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I want to ask our Audit Scotland representative the same question. Obviously, you are not in a position to advise Government on policy as such, but from an economic and social perspective, do you think that, so serious are the future trends that we need to deal with—they are summarised in front of me—advancing a discussion about changing tax structures in line with our changing demographics is the best way forward?

One of the other findings of the Scottish Fiscal Commission—the Fraser of Allander Institute and all sorts of economic groups have said this—is that our ageing demographic is a serious problem when it comes to the tax take, as is the fact that the working population’s share of the total population is declining.

Therefore, as well as talking about changing tax structures, which I believe is very important, we must ensure that the rates of taxation, whether on consumers, businesses or personal income, make Scotland much more attractive than is currently the case. Scotland is in desperate need of more higher-paid, better jobs so that people are attracted to come here. The balance of tax structure debate, as opposed to the tax rate debate, is very important in that.

Your comments have been very helpful, because the problem is urgent, and we are getting the very strong message from the economists that we need to act, preferably on as cross-party a basis as we can.

Ms Payne, I take you back to one of your first answers this morning, in which you said that efficiencies do not equal reform. I entirely agree. I want to put that in the context of what the Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast in its “Fiscal Sustainability Report”, which I have in front of me. It says that health spending will increase from

“35 per cent of devolved spending in 2027-28 to 50 per cent in 2072-73.”

It projects that there will be little decline in spending on social care and social security. That is pretty grim from the point of view of the money that we need in order to ensure that we are sustainable for the future.

Your answers—in fact, the answers of all our witnesses this morning—about what we need to do on public sector reform are interesting, but the other part of the equation is what we do about taxation. In your submission, you mentioned broadening the tax base, and you gave us some suggestions as to how that might be done. Just as important is whether we need to restructure the taxation system. You hinted, I think, in another answer that we probably need to do that. Will you give us your thoughts on reforming the taxation structure?

Professor Connolly, do you subscribe to that view, too?

My final question is this: would each of you like to see not just a fiscal framework between the UK Government and the Scottish Government—the current fiscal framework is being reformed at the moment—but a fiscal framework between the Scottish Government and local authorities? Would that help matters?

Good morning. Deputy First Minister, as you know, we took evidence from 15 former ministers and former civil servants. The former ministers represented three different political parties who have been in Government over recent times. They were unequivocal in their views that, at times, too much decision making is rushed, unclear and unstructured. Do you agree?

Permanent secretary, I want to take you back to the start of your short statement. You said that the third aspect is leadership of the civil service. It was put to us by former members of the civil service that one of the problems with the current civil service is that there are too few people who have ability in relation to commercial expertise. Do you agree with that?

Okay. So you do not disagree that there has been an issue there.

I am not sure that I accept that, but let us try to keep the politics to one side.

Four committees of the Parliament have raised serious concerns about the proposals for a national care service, because they do not feel that the evidence has reflected the views of people on the front line. Certainly, this committee heard serious concerns about the lack of information in the financial memorandum, and we still have considerable concerns about that. Does that not flag up to you that serious issues have arisen for the Government because it has not consulted all stakeholders effectively? As I say, that has resulted in the very unusual situation—certainly in my time in the Parliament—in which four committees have serious concerns. We still do not have an accurate financial memorandum.

Ironically, current civil servants made the case that, on issues such as Covid and Ukraine, decision making was actually quite good because those situations were so desperately urgent and serious that things worked out pretty well. The pre-Covid and pre-Ukraine former ministers and former civil servants argued very forcefully that far too many decisions were not good because they were so unstructured.

This morning, the gender recognition situation and issues around ferries, BiFab, Prestwick airport and the census have been flagged up. We can add to that the deposit return scheme, highly protected marine areas and the national care service—the list of concerns about effective decision making by the Scottish Government goes on. In all those cases, I am sure that the Scottish Government argues that it could have done things better. Our concern as a committee is that the Scottish Government is perhaps not listening carefully enough to stakeholders who are on the front line of delivering those policies.

As I say, the Scottish Government’s record on a lot of those issues has not been very good. Do you accept that?