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If your question relates to VAT assignment, that is what we need to resolve with the UK Government. There are choices. Should we continue to try to find a way to mitigate the risk? A lot of work has been done on that, but the conclusion was that that is very difficult. Should we agree that it is just not feasible to have assignment without having the policy levers? An agreement could be reached—although this is highly unlikely—that VAT would be devolved to us, along with those policy levers.

The third option is that we agree that it is not feasible to go forward with VAT assignment on the basis of all the risk that it is agreed exists and that, in the light of the evidence that has been gathered since 2016, which would not have been understood at the time in the way that it is now, we decide that the risk is too great.

That decision has not been made yet, so I want to leave space for the joint Exchequer committee to come to some conclusions on the matter. It will be a joint conclusion.

We are looking for officials to recommend to ministers the conclusions that they have come to on the art of the possible. We are not at that stage yet. We need to let that process go through. The optimum scenario would be that recommendations are made to ministers that we can jointly agree.

I do not think so; we have covered the main points. I thank the committee for the evidence sessions and for the clear steer that it has given us on VAT assignment, which is very helpful. I will do my best to keep the committee as informed as I can.

We would certainly want to test that.

Our having such status would require a whole reset. The sky is the limit on whether we could do things completely differently; of course we could, but we would have to get the people on the other side of the negotiations on the same page, and we do not know what their appetite for that would be.

On your first point, there are huge issues relating to population growth in Scotland relative to population growth elsewhere. The key levers over migration, as well as some of the key economic levers, lie elsewhere, so being able to address the fundamental issue of lack of population growth without having the levers to do so is very difficult. Of course, that impacts on how the block grant adjustment is applied.

If we look at tax take and anticipate the growth in tax revenues that is due to tax policy that is set here in Scotland, from the HMRC data, the signs are that performance continues to be strong, but that all needs to be put through the block grant adjustment machine, which is based on population growth, and what pops out the other end is what we know to be the case.

That is a challenge. Addressing it would require a pretty fundamental change, which would need to be part of a bigger, more fundamental review. The Barnett squeeze is definitely reducing the spending that is available over time. If you want, I can bring in Matt Elsby or Niall Caldwell to say more about that.

On the Crown Estate, we strongly argued that, over many years—I am talking about the pre-devolution period and the early years of devolution—the investment in the Crown Estate has been particularly focused on London and the south-east, with no focus on investment in the Crown Estate in Scotland. We have made that a success story by focusing on investing in the Crown Estate and, in particular, offshore wind. The fact that that was part of the negotiation was a recognition of that success. The success of the Crown Estate since 2016, when the fiscal framework agreement was reached, has been recognised by the UK Government.

We made the point that the underinvestment in the Crown Estate in Scotland compared with the Crown Estate in London and the south-east had to be part of the understanding of the position that we ended up in on the Crown Estate. To some extent, we had to compromise a bit, but I think that we landed that point reasonably successfully.

Economic performance relative to that of London and the south-east is not just an issue for Scotland; it is also an issue for parts of England, too. Of course, it has major consequences for us in terms of the funding adjustments that are made as part of the fiscal framework. We were never going to be able to unpick any of that as part of this review. It is very much an issue of what comes next. It would mean a fundamental look at how the relationship between our budget and UK finance is constructed.

I accept that. However, had we held out to say that we were not going to make the agreement unless we could have that, we would not have got the agreement.

You can be assured that our key asks on a number of matters will be put to any new Government that emerges after a general election, not just on fiscal powers but on things such as the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the Sewel convention, the way in which Governments interact and the respect agenda—trying to get back to a position of respect. The days of the memorandum of understanding seem a long way away. A lot has happened. The internal market act in particular is a real impediment to devolution and is an erosion in so many respects. It makes the day-to-day interaction with the UK Government very difficult. That is not just a Scottish Government position, I hasten to add, but a Welsh Government position.

There is important work to do on what the devolved Administration’s relationship is with the UK Government. Rather than that being a party-political issue, there is a more fundamental issue of the relationship between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government. The balance of power has shifted away from the devolved Administrations in so many respects. There is an opportunity to reset and refresh that. The element of fiscal powers that we have been talking about is a part of that.

There will be a further meeting of officials in the new year to examine where we have got to. I mentioned that the evidence that this committee has heard will be an important part of that. The outcome of those discussions will be considered at a future meeting of the joint Exchequer committee. The best outcome would be that, working together with Treasury officials, officials put some joint recommendations to us and then a decision is made. As I said earlier, I am happy to keep the committee updated.

There are a few issues there. The first is that we cannot escape the fact that capital budgets will decline, unless something changes tomorrow, and that the purchasing power of what can be developed and built with that reducing capital availability is constrained. Therefore, we will need to prioritise. I will set out our proposition in the budget. We recognise very much that modernising and improving the prison estate to ensure that it is fit for purpose is a priority, and we are keen to do that. We know that the pressures on the prison estate at the moment are challenging, to say the least.

You touched on spend to save. That is part of the reform agenda that I am taking forward on behalf of the whole of Government. That is about looking at ways of doing things differently, whether on resource or capital. One of the issues that we are looking at is the public sector estate in its widest sense and what we do where and why. One of the challenges of future investment in the net zero space is the requirement to bring public buildings up to scratch in terms of net zero emissions. With some buildings, it will simply not make sense to do that, given the cost. That will require us to think about co-location and where things are done, taking account of patterns of home and office working, which have changed since Covid. All of that is being looked at in the work on the estate strategy.

Looking more widely at the reform of public bodies and fiscal sustainability, one of the issues is the balance of the workforce and where that sits, as well as affordability, in terms of the size of the workforce and what the workforce does. All that needs to be taken forward carefully, and we need to ensure that what we end up with—this will take time; it is not going to happen in the short term—is a sustainable set of public services that can continue to provide high-quality service, but which might look and feel a bit different from the way that they do at the moment. The prison estate and the justice system are one part of that.