Chamber and committees

Exactly. While you are at it, we would like the devolution of fags, bevvy and fuel—that would bring a few bob into the Scottish Government’s coffers.

That is great. Thank you very much.

I have only a couple more questions, because colleagues are keen to come in, as they always are. They are not quite champing at the bit, I must say—they are all very relaxed this morning—but they are keen to come in.

I understand that the Government is quite ambitious about reducing the number of civil servants. What will the annual reduction target be over the next five years?

I just assumed that we were all going to have to work over the festive period to a large extent. Sadly, some of us do that anyway.

That was greatly appreciated, cabinet secretary.

Some of the more starry-eyed and excitable members of the Labour Party told us last year that, after the UK general election, Scotland would be at the heart of the UK Government. The fact that the Scottish Government was not even consulted on the date of the autumn statement gives the lie to that—as have many other developments over the past 14 or 15 months.

It is really disappointing that the autumn statement will be on 26 November, which is four weeks later than the date of last year’s statement. I can understand the difficulties that that presents to the Scottish Government. It also presents the committee with difficulties in its scrutiny, as you can imagine. Having the budget on 15 January means that it will be 50 days after the autumn statement, and we are all aware that that includes a fortnight over Christmas. If we exclude that, it is the same length of time as was available last year. Even so, the 15th is very late, and it is a Thursday. That would give the committee only the following Tuesday to cobble together some kind of scrutiny. I realise that it will be difficult for officials, the Scottish Fiscal Commission and others, but if we were to get the draft budget on Wednesday 7 January, which would be a week and a day earlier than is being suggested, that would at least allow for more effective scrutiny and would give some breathing space for consideration following the presentation of the draft budget.

I am not asking you to give us a definite answer on that today—although it would be great if you could. I hope that you can consider that idea, as the truncating of scrutiny would be very disappointing for the committee and for the whole management of the draft budget.

Do you wish to comment on any of those points before we turn to specific questions?

I know that you can be knocked off field by things such as the employer national insurance contributions increase. In the area that I represent, in North Ayrshire, 54 per cent of the council tax increase—some £6.8 million a year—is going into paying ENICs, and that is just the direct cost. However, given that we were told in January of this year that the deal was likely to be in February, it seems disappointing that we cannot get it concluded. I am sure that others would like to see it concluded quickly as well.

We have talked about capital over the years in the committee, and there has been great frustration that the investment pipeline always seems to be just beyond us—it is like a donkey with a carrot on the end of a stick. We keep pursuing it, but we never quite get to see an infrastructure pipeline. When it is produced, will it contain shovel-ready projects, as some witnesses have asked for?

Obviously, capital can fluctuate and one concern is that sometimes, at the end of a financial year, capital is rolled over. If there were shovel-ready projects, there would be a bit more flexibility in terms of being able to deliver on some projects in the short term.

You touched on the invest to save fund, which I was going to ask about anyway. Witnesses were very supportive of the fund, but they said that £30 million is not enough to do more than scratch the surface, that you really need a bigger fund if you are going to make fundamental change, and that the more that you invest to save, the more radical and swift the change is likely to be. Are those fair comments?

Does that seem reasonable?

Joe Griffin told us in response to a question from Michelle Thompson that, out of a workforce of 7,000 people, there were 4,000 managers. It looks as if it is all chiefs and nae braves, if you know what I mean. If you are looking to improve efficiency, the civil service does seem relatively top heavy compared with other organisations.

I am just thinking of Ireland. In 1986, the country was effectively a basket case, so everybody sat down and decided, “Look, this is what we need to do: focus on infrastructure and education.” Look where it has gone in the past 30 or 40 years as a result; it has had phenomenal growth and success relative to where it was.

I am now going to open up the session. I call Liz Smith, to be followed by Ross Greer.