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I do not want to talk only about budgetary stuff, because our inquiry is more about reform, but that is at the core of a lot of what you have been saying, so I will ask one or two questions on that before I bring Sarah Watters in.

The figures that you mentioned are from paragraph 46 of your submission, in which you talk about

“an increase of 4.3% in Scottish Government funding of other areas over the same period”,

but would that be the case if you were to take out the funding for the national health service, for example? The difficulty has been that we have an ageing and more frail population. We could argue about the percentages here and there, but any Government of any colour would have put a disproportionate amount of additional funding, when it was available, into the NHS because of it being demand led. An example of that is the fact that, pre-pandemic, there was a 25 per cent increase in accident and emergency cases over five years. There has been a 50 per cent increase in radiographers and a doubling of the number of psychiatrists in the NHS, but that is still not enough.

Is that not the context in which we operate? You responded in such a way as to suggest that we are all heading in the same direction at the same pace, but there are some areas of the Scottish Government where the pressures are absolutely in your face. You can argue about priorities—it is crucial that we do that—but is that not the background picture, in a period in which, overall, we have had a fairly flat funding settlement over a number of years?

I will ask you about those kinds of issues as we move on. It is interesting that you keep saying “since 2008”, but as I recall, the previous Administration had a policy of top slicing 3 per cent of local government funding year in, year out. That would have been its policy, so we would have been in this situation regardless of which Administration we had had.

I have a question for Sarah Watters—fair funding sounds good, but how much is fair funding? That is the issue. Given that local government is as aware as the rest of us of the financial pressures that the Scottish Government and indeed the United Kingdom Government are under, how realistic is it to expect additional funding for local government over and above any average increase in the settlement that may come to the Scottish Government over the next year?

The medium-term financial strategy states:

“it is for individual public bodies ... to determine the target operating model for their workforces and to ensure workforce plans and projections are affordable in 2023-24 and over the medium term”

Do you consider that to be realistic at this time?

Indecisiveness is obviously a concern in some instances.

I will wind up the session by giving our witnesses the opportunity to make any final points if they feel that we have not touched on an issue or if they wish to emphasise something.

Dr Foster, does the workload of ministers mean that they cannot keep their eye constantly on the ball? Does that have an impact on the quality of decisions, and does it mean that some of the decisions are, in effect, outsourced because they have to rely on other people to have a full grasp of the detail?

Before you come in, I note that you touched on workload earlier. Obviously, ministers can have a dozen meetings a day. They have to respond to questions in the chamber, formulate policy and speak in debates. They are often pressed to deliver—or indeed are proactive in delivering—statements. They might have a constituency, and they probably have a home and family life. How do they manage to balance effective decision making with those pressures?

Finally, there is the 24-hour news cycle and pressure from ministers to make announcements. They want to be seen to be successful by their own political party as well as the wider public; given that they have the life expectancy of a Hibs or Chelsea manager, you can understand why they want to make an impact right away.

If we are thinking about how we achieve significant long-term outcomes, it all comes back to the same issue of churn and stability in the relationship between the civil service and ministers. Ministers often come up with wonderful ideas that might not be wonderful when it comes to implementation, and they might well long since have moved on by the time that the ideas are actually implemented.

That phrase “monopoly of wisdom” is interesting. We have talked about generalism versus specialism in the civil service but, of course, ministers are almost all generalists. Some of them are appointed to portfolios that they have no understanding of and in which they had no real interest before they were appointed. Indeed, they might rather have been offered a completely different portfolio. That means that they are even more reliant on special advisers and their civil servants.

Given that that situation is unlikely to change and that all Governments will continue to promote generalists, how can we enhance decision making in that context?

That is interesting. They often share the fate of their ministers, so, if the minister does well, they will do well and, if the minister does not do well, they will not do particularly well, although they are not always tied to the minister in that way. They try to help ministers to formulate and deliver policy, so I can understand your view, but the role benefits the governing party and it is politicised, so I wonder whether special advisers have an impact on the access of civil servants to ministers. Are they a kind of Martin Bormann-type character who stands at the door and prevents others, even senior civil servants, from getting to the minister when they might need to?

The next question is from Ross Greer.