Chamber and committees

I think that all portfolios could rightly make the case that they could spend more money very usefully but, of course, we live in constrained fiscal times and there is a budget process that is on-going.

You are absolutely right that we want to have more certainty, but the uncertainty around the fiscal settlement from the UK Government has made that problematic. I will take a step back and look at what we want to do with the ScotWind money. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government will say more on this, but the intention is to use that funding, wherever possible, to support net zero capital projects, because that is where we see our getting value for that money.

You are right to say that, depending on how we do that, there is scope to leverage in additional private sector investment, which remains our objective. However, because of the uncertainty around consequentials and the pressures on pay, inflation, health spending and the other areas that we have identified, we have had to use that money over the earlier part of this year, to some extent, to help to balance the budget, which, as you know, we need to do.

As we move through the rest of this year and the budget picture becomes clearer—for example, we are not yet sure about the position with national insurance contributions for employers, including those in the public sector, and there are other such examples—our intention is for the ScotWind money to be substantially available for capital investment.

I would not make that connection. We can think through the logic of why those transfers happen. As we have explained, it is about policy decisions being made in one portfolio, with a different portfolio doing the delivery. If the funding is put into the delivery portfolio, where the policy decisions have not been made, it probably makes it harder to have control, because the portfolio making the policy decisions is working in a vacuum, to an extent, as the funding is, at that point, somebody else’s money, which the other portfolio is, in effect, spending. If the budget owner—the portfolio that has the budget—is making the decision on what it should be spent on and is considering how it balances its budget and gets maximum effect from that, that is the way to have better control and, therefore, better sustainability. The transfer is simply to execute the delivery of the policy decision, once the extent of the spending has been determined.

It is an on-going and evolving process. All of that works within a range.

You have to unpick the timeline on that. The UK-wide pay review bodies would have been making their deliberations in exactly that time frame; the UK Government would have been aware of that and would have engaged with them. We are not part of that process. We have to wait until they publish and the UK Government makes its decisions.

Following the election in July, the UK Government indicated that it would be making those pay awards in full. However, you must remember that there was huge uncertainty at that point about how those awards would be funded. There was much talk about the UK Government reducing departmental spend budgets in order to fund the public sector pay deals, which would have meant that we would have been in a difficult situation. It was only when the UK autumn budget took place that there was more clarity on the consequentials that were coming through.

Absolutely—please do.

The amendments to NPF4 would be done at a Scotland-wide policy level, but with regard to local development plans and local specifics, it is important that local groups and interested parties and individuals take the opportunity to input to local development plans as councils and planning authorities bring those forward.

We have talked today and in earlier committee sessions about the importance of encouraging local communities to bring forward their local place plans to feed into that process. It is important that we highlight that where we can to local interested parties so that they have the opportunity to feed into those LDPs.

That is correct, unless officials are going to tell me that there is more nuance to it.

That is a good question, and I would note first of all that the consultation period is longer than that for planning applications, which is typically a minimum of 21 days. A 30-day period is the longest in the various existing regimes—in this case, the environmental impact assessment process that we had to consider. Therefore, we asked in the consultation whether 30 days were sufficient, and there was overwhelming support for the proposal. Indeed, 73 per cent of those who took part in the consultation indicated that that was sufficient time. Therefore, we think that that period is long enough, and it strikes a balance between providing an opportunity for engagement and giving interested parties the scope to comment, and keeping the process moving.

We are comfortable that its being available online is sufficient. I understand that that will have been part of the consultation process. Kristen, do you want to comment on the specifics?