Chamber and committees

I do not know who you have been speaking to. I speak regularly with local government leaders of all parties, and I have given those assurances to be helpful. I thought that it was important to give certainty on that, not least because COSLA was asking me about the baselining. That is alongside the £45 million, which is contingent on the spring budget showing that that is a positive addition rather than something that leaves us in a negative position.

The relationship with local government has been challenging in this budget process. Probably every budget that I can recall has been a time of tension with local government, and this year is no different. However, one of COSLA’s top asks was about the share of the budget, and I would just reflect that local government’s share of the overall budget is increasing, from 31 per cent to 32 per cent. Despite the challenging fiscal environment, local government has an increasing share of what is a constrained cake, if you like—local government has a bigger slice of it. That needs to be borne in mind.

I will continue to discuss those issues with local government. There is a lot that we are working very positively on. We do not always hear about that in the public domain, but a lot of joint work is going on in a lot of areas that will be good for public services.

No. The Verity house agreement is really important to COSLA. I met the presidential team just a couple of weeks ago and they stressed, despite the difficulties of the budget and some of the disagreements, how important the Verity house agreement is to them because, apart from anything else, it will deliver a new fiscal framework that will be helpful going forward. The agreement has delivered a range of areas of progress. Again, we perhaps do not hear about them because, inevitably, the areas that get the attention in the public domain are those where there is disagreement rather than those on which there is agreement, but there is huge agreement in a lot of major areas of policy that we are taking forward.

There is nothing different this year from any other year.

The payment will be revenue, because the drawdown that we are using is resource drawdown. I will get back to you if there is a capital element, but the money that is available to the budget, which I was describing earlier, is resource.

That will be a matter for discussion with Crown Estate Scotland regarding its requirements. Incidentally, I should put it on the record that it does a very good job and has turned things around. The Scottish Government has had a role, too. It has done pretty poorly from the Crown estate in the past, but the work that has been undertaken by Crown Estate Scotland and its use of its assets have led us to quite a transformation, which has been extremely helpful—not least in relation to the budget support that is now provided. That has been a journey from a very different position.

What I have set out is subject to approvals and procurement. There is a process that requires procurement to happen, and there are ifs and buts around that, but all being well, subject to approvals in procurement, we can see the delivery of the seven new small vessels between 2026 and 2028.

That is the plan. If there are any changes to that, we would, of course, bring that to the attention of the Parliament, but that is the intention. We will be able to provide updates as soon as possible after we have those key planks of the process in place. We will be happy to keep the Parliament updated.

Well, what I have set out—

You are right to point to port infrastructure being really important, and we remain absolutely committed to the funding of not just the new vessels, but the port infrastructure to support the ferry services. That is why the infrastructure investment plan set out funding of £580 million and why we have provided more than £100 million in further funding to allow, for example, the purchase of new vessels for Little Minch.

There are two parts to the infrastructure investment plan going forward. First, there will be an update at the end of this month on the projects that are already in train and where they are with regard to any delays.

Secondly, we will produce the next phase of the infrastructure investment plan later this year. We would have liked to align that with the budget but, as you will appreciate, there are quite a lot of uncertainties, given the capital outlook, in where the spring budget will leave us with capital funding. However, we will set out the next iteration of the infrastructure investment plan.

There is no doubt that capital budgets going down will have an impact across the board, but where we are investing in new vessels, we clearly need to make sure that the port infrastructure is there, so that the new vessels have the required infrastructure. That is an important priority.

You mentioned one or two issues in relation to port infrastructure; there are a number of them. As we get the detail on any changes or amendments to the infrastructure investment plan, we will be happy to provide you with that. The next iteration of the infrastructure investment plan will be published later this year.

In summary, there might not be an even or straight road of investment each year for organisations, with investment continuing to grow; the position will fluctuate. The availability of capital funding will be constrained, so we need to think carefully about how we might be able to lever in external funding to support some of our objectives, given that we will have less capital funding available.

However, the ambition remains, and we will ensure that we are able to show, as we have done in annex J, how our investment for 2024-25 will be focused. That has to be set in the context of future years, with investment going to ensure that we are on track to meet the targets that you alluded to.

I set out at the beginning of this evidence session that we are investing £4.7 billion of capital and resource in positive action in the 2024-25 budget to meet our climate change goals. One could argue that, if whatever amount of the up to £350 million of ScotWind moneys is part of supporting the budget, it is also part of supporting that £4.7 billion of the budget that is tackling climate change.

My dilemma is that in an ideal world—with funding not being so constrained—we would indeed want to create a different fund, almost a sovereign wealth fund or something that would be specifically geared to future action on climate, but, given budget constraints, I would face questions across Parliament were I sitting with £350 million that was either unallocated or being kept for tough times. These times are the toughest, and I am having to use that money to support the budget. Because it is not aligned to a particular part of the budget, the point that I am making about the £4.7 billion is that it supports the budget as much as investment in the national health service or Social Security Scotland. It supports the budget in general and, without it, we would frankly have to make even more difficult decisions than we have to make at present.