Chamber and committees

No members have indicated that they wish to comment, so I invite the cabinet secretary to wind up.

You hit the nail on the head when you pointed out that, frankly, revaluation is electorally toxic because of the impact of loss aversion on those whose council taxes would rise.

At Westminster, Labour has a majority of more than 150 and I am not seeing any big moves to change the system down there, which it could do without facing anything like the difficulty that we have here. It would face the same issues that any Government would face, as we do in Scotland.

I am referring not to portfolios but to specific projects, if you know what I mean. Money might be allocated to transport or whatever, but there is no pipeline that allows us to see what is being prioritised in particular portfolio spends, which is what the committee is keen to see.

We do not want there to be a considerable capital underspend this time next year. I know that it is very difficult for the Government because, with a 12 per cent increase in a year, you could end up with inflation if the capacity of the workforce to deliver what the Government wants does not exist. We do not want a 2 per cent increase in delivery and a 10 per cent increase in costs because of it. We are keen to see the budget being delivered in the most economically effective way.

That is four months away, and this session of Parliament has only another 13 months to run. A lot of the details in the response are about things that would seem to be fairly reasonable if we had another five years in the parliamentary session. However, from what I can ascertain, there seems to be not a lot of urgency in some of the work. My colleagues might think differently—although I would be surprised if they did—but these things just seem to roll on.

Incidentally, yesterday, the Minister for Public Finance, Ivan McKee, had a summit with a body of leaders about moving forward to look at public service reform and—lo and behold!—to develop a strategy on that. We still have strategies coming out of our ears.

That concludes stage 2 consideration of the bill. I thank the cabinet secretary. The stage 3 debate is due to take place next Tuesday.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. Our next agenda item, which will be taken in private, is consideration of a proposed contingent liability.

That is all connected to the financial year 2025-26, which starts in just a few weeks. Why have we not got sight of that? What is actually contained in the capital pipeline for 2025-26?

Amendment 1, in the name of the cabinet secretary, is grouped with amendments 2 to 6.

A key initiative is the Cabinet sub-committee on investment and the economy. I understand that you held its first meeting on 10 December, but the next meeting is expected to take place in spring 2025, which seems to leave an awfully long gap. That work is an imperative for the Government, but there does not seem to be a great sense of urgency, given that there will be three or four months between meetings, for example.

Excellent. The committee likes certainty.

This afternoon, the Parliament is debating employer national insurance contributions, which is going to be quite tousy. I am not participating, so I shall look on with interest, but I understand that the level of impact that ENIC increases will have on the public sector is an issue. The most precise figure that I have heard regarding the direct cost to the public sector is £549 million. There might be costs over and above that figure, and we know that other sectors, including the private sector, third sector and so on, are affected. I have no doubt that the issue will be covered in great detail this afternoon.

Can you advise the committee on what specifically the sum of the tranche of money from the Westminster Government will be, when you expect it to be confirmed and when it will arrive?

Lastly, we took evidence from a number of public bodies and the issue of compulsory redundancies came up. Before I ask you about that, I note that you said in your response that you have asked

“the Minister for Public Finance to develop a programme of workforce reforms. This includes workforce trajectories to support the workforce control framework that is being developed for public bodies including recruitment controls, a workforce management policy and related governance arrangements. The framework will be delivered close to the start of the 2025-26 financial year.”

We will be keen to see that when it comes out.

The public bodies all suggested that they wanted flexibility with regard to compulsory redundancies. A policy of no compulsory redundancies was brought in 17 years ago, understandably, in response to the financial crash, when people were really worried about their jobs. However, we now have a situation with advancing technologies and changing jobs where we have a lot of square pegs in round holes. Public sector organisations have to reduce budgets. To achieve that, they are using voluntary redundancy to pay people who they do not really want to lose a lot of money to leave and they are stuck with people who they do not necessarily want to keep, because they might have a skills mismatch or whatever. That approach is not really efficient or effective in delivering public services; it is also very expensive.

Will there be any change, if not directly in the public sector then in some of the bodies, to give organisations what they want, which is to have flexibility in their workforce? That seems to be the implication of your response without your actually saying it.