Chamber and committees

But this is a year-on-year thing. In the current year, there was about £140 million of capital slippage, and there will, no doubt, be capital slippage next year, too, given the significant increase in capital and issues with regard to the capacity to absorb it. Surely, if there were shovel-ready projects, that would aid things.

One of the responses is about strategies. It says that the

“Strategy and Delivery Directorate will undertake an exercise across portfolios to identify the number of ‘live’ strategies, to provide a baseline for numbers to be monitored and reduced wherever possible.”

When will that exercise conclude? When is the deadline for it?

Those figures are very helpful.

I understand that £144 million is being allocated to local government. However, as yet, local authorities have not received the breakdown of how that will be distributed.

Secondly, councils have said that, collectively, their procurement costs will rise by around £85 million because the people that they procure from have also been hit by the increase in costs and so they are putting their prices up.

Thirdly, a lot of third-sector organisations will be affected—I think that the impact is about £75 million. The impact on universities will be about £45 million. There will also be an impact on the independent care home sector. Those organisations are expecting the Scottish Government to step in and somehow provide funding. What is the situation in those areas?

That would be really helpful. That has been called for for many years, including by the Scottish Government, so it is good that we are making progress.

One thing that you said in your response to our report is that, should money become available, you might try to abolish the two-child limit. How will that be remotely possible, given what we have just talked about? Our universities, the third sector, the independent care sector and all areas in the public sector are under pressure—and not just because of inflation and all the rest of it. Would abolishing the measure be prioritised over, for example, providing money to the organisations in the public sector for which the Government is already responsible?

That is all right—many of your colleagues have done so privately. [Laughter.]

That would be great.

Incidentally, when the committee suggested an annual parliamentary debate on public service reform, I was quite surprised that your response was that you would progress such a debate in the coming months, subject to parliamentary business accommodating it.

Given some of the stuff that clogs up the weeks’ parliamentary chamber sessions, an annual debate on reform should not be too difficult to organise.

I will put my tuppence-worth in regarding ENICs by saying that the Government did not have to raise as much tax as it decided to raise. As you said, it could have brought in a wealth tax or an online-sales tax to boost the high street. It could have taxed gambling, gaming or big tech, or it could have reversed the tax cuts on banks. It is important to look at the package and to see where the best balance would be.

We will take a five-minute break before coming back for stage 2 of the budget bill.

Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2025 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We will consider the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill at stage 2, but before we turn to formal stage 2 proceedings, we will take evidence on the Scottish Government’s response to the committee’s report on the Scottish budget for 2025-26.

We are joined by Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. She is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Jennie Barugh, who is director of fiscal sustainability and exchequer development; Richard McCallum, who is director of public spending; and Lucy O’Carroll, who is director of tax. Before we turn to questions, I ask the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.

One of the issues that the committee has pressed you on, since about December 2023, is the capital infrastructure pipeline. In the response to our committee report, you said that you have

“instructed officials to work on a reset of the infrastructure pipeline to 2026-27 with the intention of publishing this in September following the outcome of the UK Spending Review.”

That is nearly halfway through the financial year, and 21 months after the committee sought that. With a 12 per cent increase in capital spend, surely that matter should be at the forefront of the Government’s thinking and we should have much more information at this point on what that infrastructure pipeline contains if we are to ensure that it is fully optimised in the forthcoming financial year.

I do not think that anyone is in favour of compulsory redundancies per se, but it is important to optimise the delivery of services. If, in order to continue paying people who, frankly, no longer have the required skills and are effectively not able to deliver the services that are needed, you have to give others over and above what you would like to and say, “Look, if we give you this shedload of money, will you just leave?” We all know that is happening and that it is just inefficient, ineffective, expensive and not really affordable in the long term.

On what you said about the contingent workforce, it is important to put on the record that some £200 million savings have been brought about through the work that the Government is doing, which is very positive. However, we are looking for flexibility. Everybody accepts a one, two or three-year thing during a crisis, but the Government is bringing in policies such as that ludicrous one of not giving ministers a pay rise for 17 years or whatever it is, which, let us be honest, is just bonkers. I see that you are smiling, cabinet secretary, but you know that it is; people are bewildered by it, frankly. The Government must occasionally revisit policies; they should not be written on tablets of stone. That lack of flexibility means that we do not have the efficient delivery of services that we should have.