This is an issue that has been gaining an increasing amount of coverage over the last few years.

The House of Commons Treasury Committee are also looking at this issue.

The Chartered Institution of Taxation have published a report of a recent Treasury Committee hearing on this issue.  It seems that there is general agreement as to the existence of the “tax gap”.  There is as yet no agreement on how we go about measuring it or how to reduce it.

The CIOT report on this can be found here.

Inner House case considering the competency of the Lands Tribunal to discharge or vary conditions in a registrable lease in terms of s90 of the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003.

The Co-operative Group, who were tenants under a 125 year lease of subjects at the Paisley Centre, sought to discharge or vary certain provisions including restrictions on the use of the property and a “keep open” clause contained in the lease.

The Lands Tribunal had rejected Propinvest’s (the landlord) preliminary arguments that it had no jurisdiction to vary or discharge the conditions. However, an extra division of the Inner House held that the Lands Tribunal had “gone too far, too fast and on inadequate foundation” in rejecting Propinvest’s challenge to their jurisdiction.

The Inner house found that the Lands Tribunal had not applied their minds to a significant aspect of the decision in George T Fraser Limited v Aberdeen Harbour (1985). It was clear that the legislature did not intend all title conditions in registrable leases to be susceptible to the Lands Tribunal’s jurisdiction[1] and, in Fraser, the Lord President (Emslie) had[2]: identified two potential areas of limitation:

1)     that the condition must “relate to land”; and

2)     that there must be an obligation. I.e. a burden on an established right.

With regard to the second area of limitation, the court in Fraser had held that the Lands Tribunal had no jurisdiction to interfere with a clause which, by excluding assignees without the landlords consent, essentially defined the tenant’s identity from the outset. Such a clause was not a true burden just an important delimitation of the initial grant.

The Inner House found that, when rejecting Propinvest’s challenge to its jurisdiction, the Lands Tribunal had not considered the second aspect of the Fraser decision and had failed to consider whether Fraser laid down a principle of general application which should have been followed. Fraser was plainly of high authority and it was at least arguable that the court there did seek to identify a principle of general application.

The Inner House sustained Propinvest’s appeal and allowed a proof before answer on all aspects of the dispute including whether the Co-operative Group could bring their application within the proper scope of the Lands Tribunal’s jurisdiction noting that a decision should not be reached without the fullest consideration of the Fraser decision.

The full judgement is available from Scottish Courts here.

 All of our property and conveyancing case summaries are contained in the LKS Property and Conveyancing Casebook here.

The Scottish Government have published research looking at various methods of charging for development within the planning system in order to fund infrastructure.  Five different models were considered including a ‘blanket’ system similar to the Community Infrastructure Levy used in England.

Although the research determined that all five models were options for Scotland, the ‘blanket’ system was criticised for being short on certainty and not necessarily being tangibly linked to site developments. The models deemed to have the greatest potential were (1) the ‘measured charges’ model which bases the charge on the “infrastructure call” made by the development and depends on up front financing being available for specific phases of the development with payment of the charge being made at the point of build or on unit sales and (2) the ‘negotiated model’ i.e. the present section 75 contribution approach.  Also considered were a ‘central model’ (i.e. state funding for infrastructure) and an ‘innovative model’ which included various approaches such as Tax Increment Financing (TIFs) and Local Asset Backed Vehicles (LBVs).

The full Report is available from the Scottish Government here.

An independent report into elderly care in England, commissioned by the UK Government and headed by Andrew Dilnot, has been released today.

The Dilnot report recommends that a person’s lifetime contribution towards his or her social care costs in England should be capped at £35,000.

The report also recommends that the means-tested threshold in England, above which people are liable for their full care costs, should be increased from £23,250 to £100,000.

The Dilnot report can be found here.

Two of Scotland’s leading economists warned that frontline services such as education and social care will lose out to Edinburgh’s troubled trams project as they raised serious doubts over every single aspect of the funding proposals.

Professor Arthur Midwinter of Edinburgh University Business School told The Herald the council’s plans to raise the extra £173 million needed are “full of questionable assumptions and there is risk in every element”.

In a scathing attack, Professor Arthur Midwinter of Edinburgh University Business School told The Herald the council’s plans to raise the extra £173 million needed are “full of questionable assumptions and there is risk in every element”.

The report from the Herald can be found here.

A former Glasgow city councillor has been banned from making solo visits to his elderly mother in a care home run by Southern Cross after complaining about her treatment.

The report from the Scotsman can be found here.

The chairman of BMA Scotland, Dr Brian Keighley, has questioned whether society can afford the cost of treatments designed to prolong the lives of terminally-ill patients for weeks or months, given the current pressure on health service budgets. Dr Keighley said in some cases tens of thousands of pounds were spent on drugs to extend cancer patients’ lives for relatively short periods He added that such treatments should be looked at ‘critically’ and that for life-prolonging treatments costing thousands of pounds, ‘useful’ longevity, should be the criterion for decision-making.

The article in the Scotland on Sunday can be found here.

A new report, Quest for Quality by the British Geriatrics Society (BGS), has highlighted the fact that up to 400,000 vulnerable older people resident in care homes are frequently denied access to routine NHS healthcare because they live in care homes. The inquiry found many often cannot get access to GPs, therapy services, out of hours services or specialist dementia services such as memory clinics.

The report can be found here.

The “Christie Commission” or to give it its Sunday name: “Report on the Future Delivery of Public Services by the Commission chaired by Dr Campbell Christie”, was published today.

One recommendation is that our health and care services are integrated.  I will write about this in more detail in my next article on Scotland’s care industry.

The report can be found here.

The Irish Times reported at the weekend that the French Government is still seeking to have Ireland increase its 12.5% Corporation tax rate in exchange for a deal on improved interest rates on the bailout loans.

The report in the Irish Times can be found here.