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That is interesting, given that the legislation is going through.

Short of putting matches under your fingernails, I will not get a cash figure from you, Mr Devine.

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We have received apologies from Ross Greer, and I understand that Jamie Halcro Johnston is travelling and that he will be delayed.

We have one item in public on today’s agenda, which is an evidence session on the financial memorandum to the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Charlie Devine, service manager, waste partnership, Dundee City Council; Kirsty McGuire, waste manager, South Lanarkshire Council; and Jim Jack, head of operational services, West Lothian Council.

I intend to allow up to 75 minutes for this session. We have written submissions, so we will move straight to questions.

I will go to Mr Devine first because we set out a number of questions, as we do for all financial memoranda, and, unlike his colleagues, he completed the first three. We will therefore put him on the spot first. If his colleagues wish to chip in, I would, of course, be more than happy for them to do so.

You were asked to comment on the financial assumptions that were made. Dundee City Council’s submission talks about “insufficient financial detail”, and it says that the

“Scottish Government should consider the impact of additional capital and revenue costs required to implement, manage and maintain the required changes at a time of considerable budgetary pressure for”

local authorities. Can you enlighten us on what those additional capital and revenue costs would be?

Back in 1980, Clare Grogan said in the film “Gregory’s Girl” that boys think in numbers. I am one of those people. Can you put some numbers on what has been said, given that the financial memorandum is all about the numbers?

The bill talks about something like £2.95 per household for education, behavioural change and so on. Do you recognise that figure?

It is understandable that there will be a reprioritisation of capital spend. Where economic growth can come out of that and lead to increased tax revenues for public services, that will be important. Some of the witnesses have said that, although the Scottish Government has a growth strategy, it has not been as clear as it perhaps should have been. We need to show that clarity going forward.

There was an issue that came up significantly. You touched on the Government’s three priorities. The Scottish Fiscal Commission has said that, by 2027-28, Scottish social security benefits will cost about £1.4 billion more than the Scottish Government receives in positive block grant adjustments. The difficulty is that that money has largely had to be diverted from core public services such as health, education and local government when you have a more or less fixed budget. Paradoxically, the poorest people in our society are impacted the most, because they are mostly the ones who rely on those services. Those who depend on those services are those who are being impacted. Do you accept that?

I thought that the Scottish child payment had lifted 90,000 children out of poverty. It has certainly had a very positive impact.

The Scottish Government is in a more difficult position than the UK Government, because the UK Government deals with demand-led programmes such as social security through annually managed expenditure, whereas the Scottish Government has to fit it within a more or less set budget.

To finish off my questions before I open it out to colleagues around the table, because transparency came up a wee bit, I am going to ask about that very briefly. First, will the Scottish Government do more to highlight what it is spending in the budget on mitigating those parts of the UK’s reserved areas that the Scottish Government is paying for? The bedroom tax is the obvious example of that.

Secondly, when the representative of the Fraser of Allander Institute gave evidence, he said:

“We have reinforced that we think that it will be important to have more information about in-year execution and about comparing plans with actual outturns, because we might be missing some important information on, say, how much of the allocation of capital is being spent in-year. It might be that the 10 per cent cut in the in-year allocation is a different percentage in actual execution.” —[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 19 September 2023; c 31.]

We all go into the debates in January for the usual budget knockabout, but it is important that we are all speaking the same language, at least on figures, so that the Scottish Government is not talking about apples while the Opposition is talking about oranges. This is about trying to ensure that the information that we detail on last year’s, this year’s and next year’s expenditure is measured in the same way and the figures can be compared with each other, so that we are all talking the same numbers.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s sustainability report was about where we would be by 2072 if things did not change, rather than what the allocations might be.

Jamie Halcro Johnston made a point about population displacement, and I think that you touched on it as well, cabinet secretary. It is a real issue. Arran, in my constituency, has the demographic profile that the SFC predicts for the whole of Scotland by 2072. It is important that we do not look at Scotland as one unit; we need to look at island and rural Scotland differently. It would be helpful if rural funding allocations for housing were spent and, indeed, if deliberations over them did not take three years to progress, as they have done in my constituency.

I have one further question. John Mason and one or two others touched on the issue of decluttering. We have Westminster, Holyrood, local government, health boards, integration joint boards, community planning partnerships, three enterprise agencies, region and city deals, 150 non-departmental public bodies and an increasing number of commissioners. A national care service board is also going to be established. You mentioned a presumption against new public bodies, but, surely, the Scottish Government has to be much more ambitious about decluttering the public sector. You talked about overlap, but there must be overlap, duplication and confusion. I do not think that there is anyone in Scotland—I would be surprised if there was anyone—who knows how all of those fit together and work. I suggest that the Scottish Government address that. Will the Scottish Government give greater priority to that?

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

There is one item in public on the agenda, which is an evidence session with the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance on the sustainability of Scotland’s finances, as part of our pre-budget scrutiny. The session will also cover evidence that we heard earlier in the year on public service reform.

Ms Robison is joined by Scottish Government officials. Dr Alison Cumming is director of budget and public spending; Dr Andrew Scott is director of tax and revenues; and Ian Storrie is head of local government finance. I welcome all of you to the meeting, and I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.