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The joint working group with COSLA is working on proposals for reform and collecting evidence, opinions and views on that. It is also looking at data collection and best practice and is, as I said, working with Citizens Advice Scotland on how we manage best practice for the collections process.

The formal process itself depends on what kind of council tax reform proposal comes forward, but if it was any kind of property-based scheme, you would still need to assess whether people were due relief or should be considered for relief as part of the process. By definition, the fact that you own or are liable for the tax on a property does not necessarily have a relationship to your ability to be able to pay that tax from your earnings. Whatever property-based system is in place, we would still need a system to assess people’s ability to pay based on other factors. I do not think that that kind of system would necessarily take us to a place where we would not need some kind of relief scheme in place, as well.

That is correct.

It will ask for opinions on where the bands and levels should be and for the evidence to support that.

I defer to officials on specific timing, but we plan to get the consultation launched early in the new year. It is important to remember that this is all in connection with debts that have not been paid.

It was assessed that an equality impact assessment was not required. The impact is on people who earn less—that goes without saying. It is about getting the balance right between how much they can afford and then, coming to councils, ensuring that there is not a disincentive for payment if debts are not pursued below that level. It is important to get that right.

Perhaps Richard Dennis can comment on the timing of the consultation.

Exactly, that is absolutely right. That is the point; we want to be able to reverse that expenditure—our intentions remain in place. However, pressures had to be dealt with. Which spends should we not have followed through? Should we not have increased health spend or followed through on those pay deals? What should we not have done? Those are important questions.

As I have said, there was a lack of clarity on the scope and scale of the consequentials that were coming from the UK Government, and it was necessary to use that money over that short period of time to be able to manage through that process, given our lack of borrowing powers. The UK Government and other Governments do not have that problem, because their borrowing powers do not have those tight constraints on them. A normal, independent country—dare I say it—that had the fiscal freedom to deal with that situation would have used borrowing powers to get itself over that hump, if you want to call it that. The fact that we do not have those powers means that ScotWind money has been used as a short-term buffer.

The strategic intention as to how to use that money is absolutely clear, and we are working to get back to that position.

I think that we answered the points that Michelle Thomson made. The transfer from net zero was largely to do with the fact that Scottish Water sits within the transport budget and a technical adjustment was made to the way in which its loans are treated. It was absolutely not the case that we decided to make a big cut in net zero because it was no longer a priority.

With regard to your question about transparency, we are striving to become more transparent. We have made a commitment to do that, and I think that the fact that we are becoming more transparent is evidenced by the way in which we have treated this process.

I am very happy to do that. There are many moving parts in this scenario. Many budget lines and different portfolios within them have different priorities and perspectives on how they want to spend the money, and there is an overarching perspective on how we balance the budget, which lots of factors can impact at any given point.

We strive to be as transparent as possible and to explain why there are changes in specific budget lines in specific situations. However, considering only the top level, such as in the examples that we have looked at this morning, can perhaps be slightly misleading in relation to the reality of why specific budget lines have been increased or decreased. Quite often, it is about technical or demand-led issues, or it can be things that are—

The nature of the numbers makes the pressure more challenging because of how the consequentials that flow through are worked out. Clearly, the money that flows through is a function of the decisions that are taken on total spend and tax by the UK Government. However, if you look at the public sector pay requirements for a given percentage increase in the rest of the UK, the proportionate increase in Scotland would be higher.

We make different decisions in Scotland about how we spend money, whether it is on tuition fees, prescription charges, the Scottish child payment, higher pay for nurses and teachers or a range of other decisions that we make based on what our priorities are and how we want to spend that money.

Yes, the calculation was done, and that is where the figure ended up. Clearly, there are a lot of variables in there from across all the different councils.