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Well, no. With regard to local government, if you look at table A.09, you will see that it actually lists all of the areas that are subject to in-year transfers, for the very reason that we want to be transparent. That has been the same in the last few budgets, so that information is there.

Sometimes these things happen for portfolio and policy reasons. The fact is that, once the money is baselined, ministers have no control over it if they want to change policy. The active travel line for local government is a good example of that. As I understand it, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport has changed the policy with regard to how active travel funding is to be given. We can provide more detail on that, but if that money had been baselined, she would not have been able to do that; she would have lost any control over being able to make changes in policy.

There is a balance to be struck here. Do you just put all the money out the door and then, if there is a change of policy, do you have to bring the money back? These are judgments that have to be made. We have baselined a lot of money, and we have done so each year. The direction of travel has certainly been towards baselining more and more funding.

Ellen, can you remind me what the additional baselining is? Is it £2.2 billion?

No, it is table 4.15.

We are not trying to create any confusion, which is why table 4.15 sets everything out.

No, not at all. I do not accept your point. We have always managed to balance the budget. If you are going to quote, you could quote some of the credit rating agencies that have praised the prudent financial management in Scotland.

I think that we have set out a reasonable position for local government funding. By any commentator’s view, there has been a real-terms increase, but there is a difference depending on whether you compare to the ABR or to last year’s budget. The reason that you cannot compare to the ABR is that, as I set out, we had employer national insurance contribution funding of £144 million and pay of £109 million, which inflated the ABR position. SPICe, which guides committee members as to what is reasonable, has clearly said that that is why it is not reasonable to compare the budget to ABR. It is more reasonable to compare the local government settlement from budget to budget, because of the in-year movements. I agree with SPICe on that.

Relative to tax paid in 2025-26, someone would be £32 better off. The policy impact relative to the SFC baseline is £25 up to an income of £40,000. Do officials want to add anything to that?

Well, I have just told you the figures.

It is hard to disagree with that in principle. It is a case of considering the evidence on the outcomes of policies. I assure you that, when we set budgets and through our work on the spending review, policies are pretty robustly scrutinised and tested. Every cabinet secretary in every portfolio is challenged to set out the degree to which their spending is having an impact on the First Minister’s four key priorities. That work was done through the spending review process, which was quite rigorous.

There are always choices to be made. Judgments about the impact of removing a source of funding to a particular service or a particular social benefit will be made in the round, but I assure you that these things are regularly and rigorously challenged.

09:45

The figures that we have provided are at a significantly more detailed level than what is in the UK spending review, for example, which is much less—

We have provided level 3 detail for social security. We have provided additional detail for health and local government because those are among the biggest spending areas.

On your other point, we have, on a number of occasions during this session, tried to set out why we have a different comparison for the local government budget—it is a budget-to-budget comparison rather than comparison with the ABR, because of the in-year movement. We have set all of that out in the budget—as we did last year and, I think, the year before—in table 4.15.

We have tried to be as transparent as we can be with the amount of material that we have published, not just in the budget but in all the associated documents. Is it complex? Yes, there is a lot of material and a lot of information there. I accept that, but we have absolutely tried to set all of that out in as transparent a way as we can.

On college funding, I think that reasonable points were made. We have responded by saying that the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills will provide clarity to the Education, Children and Young People Committee on the presentation of that funding, given the issue of all the infrastructure investment being put together and items not being separated out, including things such as the Dunfermline learning campus, which has not provided clarity in the college funding line. Where a fair point has been made, we have tried to respond to it.

On the point about the fiscal gap, what we set out in June in the fiscal sustainability delivery plan included a lot of detail. That has now been built on by the work that Ivan McKee has done on each portfolio, with its savings plans and efficiency plans. The workforce reduction plans clearly set out where those reductions are going to happen and the definitions of front line and back office. There is a lot of material that lays out the path to the savings that we need to make by the end of the spending review. I am not sure how much more detail could be provided in that space.

On the local government issue, as SPICe has recommended, we compare the local government budget to the local government draft budget, because of the in-year transfers into the local government funding line. I have already talked about the 2025-26 position, in which there were two particular areas of funding that would distort an ABR comparison—employer national insurance contributions and pay.

I am trying to be very transparent about why the figures are the figures. I am not sure how much more I can say about that.