Seòmar agus comataidhean

In your opening remarks, you mentioned the £1.2 billion per annum that is expected to be brought in through EPR. However, a concern of our witnesses was how that would be distributed to local authorities. For example, that is a UK provision, so how would Scottish local authorities gain from that? What would be the mechanism? Obviously, we want to have certainty about that for forward planning purposes.

Thank you for that—as always—helpful opening statement, minister. When we look at the top-line figures, what is interesting is that, although the addition is around £361 million, which is about 0.6 per cent of the total budget, once again we see considerable movement within portfolios. There has been, over the years, as you said, a difference between policy intention and delivery. If we look, for example, at health and social care, we see movement of about £1,059.6 million into other portfolios. There are detailed explanations of that; I am heartened by the information that the minister and his officials can provide. Compared with how it used to be, the information that is provided is, obviously, very extensive.

When we are looking at movements of such scale in-year, would it not be better, in terms of delivery, for the funds to be baselined into the areas where they finally end up? Many of those movements appear to happen almost annually. It almost seems as if, when the policy intention is created, there is a real mismatch between it and, ultimately, delivery. What is your comment on that?

However, £44 million is quite a substantial percentage of that, which is why one asks why that cannot be envisaged at the start of the financial year. As I said, if it was just £1 million here or there, you might think, “Ok—fair enough.” It seems to be a significant amount that one would think could have been predicted when the budget was being drawn up, therefore we would not have to have the portfolio transfer that we are witnessing now.

Colleagues around the table will want to dig into some of the figures. I will just touch on a couple of them, especially given the fact that I overdid it in the last session. [Laughter]. I will give folk a chance to claw back some time.

Under rural affairs, land reform and islands, I will not go into detail other than to mention that you have said the portfolios were reduced by £31 million as part of the budget revision, and you gave some context to that. You also talked about services for agricultural support being reprofiled in future years with no loss of funding. Why does that change have to take place in the first place?

Hold on a second. If you are taking actions, the costings have to be realistic. The point is that local government is saying that the costings are not realistic. Therefore, even if councils agree to take things forward to the nth degree, which is what they want to do—nobody wants to have contaminated waste, and everyone wants to maximise recycling: that is a given across the Parliament—that has to be funded.

Each local authority is different. For example, Dundee City Council talked about half of its citizens living in flatted properties. Enforcement and behavioural change are extremely difficult, and the cost of educating people will be extremely difficult to meet if we are going to get the long-term behavioural change that we want. Councils have said that they are putting huge amounts of money in, but they are still unable to reach recycling targets and they need additional resources.

We know that the bill is a framework bill, that there will be co-design and that there is going to be secondary legislation, but will the Government make a commitment up front, through the Verity house agreement or whatever, that, if its partners in local government go down that road, they will be funded? Local authorities will be quite reluctant to go down that road if they think that they will not be resourced to do so. It is one thing to say that it is up to them to do this or that, but they cannae do it if they havenae got the money. That is why they want a commitment from the Government that they will be funded.

Local authorities want realistic funding, not an airy-fairy promise that they will collect 100 per cent of fines when that has never happened and never will happen. It has to be realistic, and our concern is whether the financial memorandum is realistic. The evidence that we have suggests that there are elements of it that are not realistic, such as the examples that I have already given.

We will want to ask further questions specifically on that in the weeks and months ahead, so that we can have it clarified in our heads and, indeed, so that the wider Parliament can get a grip on what it means. That will be an important process for us.

This is my last question before I open up the discussion to colleagues—I said that I would try not to hog the session, as I sometimes do inadvertently. Resource borrowing costs and capital borrowing costs are down. Given that interest rates have gone up, why do we have reduced capital borrowing costs? One of the things that came out of our sustainability report was that the UK Government will cut our capital allocation over the next five years by 16 per cent in real terms. One would have thought that the Scottish Government would seek to maximise its capital spend wherever possible, given the need to invest in physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure et cetera. Why has that happened, and what is the reasoning behind the Government’s move on capital?

Excuse me, but everyone seems to be whispering all of a sudden. I do not know whether I am the only one who notices it, but it is difficult for everyone to hear. Minister and Niall, will you speak up a wee bit?

John Mason raised the issue of different councils using different coloured bins, which means that when people move from one local authority area to another, they do not realise that the bins have changed, and all the rest of it. You said that standardisation in that respect might emerge from the co-design process. Is Government’s role not to provide some leadership by saying, “This is what we want recycling in Scotland to look like in five years’ time,” and trying to steer local authorities in a certain direction? Co-design sounds great, but it also sounds kind of woolly. It is as if we are asking, “Where are we gonnae end up?” Therefore, should the Government not provide leadership on this?

Such framework bills appear to me to be something of a cop-out, frankly. We have seen that with the financial memorandum for the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. People want to know that, when they elect a Government on a manifesto, it will work to deliver that manifesto. It is all very cuddly having everyone in the big tent and all that, but it seems to me that it takes a lot longer to get anywhere and you do not even know at the start of the process where you are going to end up.

Thank you for that clarification.

I will open up the session to colleagues. The first to ask a question will be the returning stalwart, Daniel Johnson, and he will be followed by John Mason.

A stalwart indeed. We want you back.