You mentioned full cost recovery for planning and building control. Are some councils not recovering their full costs? Will you give a bit more detail about how the system works?

It would be helpful to me. Thank you.

We have discussed balance a lot. Towards the end of the COSLA submission, you mention transparency. How do we strike the right balance between transparency and flexibility, which COSLA also mentions?

Sorry, Mr Manning, I have not asked you a question, so maybe I should put this one to you. Ring fencing makes things easy, in a sense—I am not saying that I agree with ring fencing—in that it enables us to follow the money and see where it has gone. People ask MSPs how much is spent on education and so on. If we give South Lanarkshire Council extra money, which it splits in different ways, there is flexibility, but is transparency reduced?

That is okay. Does the David Hume Institute have a view?

You raise the issue of preventative spend, which the committee has done quite a lot of work on. We are all sympathetic to it but struggle with how to put it into practice, if we have no extra money at the moment. I take the point in paragraph 7 of your submission that education, housing and employment are key things that can prevent problems and reduce demand on, say, the NHS or other more reactive services.

Do you have suggestions as to how we balance that? We are continually shown the waiting time for accident and emergency at hospitals, which is a big figure that we all get excited about. If we put more money into that, there is less money for housing or whatever. Do you have suggestions on how to get the balance right?

Does anyone else want to come in on that question? No. I realise that it is a sensitive issue.

We have already mentioned the interaction between income tax and corporation tax and the idea that people might incorporate. In the Chartered Institute of Taxation’s submission, Charlotte Barbour, you also mention various other taxes such as capital gains tax and national insurance. There is a whole package in there. If more of those taxes were to be devolved, we could presumably come up with a more joined-up system. I read a Reform Scotland paper about tax—published in June, I think—that was quite interesting. Is it the Chartered Institute’s argument that the position should be a bit more neutral, so that, if somebody incorporated, that should not make any difference? For example, they might put their profits into shares, which are subject to capital gains tax, but all the taxes on any kind of income could be set at the same rate—I think that some countries do that.

No—absolutely. I will raise another point that may be linked. The David Hume Institute talks about

“the size of the envelope”

and

“growing the tax base”

Are you also thinking widely? Do you mean income-based taxes, land-based taxes or other taxes?

I will leave it at that, although colleagues might want to follow up. It would be helpful to get that email.

Auditor General, in your submission, you talk about the fiscal framework being

“intended to incentivise the Scottish Government”

You say that, when the Scottish economy is doing well, tax revenues increase and that, when it is not doing so well, revenues do not increase. Would you be prepared to say that the fiscal framework is weighted against Scotland at the moment?

Dr Foster, we have the national picture and the health board picture. Obviously, health boards are under pressure financially. How are they thinking about the long term? Are they keeping a bit more in reserve or ready for the next pandemic, as opposed to thinking, “Let’s fix hip replacements tomorrow”?

My big question is about how much money we put into being ready for next time. Yesterday, we had £500 million of cuts or savings. Across Scotland, there is huge pressure on resources. How do we get the balance right? Mr Rowley was asking about that and it is where I would like to start. Even in an empty lab, there must be a bit of a cost. Perhaps you have to keep a bit of heating on and I presume that the equipment gets out of date after a few years.

Perhaps more obviously, the NHS National Services Scotland submission mentions PPE. I do not know how long a rubber glove lasts, but I think that it has some kind of end date. Correct me if I am wrong, but we could spend a lot of money on rubber gloves and then have to throw them all out after three years. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a bit of a concern. Some doctors said that they had been given PPE that was out of date even though it might have been okay.

I am struggling a bit to know how we get the balance right. I will come to the witness from Audit Scotland in a minute to see whether there is a mathematical answer to the question, but do you have any thoughts, Ms Morgan?

That is very helpful indeed.

Mr Robinson, does Audit Scotland have a view on such things? Can you say, for example, that there is a 2 per cent chance of a pandemic in any given year and, therefore, it is worth putting a certain amount of money into PPE stock? That sounds like a sensible answer to me, but there is a cost to keeping more stock in storage instead of having a just-in-time approach so that it turns up on the day that you need it. Would Audit Scotland have a view on that?