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What they do with the money is up to them. The distribution group will allocate to each of the 32 local authorities. It is then entirely up to them how they use that money.

Your point is well made. Local authorities commission social care services differently, for example. Whether they try to address some of that will be entirely up to them, but I suspect that it will inevitably come to their door anyway.

Let me be clear: the work on the spending review has been kicked off, so we will not be waiting until after the election. That work will then go ahead at pace and I will work with the committee on the timetable for that, as it is a major undertaking. It is important to communicate with the committee and the Parliament on the spending review.

That line in the response was just a recognition that there is an election. Any new Administration, whatever its colour, will want to put its own stamp on spending plans. That line was just to recognise that the spending plans will be the spending plans until somebody decides otherwise. We can set out the detail of what we believe to be the right correlation of spending envelopes for what, and there may well be a shift—which is what a spending review is all about. We will have to take cognisance of the UK spending review, and there is a lot of chat about what the various envelopes might look like in the future.

The resource spending review set a direction of travel, but we are now getting beyond that high-level direction of travel in order to force the pace. Perhaps we have recognised that things were not happening at a pace that we were satisfied with and that we had to do things differently, which is what Ivan McKee is doing.

I do not think that local government in England is particularly happy at all, per se. I cannot really speak for it, but I have seen an unhappy tone in the media.

The Welsh also have a gap. It may be slightly less than ours, but it is significant.

The sustainability delivery plan will look at a five-year horizon. I accept the point about the need for an acknowledgement that looking beyond that brings into focus some of the demographic challenges that we are all aware of. Although there will be a five-year action plan, there will be an acknowledgement of those longer-term pressures that many countries—not just ours—are facing. We must use the levers that we have, but we also need some levers that we do not have at the moment. For example, migration would be an extremely welcome tool in helping us to recruit into key sectors where we have shortages and to grow the economy.

I will write to the committee with the information that I have garnered. I have had some detailed discussions with social security colleagues about that, because I wanted to reassure myself.

The budget set out a great deal of what is contained in the capital allocation—£768 million for affordable housing, for example, and other capital commitments for 2025-26.

Does Murdo Fraser think that the Tory proposals to cut our trade offices across the world would help or hinder economic growth in Scotland?

The budget for this year—2025-26—includes a real-terms increase for local government. How does Alexander Stewart reconcile that with the £1 billion of tax cuts that his party wants to deliver? What impact would that have on the local government settlement?

I can certainly give that commitment to Willie Rennie. In the meantime, I want to give some certainty around planning assumptions. Of course, the more money that we get from the UK Treasury for employer national insurance contributions, the more that I will distribute on a fair basis.

Looking ahead, our tax policy decisions in this budget continue to deliver our progressive approach in Scotland while raising substantial revenues to support the delivery of our public services. We are asking those with the broadest shoulders to contribute more.

In line with our tax strategy, for the remainder of this session of Parliament, we will provide certainty for our largest source of tax revenue and will not introduce any new bands or increase the rates of Scottish income tax. We will also maintain our commitment that, in 2025-26 and until the end of this session of Parliament, more than half of taxpayers will pay less income tax in Scotland than they would pay in the rest of UK.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission estimates that our choices on income tax since devolution will raise up to an additional £1.7 billion in 2025-26 compared with what the position would have been had we matched our policy to that in the rest of the UK. Thanks to the tax and social security decisions that we have taken, 60 per cent of Scots will be better off because they live in Scotland. That is exactly what this budget is about—delivering for and improving the lives of the people of Scotland.

I want to remind Parliament of what the 2025-26 Scottish budget is delivering for Scotland.

We believe that tackling poverty is an investment in the future of this country, and that is why eradicating child poverty is this Government’s number 1 priority. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “UK Poverty 2025” report is clear that only in Scotland is the rate of child poverty set to fall by 2029. That is a great achievement that bucks the trend across the UK and it is thanks in part to measures such as our Scottish child payment. However, we are in no doubt that there is still much more to do. That is why, through this budget, we are developing the systems necessary to effectively scrap the impact of the two-child cap in 2026.

We are also supporting households more widely through investing £768 million for the affordable housing supply programme, boosting affordable housing supply across Scotland and enabling housing providers to deliver at least 8,000 homes for social rent, mid-market rent and low-cost home ownership. To help with home energy costs, the budget will reinstate the universal winter heating payment to every pensioner household.

On wider support for children, this budget will continue to invest around £1 billion through the local government settlement in continuing to deliver high-quality funded early learning and childcare for three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, supporting families to provide their children with an essential early learning experience at that critical stage in life.

To support our schoolchildren, the budget will provide up to £3 million to deliver a bright start breakfasts pilot to test the delivery of free breakfast clubs and kick-start more breakfast delivery across Scotland.

We will also provide £37 million to support local government to deliver on our commitment to expand free school meals provision for children in primary 6 and primary 7 who are in receipt of the Scottish child payment, which is expected to support around 25,000 pupils. We will also provide an estimated £3 million to support a new test of change phase that will extend free school meal eligibility in eight local authority areas for pupils in secondary 1 to secondary 3 who are in receipt of the Scottish child payment.

We want to see a Scotland where everyone is able to flourish and to support Scotland in reaching its full potential. That is why we are taking these important steps through this budget.

Boosting fair and green economic growth is also essential. It improves living standards and outcomes for the people of Scotland and it helps to increase tax revenues to support high-quality public services. This budget prioritises major capital investment in the foundations of our economy, including in housing, transport, digital connectivity and delivering critical infrastructure for a green and growing economy.

We are investing more than £7 billion in our total infrastructure package. That includes almost tripling our investment in offshore wind to £150 million, advancing our commitment of up to £500 million over five years; expanding regeneration funding to £62 million to invest in communities across Scotland; and investing £100 million for the continued roll-out of our digital connectivity programmes across Scotland.

This budget will also ensure that enterprise and innovation are at the heart of our economic strategy, and, through investing in an expanded enterprise package, we will grow the start-up economy and contribute towards our ambition of establishing Scotland as a top-performing start-up economy.

Specifically, we are investing £321 million in Scotland’s enterprise agencies to deliver our programme of support to help Scottish businesses to start, be more productive and attract investment. The Government is supporting further investment in the Scottish National Investment Bank, with a net £200 million being offered to create jobs, support innovation and attract investment. This Government is also supporting the development of its future workforce by continuing to invest more than £2 billion in Scotland’s colleges, universities and skills development programmes.

On non-domestic rates, the budget will support businesses and communities by freezing the basic property rate—the lowest such rate in the UK—and maintaining the small business bonus scheme, which is the most generous of its kind in the UK. The budget also provides 40 per cent rates relief in 2025-26 for the 92 per cent of hospitality premises that are liable for the basic property rate. For our islands and remote areas, hospitality relief will continue at 100 per cent. Both are capped at £110,000 per business.