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Let me be helpful and say that I am very keen to work with the committee further on those areas. We might be able to make a distinction between the areas that are settled and those that are more prone to policy shifts, which might, in turn, shift the funding level. We could have a look at that.

I recognise the frustration that you reflected in relation to PPP, and we can discuss that further with the committee.

The fiscal sustainability delivery plan will have quite a sharp focus on workforce and you will be able to see some of the detail of those projections when it is published. Pay is clearly a huge element of the budget and I am very open to looking at ways of being more transparent about those costs and budgeting for them.

I am not shutting the door on any of the ideas, convener. If the committee wants to make more specific suggestions on those areas or others, I am happy to look at them in advance of 2026-27.

The NPF is obviously under review at the moment. It is important that all those elements are coherent. That is an important point about reform and tangible timeframes and outcomes. That will be a key pillar of the fiscal sustainability plan, which will show what needs to happen to ensure that we can reduce our fiscal pressures and extract benefit from doing things differently.

The point about outcomes is a good one. There are many documents that are much more granular in detail and focused on outcomes. For example, the Verity house agreement or health board plans have more detail on outcomes at that level. However, I take your point that we can and should be able to more readily describe the outcomes that we expect from investments. We have kept children out of poverty by investing in the Scottish child payment. We have put figures on that over the years by analysing how many children that will impact. As I described in a previous evidence session, we did the same with the lifting of the two-child cap, by working out how many children we expected to be kept out of poverty by that investment. So, in some areas, we have an analysis that is able to focus more on outcomes. However, I take your point more generally that we could make improvements.

I have just been reminded that I am chairing a meeting of the tax advisory group in late August.

I have a lot of engagement, with COSLA in particular. We engage regularly on pay and many other matters pertaining to the funding of local government. This year, there was far deeper pre-budget engagement, and I think that even COSLA recognised that it was better—maybe not perfect, but better. Similarly, I had meetings with the STUC and individual unions to set some expectations around pay, given the constraints that exist.

On what has changed, I would like to think that there are iterations during every budget process based on what we have heard. The local government budget is a good example. Hearing COSLA’s experiences of what did not work has led to a far more open-book approach for 2025-26. I would cite that as a strong example of where we listened and changed our approach. It was a much better way of getting to a place that COSLA was more comfortable and content with—it was perhaps not entirely happy with absolutely everything, but we got to a far better place.

Yes, of course. It is a very high-profile inquiry, and we are very much taking notice of it.

Well, we have not been offered a meeting that is comparable with the meetings with Whitehall departments, which will be taking place throughout May. We understand the time pressures. I appreciate the time that it takes to have meetings with all the respective parts of the Government, but it was a bad message to send. I felt that that would have been an opportunity to get, in confidence, an understanding that we were in—

We have raised those issues with the Treasury in order to find solutions. Additional budget flexibility could also assist in managing SNIB’s financial position. We are keen for SNIB to be given the same status as the National Wealth Fund, because they are both public sector financial institutions, and that would enable SNIB to have more flexibility. I think that the latest from the Treasury is that it has not closed the door on that.

I had a general sense of shifting spend and we had no line of sight on what that would mean. We asked the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to give us a sense of the spending departments that were likely to be prioritised and protected, compared to those that were not. For example, we do not know where local government will sit in terms of Whitehall department priorities. He just said that he had to meet with all the departments, but, at this stage, they must have some sense of the priorities. I felt that all of it represented a bit of a shift. Compared to the assumptions that we had made, we are now in a different place, unfortunately.

No, but I will come back to the committee with the latest on the review.

It depends on what is on the table. If we were to consider specific tax powers or areas of devolution or spend that we do not have powers over—corporation tax, for example—we would have to know what was on the table in the discussion with the UK Government, so that we could model what that would mean. We have never hidden away from the fact that we want independence—or any powers short of that—for this Parliament. That is not a secret.

Detailed financial and economic modelling would have to be done on the basis of what we were talking about. For example, if there were to be a framework review that got into the detail of which areas would move, shift or be devolved, at that point, the detailed analysis would be done on each of the tax powers that would move to the Scottish Parliament.

At the moment, the policy is a principle. We would have to discuss this with the UK Government and do detailed work on what we had discussed and agreed on. Nothing has been agreed with the UK Government—