good morning and welcome to 30 second meeting in 2023 of the finance and public administration committee we have one public item on the agenda today which is a first annual evidence session with representatives to van revenue Scotland on how it fulfills its functions we are joined today by Alayne Lorimer chief executive and Arduino Carol chair revenue Scotland and I should say before wishing you good morning that I was privileged to be invited to host a reception y rydw i'w imeddi, ac fe ryw i'n ddau'r hyn gyda'r leiswyr hwn. Mae'n amdano yn lawer o'i amser i ddod y syniadol. Mae'n rhiwfydol fod yr hynny yn ei ddengau'rwylaeth mewn cyfnod gan y ddechrau. Mae'n mynd i nhad i'ch cynnig hŷnogu oedd ar yn awdurdodau iawn i chi. Mae rwy'n arddangos i chi i. Mae'n mwy fwy o'ch amdano i chi i i'ch ffansiwr i ddau. I thank you for the invitation to join the committee this morning. I think that this is the first time that we have appeared before the committee in this way and we very much welcome the opportunity to discuss all aspects of Revenue Scotland's performance. Today's discussion is an important part of our governance as we are accountable to the Scottish Parliament who set up Revenue Scotland in 2015. It is my privilege to represent the board of Revenue Scotland today alongside our chief executive and accountable officer Elaine Lorimer. Revenue Scotland is currently responsible for the management collection of two fully devolved taxes, land and buildings transaction tax and Scottish landfill tax. Since its inception, we have collected more than £6 billion in revenues that stay in Scotland to help support public services. We are proud that we have managed to deliver this in an efficient and effective way with a 99 per cent digital return and collection rate and cost below 1 per cent of the taxes collected. With the publication of our latest annual report and accounts, both the devolved taxes and the resource accounts, we are pleased to report on continued progress across the four pillars of our current corporate plan, which covers the years 2021-24, excelling and delivery, investing in our people, reaching out and looking ahead. That has been achieved through really challenging times coming out of the pandemic and is a testament to the quality and commitment of the great team of people that we have at Revenue Scotland. While we may be a relatively small team in overall numbers, we more than make up for this with a depth of expertise, a desire for continuous learning and a commitment to work with others outside of Revenue Scotland to deliver the very best service that we can. Indeed, in the latest people's survey taken across the whole of the civil service, Revenue Scotland scored consistently highly across a large number of key areas tested, including leading and managing change, inclusion and fair treatment, and clarity on our purposes and objectives. We look forward to taking on further responsibilities with the introduction of the Scottish aggregates tax and the building safety levy, and we will continue to work closely with our local government colleagues as they move towards the implementation of the visitor's levy. Looking ahead, it is going to be vital that Revenue Scotland continues to take advantage and invest in the most effective digital technology and solutions. This is what will keep us highly efficient in the way that we operate and to continue to seek better ways of capturing and using the important data that we collect as part of our responsibilities. By keeping the mindset of digital by design and doing this safely and effectively, we can be confident in keeping our operational costs as competitively low as possible, collaborating with others across Scottish Government and elsewhere to ensure that we can continuously improve the way that we deliver our services. Next spring, we will lay our next corporate plan to cover 2024-27 before Parliament for scrutiny and approval. This will cover a period when it is recognised that Government funding for its programmes will be under unprecedented pressure. It is vital that Revenue Scotland plays its full part in delivering the tax revenues that we will be responsible for in the most effective and efficient way. That will always be our primary focus. We are keen to share our experiences with others as we all have to continue to improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of our services. Collaboration will be key and that too will remain the cornerstone of all aspects of our operations and will continue to reach out to all of the stakeholders who are in some way engaged in the tax systems in Scotland. We will maintain our commitment to training the very best professionals as we continue to build our capabilities and expertise as your tax authority. Finally, I would like to record my and the board's thanks to our senior leadership team and all staff at Revenue Scotland for their continued dedication and professionalism. This is something that we can all be very proud of as we move towards our ninth anniversary and we can look forward with a high level of confidence that we can address the challenges ahead by aspiring to be an exemplar organisation that the public at large can rely on. I thank you again for this opportunity to engage with the committee and we genuinely look forward to our discussions this morning. Thank you very much for that opening statement, Aiden, and it's hard to believe that it's almost a decade since the Revenue Scotland and Tax Powers Act 2014 was actually passed and I recall all the deliberations and discussions at that time. It's also astonishing that it's the first time that you've actually been in front of the finance committee, but you certainly made up with it the kind of tome that we've actually presented in terms of your annual accounts, which I myself and my colleagues have been waiting through. I have to say that it's all been very positive, but there's obviously a number of questions that we would want to ask for clarification. Also, some of the questions that we'll ask will be in your report, but it's important to get them on the public record. Can I talk at the end of your opening statement about staff? The numbers have increased from 76 to 83, from 21, 22 to 22, 23. I wonder if you can tell us why that is. I can take that. Obviously, what we've been working on in the last financial year has been the starting of the work on the Scottish Aggregates tax. We require to bring in people who can dedicate their time in relation to that. We set up a small programme team within Revenue Scotland, and we also moved some of our existing staff into that team to begin to focus on the development of the bill, because we've been working alongside Scottish Government colleagues. It's obviously ministers and policy colleagues' responsibility to bring that bill forward, but it was really important to us that we were able to get in early to offer our expertise around the content of that bill. That's the primary reason for the small increase in the staff that we have. Thank you very much for that. I noticed that the work that you're doing through compliance activity brought in some £10.4 million. However, the increase in total amount of penalties and interest collected in the current year is £2 million and £65,000, compared to £1.245 million in the preceding year. That's quite a significant jump. I wonder if you can clarify why you believe that to be the case. There are two separate issues, one around our compliance yield and one around our amount of penalties. There was a delay in issuing of penalties during the Covid pandemic. Our board took the decision at that time that it wouldn't be fair on businesses to issue penalties over that or indeed to individual taxpayers to issue penalties over the pandemic period, but once businesses started to get back working again and societies started to open up again, we took the decision then that we had to begin to re-issue our penalties. That's a primary reason for the increase in the penalties that you see there. In relation to the compliance yield, we've been building our expertise and compliance as an organisation over the years. We've had a number of significant successes, if I can call it that, to tax authority. It's a success. If we are able to bring in additional yield as a result of our careful compliance work and what you're seeing in that £10 million figure is the bringing to a conclusion of a number of cases that we've been working on over the years. That's additional revenues that have come in to Scotland or it's indeed revenues that are protected, so it's where we have been in debate with the taxpayer and come to a conclusion of which they have accepted, which has allowed us to protect revenues rather than pay revenues back. It's a mixture of two. That's certainly very positive. In terms of your accountability report, I was looking at the corporate governance report and, of course, one of the big concerns that we have in society these days is cybercrime. I notice that in your accountability report, during the course of the year, there were eight issues relating to minor data losses that you're reporting dealt with internally. It goes on to say that those were resolved quickly and mitigation put in place, but I'm just wondering if that is set of lamb bells in terms of Revenue Scotland with regard to the potential of further and more serious breaches, tens of cunning and what Revenue Scotland are doing to ensure that that doesn't happen in the future? I'll let you kick off. There are two issues. There's cyber and then there is information security. The transparency with which we are reporting the minor data breaches is not as a result of a cyber concern, but as a result of minor administrative errors that our staff made over the course of the year. An example would be sending an email to a solicitor with a similar name to a different solicitor who is actually the solicitor that he was acting on behalf of the client. That's the type of administrative error that we're talking about here. We have really strong and strict controls in terms of data security within Revenue Scotland. Right from the very beginning, it's been absolutely baked into our ethos because we have very strict responsibilities as individuals working within Revenue Scotland for protecting taxpayer information. In fact, I could go to prison if I release the name of a taxpayer without their consent. You can imagine the culture that we therefore have within our organisation. As a result of that, our staff are highly trained around being able to recognise when an error has been made. We have a culture of not blaming people. I'm confident that what we have there is the number of data incidents that we've had over the course of a year, which when you put into the context of the volume of work that we're dealing with, it's minor. Once somebody has raised a concern internally around a breach such as that, we then investigate it. We have people in the organisation who will do that for us, and we then take a view as to whether it is of such a nature that it requires reporting to the information commissioner. You'll see that the nature of the data concerns that we had over the past year, none of them reached that threshold, all of them were dealt with quickly, promptly and resolved without on-going complaint as a result of that. What you're seeing there is a mature organisation. Mistakes will happen is how you then deal with them that matters. On the cyber side, I'm sure that you don't want to come in there too, because cyber has been something that our board has taken real interest in, as you would expect. If I can set out just briefly, our cyber security is on our strategic risk register. It's one of our highest category risks, as you would expect, as an organisation that is digital. We have a low risk appetite in terms of tolerating any form of breach. We have strong controls in place with all of our suppliers who supply us with digital services upon which we rely in terms of meeting high standards of cyber security governance, and we check them for that. Within our organisation we also run regular business continuity testing, and because cyber is one of our highest risks that we monitor as an organisation, it wouldn't surprise the committee to learn that potential cyber breach has been something that we have run business continuity exercises around as an organisation, and built in further controls, not so much in terms of our management of our suppliers, more in terms of how we would respond as an organisation should that occur. I'll hand over to you because it's a real interest to the board. I think that it's just to reassure everyone that this remains a top priority of the board, and it's continuously looked at by our Audit and Risk Committee as well. We ensure that we get both internal audit to review the areas on a regular basis, and we continue to reach out to ensure that we've got the right cyber resilience and looking at what the Scottish Government is doing more broadly to ensure that not only are we complying, but that we are thinking ahead in terms of if we can get further external verification on things that we might do in addition to what is required within the normal parameters. An example would be also in the regular penetration testing that we want to get done, and it will continue to test. It's an area that keeps us all awake, and it's not just at Revenue Scotland, but it will be a continuous threat for our organisation, and so it's something that we need to remain totally vigilant on. I think that you'll see within the annual reporting accounts some of the examples of what we're doing to remain resilient and ensure that we keep our status as high as possible. Okay, thank you for that. Now, one thing that I was curious about was regarding the devolved taxes account, the financial statement of cash flows, and during the bottom of the page, which is, I think, on page 26, it talks about the analysis of changes in net funds, and I'm not really sure what those mean, so I'm just wondering if you can explain them a wee bit. So, for example, in 2022-23, on the 31st of March, it was 61.935 million, and the following date was 66.696 million. What's interesting is that if net funds, 31st of March, it was 22.23 and 21.22, or 61.67 million, but there's a huge difference between the net funds at 1st of April, 22.23 and 21.22, while a factor of 10. So, I'm just wondering if you can explain what those figures relate to generally, what they mean. I think that will be on note 5. Our accountant, John, is waiting to come in after that. This may be something that we might need to write to you with some information on if I'm not able to answer in the way that you are hoping for. Right, so this is to do with... Thank you. Thank you for your patience. This is to do with the transfer of funds backwards and forwards to the consolidated fund through the Scottish Government, and it's to do with the position at the end of the year where we're at, and we work on an accrual basis. So, it's to do with where we were at on 31st of March and also beyond that what we were due to accrue in terms of revenues to be received beyond the 31st of March, which relates to tax returns, which were in by the 31st of March, but the revenue is not received. So, this is to do with the cash that we essentially had at the end... Excuse me, I noticed you're looking at him even though he's in the last two questions. Sorry, apologies. Apologies. Apologies. He was looking intently at our way. So, that's what it's to do with. It's to do with where we're at at the end of the financial year and the fact that we are still accruing revenues beyond the end of the financial year that relates to the financial year that's just closed. Okay, so it's just... Why is it only 6.7 million in the first of April, 2122, but it's nearly over 6.6 million the same day a year later? I mean, that's whereas the net funds appear to be pretty similar, really. I was just wondering why that was. It just seems to be quite... I think that's about... We should probably write just to clarify this, because I think it's probably to do with the working days and when funds are actually transmitted. And it may well be that funds were transmitted in 2021-22 on the close of a Friday, for example, whereas we had funds that were waiting to be transmitted that would not be transmitted until after the year-end date in 2022-23, but we should clarify that and come back to you. The committee's content will write to you about that. Yeah, that's fine. That's absolutely fine. In terms of the same document under devolved taxes, I count 2022-23, 1.4, the tax gap. I'm just interested in this, because this is a theoretical liability that represents the tax that would have been paid if all individuals and companies complied with both the letter of the law and the revenue of Scotland's interpretation of the intent of the Scottish Parliament setting law, which is the spirit of the law. I remember when the bill was being put together a decade or so ago, the spirit of the law was very important in order to try to avoid loopholes, which we can get in terms of UK taxation, for example. I'm just wondering if you can explain how much you estimate the tax gap to be, because I didn't... I had a wee look and it might be here somewhere, but I couldn't find it in your account, so I'm afraid. It's not something that we calculate and it's a kind of impossible thing for us to try to calculate. I think, as I understand it, there's been plenty of research over the years around tax gap and whether it's actually a reliable figure or not. There's too many uncertainties in trying to calculate it. What I would say, though, is that our compliance work gives you evidence of areas that are open to interpretation, shall we call it that, in terms of our legislation. Part of our rigorous work on compliance is to try and, on a risk-based basis, to bring in as much as we can that we identify as being properly due in terms of our legislation. We don't calculate a tax gap within Revenue Scotland. It would be pretty much impossible for us to try and do for our taxes. What we do instead is work really hard to identify potential risks associated with our legislation. We follow transactions as they are coming through and we take a view on which of those areas in our legislation or which of those transactions we should focus our compliance efforts on. Let me take that approach across both of our taxes. The other thing that I would say is that, because we have a number of years of experience now, what we are also identifying, as you would expect, is areas in which we would like our legislation to be clarified. In recent years, we have had the opportunity to do that, so we had a landfill tax prescribed activities order in which Parliament passed last year, which was important to us in terms of clarifying our understanding of that particular set of provisions in landfill tax. We have called for a while as an organisation further to be an opportunity at a reasonably regular interval for Parliament to take a view on whether the devolved taxes require the legislation requires to be updated. Because we have had a number of years of experience now, we have a list of things that we would like to see changed in our legislation. A lot of it I would class as being very technical. It is not particularly interesting to the lay observer, but it is important to us as an organisation because it would help to clarify the position, or it would help us in terms of our guidance and what we put in our guidance for taxpayers. The reason that I am asking about that is because it is one of the contentious issues that we have to do with tax gap. I was looking for a ballpark figure, but I was not looking to say that it was £10.3 million or £4.5 million. It is one or two per cent or three per cent. Obviously, if we do not know what the gap is, it is hard to be able to tackle it. I know that more than 99 per cent of money that is liable is being collected, but it seems to me that there may be a gap outside of that. That is exactly right, chair. The 99 per cent relates to the fact that our taxes are self-assessed. The 99 per cent that you are describing is where taxpayers have come forward, have submitted their return and have paid. The tax gap, or our compliance work, is looking at those who are not complying, who have not submitted their return or who have submitted a return, but we believe that they have not applied the correct interpretation of our legislation in terms of the application of how much revenue is due and how much tax is due. I was just going to say that, clearly, the Scottish Fiscal Commission tries to undertake some work in respect of that as well. What Revenue Scotland provides as much information to the Scottish Fiscal Commission as we can so that, looking forward, it can do its own estimations of both where the revenues and the revenue cycles are going, but also to do any estimation that it deems fit to try to work out if and to what extent there is a tax gap. Being a self-assessed tax, where we are clearly reliant on the taxpayer submitting the returns and then being as efficient and effective as we can be to process those returns and collect the tax, means that we are not in a position to estimate what a tax gap might look like. What we can do is share the information of the compliance activity that we are doing, the areas that we need to respond to quickly if we feel that there are loopholes, that might be being applied by certain taxpayers. That was particularly the case in the landfill tax area, as opposed to LBTT, and we should try to ensure that those gaps are closed and that those loopholes are closed so that there is no lost tax checker. I must apologise for shuffling my papers while we are actually speaking. I am listening to you, but I was trying to find a specific page that I cannot seem to find among those massive tomes. I did annotate all the pages that I was going to ask questions of last night, but I seem to have missed that one out. I apologise for my ceaseless futuring over the last few minutes. I cannot really find a page, but I will ask anyway. It is about your capital plan. You seem to be investing £778,000, if I remember correctly, in capital over the next year, which is an increase on more or less zero in the last year or two. I wonder whether you can talk us through that investment and what you intend to deliver with that. The first thing that I would say is that it is important for us to have access to capital to be able to continually invest in our tax system. We need to build improvements on the basis of the feedback that we have had and to assist us in becoming even more efficient. Some of the investment that we have brought to bear in the last financial year has been around increasing efficiency for us internally, but it has also been around improving what the taxpayers agent would be able to see when they logged on to our system. We have introduced a dashboard, for example, so that they can log in on to our system. They can see what outstanding tax may be due, and they can also see whether there are any penalties waiting to be paid by their clients. The investment in our system has always been primarily around improving our efficiency or, indeed, improving its accessibility. That is for our main tax system. We also did some other things over the last year. We invested our contract that we have for our finance system, so we have a separate finance system from our tax system. It was due for renewal, so we renewed that. That came in considerably under budget from what we had expected, but, nonetheless, that scored towards capital. The other things that we have done, too, have improved our website. We have moved our website into a more secure footing, which is now cloud-based. That requires some capital. It is a mixture of things that are essentially designed to support our efficiency, but also, probably more importantly, to support the accessibility to our systems, to our information, either to agents or to taxpayers, so that they can understand their obligations and be able to submit accurate returns, which means that we then do not have to do compliance work on it. I am delighted to see how much you have been able to achieve with the fairly modest capital investment. Given the fact that the department has spent more than £3 million just up to date in its website, to a role-payer system in my view, but we will not go into that at this moment in time. Digitalisation is certainly something that you are focusing on. Do you have an issue with people who are not digitally included? I would not have thought that you would have a lot of that, given the way house buying operates just now, but you must have some. When we set up as an organisation, we set up with the intention of being wholly digital, but there is always a category of people in society who are digitally excluded, for one reason or another. We used to accept paper returns and checks, because we were still people who wanted to pay their tax by check. With Covid and the pandemic and having to move our whole organisation to remote working, that gave us the opportunity to look once again at that policy. We engaged with the law society, ICAS and other stakeholders. We were able to reduce the number of tax returns by paper, because what we were able to do was introduce a new policy, which was that we would accept it, and we would give you support in submitting a paper return if you needed it, but we were in a category of what we would class as enhanced needs or enhanced support, as opposed to whether you were giving everybody a respective of their needs a choice as to whether to submit by paper or digital. I am pleased to say that we have also been able to remove the need for payment by check. One of the innovations that we brought in in the last financial year is a new enhanced needs policy. I am pleased to say that this has been widely welcomed by a range of groups that represent people who are either from a disability perspective or age perspective, or whatever. We engaged with a number of groups around society in terms of bringing forward this policy, which would mean that if you are looking for extra support, either in not necessarily being able to understand our website and the information on it, if you genuinely just want to speak to somebody at the end of a phone who will help you, we have staff who are now trained to be able to support folks in that situation. I am pleased to say that people have been using that service and it has been very well received. Thank you for that clarification. The last question for me is basically with regard to page 38 of your performance analysis. I was pleased to see that, between 2016 and 2022, the 10 categories that you are there from leading and management change through to engagement index have all improved significantly over that time period. However, there is quite a variance in terms of the improvement. For example, you are sitting at 61 per cent for paying benefits compared to 92 per cent for my team. I am not really sure what my team relates to. I am just wondering whether you can explain the kind of graph and the progress that it is being made in that you plan to make as we move forward. Yes, so this is based on the results of the annual people's survey. The way that the people's survey is constructed, it is constructed along themes. My team is one of the themes, and within that there is a range of questions that staff will be asked or invited to answer. That will give you some examples. I feel connected to my team. My team supports me when I need assistance with my work. It is those sorts of questions around my team. My line manager is visible. Over the course of our time in Revenue Scotland, we have invested a lot in our engagement with our staff, our support, our learning and development of staff. One of the areas where we have placed a lot of emphasis in recent years has been around supporting line managers, giving line managers access to learning and development, and encouraging line managers to work more closely with their teams. That is borne fruit in terms of the results in our people's survey. There is always room for improvement. Paying benefits seems to be the one where people look for the most improvement surprisingly. I am just going to say that in every survey, whether it is a civil service survey or otherwise, paying benefits always scores the lowest in terms of overall satisfaction. What we also do is ensure that we do the read-across across all other Government departments to see whether we are an outlier in a negative way and how we would then go about addressing that specifically. Overall, we are really pleased with the progress that we have made in terms of our people's survey results. I am conscious that it is a moment in time when those surveys are conducted by staff. Nonetheless, to be ranked in the top 25 in the civil service in the UK, there were more than 100 organisations that participated. We are really pleased with the results from last year. We await the results for this year's survey. They will be out in the next week or so. You are hoping for further progress in the planning for working fields from here. I have hugged the floor enough. I am going to open out a session to colleagues. First, Michelle will be followed by John. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I just wanted to pick up on a point that the convener made. I never have any difficulty finding the stats because I simply search on the key item in my laptop such as the joys of digital technology. On that, I wanted to pick up a bit more about, first of all, what we were talking about, cyber security but also in general, and ask you what assessment you have made of both the challenges and the opportunities wrought by artificial intelligence. One of the challenges is that in general terms, we all do not know. Specifically, I would perhaps make the case that the public sector is not at the cutting edge. Therefore, what assessment you have made of the advent of AI, particularly the sensitivities around data that you have outlined, what challenges you see there, how you are addressing them and also what opportunities? I want me to kick off with that one. Again, it is a really important area for us and we continue to look forward in terms of not just from a practical perspective, but looking at areas that would lend themselves to better automation. Those would typically be the more repetitive things that have to be done. An example for that would be, for example, how we issue penalty notices and getting that into a more automated approach. Looking forward in terms of, as you go for automation, where typically you would be using some form of robotics to improve that, to improve the automated process, then looking at where the market is going more generally with AI, which would tend to be more predictive and predictive type of analytics that we look for. We have put together a team both internally looking at our overall data maturity at this point in time and how we can ensure that we get the best out of our existing systems, but also to look to where we can improve those systems. Engaging with external parties, including one of the main provider in terms of NEC, as to what they are seeing in terms of iterations and the potential use of, and I will put the broad term AI because it can mean so many things. More importantly for us is to look at the automation benefits going forward and we are bringing that to bear as we look at things like Scottish aggregates tax and engaging with the industry to ensure that they are also as ready as we will be to ensure that we can have a fully automated approach to ensuring that the self-assessment that applies there is done systematically. The challenge with AI is always going to be a never-present one, not just for revenue Scotland but for all non-departmental bodies in terms of both as a threat and an opportunity. Is there something there that we have to be even more vigilant about when it comes to cyber resilience in terms of the impact that AI could have, particularly in terms of trying to penetrate our systems? Equally, is there an opportunity for us to refresh the systems that we have so that they can also start to help with predictive data that we can then look at and share that data and the data insights, not just with rest in revenue Scotland, with the fiscal commission but with others where that data could be important? It is early days at this stage but we are continuing to resource internally to ensure that we are growing our internal expertise but just as important that we are reaching out and looking at what is happening. One of the main areas there is having that engaged discussion with NEC, our main provider. We have to be open to the possibilities but cautious. I would rather not want our organisation to be trailblazing in the use of AI. I would rather our organisation to be open to the possibilities and to be curious about it but prudent and cautious because of the nature of our work. We are not going to be the organisation that is the pathfinder for the use of AI but, as Aidan says, we are really interested in the use of automation. Some of the improvements that we are bringing into our system this year, using our small capital budget this year, is around automating some aspects of our penalties processes. We need to be careful about the use of automation. We have a number of key facets of our legislation that requires us as a tax authority to exercise judgment. What we can never have is a situation where a machine is exercising that judgment that the courts would expect an individual to exercise. That is why we are focusing more on routine processes that can be automated where there are aspects of our decision-making around inquiries or assessments or whatever. We are going to always need to have that individual making the decision. I suppose that one of the questions that I was going to follow on that you have answered in part is about the external assessment that you have mentioned, your software provider. I suppose that the following question is, again, that their view is only as good as their view of the world. Part of the challenge is the exponential speed of change. A follow-on, then, is that would you consider consulting wider expertise? Is that something that you have on your sites? Yes, and it is something that we are already doing. Our digital lead within our organisation is very plugged into the digital team within the Scottish Government and the leaders in the field in the UK Government. From a governmental perspective, we are very plugged in, but we are genuinely interested in what is going on in industry. We are fortunate to have representation on our board with Eidol Ngu Guru, who is one of our board members who is a digital expert. We are definitely making use of his connections, his understanding in terms of our approach to this. We are plugged in at the governmental level, which is obviously really important for us, but we are also interested in exploring more broadly. Finally, we also set up as an organisation the British Isles Tax Authorities Forum. It is a long mouthful of that one, but essentially what it does is it brings together the tax authorities from across the British Isles, named that way to include Jersey Guernsey, Isle of Man, as well as HMRC, the Welsh Revenue Authority and ourselves. A lot of the discussion that we have when we come together, two or three times a year, is around developments in technology that we, as tax authorities, can benefit from the pros and cons of those. We are as connected, as we can, to be given our size. You have led me on to something else, perhaps inadvertently. I wanted to ask you about equalities. Like the convener, I have read through your corporate governance report. I know equalities is an area that you are required to give cognisance to, but I did know that of your seven people on the board, there are one woman and six men. I can see that your senior management team is equally split. I also did a research on the use of the word woman in your corporate governance report, but I was not able to find any mention of it. In financial services, generally you will know that we have a significant issue with the lack of representation of women. I wanted to ask what your plans are to make the board more equitable. What is the split on your risk and audit committee, which is a classic committee that normally never has equitable split? The Audit and Risk Committee are three individuals, all male. That would align with— You have proven my theory with the statement that you made. I will go back to—we clearly had a more recent recruitment process for board members, where we brought on three new board members. That process followed the public appointments process to the letter with the Ethical Commissioner representing to ensure that that was a fair and valid process and that it focused on merit. I am delighted with the individuals that we have recruited on to the board in terms of their experience. I am nonetheless acutely aware of the gender imbalance on the board. One of the things that we will be looking at this year is the opportunity potentially to co-opt individuals, particularly on to committees, to give them experience of working with Revenue Scotland. We did that successfully with one of our existing board members as part of the process, Simon Cunningham. He started off as a co-opted member on the Audit and Risk Committee and ultimately became a full board member. That could be a useful process as we look forward two years in two years' time when there will be two board members retiring and that we look for the next recruitment cycle. I am acutely aware of that, particularly in terms of trying to ensure that we get as much diversity on to the board as we can. I am delighted with the diversity that we have in terms of the experience and the different skills that each individual member is bringing to the board, but, equally, I am conscious of the broader diversity requirements and desires to have better gender diversity on the board. As we have discussed and will continue to discuss how best to address that over the next couple of years as well. What I would like to hear you say is that you have definitive plans to get to an equitable split the next time. Obviously, you have two people stepping down because the problem with the perception of meritocracy is that, if women never get the chance, they never get the chance to demonstrate merit. That is the cyclical problem that we have had for a long time, heavily pronounced in financial services. I am interested in knowing a bit more about your specific plans. What is the target that you aim to reach in two years' time, given where we are? What is the target that you are aiming for? Do you have a target? I have a personal target, which I am quite happy to share. My different preference would be to have two females appointed to replace the two that are outgoing, which will give us better gender diversity. However, I am subject to the public appointments process, which is a rigorous process and which is dictated in terms of how both the sifting takes place in terms of the application process that comes in and then ultimately how the individual candidates are then interviewed. While I may be a voice on that panel, I am one voice of a number of people, including representatives, who ensure that there is a diversity of thought in terms of the appointment process. I have a personal ambition to get there. I would hope that it will not be derailed in some shape or form, but I will continue to do my best efforts. By getting individuals on, perhaps co-opted on to committee, I might also give those individuals a good opportunity both to determine whether they want to apply in the future for the board position, which is subject to the public appointments process, but it might also give them a bit more of an advantage on the basis that they will be able to bring relevant experience to the interview process as well. What I was going to say is that it might be helpful just to add a little bit more colour in terms of the efforts that we went to reach out as broadly as we could to get as wide a pool of candidates as we could for our last board appointments. Aiden is quite right. We are ministerial appointments but regulated by the public appointments process, so we get caught into the rigorous process that requires adherence to competencies, a very strict process around interview to competencies and evidence-based. We tried to demystify coming to be on our board and to reach out as broadly as we could. We paid as an organisation for a search, we got approval from the appointments ethical standards commission to do that, we reached out across the UK, we went out to, we identified different diversity groups, representative groups in business as well as in the third sector and reached out there. We ran open evenings, open events. We really did target in as much a way as we possibly could and, while I am not part of that appointments process, I with Aiden was very interested and determined to try and increase diversity as much as possible. From what I saw, and I was not part of the process, but from what I saw in terms of people who were interested, we had diversity. People who turned up at these events, we had diversity. It is something that happens, I think, because it is a personal view, but I think that something happens then when you get into the rigor of the process, where there is no compromise, where I think that there is still some work to be done. Our view is an organisation led by the board in terms of thinking about how we can help people to get over that. By targeting women in particular, because that is what you have identified, where we are lacking at the moment on our board—we were not previously, it is just in this most recent round that we have found this—the co-opting individuals on to committees gives board experience, demystifies, and it means therefore that those folk who are willing and interested in doing that should stand in good stead when you get into that rigor of a pretty straight-laced interview, competency-based process. Thank you very much for that, and I think that you have identified the concerns with the process, which thankfully will be picked up and I will carry on progressing it. My last question was—perhaps I should have tagged it in with the first one—about where you are delegating, although you remain accountable, but responsibility moves elsewhere. For example, SEPA, given what you outline in terms of protecting the integrity of your data and so on, how are you monitoring the risks of delegation, if you could just talk me through that? We have a dedicated team within SEPA who work alongside our landfill tax team. They all go through the same level of security clearance that our staff do. They all go through the same training that our staff do in terms of protecting taxpayer information, etc. We restrict access to our SETS system, and not everybody on the team has access to that. We have an underpinning documentation in line with our legislation, which allows for the release of information in a very restricted way, if that is necessary for compliance work. Where does the sharp end of this come from? We have data gateways that we can use for that, which is regulated. We monitor that. We have regular monthly meetings with SEPA. I engage with one of their chief officers on a quarterly basis, where we are looking at the performance of SEPA but also the relationship between our two organisations in terms of whether we are getting the best out of it. If we are worrying about things such as cyber security, for example, our systems are absolutely ring-fenced. The issue that affected SEPA in terms of its cyber attack had operational effects for us, but it did not have any security effect for us. In fact, the way in which we dealt with that operational impact was that we brought some of the SEPA staff into Revenue Scotland. We brought them in and so called them into Revenue Scotland. They became Revenue Scotland staff, essentially, for that period until SEPA was able to get themselves sorted out so that we could continue in a secure way in our compliance work. I was just going to say that we have just reintroduced joint site visits, again, with SEPA. That has a whole number of other issues in terms of ensuring health and safety, wellbeing, etc., are looked after. That is an important aspect of the collaborative nature of what we need to do, because site visits are inevitably important to ensure compliance. It allows not just our staff but SEPA to share insights into trends that we see happening out on the sites as well, and that keeps us well informed. It is important that we ensure that that delegation, as you point out, is effective. Equally, we apply the same lens as we are with external providers in terms of cyber-resilience, security, etc., that we... Have I got time for one last question, convener? It was just about shared services. As you know, this is finance and public administration, and the utilisation of shared services is something that I greatly value. I think that we could be doing considerably more. I notice that you have that on your HR function. I am just not clear about the history. Was that set up at the outset, or was that something that has evolved relatively recently? How is it working out for you? It is just a general question. We have shared services from more than HR. When Revenue Scotland was set up at first, our board at that time took the decision to embrace shared services that were on offer from Scottish Government. It covers procurement, it covers transactional HR services, facilities, we are in a Scottish Government building, finance, payroll, etc. We embraced, in fact, for a while. I think that we were the only organisation that took the whole pan of play of shared services from SG. We have modified our position a wee bit there, so you will have noticed that we have built a small team within Revenue Scotland now for HR. That is to focus on case work and to support us in our learning and development function and on our organisational capability building. Everything else we take shared services on. We have good relationships with SG across the range. You can imagine that that is a number of people within Scottish Government that we have to face off to for those services. It has been not always easy, particularly because we are small.  We are increasingly influential, so we tend to pack a big punch for Revenue Scotland. We punch up over our weight with those things. I am really proud of the fact that my leads for the functions ITX, IT systems, the SCOT system—we are relying on that, too—are leads for each of those areas within Revenue Scotland. We have great connections into people within the Scottish Government who lead on those functions. Where we are at now with shared services is that we will be aware that there is a corporate transformation programme within the Scottish Government that is running at the moment. We will be a recipient of the new systems for HR and finance when they go live. What we have tried to do there is ensure that our voice is heard in terms of the specific requirements that we will have as a separate employer in terms of GDPR compliance with the construct of the HR system. I am keen, as accountable officer, to make sure that the really good systems of internal control that we have with the existing system that allows us to have substantial assurance on our audit and clean audit certificates from Audit Scotland are maintained as a minimum going into this new system. A new system looks like it has incredible functionality that we will benefit from. The challenge for us as an organisation always with taking shared services in this way is our size. There are over 30 organisations, in addition to SG, who share the services of SG. As far as we are concerned, over the years apart from bringing some HR in-house, it has worked very well for us. It has been a good model for us to operate on. It has meant that, when we have been building our organisation, we have been focusing instead on building our compliance activity. We have been building capability within Revenue Scotland that is unique to us, which enables us to be a good client of shared services, rather than running all those systems ourselves. It would not have been an efficient model for us. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think that your turnover of staff has reduced compared to the previous year. I take it that is a good thing. Well, yes, of course, but it is always healthy for an organisation to have turnover. We turned over a significant number of staff who have noticed in previous years. I am pleased to say that most of the time, the vast majority of the time, when our staff leave us, they leave us on promotion because they get great experience when they come and work with us. It used to be a real concern for us that we were losing people on promotion all the time. It felt as if we were the training academy somehow for the civil service in Scotland. However, we have come to accept and acknowledge that, if what we are doing is giving people great experience, which enables them to move on elsewhere within the public administration in Scotland, we should celebrate that. What we have found is that people have started to return to us. They have gone off and got experience elsewhere and come back. We had high turnover and it has reduced. It has reduced because people tend to stay with us for a couple of years or so, so we are in that period. We have taken the approach that we have taken as an employer through hybrid working. We have a great reputation in terms of building capabilities within our staff. We have a really good reputation for the learning and development that we offer. People are wanting to come to stay with us for a while and get the benefits of working with an organisation such as ours. We are always conscious of our turnover or turn figures. No or low turnover is good but only for a short period. We need to continually allow ourselves an element of turnover so that we bring in fresh skills and experience, and that will enable us to continue to move forward as an organisation and not get stale. That seems fair enough. You are not a huge organisation, so people inevitably have to move at that point. You mentioned hybrid working there. One of the suggestions was that the organisation's ability to meet operational requirements was not damaged during the pilot that you have been running. That seems quite a low bar to say that it was not damaged. Was it positive or are you not sure? We know because we have our key performance indicators, which we will have seen in our annual reporting accounts. We get monthly reports on those and quarterly they go to the board. We set ourselves a very high bar in terms of our expectations around service. We have maintained and exceeded our KPI performance over what has been, if we go back to 2020, shifting an organisation that was entirely office-based to remote working, to bringing it back to operating in a hybrid way and for our performance to be maintained and exceed our KPI performance, which we are pleased with. Perhaps we should have used more upbeat language in our annual reporting accounts. I think that a lot of organisations are still in an uncertain place. Are they going to continue with totally hybrid or will they encourage staff to come in a bit more and all that kind of thing? Yes. Are you also in that position that you have not reached a settled stage yet? We have reached a bring aid in here because the board took a decision in May this year about that. Our approach to hybrid is more certain than, as you described, we took a decision earlier on this year to adopt hybrid as our operating model for the foreseeable future. We have been through enough change in the last few years to realise that you can never say that it is permanent. Where we were perhaps unique to other public bodies in Scotland was that we took a very evidence-based approach to determining what model of hybrid we should adopt as an organisation. We ran a project around that where we set ourselves criteria. We wanted a model that essentially delivered optimal organisational performances that we reckoned that we could deliver. We met the needs of our staff and what they were telling us would give them the opportunity to give us optimal performance from their perspective, which was cost-effective and which also met environmental goals that we have as well as an organisation. We are pleased to say that the form of hybrid working that we have adopted as an organisation continues to tick those boxes for us. It was important. Elaine talked about it being evidence-based as opposed to anecdotal. Not only did we engage the staff fully in terms of the modus operandi as to how it would affect. The board's concerns were really well addressed when it came to productivity, continued wellbeing of staff, continued connection of staff, which is important as well for mental health and wellbeing. Equally, we employed external consultants to come in with the evidence that they were seeing happening in other organisations and compared that with the model that we wanted to approach. It gave us a high level of confidence that the model that we have adopted, which is proving highly popular with staff, is also one that will deliver the results that we need. Perhaps the words that we used could have been more positive on the basis that we set ourselves quite a high standard because we were already operating in a highly efficient way and we did not want that to drop in any sense, so we maintained a high level of efficiency. That is probably what we should have said, that the organisation did not, in effect, miss a beat by going into the hybrid model. Based on the people survey results, we are seeing the benefits from the staff both enjoying the hybrid experience but equally recognising that there is a requirement for them to come in at the appropriate times so that they stay connected with their teams, connected with management and so on so that we do not lose what other organisations have lost to going into a more work-from-home mode. It is important that we keep that connectivity in the organisation. We will keep that monitored but the board is certainly confident based on all the evidence that we have gathered that the model will work well and maintain high levels of efficiency in the organisation. I see that you have a staffing and equalities committee. Is it operating in this space? The decision was to have a more strategic focus for that committee. What did that mean? Historically, when the staff and equalities committee was set up, it was there also to help with an organisation that did not have an HR function, to help with operational matters and to look at operational fortitude in the organisation. I think that the organisation has grown into a situation in which it is mature and therefore that committee needs to look at more strategic issues in hybrid working being a really good example. Workforce planning, working with the team to ensure that we look forward and think about the strategic issues that we as an organisation will face and most importantly the skillsets that we are going to need, particularly on technology. The SCC's focus now is looking at those strategic issues and engaging with the executive team on the actions that we can take going forward. I think that that is a really healthy thing for the SCC to be doing. The other is in the title. The staffing and equalities committee is also where we go with our equalities strategy. We talked about equalities from the perspective of the make-up of the board earlier. We did not get into what we are doing as an organisation to meet our obligations either as an employer or as a public body in terms of our approach to equalities. We absolutely embrace that responsibility as an organisation and it is the staffing and equalities committee that we go to with our plans there. Finally, the other thing that it covers is health and safety and wellbeing. Again, the committee in the past has really helped us to work through in some detail our respective responsibilities as an employer given the type of activity that we undertake. For example, we were administrative as an organisation, but we also have staff who go out on landfill sites, which is a very dangerous thing to do. We needed to make sure that we had a proper approach to supporting our staff in that and meeting our obligations as an employer. The staffing and equalities committee has helped us to take a more strategic, holistic view to our responsibilities in that regard. You have mentioned health and safety, so I might just touch on that. I was going to ask you about that afterwards. I saw it in the annual report on accounts that it talked about strengthening the health and safety systems. Is that about visiting sites? Yes, it was primarily about that. As a separate employer, we have to have a competent person who can sign off from a health and safety perspective all our requirements to ensure that our staff are working in a safe environment when they go out to visit landfill sites. We realised that we needed to have some more rigor around that, so that is what we have done over the past year. What we have done is entered into a separate arrangement with SEPA, who, of course, have all that knowledge and experience, and they have their own in-house health and safety team who can support us. As you can imagine, we had to work out the legal lines in relation to where responsibilities for them started and ended and where our starting end in terms of that. We have entered into a really good relationship with SEPA, which is underpinned with an MOU, which means that our staff and we benefit from their expertise in visiting landfill sites, but we do not give up our responsibility ultimately as the employer in those situations. What we have also done and worked on this year is, again, with the support of the Staffing and Equalities Committee, is that we have entered into a contract with an external provider for our other health and safety requirements because we are conscious as we take on aggregates tax, for example, we are going to have staff who need to go out and visit quarries, which is quite a different level of responsibility from sitting in an office in VQ. SEPA, unfortunately, cannot provide us with that service, so we have had to procure that externally. You have not had any accidents or serious accidents so far? No, I am very grateful and thankful to say that. Also in the annual reporting accounts, it talks about a variety of things, but one, for example, the review of litigation decisions and you were awarded an upper end of reasonable assurance rating, so I do not even know what that means, and then further on a substantial assurance. So there are obviously different words, which you can explain what they mean. Reasonable and substantial and so on. How do these compare and where are you? This is the internal audit language, so this is a language of the internal audit service. Substantial assurance is the highest rating of assurance that you can receive on the back of an audit. Reasonable assurance tells us as an organisation and me as an accountable officer that there are no major concerns with what they have seen, but there are areas for improvement. Upper end reasonable is somewhere in between, so essentially what it is saying is that, yes, we have identified some areas for improvement, but they really are not that significant at all. OK, I will probably leave that one at that point. We probably could explore it further, but anyway, just on the financial side of things, I mean you talk about getting penalties and the convener asked you a bit about that. Can you tell us what the penalties are for, mainly? What do people have to pay penalties for? For late, for submitting their tax return late, essentially. So it is not that they have not done it at all and then you found them? Well it could be that too. So there are two strands. The bulk of our penalties are where tax returns are submitted late. There are also penalties that can be brought to bear on the back of us undertaking compliance work and inquiry or maybe where we issue an assessment. So we have the opportunity to issue penalties if we think the taxpayers' behaviour merits it. And there is not a huge amount of that. Of what? Sorry. That taxpayers' behaviour meriting a penalty. I would not like to say that there is not a huge amount of it, but we are careful in our application of that aspect of our powers. OK, and my final point. I think the convener also asked you about some of the assets and the intangible assets in the accounts. I was looking at this IT system under development and I think you spent £152,000 last year. So you can have suggested before that there is quite a lot of different projects all happening. So there is not one big project that that £152,000 is part of? No, although our position going forward will change in relation to that just because we have Scottish aggregates tax coming our way. So, obviously, our ability, our bandwidth as an organisation to be able to take on much more business-as-usual type investment in our systems is going to be reduced. So we will see if we were to come to you next year. You would see at that point that a significant amount of our spend over this next year will be beginning to put the system in place for the collection and management of a new devolved tax, which will take up the vast majority of our capital funding. And is there a risk associated with that? In what regard, sorry. What? Probably that runs over budget would be the main risk. Well, as an organisation we have a really good reputation for bringing in capital investment on time and within budget. We have a programme in place with proper programme board for Scottish aggregates tax. Clearly the digital element of that is going to be really important to us, not just in terms of the tax system being amended to be able to operationalise the tax, but more than that for us. We also want to push the boundaries as much as we can in terms of using technology for our compliance work. So it will be a really important strand of our programme. We will monitor it very closely. It will rely on us working closely primarily with NEC or supplier to make sure that the costs that they are providing us, that we specify well, the costs that they provide us, are robust. That is all part of what will be in the financial memorandum of the bill and we will actively monitor that as an organisation going forward. It is something that we will pay absolute particular attention to because we are conscious that the introduction of a wholly new tax is a significant thing. We need to do it well, we need to do it competently and we need to make sure that the technology that we bring to bear, to be able to do that, works and comes in on time to enable us to introduce the tax on time. I just pursue that last point because it is a big change to the work that you will undertake when the aggregates tax comes in. You are responsible for the collection and the management of it. You said in paragraph 46-47 in your report that you are working very closely with the Scottish Government about how to set that up. Do you think that it will have considerable ramifications for the way that you operate your workforce? We are thinking not in the sense that, essentially, what we are thinking is that we will require to have a small team put together—this is when we go live—that will work with the industry, similar to what we have on landfill tax. We are thinking that it should follow a broadly similar model in terms of how we operationalise it to how we have done landfill tax. The difference is that, at the moment, we are not seeing that there is another public body like SEPA that we could delegate a function to. Where there might be a difference is that we might need to have a slightly larger team in-house because we do not have an equivalent body to SEPA in the aggregates industry. Given that SEPA is not able to provide that, are you likely to have to train up individuals specifically to have those skills if they go to quarries or whatever? Yes. Is that at cost? In our business case, we will be introducing the tax and operationalising the tax. We will be taking a view in that in terms of how much additional staff we will require. We are not talking about a massive team here. We are probably talking about no more than a dozen people to do that. We also need to make sure that we have people who understand the industry primarily, as well as people who are really good tax compliance type professionals. We already have within our organisation a really strong capability around tax. We have brought in some folks to work with us on the programme who will move into operationalising the tax. We are doing everything that we can. We have also been absolutely instrumental in terms of engaging with the industry. We have been proactive right from the outset in terms of engaging with the industry and accompanied Scottish Government officials when they have been going out and engaging. However, in due course, we will have our own engagement because we will need to talk about all the mechanics around how the industry is going to move from dealing with the UK tax authority to the Scottish tax authority in terms of what we expect. The last thing that I would say is about what it means for our organisation. We focus very much on the tax capability that we will require, but there are other teams across the organisation that will need to be ready for this. We have not talked yet at the committee about our stats and MI team. We publish official statistics as an organisation. They increasingly are core to how we manage the taxes. We will need to be publishing official statistics on aggregates tax. We will need to be doing a whole range of things that we do for the existing taxes. Our tax operations team, who deal with first point of contact calls from taxpayers, will need to be ready. There will be an impact across the organisation, but I am not expecting us to need a massive uplift in staff. It is more about bringing the rest of our organisation up to be ready. Will you be working with the Scottish Fiscal Commission when it comes to that data? Absolutely. That is essential. It has been in the two existing taxes. That would be very helpful to us. Everything that you have said this morning gives us a very high degree of confidence in the professionalism of Revenue Scotland, but it is a substantial change, potentially. We want to identify that we have the right capacity for the skills that will be required when it comes to the collection and management of that new tax, but you sound reasonably confident about that. There is a but to all of this, but you cannot expect to have not to use the opportunity being in front of this committee. Clearly, we will need the budget to be able to do it. We could not do it within our existing system. I am sure that we will scrutinise the financial memorandum very carefully. If you notice significant increases in your budget year on year over the last two or three years, I imagine that it will be similar. In the annual report, you note the decline in Scottish landfill tax revenues. Could you perhaps say a little bit more about that, please? That was always to be expected. Part of the policy behind this tax—it is an environmental tax—was to move towards the biogradable municipal waste ban. The way in which the tax is designed is to disincentivise waste going to landfill. You pay a very high premium for waste that ultimately ends up in landfill and a much lower premium for waste that can be reused. There has always been part of the Scottish Government's environmental objectives to move towards the bmw ban. What we are seeing in our landfill tax receipts is the projected decline that is beginning to come through. The Fiscal Commission's assessment, its forecast for tax revenues—you would also see that it is also predicting that. Essentially, that is what we are beginning to see come through in our figures. As we develop our work on the aggregates tax, which we have touched on a lot about, can we assume that that will result in the same form of trend? Is that something that you have modelled so far? It is not something that we have modelled. We have not been asked to model that. I am not entirely sure what it is. It is not something that we have modelled. That would be something for the Scottish Government to ask it in terms of its ultimate policy. For the work that we will be doing in our experience with landfill tax, because those taxes are slightly smaller taxes, they have not necessarily attracted the same level of scrutiny from each mercy. We are expecting with aggregates tax for us to go on a similar journey that we have gone on with the landfill tax industry in Scotland. For the first few years, I will not be expecting us to be seeing a decline in revenues. I am interested in the broad move between the revenue that is being collected towards a more environmentally sustainable trajectory. There is a trade-off to be made for the public accounts in that regard. There is reasonable agreement around challenges ffiscally for Scotland at the moment. More broadly, I wondered about the issue of behaviour change in some of those devolved taxation. We have seen significant issues about behaviour change in terms of tax collection from the income tax side of the agenda. As more of those taxes are collected, are there any broad lessons that Revenue Scotland could give us a reflection around how behaviour change in Scotland under the devolved taxation regimes is beginning to evolve? We talked to our colleagues in Wales quite a bit about that because they have similar powers to us and they are a little bit younger than us. I am going to speak in the generality here, but what we have observed is that, because you have your own tax authority in Scotland focused on those taxes, we very much see it as part of our role to raise taxpayer awareness so that the maximum revenues can be brought in within our remit. The approach that we have taken is very much to focus on the accessibility of our guidance. We call it upstream compliance. I do not really like that term, but our ideal would be that taxpayers understand our obligations so well that our intervention is minimal. What we have seen with our stats is that we have our 99 per cent collection rate. That is a great collection rate. That is an indication that the system is working, the tax system is working for those taxpayers who know what their obligation is. On landfill tax, we would like to say that our approach to compliance in terms of getting close to the industry, having direct relationships with the owners of the 27 or so landfill operators in Scotland who are taxpayers, has meant that we have been able to assist them in their understanding of how the tax works for them, how it plays out in terms of the processes that they have as a business, in terms of how they reuse waste, how they manage waste. We would like to think that we have a really important role in helping to shift that behaviour. Where it goes wrong, we are there to come in. It is difficult to put evidence to, but certainly the fact that we are able to focus on these issues in a way that was not able to be done for good reason before, we would like to think that that means that the taxpayers in Scotland have a heightened awareness of their responsibilities, which therefore should lead to behavioural change. Is there a flipside to some of that? That raising taxpayer awareness, when we know that increasing the additional rate to 47 pence, the static costing of that for £23.24 was £32 million of revenue, but the actual after behavioural effects had generated £3 million. I think that there is a question about whether awareness is raised by the institutions, including ourselves. I know that that is not a particular tax that you handle, but across the issue of devolved taxation is what I am trying to explore. The more visible that some of those issues are, the more heightened the behavioural effects could be. I suppose that, by provoking by that around the aggregates tax, it seems to me that there may be significant market effects in terms of the businesses that could, where they obtain business from, where they obtain their supply, the products that people purchase. The differential taxation situation might affect some of that. I think that that is something that we monitor, on a regular basis, because, again, there is an internal market piece here with aggregates tax coming in, because there are a number of operators that will be operating, particularly in England and Scotland, in terms of the way that they do. The important mantra that we are trying to apply, and that will include through aggregates tax, is to make it as simple to comply as possible. The more complex we make it, the more difficult it can be to have the confidence that everyone is complying appropriately, but it may also act as a deterrent. We are trying to ensure that there is good engagement with industry, particularly around aggregates tax, because that is what happened with our experience with landfill tax. The more that we engage up front and the more that we can set out a system that is easy to comply with, and as simple to understand, as simple as we can make it, the more we can be confident that we will get the maximum level of compliance. That is a behavioural, as much a behavioural issue as anything else. We have cross-border issues with our existing taxes, and what we benefit from is really good. That is a technical operational working-level relationships with HMRC and the Welsh Revenue Authority. We have technical groups that come together regularly over the course of the year where we could be working on joint compliance work, because taxpayers do not necessarily stop at the border. We can also be raising issues that we are observing in terms of behaviour. What we are developing as a tax authority is some really rich, evidence or understanding about behavioural effect for the taxes that we are responsible for. That is information that we can share with Scottish Government policy colleagues when they are developing aggregates tax policy. Is that something that you have been doing, then, if you have been tasked to share? We do with our existing taxes, yes. Do you feel that they might be drawing the lessons around that for aggregates? I think that it is fair to say that the way in which we have been working with Scottish Government policy colleagues in recent years has really improved in the sense that it is very much, and it is something that we are really keen to continue to forge. It is a partnership of equals where we have respective roles, we have lines that we understand that cannot be crossed. We are very clear about what they are as regards us. Equally, there is a bit in the middle there that is around wanting to make sure that the tax system in Scotland works as well as it possibly can. That is where we can bring our operational expertise, but we can also bring our data and our insights. Increasingly, that is what we are doing.  It is right that everybody complies, but businesses will tend towards trying to minimise their tax in order to heighten profitability. Does increased visibility result in higher minimisation? That is a really difficult question to answer. I am not sure that I can answer that for you. I guess that our response to that is that the taxpayer pays, in our view, the right amount of tax. Some of the businesses that we are dealing with have advisers who support them in making sure that they pay as low an amount of tax as possible, but that might be legitimate. What we are interested in is making sure that it is legitimate. I would start from the perspective that we need to make sure that taxpayers understand their obligations. We are clear about that. If that results in them being able to manage their affairs legitimately in a way in which they are minimising their tax bill, that is okay so long as it is legitimate. Our role is to make sure that it is legitimate. That is the old argument of evasion versus avoidance, isn't it? Thank you very much for your contributions today. I do not know if there is anything else or any final point that you want to make before we conclude. If there is anything that you feel that you have not touched upon or that any thoughts have been stimulated by the questions. This would be an annual event, so that is something to be very much welcome. Particularly if it is around the same time around the publication of our new report accounts. I think that we would find that really helpful as part of our engagement with the Scottish Parliament. That is great. That itself is very helpful. Thank you once again for answering our questions so fully and frankly. I know that there is one issue that you are going to get back to is on, so we will look forward to receiving that. That concludes today's public meeting, so we will have a five minute break. The next item on agenda is the discussion of our work programme in private. Thank you.


While these uncertain times are certainly painful to go through, COVID-19 has been the giant reset button that this world has needed. I know that I've needed it in my own life and I really needed to examine some of the habits that I had and maybe some of the things that I wanted to incorporate in my life now that everything's been turned upside down. My friend Candice Shearling is going on a 30-day journey to incorporate some new habits into her life and I thought, why not join her? Well, fast forward a couple weeks and this journey that Candice and I are on have turned into a two-part series where I'm going to be showing you some of the ways that we're looking at our life and then moving forward and creating new habits, but also creating a community for you to join us and talk about your journey as well. Want to come with us?  And if it wasn't upside down, at least it was a little bit sideways. And after a few weeks, I realized maybe this upside down life isn't the worst thing to happen to me after all because it's given me a new perspective on how I approach my daily life and all the habits that come along with that. Then I had the great opportunity to chat with my friend Candice and she was looking at this also as an opportunity to incorporate some new healthier habits in her life. And I thought, well, this is easy. I'm going to be home for 30 days. I can do this habit changing challenge as well. Well, as with all things in my life, I wanted to create a system that worked. And in creating that system, I have documented my journey and now created something for you to use as well. So today we're talking about part one of this 20,000 foot view of our lives and creating some changes that we can implement as we're starting in our new normal and our new routine of being home for the next 30 days. Because when it comes to the rest of your life, 30 days or even 60 days, 90 days, is a very small investment in making choices that can affect your future joy, your future happiness, your future balance. And that's what I'm trying to do. There's still tons of time for me to make a great impact in the industry, a great impact on my family, on my physical health and my mental health. So this 30 day challenge, I'm hoping turns into another 30 day challenge and so on and so forth. But today what I want to show you is where I started in determining what was going to be my next 30 days. So why don't you come with me and I'll show you what I did. But before we get started, don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Right now there's a lot of great COVID content. But in addition, I'm still producing meetings, industry related content, especially for you partners out there that are in this transition time of being busy, busy at the hotel and waiting for the industry to start up again. Tons of great stuff coming. So make sure that you subscribe.  Before I started the challenge, and this is where you are today right now, I took a 20,000 foot view of every area of my life and made some notes about how I was feeling in that certain area. And if this was an area of my life that I wanted to improve or develop some new habits over the next 30 days. Now, in this process, I defined 16 areas of my life. And maybe when you go through the exercise, which you can given my free worksheet that's coming, you can you might identify some additional areas as well. 16 is a lot of areas. But in 30 days, what I wanted to do was just identify one or two areas that I really wanted to focus on. So the different areas that I examined start from how I'm feeling about my physical health, how I'm feeling about my mental health, what does my morning routine look like, what does my family life look like, and my partaking in the things that bring me joy, and so on and so forth. And before you start to doodle all of these notes, don't forget, I have a free worksheet, you don't have to write a thing down, you'll get a link to that worksheet and download it yourself and you can fill it in. I'm not going to lie, this exercise took me a while to go through. But at the end of it, I was able to really hone in on some of the things that I wanted to work on in these next 30 days. And I'm hopeful that you will too. So take your time going through the worksheet, be honest with yourself, because that's really the only way that you'll be able to truly identify what it is you want to work on and the areas that you feel you've got a pretty good handle on right now. So this is something that you want to work on. Like I said, I've got it all laid out for you. Part one here is the worksheet where you look at all the different areas of focus in your life. And you can download this worksheet and get started right away. When we come back next week, it's going to be part two. And that's where the rubber hits the road. And part two is going to look phenomenal. We're going to walk you through what areas of focus to work on, but also give you an opportunity to join something I've never done before in this community. And that is to create a community. We're going to come together in a Facebook group, as well as with weekly webinars, so that we can go through our progress and start to bounce ideas off of each other and find resource and community in one another as we go on this journey. So if this sounds like something that would interest you, head on over to liankholderwood.com, download the worksheet and come circle back with me in a week's time for part two. And if this 20,000 view exercise is not your idea of a good time, that's okay. But remember, this could be a once in a lifetime opportunity where we can take a pause and create some change in our life before the normalcy of busyness creeps back into our daily schedules. And if you're just looking for some simple productivity tips, I've outlined some tips in the blog post and blog above here. Simply find something that resonates with your style and make something new this month. I do hope to see you back here next week for part two. Enjoy the exercise and we'll see you then. Bye for now.


I've never seen that done, but that is well deserved, because I know what to live through. That's nice. Yeah, well, that's a man of his quarters, you know. Oh, I'm sorry. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Thank you very much. Oh, okay. Yep, you got it on. All right. Oh, when you were doing the shunt, what was doing this? What did you do? Sorry. Okay. I did. Yeah, I should know. Okay, who's Jeremy? Where's Jeremy? And Boop, where are you? There he is. Thank you for having me. All right. Oh, my shoe. That's good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hello, man. Thank you for all the support for the year. Thank you so much. I'm very happy for you all. I'm just trying to get there one of these things. Yeah. Nice to see you. Nice to meet you. Come on over here this way. How's he going? I'm good, sir. Good. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. You and everyone, anyway great. Congratulations. Congratulations. It's good. Yeah, I'm just excited. Yeah. It's a great day. Thanks. This is crazy. I don't want to give up to my eight for the one that's right here. When you get an opportunity to do it, please enjoy. I'm the best of you at the moment. Enjoy. Enjoy every time. Thank you. See you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Very special. Thank you very much. We're getting one of these. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Oh my goodness. This is your life. You came by yourself? I did. David told me to tell you that he wishes me good. No, no, he's way smarter. Way smarter than you apparently. No, I love coming back. Great to see you. What have you seen? I've seen it. I said he's writing my memoir. Oh, I love that. Give it to you because you can write my memoir. I know, I've been after him. So... Better safe travel, aren't you? Oh, yes. Good. We'll work. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. This was the main guard. Thank you very much. This was a total fight. It was our fight. It was our war. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.


The Honourable First of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, her Excellency, Dr. Aishabh Buhari. Your Excellency's Governor's Presence is led by the Chair of the Governor's Forum, Dr. Cairo De Fiery. The Deputy Senate President, an all-distinguished and honorable members of the National Assembly present, members of the Federal Executive Council, the Chief of Staff, all Her Excellencies, First Ladies of the various states, Royal Father's Presence, led by the Royal Highnesses, the O'Neill Vista, and the Sultan of Sokotovo. My dear wife, Her Excellency Dolly of Shibata. Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Hanfield Sani has written the most engaging book on an incredibly fascinating person, Her Excellency Aishabh Buhari, Nigeria's First Lady. It's unlikely that any First Lady in Nigeria's history has in such a few short years captured the imagination of Nigerians as profound as Aishabh Buhari. She's of course the first First Lady to be on Twitter, on Instagram, and other social media platforms, seeing her on filtered views across the Nigerian people. And she's probably the first to receive in real time the opinions of Nigerians on her views. With her views, Fort Wright, Chris Truthful, and once in a while controversial, she has established an ongoing conversation with the Nigerian people. The issues that concern them most, issues that concern us the most, good governance, security, putting food on the table, the education of our children, prompt payment of pensions to army veterans, drug abuse, the violation and victimization of women. And every once in a while, she airs her own personal struggles, her annoyance in a manner probably unprecedented in the role of the First Lady anywhere. But there is no question that Aishabh Buhari is different. Her difference has been empowering for the Nigerian people. And there is never any question that her comments come from a good place, a place of genuine love and respect for the Nigerian people and our several concerns. Hadisani's book seeks to document a practical work that she's also done in the past five years. But it begins with the detailed and I must say sensitive chronicle of her childhood years and her growth as a woman, a wife and a mother. It also highlights her evolution from a silent supporter of her husband's political adventures to an active mobilizer and campaigner who played a major role in selling him to the Nigerian electorate. Then we also read in the book how as First Lady she founded the Future Assured Initiative which promotes the welfare of women of youth and children driven by the Aishabh Buhari Foundation. The Future Assured Initiative is inspired by her conviction that empowering women is a direct way of promoting the economic and social progress of the nation. We are also given a good picture of this steadfast advocate of women's health issues who has championed improved access to healthcare for women especially in respect of maternal health with the aim of reducing maternal mortality particularly in rural communities. We understand the roots of her relentless pursuit in these past years of the empowerment of women especially through education, the need for young girls to get primary and secondary education before getting married. We understand her stand that no girls should get married before the age of 17. It is from her own experience of being married at 19 and her single-mindedness and determination in ensuring that her educational pursuits were not aborted by her obligations as a wife and mother. We also get a glimpse of the role she considers primary, being to use, to borrow the expression, mom in chief, to Halima, to Yusuf, to Zara, to Hanan, and Chuchu, and now many grandchildren. Her personal attention, the lives of her children each and every one of them and her fierce protection of their privacy and individuality is a lesson in bringing up children under the scrutiny of a sometimes mischievous press. Perhaps because of the undefined nature of their positions and it was Michelle Obama who said famously that there is no handbook on how to become, on how to be a first lady. And sometimes the uncertain impact of their roles on their affairs of state. First ladies may quickly fade into obscurity when the curtains of time are drawn on the tenure of the administration or their husbands. The result is that the records and lessons of consequence that could benefit oncoming generations and enrich our understanding of this are regrettably lost. But it's unlikely that Aisha Buhari would ever be forgotten. And even if there was a chance of this happening, and even if there was a chance of this happening, this well-written attempt to document her life and times and her contributions as firstly to national life through the causes that she has promoted removes that possibility. So the offer of Dr. Harjo signing senior special assistant of the president on administration and women affairs deserves a commendation for the publication of this very important addition to the literary canon and also to Nigeria's biographical history. History has shown that it doesn't matter how many degrees you have or how many titles precede or honors follow your name or how high the position you hold, the rare privilege of public service can only be justified by courage, integrity, and selflessness to these Aisha Buhari acts being yourself, being different. Let me end with the words of Aisha Buhari's doting sweetheart, the man who knows her best, the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Mohamed Buhari, and I quote it, Aisha, as the world has come to know her, is kindhearted. This made her transition to philanthropy and humanitarianism easy. When she became first lady, when she became first lady, her protected man was exerted when women, children, and other vulnerable people are abused. I've observed with keen interest as she addresses many of the social concerns that have given her sleepless nights. She has therefore been a worthy partner and it bitten me for some of the good things that Nigerians have come to identify with our government and reported. And I recall, I agree with you. Thank you all very much. Doctor, that's the separate part of my day. Doctor, that's me. Aisha Buhari, excellent, positive, okay.


Another New Jersey hospital is joining Hackensack Meridian, Englewood Health and Hackensack Meridian finalizing a deal within the next year. Officials from both hospitals say the deal is going to improve care in key areas. Englewood Health are no strangers. We've been working together very closely in an affiliation for the last several years. And a lot has been accomplished. We've been sharing best practices. We've been trying wherever possible to enhance our clinical services. We've worked together closely in academics, particularly in graduate medical education. Englewood Health has provided care in Bergen County for 130 years. A study by the National Academy of Sciences found fewer boys were born to stressed-out moms-to-be. Studies suggest male fetuses are more vulnerable to stressful conditions. The study found only four boys were born for every nine girls when mom had high blood pressure and other signs of stress. Getting plenty of sleep, eating healthy and exercising can help minimize the effects of stress.