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Is that for MSP staff cost provision?

I do not understand why it will cost £100,000 in staff time to upgrade the Official Report or the Business Bulletin. Frankly, I do not understand why the tasks are necessary but, to me, you are talking about £100,000 as if it is nothing when it is a lot of money to work on something like upgrading the Business Bulletin.

We are going to have an evidence session with the Deputy First Minister, which will probably last more than two hours, in which we will discuss how those in lots of areas of Scottish Government responsibility will have to deal with just that issue. The corporate body seems somewhat out of kilter with that.

The staff pay budget is to increase by 7.7 per cent. What is the differential between basic pay going up and what might be called grade inflation? We have the same number of staff—I understand that there have not been many additions and that last year’s increase in staff numbers has been consolidated. Where are we on that?

I absolutely agree. I remember that, when Jim Eadie was in the office next to me, he had a mountain made up of every Official Report that had been published since he had been elected. It is an invaluable resource, and I commend you for ensuring that members get it every day. I know that, when the new website was introduced, we were still able to access the Official Report on the old website. It is very important, and it is also important to cross-check what people have said in previous debates. I am just not sure why it needs to be updated. However, we will move on.

Inevitably, the last thing that I want to talk about is the issue of office-holders. You have talked about a 10 per cent increase, which is very significant given that other areas of the Scottish budget are under severe pressure. When you look at the eight office-holders in some detail, the 10 per cent increase hides a multitude of sins. For example, if we look at staffing costs, we see that the salary of the Scottish Public Sector Ombudsman is up 12.8 per cent; that of the Scottish Information Commissioner is up 9.8 per cent; that of the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland is up 17.5 per cent; that of the Scottish Human Rights Commissioner is up 11 per cent; and that of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland—who I remember had a big jump last year, too—is up 14.2 per cent. The budget of the Standards Commissioner for Scotland is up 13.2 per cent and that of the Biometrics Commissioner is up 16.3 per cent, while the Electoral Commission is up only 4 per cent.

Jackson Carlaw has already talked about the SPCB’s careful scrutiny of that and has mentioned, for example, the increasing functions of the ombudsman. However, the ombudsman’s staff budget is now more than £6 million, which is the equivalent of the staff budget of 40 MSPs. I am not convinced that the office of the Scottish Public Sector Ombudsman does the work of 40 MSP offices. In fact, I would be shocked if it did, given the amount of work that comes into my office and, I am sure, the offices of many other MSPs. How can those colossal increases in salary for all but the Electoral Commission be justified at this difficult time?

I will finish with the issue of cleaning, which has been brought up by both John Mason and Michelle Thomson. The cleaning budget will increase by 23.7 per cent to £804,000. That is not in itself a huge figure, but I wonder why there is such a large percentage increase in one year.

If the situation is not as bad as we thought, why has the housing budget been cut by a third, to £375.8 million, in the forthcoming year?

The housing budget has had a particularly serious reduction. You have mentioned one set of figures, but we must work with what we have in front of us. Page 53 of the budget document shows that the more homes budget has decreased from £740.1 million in 2022-23 to £564.6 million in 2023-24 and £375.8 million in 2024-25. That is almost a halving of that budget over two years at a time of a housing emergency.

We know that, at the same time, the Scottish Government has made very significant capital investments in other areas. For example, there has been a 12.4 per cent increase for Police Scotland and a 49 per cent increase for digital connectivity; I will mention one or two other increases in a moment when we move on to discuss other areas.

Why has that choice been made? The Scottish Government has quite rightly said that it is a matter of choices. I find it wearisome that no one other than the Scottish Government really makes choices. Everyone says that there should be more money for everything and no reductions in anything. We are in a situation in which capital is decreasing—that is just a fact of life—but why has housing in particular had such a dunt, relative to other areas of the Scottish budget?

For our second evidence session on the 2024-25 Scottish budget, I welcome to the meeting the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Shona Robison, who is joined by Scottish Government officials. Dr Alison Cumming is director of budget and public spending; Ellen Leaver is deputy director, local government and analytical services; and Dr Andrew Scott is director of tax and revenues.

We have just over two hours for this session. Before I open up the discussion, I invite Ms Robison to make a short opening statement.

Transparency is fundamental. We cannot be comparing apples with pears. We need to have confidence in what we are looking at when we are making comparisons.

One of the issues raised by a number of people who have given evidence to the committee, particularly on our pre-budget report, was the need to grow the tax base. It is fair to say that there is a level of disappointment with some of the decisions that have been made. I will ask about some of those decisions. In the wellbeing economy and fair work budget, there is a 15 per cent reduction to £348.7 million in the enterprise, trade and investment budget. You have already touched on the Scottish National Investment Bank; its budget is down 28 per cent. At a time when we need to grow the tax base, improve productivity and create economic growth and when we need to provide the tax revenues to pay for so much else, why have decisions been made to reduce the enterprise budgets?

We want to look at these figures three-dimensionally rather than two-dimensionally wherever possible.

I will go back to the issue of choices. You talked about protecting the NHS, and its resource is up 4.3 per cent. The resource for police is up by 5.6 per cent and support for ferry services is—I am pleased to say—up by 23.3 per cent. The figure has gone up in a number of areas, but how did you decide on those percentages? Why did you decide on, for example, 4.3 per cent for the NHS but 5.6 per cent for policing? What was the decision making behind that?