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The Scottish child payment has had a phenomenally positive impact on the 400,000 children whose parents are receiving it; it has made a significant difference. The whole point of having anti-poverty strategies is that people are eventually lifted out of poverty, and I know that, next year, the Scottish Government will spend more on employability than it originally intended to. If we are going to spend more on anti-poverty measures, by what year does the Scottish Government expect the work to lower child poverty to succeed to the extent that welfare expenditure will begin to decline?

Thank you. I now open up the session, and the first person to ask a question will be Douglas Lumsden.

Last but not least, John Mason.

Thank you—that was very helpful. I will start off the questions, but I ask colleagues to direct all their questions to Jackson, and he will decide whether to answer them or to take the fifth and palm them off to one of his colleagues.

I will start near the end of your remarks and ask about the commissioners’ and Scottish Public Services Ombudsman bids. As you highlighted, those involve quite a significant increase. The money that is being spent on the commissioners and the ombudsman is now £3 million more than it is for MSPs. While the increase in the budget for MSPs’ pay is £17,000, as you pointed out, the increase for the office-holders is about £1.2 million.

You talked about the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, the budget for which has increased by 40.5 per cent, and you mentioned a section 22 order. On salaries alone, the £463,000 increase is equivalent to 7.4 full-time positions, which is an average of £55,000 for each of those positions. Therefore, will you explain to us the necessity of that because, on paper, particularly at a time of financial challenge, it looks like a very significant increase?

There have been many positive comments about the work that you are doing. I asked the question because I am trying to put information about the allocation of money on the public record. Will there be a reduction in the scrutiny of Brexit? We are now three years into that. There must surely be a change to the scrutiny now. Is that winding up, or is there more work still to do? Is it on the same level? Where are we with that?

I would agree with everything that you said. It is important that there has been an explanation of that. I still think that a system that is a year behind—whether we benefit or not—is odd, because that is not reflected anywhere else in the public sector. I do not think that anyone on the committee would suggest that, at a time when everybody else is taking below-inflation pay rises, we should not do the same. Of course, the system has to be independent.

I ask that question because MSP colleagues will talk about the matter privately, but they will no want to do that publicly. Frankly, that in itself is an issue, because everybody else feels more than happy to talk about their pay and conditions, regardless of where they work.

That explanation is important and helpful. The weakness with ASHE is not that it is an independent system but that it does not take into account our actual situation as it is, whether it is good, bad or indifferent. As I said, all that will happen is that, because it is a year behind, it will look bad when the rate is above CPI, just as it will look odd when it is below CPI. It is a rather bizarre system.

I do not think that it is about that at all. It is about having something that is seen to be fair and realistic, et cetera. The methodology is important.

The Welsh comparison is interesting. If you look at the difference between the salaries that MSs and MSPs were paid 20 years ago, you see that MSs’ salaries were about £17,000 less per capita than MSPs’ salaries. I think that MSs’ salaries are higher now, and their numbers are increasing from 60 to 96.

I have raised before—I raised this last year—that the corporate body completely ignores the different workloads of list and constituency members, in terms of both staff allocation and salaries. Every person knows—I was a list member, as were you—that there is no comparison in the workload, but everyone gets paid the same salary.

I know that you will continue to ignore that, year in, year out, but if there is a reassessment, that has to be the situation. It does not mean that the overall salary has to increase, but there should perhaps be a readjustment. I know that I will make myself extremely unpopular with three of my colleagues around the table for saying that, but it is a fact.

That is interesting, and it leads on to my next question. When prices rise, they remain at a high level even if inflation goes back to zero, so there is still an issue. If we had the time, I would love to wade through the budget and ask a whole load of questions, but I am not going to do that. My colleagues would lynch me if I did so, and time is against us. However, I have a question in relation to that.

I noticed that the more homes programme will see its budget fall by 24 per cent next year, to £567.5 million. I imagine that you will respond by saying that that is because of the issues that you have outlined in relation to high inflation and the costs of materials that are needed to build those homes. However, local government capital grants will increase by 19 per cent next year, to £607.6 million. What is the thinking behind the decision to reduce capital spend on housing but to increase it significantly in the money allocated to local authorities?

I am sure that other members will ask about local government.

I want to go back to the NHS briefly. You talk about £1 billion in additional resource for the NHS and social care. How much of that additional funding will go towards the establishment of the national care service?

I do not want to spend a lot of time on this, but £242,000 is the increase for the SCHR. You mentioned two additional members of staff, but surely there must be more to it than that.