measures or assessments to that. Developing estimates of where there may be tax-motivation incorporation or wider issue about tax, yes, we have to take that into account in the forecasts, but I would not say that it has been a major issue of discussion or debate at any level of detail. It is worth saying that the OBR, through its production of forecasts, considers measures that HMRC proposes to reduce avoidance and therefore increase tax yield. Its assessment of the sort of revenues that those measures will raise has changed a bit over the years and released a report in the past couple of months, which suggests that it may be more conservative about the estimates of the sorts of sums that those measures may raise. It is important for us to be aware of those measures if they are going to impact on the Scottish tax take. We have quite a detailed consideration of UK policy measures that may impact on the Scottish tax take. As David said, we have been working very closely with the OBR, who have been tremendously helpful in many ways in giving us advice as we are a sort of fleddling independent fiscal institution, but also raising awareness of our role and our statutory function with UK Government departments, which has been really helpful for us in terms of opening doors. We work very closely with them and their views on those sorts of UK policy measures in order to inform our own forecasts. One of the other areas that we have been interested in in this inquiry is the extent of independence from government in the statistical bodies or bodies that exist or may exist in the future. Do you have a view on that? Obviously, the fiscal commission, as you mentioned at the very beginning, Mr Wilson, is a statutory body and therefore at arm's length from government, is not it? Do you have a view from your own experience and perspective on the debate that is there around the extent to which there should be or there should not be an independent from government statistical unit? A formal position would be that we do not have a corporate view. It is not really for us to have a view on a statistical institute or any recommendation that you might think about. Perhaps just a couple of points to mention it. The first is not to underestimate the degree of proper processes that underpin the quality of the statistics and the independence of the production of statistics and the release of the statistics. This is a very long-standing issue and there is a good deal of regulatory processes that provide, in my view, a great deal of reassurance about the independence of the production of national and official statistics. However, I understand that there is a debate to be had about this. One of the issues that has perhaps come up—I think that my colleague Stuart McIntyre mentioned about the Northern Ireland statistics agency—is that we need to look carefully at the regulatory processes of what independence means. In the case of the Fiscal Commission, we feel that the statute is very clear that we are a non-ministerial department that is operationally independent from the Scottish Government, and that is very clearly set out in the statute for good reason in our situation. However, there are other parts of Government activities that have different processes for guaranteeing quality and independence. It is really for others to judge about the statistics role, but I just want to emphasise not to underestimate the proper care and professionalism that goes into the production of statistics already at the moment that should be underestimated. Thank you. Perhaps one last question for myself. I think that my understanding is that you will produce a tax and GDP forecast alongside the Scottish draft budget for 2018-19. Do you have an idea of when precisely that will be published? Our document will be published at the same time as the Scottish budget, so that will be on 14 December. It is very deliberate as part of the overall fiscal framework arrangements that we publish on the same day as the Scottish budget. At the same time on the same day? I had understood your answer that way, so that is thank you for the clarifications. We will be producing five-year forecasts of the current year. We will finish that and then we will do the budget year plus the next four years for everything that we are producing forecasts of. Then those will be revised annually. Is that the… Twice a year. At least twice a year, perhaps more. If there are no further questions from committee members, then thank you very much for attending today and I'll suspend this session and move to private session.