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:I have a question about health, so perhaps Jack Gillespie will deal with it. The majority of the savings in the spending review—£1 billion of the £1.5 billion—fall within health. What detail have you had about how those savings will be measured and reported against for Government?

:This question, which is for all the witnesses, is about the process of engagement by the Government with your organisations on the figures that have been set out in the spending review.

We were all struck by figure 6 in the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s report. The graph shows local government spending taking a hard left. There are smaller decreases in other areas, and there are increases in some areas too. Did you have discussions with the Government about that, and if so, what rationale did it set out to you?

:The circumstances in Dundee are unique in the sector. They relate to management practice, people not being able to read management accounts and all kinds of issues. The situation is an absolute disaster and a disgrace.

I am concerned about the SFC’s record in the sector more broadly. You are sounding alarms about the sustainability of the sector at this meeting and the SFC is doing that more generally, but it feels to me as though the SFC has been asleep at the wheel on the matter for years as the sector has become more leveraged and more reliant on risky international funding. We have not heard the Scottish Funding Council tell that story to the public about those precious institutions, which, as you say, are important. What is different about the SFC’s approach now from the approach that steered us into this mess in the first place?

:Was it the SFC that said that you want to go beyond level 2? What would be the counter-argument?

Multiyear funding is a long-term demand of local government, because it wants to be able to plan for the longer term. The committee was a bit concerned, because we do not like to see the number going up considerably over time to meet various needs, but we recognise the challenge because of the funding situation.

However, part of it is surely about getting local government to deal with the reality that is in front of it. If the cabinet secretary came to you and said, “Well, actually, we think that the situation might change—it probably will—and there will be more money,” how would that impact the approach that local government takes to dealing with the hard-line, difficult scenario that it is presented with at the moment? Will you wait and hope that things get better? What is the practical reality?

:I will come back to you on that, Tiffany. You said that the engagement with Government has been positive and has been partly focused on keeping the doors open. We are in a situation whereby universities are shedding thousands of jobs right now, and, across the three-year spending review period, the SFC’s funding is down by £10 million. Is the settlement commensurate to the scale of the challenge that people face right now? Institutions are in crisis, including in Aberdeen, Dundee, Strathclyde and Edinburgh, all with huge job losses.

:If you are diving right into the depths of the budget lines, is it not then a little bit strange that the other side of it only comes out at level 2? I see a few raised eyebrows from our witnesses on that point. The Government has not produced the detail and given it back to you. You have examined those spending lines right down to their depths, but, by the sound of things, you want more detail. Does everyone agree that level 2 is insufficient and not commensurate with the level of the examination that you undertook as organisations?

Is the £12 million part of the £30 million scheme?

I will go back to public service reform. On pages 5 and 6 of the spring budget revision document, you highlight two different and, in the overall picture, relatively small amounts of money. There is a £12 million reduction in the finance and local government portfolio for public sector reform and a £1.5 million reduction in the funding for education reform. Will you give us any detail as to why that is the case?

We heard comments in last week’s evidence session about the good work that the committee has done over the past parliamentary session. I think that we have to capture that, but not just the compliments; we need to think about what that culture is. I say that as somebody who has been on a couple of different committees. It is not just about the people; it is about the working practices.

I was a short-term member of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, and it was utterly abysmal, and I will put that on the record. There were questions written by clerks that were, frankly, in my view, unidirectional—how can we spend more money on this one thing—rather than any kind of intelligent examination of it. The fact that we do not have any of that in this committee is incredibly important and should be part of what we reflect. There are structural things that we can do, as Alison Payne has reflected on. We can try to build the culture that is required for better committees, but it will always come down to people in the end.

I also worry a bit about the discourse around barbarians at the gate and how we defend the status quo. In essence, that just gives more power to the people who want the status quo to break. Some of us want the status quo to break, too, so let us not be defensive about it.

Sarah Davidson’s point about transparency being the antidote to some of that is important: “This is how it works and if you want to change how it works, show us.” What could we do more of, or what could our successor committee do, to pursue that angle of transparency and openness and ways of working in public administration? We have dealt with some of the finance aspects of the issue, such as the publication of numbers, but in terms of exploring institutions and some of the inherent biases and issues, what more could we or our successor committee explore?