Chamber and committees

Absolutely. I speak out of a sense of public duty.

My colleagues have covered the major issues. I want to raise an issue that may seem slightly niche and left field. The shopkeeper in me could not help but look over the figures for the Parliament shop, and I have some observations.

The shop’s revenue was £250,000 in the year preceding Covid, and footfall in that year amounted to around 260,000 visitors. That revenue strikes me as very low. It is important, in these times, that we ensure that the Parliament maximises not just its ability to control costs but its revenue.

I also observe that, in your forecasts, the gross profit margin is going to jump from 44 per cent to 50 per cent. Although 50 per cent is a better profit margin for a gift shop, any forecast that sees a gross profit margin increasing by 5 per cent would make me ask how that will be achieved. I also observe that the forecast does not really account for the true cost of operating the shop—there are no utilities and no hypothecated rent. I suggest that, if you were to add those things on, the shop would probably be running at a loss, given that it is anticipated to make a profit of only £17,000.

Is it sensible for the Parliament to directly manage the shop? Might it not be better to lease or license it? It could be let to a third party operating under a licence to use the Scottish Parliament branding. There are other public sector providers such as museums and art galleries that run very successful shops.

There is a lot there. The broader theme is the question of whether we are making the best use of the visitor shop and whether we could generate more than the 80p per visitor that we seem to be generating with the existing set-up.

I will come on to that point in a moment, but I agree that what we should all be focused on, in essence, is getting more people earning money and getting those people who are already earning money earning more. We can all agree on the need for that to happen, and for it to happen as fairly as possible.

I understand the complexity of the reconciliations: the mechanism of block grant adjustments is simple when we see it on a flow chart, but it is complicated when we look at the different time lags. However, I feel that your answer was more about what happens within a given year, whereas I am really asking about the broad trend and the broad envelope, which will need to be addressed over the next three, four or five years. I recognise that you cannot predict the precise numbers that will drop out of those streams, but the overall picture that is painted by the Fiscal Commission involves placing downward pressure on budget lines that are not social security, does it not?

I am referring to figure 3.19 in the SFC’s report, which presents a crude aggregate picture of total pay growth between February 2020 and September 2021.

Indeed; that is the only reason that I pressed the point. It is highly important.

I am conscious of time, but I have one last question, which is relatively broad. I would like to get the cabinet secretary’s response to Stephen Boyle’s comments, which were issued with the audited accounts last week. In reference to the Covid funding in 2020-21, he said:

“While there is some high level details about how this money was used, the government needs to be more proactive, open and transparent with the provision of this important detail.”

Critically, it strikes me that the budget is a balancing act between business as usual, immediate response to Covid and recovery. That is difficult, and to do it effectively, you need transparency, not just over what you have spent in the past, but on an on-going business basis. As well as responding to Stephen Boyle’s comments, can you say how the Government will track the Covid spend between those three poles?

I am almost tempted to start by asking what text messages the cabinet secretary has had, as she said that an hour is a very long time at the moment. However, I will not ask her to divulge that.

I am interested in going back to the points that the convener and Liz Smith raised about the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s report and asking the cabinet secretary to extrapolate. I asked the Scottish Fiscal Commission representatives this question as well, when they were in front of the committee. Figures 2.3 and 2.4 in the commission’s report, “Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts December 2021”—I do not expect the cabinet secretary to recall what those say—set out the tax net position and forecast the social security net position and new payments. Combining the numbers for 2026-27 for both those lines gives a tax net position of a deficit of £355 million, and social security represents £764 million of additional commitments and spend. That would indicate—if you accept those projections—that a sum of £1.1 billion to £1.2 billion would need to be found from other budgets.

Do you accept those projections? I accept that the issue goes beyond this budget, and it probably goes beyond the spending review in the new year. However, it is certainly on the horizon of this Parliament, and it suggests that some quite difficult in-line changes between budget lines will need to be made in the coming years. Is that a fair analysis of those forecasts?

No—I kind of agree. Basically, income tax and social security bills are outwith your control in some manner or means and, if they put pressure on your budget, they will force you to manage budget lines elsewhere that are in your control, and that will be the dominant feature of the comprehensive spending review and the budgets in this session. That is what I am trying to get at.

That is helpful. I will add one point. There is also a question mark over the timings of some of those publications; timing them better could help with the maturity of the debate, and I am happy to discuss that in the future. I could go on, but in the interests of time, I will finish there.

Forgive me, but, in a sense, that response just continued the description of the problem rather than providing analysis.

If we look at figure 3.19 in the SFC’s report—this is directed more at the cabinet secretary than at Lucy O’Carroll—we see the particular problem in north-eastern Scotland. That is understandable, given the situation in the oil and gas industry. However, the issue is that no Scottish region performs better than the UK average. Indeed, no Scottish region performs better than Wales or Northern Ireland, which are devolved Administrations. Given that we have the levers, one would hope that Scotland as a whole would perform better than the UK average. At the very least, one would hope that some Scottish regions would do that, but they do not. Indeed, many of the regions that I have identified have exactly the same demographic problems and precisely the same issues with the legacy of deindustrialisation as Scotland has.

What is the analysis? Why is Scotland lagging behind? More important, why is every Scottish region lagging behind the UK average and the other devolved nations? Is that not a critical question that the Scottish Government must have a handle on?

I would not call it that, Mr Carlaw, but you get the broad theme.