Seòmar agus comataidhean

There are a couple of issues that I would like you to talk through. One is the budget for the Scottish teachers’ and NHS pension schemes, which is going up in the current financial year by £495.7 million, which is quite significant. In addition, the budget for education and skills has gone down by £582.4 million. There is clearly a relationship, but will you talk us through the thinking behind that?

As a share of the overall portfolio, it is huge. That is the thing. I am trying to understand why the changes are so huge not only within a year. This is the second set of revisions. You have explained part of the reason, but I am still a bit concerned that the changes are so huge; I wonder how they can possibly be so big in such a short period.

Sorry—are those figures not after the autumn budget revisions have been applied?

The overall amount of money that the Scottish Government has is up by £713.4 million. The update says that “deployment of available resources” to—not within—portfolios is £502.3 million. I take it that that is additional funding, so where does that additional money come from? We are talking about half a billion pounds. I should really have asked you that before I went into the specifics of the portfolios, so I apologise if that adds a bit of confusion to the discussion.

Thank you. I am glad that you have got another life, because I have been stuck with this one for decades.

I think that the number 1 question that members of the committee want to ask when they get these figures is why specific changes have been made. We get the changes, but we do not really get the reasoning behind them. I also think that it would make life a lot easier for you if that was laid out. As you say, it is very difficult for a minister—not that I have been a minister—who comes to a committee such as this one, because you never know what we are going to ask. There is a mountain of different figures and it is not always easy to keep them all in your head. I think that that would make life easier for all concerned.

I will ask a couple more questions to close this part of the meeting, because we have not really touched on capital much in relation to borrowing. Paragraph 132 of the update says:

“all Reserve availability is being utilised to support the 2022-23 financial position.”

Paragraph 139 says:

“It is ... now highly probable that the full Capital borrowing annual allowance will not be utilised in 2022-23 as discussed in paragraph 125.”

Having jumped from paragraph 132 to paragraph 139, we go back to paragraph 125, which says:

“late underspends will be used in the first instance to reduce the current £450 million borrowing assumption in line with the Scottish Government’s Capital Borrowing policy”.

Where are those late underspends envisaged? What kind of funding are we talking about? How much are we talking about in those late underspends?

I recognise what you say about the fact that we might be talking about only 1 per cent of the overall size of the Scottish budget, but the changes within the actual portfolios are significant. For example, the funding changes to net zero have brought it down by £230.1 million, whereas we are talking about £1,110.4 million of additional funding for social justice, housing and local government. A huge proportion of funding is being moved within those portfolios. That is not 1 per cent—it is significantly higher than that. That alone is double the total figure.

If we look at it in a two-dimensional way—looking at the budget at the start of the financial year and at the end of the year—we can see that, yes, there might be a 1 per cent differential, but there are still those huge changes within the portfolios, which I find quite difficult to comprehend given that we had the autumn budget revision just a few months ago.

That is helpful. You are therefore saying that, to an extent, the Scottish Government’s decisions on that are because of decisions made elsewhere and the way that you have to react to that.

Apart from the colossal number of figures—there are literally hundreds of different figures here—we have the statement in paragraph 54 of the finance update—I mention this issue only because you touched on it a moment ago—that

“There has been a £565.1 million reduction as part of the budget revision with portfolios reviewing their non-cash requirements. The largest element relates to the £627.1 million movement in the Student Loan RAB charge. This is to cover the latest estimates from economists on the impact of the current macro-economic climate on impairment of the student loan book.”

What does that mean to most people? Not a lot. It would help if there was a wee bit more explanation as to what such things actually mean. Explanations of how those things impact on the Scottish Government seem to be in separate silos. What does that statement mean in terms of how much money we can spend on local government, the national health service, policing or whatever?

Okay. You said that that is worth £20 million to £30 million. Where would the other £20 million to £30 million be?

Okay. That concludes the first item on our agenda. We will now move on to our next item, which is formal consideration of motion S6M-07762. I invite the minister to move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Budget (Scotland) Act 2022 Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 2023 [draft] be approved.—[Tom Arthur]

Motion agreed to.