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Good morning. I want to go back to a comment that David Phillips made earlier about capex and the accommodation that was made by the UK Government. In some respects, I am surprised. I appreciate why the Scottish Government wanted to fix on the IPC, for all the reasons that we have discussed. However, in relation to the current fiscal challenges, I am surprised that it did not push more around capex thresholds, given that there is a very real need for capital projects and given what those could have brought to the economy in the complete absence of any of the meaningful levers to grow the economy that it might ordinarily expect to have. A lot of what we are discussing is really dancing on the head of a pin in terms of the nature of the fiscal transfer and the way that things are happening in the UK.

Do you agree with my assessment? If you had been doing that, would you also have been pushing hard for increased capital borrowing powers, with the intent of using them because there is a good reason to do so in the current economic climate?

I will pick up that thread. Let us carry on with the same theme for a minute, and then I will bring in some other areas.

I must admit that I read your submission and have listened to your comments with great interest, Professor Humes. On the basis of what you have said, I think that we have a good sense of the role that culture plays in delivery by national Government and the agencies; you have already put that on the record. How would you go about changing that? I ask that because changing culture is extraordinarily difficult to do and very time consuming, and for that very reason, agencies—at whatever level—often get rather tired of it and move on to something else. How would you go about changing the scenario that you have depicted in your comments?

Marina, I will bring you in.

Following on from that, the view of the international council of education advisers is that Scotland should aim for an “egalitarian culture” in education. What does an “egalitarian culture” mean to you? Do you agree?

Perhaps Marina Shapira might like to answer that.

Would anyone else on the panel like to come in, specifically on the question about how we should go about changing that? Janet, you are looking at me.

That leads us neatly on to the next set of questions.

I have a couple of brief questions off the back of what has been asked.

Going back to the issue of police pensions, minister, you said correctly that this was demand led and that there had been more volatility. That has piqued my interest. To what extent is that an overhang from Covid, when we saw more people choosing to retire as they realised that there was a life out there to be lived? In other words, have you any sense of the extent to which that will continue, or was it a one-off? You might not know the answer to that.

I am asking the question, because if it looks like something that will continue—and you are right that there is more flexibility in the way in which people take their pensions—it would be useful to know that. Indeed, it applies not just to the police scheme—I am thinking across the board.

I have a second wee question. I know that you have already agreed to write to us with what reserves are actually in place, but it would also be useful for me to understand the rules around agencies that are able to gather reserves or not, as you have pointed out, and whether there is any policy thinking in that respect. I think that most of us on the committee are pretty comfortable with agencies being required to use existing reserves where we have this fiscal tightness, but I am interested in, for example, the situation with the Scottish National Investment Bank. When it eventually moves into profit, I think that we will want it to be able to keep its reserves, because that is how we will get to scale. It would be useful to put a bit of meat on the bones of that.

My third wee point is to thank you for your contribution today. I recognise the extra effort that has gone into this, and as a member of the finance committee, I find that heartening. It does not happen often, so thank you very much for that. I also wonder whether you can speak internally to your colleagues about this. The kind of rigour and discipline that we are seeing in this session contrasts with what we saw in our previous session, when we examined a financial memorandum. It made us run over time, and the committee felt that there had not been a sufficient level of rigour, as what we were dealing with were estimates. I do appreciate that, but it would be nice if we could square that circle a bit with the actuals represented in this document. I know that things can only be accurate when we have the actuals, but we are increasingly finding ourselves in quite a fluid position with FMs that are coming to the committee with estimates.

You are making an argument when you say that the costs are as indicative as you can make them for a framework bill. Following that logic, the estimated costs cannot be very accurate at all, because it is a framework bill, as you have emphasised. That concerns me greatly. I absolutely appreciate the complexity, but our job, as a committee, is to scrutinise the FM. In some respects, we almost need to set aside the policy and the excitement that is generated by the policy and the change. Our job is to look at the FM, as it stands.

You have heard from the convener that concerns were expressed by the representatives two weeks ago. Indeed, in answer to my question, Kirsty McGuire from South Lanarkshire Council gave a four for her confidence level, and someone else gave a five, because they were reflecting that they do not know the final costs.

As it stands, from looking at the FM, we can have simply no idea as to the final costs of implementing the policy. In fact, it is fair to say that, in any project, you never know the final cost until it is done—that is just a statement of fact. I am trying to establish the confidence level, given that, in all your previous evidence to the convener, you have set out exactly why we cannot know and the mitigations that will come through co-design. How confident are you, having explained that, that the FM represents the final cost to the Scottish Government and the taxpayer?

The convener made the point that, if those regulations go through as secondary legislation via, for example, an affirmative procedure, that could in no way be considered scrutiny. They might go through automatically, even if they went to a lead committee. For example, I was at a recent evidence session on the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill that was all about costs, and there was exactly the same issue. That bill is a framework bill, and the details on costs were starting to come through but were being considered by the Education, Children and Young People Committee.

I am trying to say that I cannot have any confidence in the FM when the fully disclosed estimates are quite vague because of where the Government is in the process. I understand why that is the case. Witnesses from councils have said, “Actually, frankly, we don’t know.” There are mitigations, but, with some of the ranges, the costs could be seven times higher.

I will frame it in this way. Imagine that you were going to build your own house and you went to the bank and said, “I think that I want to borrow £250,000, but I might actually need £1.75 million. I will let you know once I’ve been through all the various stages.” The bank would say, “Eh—I don’t think so.” It would be looking for considerably more detail.

Given that, critically, our fiscal constraints are so tight, why do you think that it is acceptable for us, as a finance committee, to sign off on an FM when, to be frank, we have no clue? I am setting aside the policy; I am just talking about financial scrutiny. We have no clue. I find it extremely difficult to have the right level of confidence, because there are so many variances. To have some ranges in which the costs vary so much—they could be seven times higher—is unbelievable.