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It is a bit easier to do that when you have the whole picture, but that is not to say that there is not something that we can do in that respect. I am happy to look at that. We are always keen to see ideas from elsewhere, and there might be some merit in doing that here.

I know that this will be difficult in the current political climate, but if we were able to establish enough of a consensus about what such a vision would look like, we might be able to have some kind of landing space in which, although we might disagree on certain things, we could agree on the things that we need to move towards. That might bring benefits.

I guess at a very high level it goes back to the key priorities, and the overarching key priority of eradicating child poverty. The question is: do our programmes help achieve that aim? There are various lenses through which we would look at existing spend and priorities to try to ensure consistency. We are also required, by law, to produce another child poverty delivery plan—the third—which will give us a good chance of hitting the child poverty targets by 2030. That is one example of the lens, I guess—

I guess that the overall answer is yes. Every part of the public sector would be looked at in terms of the contribution that it can make.

Without giving away any trade secrets, we have been having a debate about whether the bulk of the overall spend—whether it is in colleges, childcare or health—does enough to eradicate child poverty. We have a tendency sometimes to focus on the new bits of funding. There is a question about the rest of the tens of billions of funding through our various structures. I am quite thoughtful about that. Whether it is colleges or the health service, we need to interrogate whether what they are doing—for example with our childcare programmes—is going as far as it could to lift families out of poverty.

We will continue to discuss with business the best way to shape the funding that is available in order to have the outcomes that we want.

For example, we are talking to the hospitality sector at the moment about whether the current regime that is focused on turnover is fair to the hospitality sector compared to retail. We are not absolutely wedded to doing things the way that they have always been done. We are all cognisant of the current climate in which businesses are trying to recover from Covid and of the headwinds that are impacting on small businesses in particular, but it is not a bad challenge to say that the small business sector might have ideas.

We are talking to business and engaging with it on what the future looks like. It is a good time to have those discussions and to frame the issue in a way that shows that it is not about taking something away but about what investments could work better. I will continue to have those discussions through the budget process and into manifesto territory.

We can come back to you on that.

I will come back to you on that. I feel that discussions with the UK Government are in a better place now.

I guess that that is just drawing the distinction between saying that we would like to have VAT along with all the other revenue-raising powers, but that it cannot be through a system of assigned revenues. It is a matter of distinguishing between the principle and what was being suggested in relation to assigned revenues, because that is where the risk is. If the UK Government was to turn around tomorrow and say that it will give us responsibility over VAT full stop, that would be a very different matter.

That is why we took action in June to set out where we would close the gap. Clearly, there are some moving parts around the spending review. For example, on social security spend, the updated forecasts in the autumn will show the movement in the block grant because of the U-turn on welfare policy, which will probably adjust the projection by about £440 million by 2029-30.

There are other unknowns—for example, if there is an announcement on the two-child cap; we have factored in about £150 million to start with, but that grows as the projection goes towards 2029-30. At the moment, there are some unknowns that will impact on that gap, in addition to the steps that we have already set out. We will make sure that the committee is updated as we get confirmation of those forecasts.

Let me deal with the £36 million. That relates to the total sum of historic devolved debts that were either transferred to the Scottish Government under devolution or accrued under the lifetime of the agency agreement, when the DWP was still administering. That is historic debt, not somehow something that was created—

We will not let it go. Social Security Scotland will continue to take a zero tolerance approach to fraud. Any decision to write off any debts will be made only on an exceptional basis and after a full assessment has been taken.

I can take you through a lot of the detail of what Social Security Scotland is doing. It is using intelligence gathering and working with partners to identify and respond to fraud quickly and effectively, and suspected fraud is actively being referred to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service—a number of cases are already with the Crown Office, and it is ensuring that it is recovering overpayments. It has recovered a significant amount of money in the past two years. Although more needs to be done, I would not want anybody to have anything other than the impression that Social Security Scotland takes a zero tolerance approach to overpayment or fraud.