Chamber and committees

Indeed. The commission also said that the United Kingdom would not be able to meet its own climate targets without Scotland, because of the impact of peatland restoration and so on.

As for the small business bonus scheme, I would note that the Federation of Small Businesses has said that, without it, one in six of their businesses would have gone bust at the time of the financial crisis in 2008. Certainly the scheme might have a use in times of crisis.

I call John Mason, to be followed by Craig Hoy.

I have just been whispering about that with the clerks. We thought we had kicked it into touch long ago.

Excuse me, how many questions are you thinking of having?

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting of the Finance and Public Administration Committee in 2025. We have received apologies from Michael Marra.

Before we start, I put on record our thanks to the Lithuanian MPs, organisations and officials who met us during our short fact-finding visit to the beautiful and extremely clean city of Vilnius last week. I have never been anywhere so immaculate.

Lithuania’s challenges are similar to those of Scotland in relation to demographics and public sector reform. We had fruitful discussions with our counterparts on long-term strategic thinking and growing the economy. We will draw on those discussions as we continue our pre-budget scrutiny, and we will publish a summary note of the visit very soon.

We have one item on today’s agenda, which is to take evidence from the Scottish Government on responding to long-term fiscal pressures. I welcome to the meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, Shona Robison. The cabinet secretary is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Richard McCallum, director of public spending; Lucy O’Carroll, director of tax; and Alasdair Black, deputy director of budget and fiscal co-ordination.

I wish the cabinet secretary good morning and invite her to make a short opening statement.

Even 14 January would be better. A Thursday is a terrible day.

During my lifetime, we have had inventions such as the internet, email and the telephone—actually, that was before my lifetime, but it was in Liz Smith’s lifetime. I therefore do not think that it is impossible. Certainly, any step forward in progress that you could make on that would be helpful for our scrutiny.

I commend the Government for the fact that all four plans will be together. That is really important. I was going to ask you specifically about that, but you have answered the point. It will be very helpful to have all those documents together. I realise that that is also a lot of work for the Government, but it is certainly what we have been looking for.

I will get into the meat of other things that we want to discuss today. We have taken evidence on pre-budget scrutiny for a number of weeks, and one issue is prioritisation. The Government has talked about that, and you have talked today about areas of need. Again, we have found that, although it is always easy to talk about what is being prioritised, the quid pro quo is that, if you prioritise one thing, you must be deprioritising another. What is going to be deprioritised as we go forward?

It was below inflation, though.

The Scottish Government inherited a total mess with colleges. In my area, the college in Kilwinning—which is in Cunninghame South—was linked with the James Watt College in Greenock, which was an absolute nonsense. The reorganisation has been effective and has made things much more focused. All the daft five-hour courses—that was five hours in total, not five hours in a week—have been bumped, and there is much more focus on business and connections with business.

A lot of that work has now been done, and yet colleges are still being expected to squeeze. Although there are no doubt innovations in your area, cabinet secretary, as there are in my area, colleges cannot continue to innovate while core budgets are being reduced or not allowed to grow. That is frankly unrealistic, so I hope that greater consideration will be given to the sector.

On local government, you told the committee four weeks ago that

“we have agreed on 95 per cent of everything”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 2 September 2025; c 40.]

in relation to the arrangements being discussed with local government for a new fiscal framework, although views differed regarding a rules-based budget. Has there been any progress over the past month on where we will be by budget time or, if not then, by the end of March?

You touched earlier on improving efficiency in portfolios. You said that you are looking to reduce administration costs by some 20 per cent across the public sector in a managed way. Over what period will that be delivered and, specifically, how will it be delivered?

I appreciate that you need to keep experience.

Thirty years ago, a member on Glasgow City Council suggested that it reduce the number of directors from 21 to 12. The administration scoffed and said that it could not run a city with only 12 directors but, a year later, it reduced them to seven. So, it depends what people actually do.

I have another couple of wee things to touch on. First, there still seems to be an issue between the Scottish Government and the UK Government about the impact of proceeds of crime, in relation to which the block grant has been held back by £4.3 million. Will that issue be resolved soon or will it keep dragging on—because, obviously, that is £4.3 million lost to our budget?