Chamber and committees

Given that the police are getting thin on the ground and that people are leaving through natural attrition or redundancy—I do not mean ill-health redundancy, which is unplanned—I do not understand why we are in a situation in which nearly 100,000 rest days are cancelled each year in Police Scotland and a similar amount of days are lost due to psychological illness. That has doubled in the past couple of years. If the police are thin on the ground, why are people being drafted in when they should be having a day off? It sounds like those are much-needed days off, given the trauma that many of them face. Surely that is a recipe for disaster down the line.

In addition, around 1,000 police officers will be eligible for retirement soon. As you know, we have just had many officers taking early retirement due to changes in the pension rules over the past few years. It sounds like we are heading into a perfect storm, where there will be a major loss of experienced people in the force and a lot of younger, sometimes vulnerable, officers will be on the front line dealing with a very changed world. What risk does that pose to the public?

It is very helpful. However, it insinuates by phraseology. Saying, “We want to be less racist,” means, “We are racist still.” Saying, “We want to be less discriminatory,” means, by default, “We still are discriminatory.” I am not asking you to agree or disagree with comments that have been made by Police Scotland but, apart from what has already been said, have you, in your capacity as chief inspector, seen evidence of discrimination, racism, sexism or misogyny?

Good morning. For the benefit of the record, I note that I usually wear a tie.

I have a lot of areas to cover, which I will do my best to get through. Following on from the line of questioning so far, it will not surprise you that I will ask a supplementary on Ferguson Marine, given the great interest in the topic.

I will not rehash any of the questions that have been put to you. There is a wider question about the yard. This committee and Audit Scotland have taken a great interest in the viability of the yard as a going concern and its future as a major piece of infrastructure that is publicly owned and a big local employer in the west.

The problem that we have as a committee—Audit Scotland has reiterated this point—is that it is hard to see what the future for the yard is at the moment. What is its future?

There is also the SVRP, though. The Western Ferries contract would have been a nice-to-have contract, but we were told directly that it was the Government contract that the yard was waiting on, not the private one.

Okay, thank you. I will move on to other issues relating to the reports that we have in front of us.

I will maybe start with you, permanent secretary. The main point of note is the big elephant in the room, which is the identified funding gap in Scottish finances of nearly £5 billion across the next three years. Three years is not far away—it seemed far away when we first heard about the potential gap, but the gap has got bigger and the timeline is getting closer. It is still unclear—this was reflected in the Audit Scotland report—what the Scottish Government will do to meet that gap. Is there a plan?

10:30

Which health boards are merging?

I will come on to public service reform, which is an interesting area, in a moment. However, in layman’s terms, the Government will not have enough money to spend on the things that it needs to spend money on because there are resource and capital shortfalls. That clearly means that the Government must either introduce considerable tax rises to make up the difference—I assume that the Government is considering how far it can go with tax rises to achieve the maximum income—or make cuts to public services. The question is which taxes will go up or which services will be cut. The public has the right to know that.

So, with 0.5 per cent, what we are looking at? How many people per year will the Government lose? When you talk about back-office roles, you are presumably not talking about nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers—or are we talking about those roles?

In relation to the consolidated accounts for 2024-25, the Audit Scotland report contains some figures on underspend—a £875 million resource underspend and a £134 million capital underspend, which is a total underspend of more than £1 billion. At a time when many public services are seeing quite heavy workloads and tight budgets, and when services are being cut and some capital projects are being cancelled or paused, that does not make sense. What happened to the £1 billion?

It sounds as though roughly half of the underspend was rolled over to the next financial year and spent accordingly, and that, with about half of it, you could not do that, due to its nature. That is helpful information. I appreciate the wider context, but I thought that it was important to check that.

Another issue that the Auditor General raises in the “Financial sustainability and taxes” report, and on which we have heard evidence in person from Audit Scotland, is to do with tax revenues in Scotland resulting from devolved policy decisions. I appreciate that those decisions are made not by civil servants but by Governments and, indeed, that they feature in budgets that the Parliament passes. However, there is still a wider question.

The Auditor General raises the valid point that, for 2025-26, £1.7 billion of extra tax will be raised in Scotland through policy choices that the Government makes, but that that will net only £616 million of benefit to the Scottish budget. Those are the Auditor General’s numbers. That is about a third of the amount raised—it is slightly better than the figure the year before. However, about 33p in the pound is reaped for the benefit of all your directorates to spend on public services. How are we going to fix that problem? How will we ensure that the £1.7 billion that we raise in extra taxes is available to the Government to spend on public services? At the moment, we are nowhere near that.