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Indeed—it is now.

One area that we are agreeing with the City of Edinburgh Council is the Granton funding landscape. The component parts are quite complex and have been funded from various bits, but there is a final bit of the jigsaw that needs to be put in place. In order for that to be completed, the City of Edinburgh Council is required to borrow, and we have agreed to pay the revenue costs of that borrowing.

That one example shows quite a pragmatic way of completing a project. It works for big projects such as housing and transport infrastructure, but I actually quite like it. It is a good way of ensuring that there is no one bit that is—

We would want more spending on defence in Scotland. For example, “Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland” shows a disconnect between what was attributed to spending on defence in Scotland and the actual spending on defence. Anything that can remedy that by having investment in defence industries in Scotland is to be welcomed.

We would have some caveats to that. You gave an example of ships that are absolutely needed for defence purposes. There are some areas of defence that we would be less keen on. Obviously, spending on nuclear weapons is one such area, but in terms of spending on conventional defence—

As I said, when it comes to powers over some of those more straightforward options, the path is not clear and obvious. Whether the UK Government will look at that issue remains to be seen. We will get a flavour of that at the autumn budget.

I have spoken about council tax several times, and I am up for looking at reform, but it can only be done in a way that attracts some consensus. With all due respect, the last time that there was any idea of moving forward with reform, we got the usual political response from the Opposition. We can only move forward with reform if we can find an area of agreement. In the absence of that, it is very difficult to embark on a programme, particularly given that we do not have a majority in the Parliament.

Post-election, we should return to having a serious discussion on where there might be areas for reform. It will be interesting to see where the UK Government goes in order to address the very complicated interrelationship between property tax reform and council tax. I am still getting my head around what their proposal means—it sounds incredibly complex, which means that it will probably never happen. We need to have an honest discussion, but that will probably be post-election.

Let us start with the good news: the forecast for 2026-27 is a £406 million positive reconciliation. That shows how things can change, because there has been a big change in that number. I am trying to remember the year—Jennie Barugh might help me—when a big negative tax reconciliation was predicted before the position completely changed. Was that 2022-23?

Absolutely. Investment in defence of that nature that secures well-paid jobs in Scotland is crucial. We all recognise the importance of national security and see it as key, particularly in an uncertain world, so absolutely—

There is a question about considering what happens within defence spending, rather than taking money from welfare into defence spending, for example.

As I said earlier, public sector pay and negotiations are the art of the possible. Pay policy seeks to provide a guide to negotiators to constrain and set expectations as far as possible. It cannot predict the outcomes of pay review bodies, however—and we have no input into that. Those are UK pay review bodies, and they tend to drive pay.

There is an issue there in terms of how pay review bodies operate. We have no way of inputting into them, and we often find out what the recommendation is just as it is announced. That drives pay, because it is then very difficult to say, “Well, we’re going to ignore the independent pay review body down south,” when it is essentially a driver for pay. The UK Government is in exactly the same position. It is far from ideal. We need to look at how that operates in practice.

We said very clearly that if it was going to be a single year deal it could not be more than 3 per cent. That was very important as it drove multiyear deals. The unions on the staff side recognised that if they wanted to have a higher first year, it had to be part of a multiyear deal. That enables—

Let me finish this point. Having that three-year horizon enables two things. First, as I said earlier, it enabled us to buy some peace and predictability. Secondly, it enables space for reform. When you are not back in the room negotiating pay again, you can actually look at some of the reforms in terms of who does what, changes to roles and so on. That is really important in the reform space that we have just been talking about.

I think that the multiyear deals have really helped. We built in a bit of contingency to help portfolios with their pay deals, but, at the end of the day, a judgment has to be applied that the cost of industrial action on a day-to-day basis is really expensive and disruptive. I think that we have got to quite a reasonable place in this round of pay deals—we are not quite out of the woods yet, but I think that the multiyear landscape has been really helpful.

We need the right policies. There is not one single policy that we can put in place here—it is a mix of policies. The measures that I have described—which include the drug consumption room and other forms of practice such as ensuring that people are seen quickly when they ask for help, and the medication assisted treatment standards—are all having an impact. There is no one solution here. However, the things that have an evidence base showing that they work need to be properly funded, and that is why there has been an increase in funding.

You have just been asking me about our spending choices—