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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—

The point that I was making—and it is not just in defence; it relates to other areas as well—is that the notional figures that are attributed to spend in Scotland do not always accord to the actual spend on the ground. Those two things do not equate. There is a notional allocation and then there is the reality on the ground, and there is a mismatch there.

We are not starting from the point of view of saying that everything is on the table but 1 per cent might be at issue. Everything should be challenged. The principle is that we have to challenge each other. If everything is committed, there is no room for change. However, there are clearly key priorities that are big spending areas. Health, local government and social security are the three big spending areas that constrain spending on everything else to a much smaller spend.

The work on health and social care reform will be important to ensure that the £21 billion that was allocated to health and social care for 2025-26 is spent in such a way as to reshape and do things differently. It will not be a great surprise that we have a commitment to maintain health spending and to pass on all consequentials, so there are some certainties in that big spending area. We need to manage expectations: we are not going to massively reduce health spending; the question mark is over how that money is spent and what it delivers. Richard McCallum, do you want to say more about process?