Chamber and committees

On conditionality, I am optimistic that the businesses that trade out of whatever Scottish ports are allocated green free port status will have equitability at their core—in the context of entrepreneurship, I am thinking about women-led businesses and women business representation. Am I right to be optimistic about that?

Good morning, everybody.

I want to focus on the matter at hand, which is the financial memorandum. There has been a lot of chattering external to this committee about the national care service, but personally, I will always welcome audacious and ambitious projects for change. That said, I have to recognise that what we have here is a large project that is complex to deliver and which has a longer-term outlook and a wide breadth of scope at a time when, as has been mentioned, we have rising inflation.

Minister, you said that “folks are saying that all that should be” covered in the financial memorandum—I think that you were referring to the extra items that the convener said were not mentioned. I do think that that is true, but my frustration has been that, despite the fact that the estimated costs in years 1 and 2 have about a 50 per cent variance and that there is over a 100 per cent variance in years 3, 4 and 5, everything has not been covered. I expected to see something in the FM that said, “We don’t know about the following areas, but we’re going through the process of discussing them. For example, we have talked about VAT,” but it is almost as if those areas do not exist.

That frustrates me because, ultimately, I want to have confidence that the FM represents the best picture that we have at that time, even if its estimates have a wide degree of variance, as is the case now. Knowing that, and having read everything in readiness for this meeting, what would you or your team do differently next time to reflect those concerns?

I go back to my original question: knowing what you know now, what would you do differently next time? I am entirely sympathetic with regard to the complexity and nature of this type of work, but I do not think it unreasonable to suggest that this has just not landed at the right level for this finance committee. If we set aside the ambition of changing social care, I do not think that you could conceive of the committee emerging with confidence in the estimates and the articulation of the unknown unknowns, particularly after the first of our scrutiny sessions on the financial memorandum. I am trying to establish just what you would do differently next time, having acknowledged all of that. Can you give us some reflections on that?

That question is for Ms Bennett in particular but, if that is unfair, I direct it to the minister.

On engaging with stakeholders, I would go back to the convener’s point about your period of engagement with key people on understanding the basis of your estimates and the need to do that without prejudicing future decision making. I do not think that that has come through, either.

Something that you have said about the cost of data collection intrigued me. In this committee, I often go back to my old life, when I was engaged in large transformational change programmes. I am surprised to note that we do not have what would, in effect, be a kind of unit cost per service by local authority. Can you give me some flavour of that? Have I misunderstood the situation?

You have made a very important point. We want to support this measure with regard to confidence but, to do that, we have to compare apples with apples. Equally, if concerns are being expressed about a loss of economies of scale and so on, the question is how we can know whether that is true if we cannot compare that data. I agree that it is an important area, and it likely feeds into the wider picture. I acknowledge that you have agreed to come back to us on that, and the committee is keen to see that information.

Finally, at the end of all of this—in, say, five years—and regardless whether we have descoped elements or whether the scope has increased, there will still have been great uncertainty over inflation and the financial environment. Given that uncertainty, how will we be able to compare the actions that are ultimately taken with the estimates? It strikes me, having heard what you have outlined with regard to the data, that that will be a major challenge. That will be the ultimate test of the processes that we are going through, given that we fully accept the uncertainty, because of the scale of the project.

You can see why the additional level of data, including the rationale for the exclusions and so on, is so important.

I want to put it on the record, as somebody who raised some of those points, that I am absolutely in favour of the national care service. It is the kind of audacious and ambitious project that we should be doing. However, I am carrying out my function of financial scrutiny, and other parties, such as the Tories, would do well to heed that.

The cabinet secretary is faced with two aspects of risk that are of particular concern. First, there is the uncertainty created by chaotic UK Government economic policies. Secondly, there is the undoubted harm that is about to be inflicted on the average citizen come the autumn statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That the chancellor has taken advice from George Osborne, the architect of austerity, is no comfort on either front. Can the cabinet secretary indicate the basis of discussions with the latest UK chancellor? Indeed, has he been consulted by him at all?

Absolutely—if Mr Carson can answer that point.

The member fails to understand the fundamental point that I am making, which is about capital borrowing powers for this Parliament—the Scottish Parliament—in which the member sits and to which he should be contributing for the Scottish people.

I hope that all those who want, for the best of reasons, to hasten capital spending on projects such as road dualling will, equally, argue for increased borrowing powers to strengthen our capacity. If anyone else wants to intervene on that point, I am willing to take the intervention.

I would very much like the minister to address two questions in his summing up. First, will he outline the major impediments to publishing a timeline for completion of dualling the A9 and A96? Secondly, what is the current state of play regarding capital funding for the projects? Let us hope that we can get them back on the road to completion.