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As Michelle Hegarty said, we are moving at pace. We will receive recommendations and requests will follow on from that. We are looking, for example, at whether there should be any national procurement to make it easier to deal with the issues—that might or might not be the route to go. There are a series of questions that we are currently exploring and investigating. We are taking advice from others who are going through a similar exercise, whether at Westminster or in Northern Ireland or Wales.

Clearly, there is a sense of urgency in relation to all of this, in terms of the reassurance that we want members to have. As and when we are able to make early progress, you can be assured that that is what we will be doing.

Thank you for the invitation to attend the committee. As you said, I am joined by David McGill, Michelle Hegarty and Sara Glass.

In this first budget of the new session, the corporate body is following up the commitment, given in February 2021 to the then convener of the Finance and Constitution Committee, that we would undertake a review of staffing resources to ensure a more robust and sustainable baseline for session 6. That request was echoed in legacy reports from other committees, as well as by a large number of members from all the parties in the Parliament during a debate around this time last year. It follows on from the review of members’ staff costs as well.

Accordingly, our budget bid, which is based on robust analysis and planning, addresses our capability and capacity to support the work of members of the Parliament across the session. Following that proposed investment, we intend to steward our resources to manage pressures and uncertainties for the duration of the session.

Unfortunately, many uncertainties persist, most notably the continuing pandemic, which has placed significant challenges on how we operate and on our financial resources. However, the committee can be assured that the SPCB will continue to responsibly flex our resources to meet the demands that are placed on us, as it has done throughout the past 20 months. That remains our Covid assumption for the upcoming budget.

Excluding capital charges and non-cash items, the proposed budget for 2022-23 represents a net 1.4 per cent increase on the current financial year’s budget, which was a higher budget largely because of the Scottish elections, for which the Parliament is responsible. For the committee’s purposes, it is a 3.8 per cent increase on the previously presented indicative budget for 2022-23.

That is primarily attributable to three factors: first, the strategic review of SPCB staffing baseline for session 6, to which I have just referred; secondly, anticipated requirements for members’ personal security; and thirdly, inflationary increases in the Parliament’s running costs. Following the death of Sir David Amess, the corporate body has been reviewing the personal security support provided to members, and it is currently progressing a number of initiatives. However, it is our view that, until the requirements of and projected uptake from members are clearer, a prudent approach would be to create provision in contingency for this year, with actual financial amounts being baselined the following year.

The committee will be aware that inflation—the third area to which I referred—is now highly volatile, with forecasters predicting continued high levels in the medium term. Inflation impacts on all aspects of the corporate body cost base, and the current levels are driving cost increases ahead of the forecasts used in preparing the previous indicative budget. That additional pressure is captured in our budget bid for operational costs.

With regard to MSP and ministerial salaries, I can confirm that following the zero per cent increase in 2021-2022, the SPCB’s budget bid reflects a 3.4 per cent uplift consistent with the application of the annual survey of hours and earnings index as laid out in the members’ salary scheme. The staff cost provision uplift, using agreed indices, will be 4.5 per cent, which is in effect a provision of £139,200 per member for employed staff.

On running costs, the corporate body proposes to maintain a broadly similar level of investment, including projects to sustain our building facilities infrastructure and services. The pace of change in our operations is faster than it has ever been, as has been illustrated in the past 18 months by the addition of two new technology-dependent services—the hybrid parliamentary business platform and remote voting—about which members might wish to ask questions. We will continue to develop and support services to provide a secure and effective working environment online, at Holyrood and in local offices.

Convener, if you agree, I would like David McGill, the chief executive and clerk of the Parliament, to conclude the opening remarks with a brief overview of the staffing baseline bid, which you might want to ask about.

There are two important areas there. It is difficult to be certain about the long-term requirement for the scrutiny of issues arising from Brexit. We have modelled that as best we can. David McGill will touch on that. Net zero is similar. We have a sustained action plan for that. I am not sure whether you are talking about scrutiny in relation to net zero or about our scrutiny of ourselves and what we are doing to achieve net zero. Michelle Hegarty will be able to expand on that in detail. David McGill can comment on the Brexit aspect.

Thank you, convener. Any time that I have presented before, that is what we have done and it is helpful to set out the main themes of the budget.

From a personal perspective, it always occurs to me that a vote in the House of Commons takes around 15 minutes and that we sometimes have 10 or 11 divisions in the Scottish Parliament, so we would be there for several hours if we were to follow that process.

I understand the frustrations that some members have experienced. Sometimes, the issues are to do with the robustness of the IT connection and network where the member is seeking to vote from. However, I still think that we have done a remarkable job in the time concerned. I might cheekily suggest that I have sometimes seen in the chat line—not so much in this parliamentary session, but maybe in the previous one—that some familiar faces have struggled to complete the voting process. I will say no more than that.

We recognise that what might have been thought of as merely a temporary requirement is a requirement that we will have to meet for the foreseeable future. As was said in the debate last week, changes in the longer-term working of the Parliament that might never have been contemplated at all now seem to be potentially more palatable and beneficial than they might have seemed if we discussed them in an abstract way prior to the pandemic.

That requires us, therefore, to continue to invest in our technology to ensure that it is robust. I assure the committee that we are aware of the difficulties that members have had and that we are working all the time to improve the technology. I do not think, however, that we will ever be in an environment that is 100 per cent secure from any kind of failing, and no other Parliament is in that position either.

I turn to David McGill.

I would go directly to David for a response to that specific question.

I would in the first instance say that we operate to indices that have been agreed by Parliament and to which we have adhered since we decoupled our members’ salary costs from those at Westminster some years ago. At that point, we agreed to adhere to the ASHE index, which, last year, would have produced a 5.1 per cent increase in MSPs’ salaries. Given the circumstances in that year, the corporate body took the view that it would suspend the arrangement and cancel the increase.

With regard to staff cost provision, again, that relates to the index that we have established. Of course, what salary increases are passed on to members of staff are a matter for each MSP, but the move protects the integrity of the sum that it was agreed was necessary for MSPs to be able to fulfil their function and to have the complement of staff at their disposal to achieve that aim. It would be wrong to remove ourselves from those two indices without very careful consideration.

Thank you, convener. I would ordinarily have made an opening statement. Were you expecting me to do that?

Mr Johnson, the radical shopkeeper in you is advocating the privatisation of our parliamentary estate.

That is a difficult question to answer at this stage, because in the first year of a new parliamentary session, it takes considerable time to engage staff, particularly for the new members. There will be some members of this committee who are new and who have not yet fulfilled their staff commitment or have taken several months to do so. It is probable that there will be an underspend in the first year because members will have been recruiting staff, some of whose start dates will not have been until the autumn. We will probably not get the full answer on that until the next year.

Michelle Hegarty is monitoring such things and will be able to give the committee an indication of our utilisation. We are probably sitting at about four fifths in relation to the typical capacity in other sessions.