Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, everybody. I will ask a question of you, Mary, but pass it on if you want to. Obviously, we are the fair work committee, but we are also the economy committee, and the challenges that we have at the moment are well reported. Everyone will watch with interest to see what the UK budget means and what flows through in implications for the Scottish Government and the wider economic environment. With that in mind, can you put on the record what you see as the key economic barriers to progressing fair work for your key stakeholders—that is, employees, employers and the Scottish Government?

It might be picked up by other members, but it is also clearly an area of interest in relation to creating a future.

I will ask an open question about green free ports. What are you able to tell us about the current status and timelines?

That is absolutely understandable, because of all the changes at the UK Government level.

In terms of specific incentives, are you able to give any more flavour at a generic level of some of the themes or, again, is that all wrapped up under your future announcements?

You can be sure that I will continue to ask about that.

I will pick up on that point before I move on to my main questions. We all agree that the most recent fiscal event—which was, frankly, disastrous—will have an impact on existing supply chains, but it will surely also have an impact on the supply chains that the Scottish Government will be looking to develop through the likes of ScotWind. Are you concerned about that combined with rising costs, a potential inability through our labour policy to attract key skills that we might need, and the limitations on proper borrowing powers?

I think that my colleague, Maggie Chapman, is going to ask about investment zones.

I have a final question. There were concerns, which continue to rumble around, about the potential for tax avoidance by using free ports. I am looking at a University of Portsmouth report from last year in the Journal of Money Laundering Control, which it makes the case over that misuse. As we know, the UK loses £267 billion each year to money laundering and financial crime. Given that regulation of that area is entirely reserved to the UK Government, have you had any discussions with the UK Government about what steps it is going to take to make sure that free ports are not used for tax avoidance? That is a loss to ordinary people in the street, in terms of doctors, teachers, nurses and public money generally.

On conditionality, I am optimistic that the businesses that trade out of whatever Scottish ports are allocated green free port status will have equitability at their core—in the context of entrepreneurship, I am thinking about women-led businesses and women business representation. Am I right to be optimistic about that?

Obviously, I ask that without seeking to compromise you.

Good morning, everybody.

I want to focus on the matter at hand, which is the financial memorandum. There has been a lot of chattering external to this committee about the national care service, but personally, I will always welcome audacious and ambitious projects for change. That said, I have to recognise that what we have here is a large project that is complex to deliver and which has a longer-term outlook and a wide breadth of scope at a time when, as has been mentioned, we have rising inflation.

Minister, you said that “folks are saying that all that should be” covered in the financial memorandum—I think that you were referring to the extra items that the convener said were not mentioned. I do think that that is true, but my frustration has been that, despite the fact that the estimated costs in years 1 and 2 have about a 50 per cent variance and that there is over a 100 per cent variance in years 3, 4 and 5, everything has not been covered. I expected to see something in the FM that said, “We don’t know about the following areas, but we’re going through the process of discussing them. For example, we have talked about VAT,” but it is almost as if those areas do not exist.

That frustrates me because, ultimately, I want to have confidence that the FM represents the best picture that we have at that time, even if its estimates have a wide degree of variance, as is the case now. Knowing that, and having read everything in readiness for this meeting, what would you or your team do differently next time to reflect those concerns?

I go back to my original question: knowing what you know now, what would you do differently next time? I am entirely sympathetic with regard to the complexity and nature of this type of work, but I do not think it unreasonable to suggest that this has just not landed at the right level for this finance committee. If we set aside the ambition of changing social care, I do not think that you could conceive of the committee emerging with confidence in the estimates and the articulation of the unknown unknowns, particularly after the first of our scrutiny sessions on the financial memorandum. I am trying to establish just what you would do differently next time, having acknowledged all of that. Can you give us some reflections on that?

That question is for Ms Bennett in particular but, if that is unfair, I direct it to the minister.