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The point that I was making about the spending review was that, when it comes to day-to-day resource spending—and I note that most of the defence spending is on capital, so it is not part of resource spending—our increase in such spending is significantly less than the average for UK departments, and it will have a direct impact of £1.1 billion on our day-to-day spend. I have heard commentators who are by no means supporters of the Scottish Government or the SNP confirming that that mismatch of average increase in spend will have an absolute direct impact on our budget. Leaving aside the defence issue, I am afraid to say that that is the fact, and I regret that.

First of all, this is a concern for everybody, not least me, given that I represent a city where drug deaths have been a huge issue of concern.

A lot has been done in this space. We have the national drugs mission, which has been backed up by, I think, £100 million of additional funding, and there is now a lot of really important practice with, for example, the investigation of near misses and the roll-out of naloxone. Over the past five years, there has been a real improvement in the intelligence in this area of public health and in the rolling out of practice that has been shown to work.

Is there more to be done? There certainly is. Although there has been a reduction in drug deaths according to this morning’s statistics—as I understand it; I have not seen them—we still have a long way to go to ensure that we move on from the situation you have described.

I thought that the figure included personnel, if you could locate them. That is a difficulty as well, because personnel are located all over the world and trying to extrapolate the Scottish spend is quite difficult. However, there was a mismatch of, if I remember rightly, £2 billion that cannot be reconciled. We could talk about GERS all day, but our contention is that the notional element does not bear a relationship to the actual spend—not just in defence but in other areas as well.

I do not think that there is anything too alarming.

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.