Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, Mr Ross. A fair few of the questions that I might have dwelt on have already been asked, but perhaps I can help out Mr Mason a little bit with regard to costs.

On the alcohol side of the equation, the alcohol and drinks industry is already committed to significant expenditure on combating alcohol harm and on community alcohol partnerships, and there is also money that it puts into self-regulation and so on. Have you had any discussions with that industry about how money that is already being spent could be repurposed for such a programme, or how, say, some of the revenues from minimum unit pricing—which, according to the Fraser of Allander Institute, are approximately £32 million a year—could be used to meet some of the costs of what I think is a worthwhile bill?

Regardless of what happens next with parliamentary time or Government support for the bill, the bill has raised awareness of the need for rehab and the scale of Scotland’s alcohol and drug deaths. It has also led to more data and transparency around that data. How much further do you think we have to go before we have an accurate picture of the trends and the costs? I know that some of them will always be unknown, but one of the unintended consequences of the proposed legislation is that we are starting to compile that data, which is useful to public policy more generally.

If the bill is passed, until the systems are in place, will it make it more difficult for the Scottish Government in the short to medium term to cut budgets as it has in the past, because there will be an increased focus on this area?

Finally, on the problem of alcohol misuse, in its submission, SHAAP called for

“a new robust national needs assessment to be carried out”,

followed by

“a full calculation ... to estimate the costs of upscaling provision to meet the currently unmet need”

in relation to alcohol dependence. Do you sense that there is agreement to extend the scope of the bill to cover all people with alcohol-use disorder, as SHAAP has suggested, or would you want to look at that further down the line?

To follow up on Mr Marra’s point, the ScotWind moneys have been a hokey-cokey reserve, with moneys going in and out of the account. Do you now have a clear policy on them that says that they should not be used to make up for what are, in effect, forecasting errors on the part of the Scottish Government?

Do you think that, in year, we will see some metrics? In the past, we have asked about the savings and whether you could plot them against budget increases. Are you confident that both will be heading south?

You are patting yourself on the back and saying that you have managed to balance the budget yet again, but what conversation would you have been having with us today if you did not have the £2 billion that your crystal ball correctly said was going to come? You criticised your political opponents. The Scottish Conservatives suggested tax cuts, which you said would lead to public expenditure cuts, but that is not necessarily axiomatic. What conversation would you be having with us today if you had not got that £2 billion?

Good morning. My questions will continue Mr Marra’s line of questioning. The committee has expressed concerns about the Scottish budget’s long-term sustainability, but is the truth not that, this year, all the cards fell in your favour? You got £2 billion more than you would otherwise have got, and therefore you got lucky this year. It was not that your modelling was correct; it was more about the nature of the transfers that you got through the Barnett consequentials.

In the past, we have talked about your efforts to make Government more efficient, to reduce the contingent workforce head count and cost and to reduce the expenditure on the workforce more generally. Shona Robison helpfully responded to my written question about the contingent workforce, and her answer shows that, on 31 March 2022, the contingent workforce across all directorates was 989 and on 30 September 2024 it was 668, which represents a reduction of 321. Over precisely the same period, the number of senior-grade civil servants increased by 500, which is significantly more than the reduction in the contingent workforce.

Are you in a position to provide figures on the net saving from reducing those contingent workers versus the senior civil servants that have replaced them? Do you have an idea, as you progress through this year, of where those figures will be at the end of the financial year, for both the contingent workforce and the senior civil service workforce?

Do you share my concern about the way that these things sometimes work? Although you may be focused on reducing the contingent workforce, at the same time, there has been a pay and grade escalation in the full-time equivalent civil service, particularly among the cohort of senior civil servants. The number of senior civil servants seems to be growing inexorably and to a greater degree than the contingent workforce.