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I have used the SFC’s forecasts, which are based largely on the UK Government’s spending review and on tax and social security forecasts.

They all have an important role to play, but they need to ensure that they are as efficient as possible and focused on the core objectives that we have set. My impression, based on my extensive conversations with the enterprise agencies and VisitScotland, is that they are all on board with that and get it.

I would say so—yes. Certainly it is embedded in the resource spending review. The medium-term financial strategy focuses a lot more on the funding that we have available, and the resource spending review focuses a lot on how we are going to spend it. That is the distinction between the two documents.

I go back to identifying the four objectives. Tackling child poverty is completely in line with the national performance framework. Transitioning to net zero is completely in line with the national performance framework. Economic recovery and resilient public services are also completely in line with it. I would say that this resource spending review is far more focused on outcomes than perhaps many things are.

Let me just say that we are spending £1.8 billion on the Scottish child payment, which will go up to £25 per week. That will just about mitigate the cut to universal credit of £20 per week.

There is a more balanced answer to that, and hopefully a more balanced question behind it than I was asked in the chamber. I accepted in the national strategy for economic transformation that increasing productivity is one of the most important objectives that we can have as a Government, a society and an economy. We take it as read that increasing productivity matters, and we need to up our game on that.

You still have to accept that between 2007 and 2019 we saw significant growth in productivity; indeed, productivity in Scotland grew by 10.7 per cent compared with 5.2 per cent in the rest of the UK. Why is that important? It is important, because it brings us back to the question of what we need to stop doing, because it might be dragging down productivity, and what we need to keep doing, because it might be boosting it. That is what the national strategy tries to get underneath.

Our economy is recovering right now, and we have the unique circumstance of a record low unemployment rate of 3.2 per cent. We cannot do much more with regard to the labour force if unemployment is at 3.2 per cent, with the exception of trying, as I said earlier, to work with those who are classified as economically inactive and get them into the labour market. There is work that we can do on migration, too.

I did not catch everything that the SFC witnesses said, but they made it quite clear that Scotland is exposed to an ageing demographic and, as far as earnings are concerned, to the situation with the oil and gas industry. While there has been a significant increase in financial services down south—the figure is about 16 per cent, if I remember correctly, but I would need to double check that—the oil and gas industry in Scotland has had a challenging time, which has had an impact on earnings. You have to distinguish between wages and productivity a little bit; they are linked, but I think that these are two different questions to which there are two different answers.

Others might want to come in on this, but from my perspective, getting social security right has two impacts. I have already touched on the Scottish child payment, and if we manage to meet an objective such as tackling child poverty, that will, in a very obvious way, deliver benefits not just for those families but for the wider economy and, ultimately, for public finances. If people are taken out of poverty and they are in well-paid, secure employment, I do not need to spell out the benefits of that to the taxpayer or in relation to pressures on public services and so on.

The other impact relates to the tight labour market. Again, if we are able to support people into work at a point when unemployment is at 3.2 per cent, we know that the area on which we need to do most work is the economic inactivity figures in order to expand the labour market.

To my mind, there is a moral obligation to ensure that those who are entitled to social security support get access to that support in a dignified way; that is an ideological choice, and I think that it is the right one to make. Equally, if we get this right and support more families out of poverty, inevitably that will deliver benefits elsewhere, reduce pressures on public services and, I hope, boost the labour market.

I would hope so, yes.

We will certainly engage with public bodies on taking forward that reform. The important point is that the public sector exists for the benefit of citizens. We need to start with citizens, and they will not necessarily be aware of or interested in the backroom shared services. In an age of digitalisation—obviously, digital is one of the key focuses—we need to consider things such as shared cloud services and shared investment in digital capability.

We have talked about estates. Sharing estate will lead to the need to share services as well. Many bodies do very similar things with their finance or human resources capabilities. As I said, I am not sure that citizens are as interested in the backroom capabilities as they are in getting the service that they want. We all need to be aligned on the need to improve outcomes for citizens, whether that is individual businesses, households or anybody else.

We will certainly work with public bodies and look at the art of the possible. I want to ensure that we protect and preserve public bodies’ autonomy to deliver services to citizens as they wish, but I also want to work with them where they need, for example, investment in their information technology or digital services and where there is scope for those to be more effective. The Scottish Government has been working on our shared services—even within the Scottish Government, we can ensure that we have one system for all the parts. There is a lot of scope, but we will need to act carefully. Obviously, we will report on the initial conclusions in the upcoming budget.

We have had discussions, and I will see the Chief Secretary to the Treasury next week, when, I am sure, we will continue those discussions on the fact that our current assumptions around block grants are largely based on an out-of-date spending review that does not take inflation into account.

I will continue to make those points to the Treasury. I certainly would like to see, at the very least, some review of the fiscal framework, taking into account the impact that inflation has, not only on our spending power but on the way that certain elements keep track with inflation.

Those conversations will continue. I am, generally, an optimistic person, but I have been having those conversations for a very long time.

I sincerely hope that our budget will not be as bad as I feared but, ultimately, the only way for that to change is for the UK Government to increase the funding pot and take into account the huge increases in inflation.