Chamber and committees

I am sure that other members will pick up some of those themes. Thank you.

In the time available, to what extent did you explore other options?

Cabinet secretary, in the context of scrutinising these regulations, to what extent did you look at what is happening south of the border, and in particular at what councils are doing? In July, half a billion pounds of additional support to councils in England was announced to help them to support fuel poverty, and I believe that further money was announced yesterday.

To what extent have you looked at what additional support is being provided down south, particularly for pensioners who are experiencing fuel poverty?

I quite understand that you might want to speak about some of the things that you have done, but I am asking about the extent to which you have looked at what some councils down south are doing, where there are a number of different approaches. In the context of the policy and regulations that we are considering today, I want to know the extent to which you have looked at those. Have you asked for briefings, or been briefed, on what is happening south of the border?

The committee is dealing with these regulations today, but I wish to note my concern that the cabinet secretary has not been able to say more about the plans in Scotland in light of the £0.5 billion of additional funds that were made available in England for household support. We know that some councils in England are using that money to make payments to the many pensioners who lost out as a result of the Westminster Government’s decision to end certain winter fuel payments. I do not have the figure for the additional funds that were made available yesterday. Once the cabinet secretary is clear about the implications of yesterday’s budget for that aspect of policy, it would be interesting to hear about them.

We have to consider the regulations that are before us, and take a decision on them, but I say to the cabinet secretary that more could be done, despite the decision that has been taken at Westminster. I hope that she will be in a position to consider that in detail, by looking at what is happening down south, what happened with funding in July, and what emerged from yesterday’s budget, to see what more could be done in Scotland this winter.

Given the importance of robust data on rent levels and housing quality, what steps will the minister take to ensure that councils have a rigorous, transparent and properly funded process for collecting that data? Where, in the landlord register, does the Scottish Government envisage the data being stored?

Does the cabinet secretary expect that the 2025-26 settlement will reverse a decade of cuts and stop cuts such as those that are proposed in North Ayrshire, where the local authority proposes to remove 90 teaching jobs, to impose a charge of £50 for food waste collection and to reduce other bin collections from three-weekly to four-weekly?

As I understand it, the original request from a member of the public was to release all the evidence that was considered by James Hamilton, and the substance of the statement today relates to the legal arguments surrounding that. When will all the evidence that was requested in the original freedom of information request be released?

The debate is making clear that our long-term economic and financial sustainability is a matter of great importance across the chamber. I welcome the detail that is provided in the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s 2023 “Fiscal Sustainability Report”, which outlines some of the long-term challenges that we face, many of which are highly alarming.

It was interesting that Ross Greer said that we all accept that Scotland’s fiscal position is “unsustainable” and that Willie Rennie said that we have been debating the “demographic time bomb” for decades. I have to say that I have found neither of those issues to be central to the debates that I have heard in the Parliament in the three and a half years that I have been here. This debate is, in part, about making some of those issues central across the party-political divide in the chamber.

This debate links to a far wider debate about our economy and how we raise the money that we need to fund the high-quality public services that most people in Scotland want and ensure that all the population has a reasonable quality of life. As Liz Smith said, it is disappointing that the committee has had to wait 18 months for us to have a debate on the “Fiscal Sustainability Report”. Now that we are having the debate, it is disappointing that the Scottish Government motion does not even mention the report, and there is a tendency, which we all have, to fall into a party-political knockabout. The challenges that we face are clearly long term and very serious. The challenges of an ageing population and of the sustainability of public services will be with us after tomorrow’s budget, so we need to grapple with them.

The motion refers to a five-year fiscal sustainable delivery plan, without providing detail under the Scottish Government’s approach to the UK budget tomorrow. It may well be that some of what the cabinet secretary is seeking is announced in the budget tomorrow, or that it will be achieved through the on-going discussions in which she is involved. However, the long-term challenges that we face—an ageing population, climate change, de-industrialisation, economic inactivity, and a failure to deliver growth and effect redistribution in our society—need serious space for debate, including a long-term debate on how to create the solutions that are needed.

One of the strengths of this Parliament is that we have a huge amount of political consensus, compared with Westminster, for example. I think that, as a Parliament, we would be able to reach consensus on many of those issues.

We know that a continuing rise in the age of our population is predicted, along with fewer children being born, and that a population decline of up to 8 per cent over the next 50 years is predicted, too. That will have a significant impact on the amount of tax revenue that is collected for future Governments to spend on public services, and it will obviously add substantial costs to our social security budgets, our national health service, our social care services and other services, as an ageing population will require more services, not fewer.

The impact of the projected demographic changes that the Scottish Fiscal Commission report outlines must not be underestimated. It is estimated that total spending on devolved public services will be £54 billion in 2027-28, but that, by the end of the projection period in 2072-73, that spending will have increased by 123 per cent, which is £120 billion in today’s money. That is without taking into account the ambitions that many of us in Parliament have to improve on the failings in the public services that we currently have, which would no doubt require additional funding.

Of course, health is the largest component of Scottish Government spending, and, according to projections, it will grow more quickly than other areas. According to the report, it will increase from 35 per cent to 50 per cent of devolved spending by 2072-73. Future demographic changes among young people might lead to some falls in expenditure; for example, education spending is expected to fall as a share of Scottish Government spending, from 18 per cent to 11 per cent, if the population trends that we have at the moment continue. However, the impact of climate change is almost impossible to quantify in economic terms and it will no doubt dominate the future decisions of Parliament.

It is fair to say that none of us yet has the policies that might be required to address some of the challenges that will come as we continue to face a situation in which we miss our climate targets and fail to prepare properly for the economic impact of climate change.

This debate needs to be focused on the long-term challenges that we face. I genuinely hope that, in this Parliament, where there is a consensus on many issues, we will seriously grapple with the kinds of policies that need to be delivered in Scotland to make the differences that need to be made.

I want to ask about inflation. It is important that third sector organisations are able to function properly and provide services, but also to be good employers and meet minimum standards, including the fair work agenda. How could inflation-linked funding be integrated to provide financial stability over multiyear funding periods? What role could funders have in that? Perhaps Neil Ritch would like to answer that first.