Chamber and committees

I have a few questions arising from what we have discussed so far, and I suppose that they follow on from the point about the differential structure in the programmes and the references to a flat profile.

I want to come back to Malcolm Bennie with a question, although it might well be a general question for the rest of the panel, too. How are you able to reflect “Events, dear boy”, if you like? I have already mentioned what happened with the refinery at Grangemouth, which resulted in the Falkirk growth deal receiving extra spend—£10 million from the Scottish Government and £10 million from the UK Government—and being rebranded as the Falkirk and Grangemouth growth deal. To what extent was that a last-minute bolt-on response rather than an active, planned part of the growth deal?

I apologise to the rest of the panel. I suspect that that discussion has been a bit Falkirk specific, but I hope that you will forgive me, given my vested interest. Thank you, convener.

You are highlighting, I suppose, the upside of being able to utilise the shared learning around a PMO—the downside is the change management processes that come with that.

I want to pick up on a point that my colleague Kevin Stewart made when you used the term “added GVA”. I am not going to have another go at you; I simply note that, with regard to the announcement by PetroChina, the figures that we have for the impact on jobs is that more than 400 direct jobs will be lost, and the Scottish Government has referred to a wider impact amounting to nearly 3,000 jobs. That surprises me, given that—you can correct me if I am wrong—the £10 million from the Scottish Government for greener Grangemouth was in essence for increasing community wellbeing, instead of specifically seeking to replace jobs. There was reference to the supply chain, and some of the businesses involved were SMEs that provided hamburgers and so on nearby. What are your thoughts on the decision-making processes that led to the focus on community wellbeing rather than jobs, which was the point that Kevin Stewart was making?

Good morning, minister. You might have already mentioned this, but this is just so that I am clear. You are saying, in relation to the mismatch between the lists, that you are seeking to see in the bill the same list of what is specifically devolved and set out in the 1998 act, but that the UK IMA could override that, regardless. I think that that is the point that you made earlier. In that case, what is the point? How are you seeking to address the matter? We know that a most comprehensive cross-party report was done here in Parliament, which set out a wide range of issues in relation to the UK IMA. Beyond the lists matching, what are you doing to make the point about the UK IMA in the light of the situation and the complexities therein?

You rightly made the point that it is an enabling bill—a framework bill. You will be aware that there has been quite a lot of discussion in the Parliament about framework bills and what they enable. Efficiency and effectiveness has been discussed, and there has been scrutiny by MSPs of the matter in the chamber and in committees.

Have you given any thought to how you will ameliorate the potential risks, if Scottish ministers have the potential to give consent, but still ensure that the appropriate scrutiny can take place, given that framework bills limit effective scrutiny in the chamber? That is, in general, considered to be an issue by members across the committee.

That was it—thank you.

My question is for Malcolm Bennie. With regard to the governance of the Falkirk and Grangemouth growth deal, while it is ostensibly more simple because only Falkirk Council is involved, it is also more complex, given that Ineos is at the heart of the area’s future, and Ineos’s vested interests will therefore come to the fore. From a governance perspective, how are you consciously addressing that?

If Ineos is on the board, it is clearly influencing it at that level. I would not necessarily expect it to be involved in delivery, but it is a key influencer by merit of its being on the board.

When I searched your report, I found that you mentioned “risks” in a number of paragraphs, including those relating to the pay bill, pay policy, NICs, the income tax net position, the mitigation of the two-child cap, energy prices, supply chains and interest rate rises. However, from reading those paragraphs, because they are in long form, I did not necessarily get a great sense of what you consider the probability of each of those risks to be and what the impact will be if those things happen.

For example, on page 71, there is a throwaway comment about energy prices and supply chains, and you mention that there could be trade wars as a result of the election of the new US President. If something like that were to happen, that could have a pretty catastrophic impact. Could you give a sense of that impact? Your report is already quite lengthy, but I did not necessarily get a sense of your thinking from reading it, so perhaps you could give us a bit more flavour.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us.

On page 9 of your report, you state that there is

“a material limitation to information available to the Scottish Parliament for its scrutiny of the Budget and in the spending analysis we can do.”

I think that that is in reference to the £1.3 billion resource increase. Following on from Michael Marra’s comments, what is your assessment of the data gaps in the budget that pertain to that statement? What is your general sense about that?

London will always grow strongly relative to everywhere else, so that is a baked-in inconsistency. Anyway, I feel that we have strayed off topic, but thank you very much for that.

For my last question, perhaps you can confirm for me something about rates relief. When we are looking at the reliefs in Scotland compared with what is happening in the rest of the UK, the finance secretary suggested somewhere—unfortunately, I could not find her exact comment; perhaps it was in the question-and-evidence session after the budget statement—that the relief could not be projected or put in place in quite the same way as it could in the rest of the UK because of a material difference. Could you give us a bit more information as to why that was the case? We know that some reliefs have been put in place in rural areas and so on.