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Grand.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the 500-ish initiatives and programmes that the Scottish Government has. I am interested in how we ensure policy coherence and best value for money across all of those, particularly in relation to the overarching missions around reducing poverty and net zero.

For example, there is something in the region of three quarters of a billion pounds of expenditure each year on non-domestic rates relief, or three quarters of a billion that is not taken in NDR income. Some of that clearly aligns with the Government’s overall objectives—for example, the renewable energy generation relief makes a small contribution to the net zero objective.

What instructions are being given to your Cabinet colleagues and SG directorates to ensure that they are getting the best value for money out of every initiative that they are responsible for, which, on the face of it, might not necessarily have an obvious connection with one of the overarching objectives, but which could contribute towards it?

For example, in other areas of NDR relief that are not necessarily about lifting people out of poverty, you could apply a condition that a company could get that relief only if it signed up to pay at least the real living wage. How are you ensuring policy coherence and best value for money across the board?

I am still interested in how we achieve the policy coherence aspects of that. Is each cabinet secretary responsible for ensuring that the books balance in their portfolio in their own way, or has a set of instructions been issued on the basis of the First Minister’s prospectus from April?

In the education portfolio, for example, I cannot remember off the top of my head whether there are conditions attached to the pupil equity fund. A lot of pupil equity funding is used by schools to pay for third and private sector organisations. That has clear additional benefit, but I do not know whether we attach, for example, a real living wage condition to the use of the PEF, which would align with the poverty objective in the prospectus. Is the overarching set of objectives being used to give instruction to each directorate and cabinet secretary to ensure that we are achieving policy coherence and value for money?

I have a factual question in the first instance, cabinet secretary, for which you might not have the answer to hand. Given that a number of public sector pay negotiations were concluded only after the Parliament passed the budget, do you know what the total public sector pay bill in Scotland now is for 2023-24?

Thank you very much. That is all from me, convener.

Thank you very much.

A couple of weeks ago, the committee had a round-table session with various representatives of public sector organisations. A point that came up during the discussion was that a number of bodies that were represented around the table had expressed an interest in the Scottish Government’s potential pilot of a four-day week. I say this with the significant caveat that this is by no means the universal position of trade unions that represent workers in the public sector, but a number of public sector workers in Scotland and local union representatives in various public agencies have expressed an interest in that to me, partly in recognition of the fact that they know that pay rises in line with inflation across the board in the public sector are not affordable right now. Although they are, obviously, interested in maximising the pay offer that is made to their members, they are expressing increasingly significant interest in other changes to terms and conditions that might be beneficial to workers. Do you have an update on the progress on the four-day working week pilot?

It has been mentioned already that NHS Ayrshire and Arran has been running at a deficit since 2017, but quite a lot of progress was made in closing that deficit between 2017 and the start of the pandemic, when everything went out the window somewhat. How did you manage that year-on-year reduction in the deficit over that three-year period before the pandemic financial years?

Thanks very much.

On a different note—and moving away from that particular table—I heard at the start of the session Francis Breedon make a comment about the north-east no longer being as much of a drag on the Scotland-wide income growth figures over the next couple of years. When the committee took evidence—late last year, I think—on regional differences in income growth, we found that the really stark difference was between the east and the west of the country. That was reflected in the population figures, too, with all local authorities on the east coast projected to grow and Argyll and Bute and Inverclyde having the most significant decrease. How much of that regional data are you able to draw on for the purposes of this projection?

My final question is on the availability of data. I realise that this might be straying somewhat outside your remit, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this matter.

Obviously, you have access to significant amounts of public data that are not in the public domain, but when you look at some of the independent tax proposals that have been put together—for example, the paper commissioned by the Scottish Trades Union Congress—you see a significant difference between the additional revenue that the STUC says will come from some of its proposals versus what is in the ready reckoners. Do you think that there is enough information in the public domain to aid a healthy public debate on the issue? After all, it creates a bit of tension if the STUC says that putting 2p on the top rate will raise an additional £200 million and the ready reckoners say that that will be essentially net neutral.

One would have expected a significant initial spike in the child disability payment as we transition away from what was a relatively hostile system under the Department for Work and Pensions towards the deliberately more generous system under Social Security Scotland but, according to the same table, the child disability payment is projected to continue to rise quite significantly. I understand why that would be the case for the adult disability payment, given that our adult population is becoming more ill as a result of a number of factors, but is the same driver behind the situation with the child disability payment or is it something else?