You have balanced the budget now by making in-year cuts. I will come on to some of those cuts in a second. You have frequently mentioned that you have balanced the books. That is wonderful—and you have a legal obligation to do so—but the means of achieving that are to the detriment of public services. As the report says, ministers are spending more than they have to spend. The money has to come from somewhere.

The logic, permanent secretary, is the deficit that exists.

The problem is that they are in-year cuts. Portfolios that are expecting a certain amount of money to perform their functions and meet their objectives are discovering, through spending reviews, either that capital investment projects are being halted or paused, or that there are massive revisions to their budgets.

Exhibit 4 on page 14 of the report has some prime examples of the portfolios that were losing out over the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24 as a result of in-year changes. This goes back to Ms Stafford’s point about the Government’s priorities. I imagine that one of the key pillars concerned economic growth and finding other ways to generate funding for public services that do not involve tax increases and borrowing.

Looking at the losers in the scenario presented by the table, we see that enterprise, trade and investment, the Scottish Funding Council, learning and energy efficiency and decarbonisation are all receiving funding decreases as a result of that objective of balancing the books. At the same time, that money is being shifted to a massively rising health and social care budget, local government pay awards and pensions. The public are clearly not seeing the immediate benefit of those, but they are seeing the immediate effect of the cuts to those services. In what way is that helping to meet the Government’s key pillars and objectives?

Good morning. Permanent secretary, after your opening comments, when asked if you accepted the key messages, findings and recommendations of the Audit Scotland report, I believe that you said that you did, in their entirety. Is that correct?

We look forward to seeing them. Thank you.

You get the point that I am making. Of course additional revenues have been achieved through taking a divergent approach to tax, but the net benefit to you guys, who have to give money to your directorates, is nowhere near the levels of money that have been paid by the taxpayer. That brings us back to the issues of fairness and transparency that the report picks up on, which is what I am asking about. Do those tax policies actually result in the amounts of money that you forecast for funding public services? The numbers speak for themselves—they are far from what you forecast.

Do you not think that, after more than 17 years of being in power, this Administration would have learned how to govern and not to have to face such stark criticism from the Auditor General? These are fundamental criticisms of how the Government manages public finances, are they not?

Let us work on the assumption that the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s projections around the cost of the rising public service bill is right—whichever way you model it, is going up. How will that be funded? Will it be funded through additional taxes—that is, through devolved taxation? Is it about maximising your capital borrowing potential? Will it be funded through economic growth and, if so, what do you expect that economic growth to look like? The money has to come from somewhere, and I am still at a loss as to where you think that it is going to come from.

Let us say that a million miles were driven by combustion engine cars and that was reduced by 20 per cent in the way that the target seems to suggest. It is assumed that that would reduce emissions. That assumption underpins the strategy. However, if we went in the other direction and 1.5 million miles were driven by electric or hybrid cars, instead of a million miles being driven by combustion engine cars, there might still be a reduction in emissions, even though the mileage that was driven by the public would have gone up.

I would have some sympathy if the Government simply dropped the target, provided that it did so for the right reason. If it was trying to reduce emissions and could demonstrate that other policies would achieve the same result, the target in itself would perhaps be irrelevant.

Realistically, given that we are sitting here in the Parliament, I have to ask which Government in its right mind, particularly coming into an election year, would implement punitive measures such as national charging or road tolls, or start rolling out national measures—rather than doing things at a local level and blaming the councils—by introducing primary legislation that imposes expensive measures on drivers. Surely that would be political suicide for any Government in any jurisdiction. The measures might help to meet the target, but they are very unlikely to happen.