Chamber and committees

There is £200 million going to SNIB. We are supporting SNIB to make more “mission-assigned investments”—that is how it has described them—across Scotland. The bank has just celebrated its five-year anniversary and has already managed to crowd in £1.4 billion of third-party co-investments, so it is doing well.

We have also given SNIB flexibilities, which it had asked for, and we think that they will make a difference. We negotiated with the bank and agreed to give it those flexibilities. If it would be helpful, I can write to the committee and let you know what that will mean for the bank’s flow of funding, but we have been able to provide one of its key asks.

I saw some commentary about that. At the end of the day, it is important to find a balance in relation to funding for the national performing companies. They receive quite a significant level of funding.

Well, look, I think that the work that the RSNO has done in proving its economic value is important in itself—I am not disputing that for a minute. All that I am saying is that choices must be made in every portfolio and that demands are always larger than the available funding.

I am aware that the additional funding and the certainty of it has addressed the fragility of and pressure on the culture sector mainly in relation to organisations that have not had that guaranteed annual funding, which were the ones that were most at risk. I have certainly had that in my constituency and I am sure that many people around the table will be aware of organisations where that was the case. Creative Scotland went through its own review to try to make the funding more strategic and focused to bring that stability to the arts and culture organisations that many communities are reliant on and benefit from.

Ultimately, those were the decisions that were made. I am aware that Angus Robertson is engaging with the national performing companies, and we will need to see where that ends up. It is about that balance of where the funding should go.

You will be aware of the reliance of the SNIB on financial transactions. We invest our FTs primarily with the SNIB and the housing programme. As I said earlier, the constraints of CDEL and FTs mean that we have to make judgments about what goes where, and we have maintained the £200 million to the SNIB, but it has been pretty successful at levering in £1.4 billion and the flexibilities that we have given it will help with the flow.

The Deputy First Minister and the SNIB have come to an agreement about what it needs in order to get on and do what it is doing. That outcome has been arrived at through negotiation and discussion with the bank, and we will continue to support it in doing what it is doing. I am sure that every organisation would like additional resources, but what we have done is support them to be able to do more of what they are doing. Giving them that flexibility was a key ask.

Yes, £2.2 billion has been baselined since Verity house. The direction of travel has been towards baselining that money for local government, but there are areas where cabinet secretaries feel that there is a policy reason to hold the money, because policy might change. If you do not hold the money, you do not hold the policy.

I am not sowing any confusion. There is a real-terms increase for 2026-27; I set out very clearly to the convener earlier that that additional funding is absolutely there. If you do a budget-to-budget comparison with last year, you will see that there is a 2 per cent real-terms increase in funding.

The spending review that you are referring to is essentially for planning purposes, and it is flat cash, because the figures at our disposal are incredibly tight. As I explained earlier, 2027-28 is particularly tight. The planning assumptions that I have set out to local government are based on what we have available to us, but the funding position, budget to budget, is likely to be different from that. As I pointed out to the convener, when you look back at the 2022 spending review, you will see that there was a flat-cash outlook then, too. What local government actually got was about £3 billion higher than that.

We can plan only on the basis of what is in front of us, but I expect those figures to change—and to change considerably.

Taxpayers in Scotland earning less than around £33,500 will pay less income tax in 2026-27 than they would if they lived elsewhere in the UK.

I will come to that if you give me a minute. According to the SFC’s estimates of median incomes, which were published alongside the budget, more than half are set to pay less after deductions in 2024-25, 2025-26 and 2026-27. As I have said before, accounted-for deductions, such as pension contributions, are required to reflect the tax that is actually paid by taxpayers.

On your question about the level—

There is no evidence that there is a cliff edge for people who are on disability benefits. You need to remember that some of these people are already in work. We have not seen any evidence that there is a cliff edge that prevents people from getting into work because they are on benefits. The latest figures show that the number of people who successfully claim adult disability payment through Social Security Scotland is quite modest. We need to consider everything in the round before making judgments.

No, but I am sure that I could get those figures for you.

I hope that you would accept that the need for mental health support has increased, particularly in the post-Covid era, not just in Scotland but in other jurisdictions. We need to support those people, and we also need to support people to avoid falling out of work. That is why it is important that people get the right support when they need it, including when they return to work. We need to support people back into work, which is why we are funding our employability programmes and providing £8 million for colleges to work with parents and help those who are furthest from the labour market to get back into work.

Nobody disagrees that work is the best way out of poverty, but I believe that Scotland has a compassionate and fair system for people who need support. Those who want to change that system need to set out how they would do that and who would lose support.