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You are absolutely right. There is a limit to how much we can realistically raise from income tax. We are not there yet, but we are pretty close: there is not much more that can be raised from that tax. Last December, the STUC published a separate tax paper that included income tax proposals and proposals for new local taxes and reforms of non-domestic rates. Reform Scotland’s paper for this meeting is more sceptical about whether the problem can be solved simply by raising more revenue. I am interested to hear your thoughts on the STUC’s proposal, which is essentially that we do not need to cut services and that we have revenue-raising options that we have not yet explored.

John Connolly should feel free to comment on anything that I have asked about. I am conscious of time, but I am interested to hear your thoughts on the balance between quality, consultation and co-design in a reform process, and on how swiftly we will be able to deliver reform. We are often simultaneously met with complaints that there has not been enough consultation and co-design and complaints that the speed of reform in Scotland is glacial. In fact, the word “glacial” is used in the Reform Scotland paper. There is clearly tension between those two things. Good-quality consultation and co-design, particularly in relation to the sustainability of our public finances, takes longer. However, we do not have as long as we might want. How might we balance those competing demands?

The Reform Scotland submission is quite interesting. It brings up a lot of points that this committee and others will be familiar with, particularly about the NHS and the need to move away from treating illness towards the prevention of illness. Particularly given the financial powers that are available to the Scottish Government and the limitations on its borrowing powers, if we were to allocate new resources for prevention, they would need to come from somewhere else. At the moment, there is no additional money, and we cannot take out a loan to do that. Does Reform Scotland have areas that it proposes cutting from? Not to put you on the spot, but everybody comes to Parliament saying that we need to spend more money on X, including prevention, which makes complete sense. It is much harder to get folk to propose where the money will come from.

I am interested in some of the comments in the Audit Scotland paper, Antony, and in one particular line, which states that, given the trajectory that our public finances will be on over the next couple of years, small savings will not be enough. If I can reword that slightly, is it Audit Scotland’s position that, at present, the Scottish Government is overcommitted and will have to cut back on or cease entire areas of service provision, that it cannot just trim and reform each service to be more efficient, and that more drastic decisions than that will be required?

Grand.

On better evaluation, whose role should that be? To go back to the convener’s original line of questioning, should reform take place within each public body or should it be led from the centre with some elements of evaluation, or is it more appropriate to have it take place externally through independent review? If we are trying to coalesce and take a consistent strategic direction in evaluation, collection of good-quality data and so on, who should lead that? Should we leave it up to each body or local authority to evaluate its service provision, or should evaluation be centralised and delivered in a consistent manner?

Thanks very much.

Students at the University of St Andrews and the University of Stirling face 8 and 9 per cent hikes in their university accommodation rent at the same time as the reserves of the University of St Andrews have increased by £4 million—from £376 million to £380 million. Is it justified for universities to raise rents in their accommodation when they are banking money?

I will follow up the issues about City of Glasgow College. Like colleagues, I have met union representatives from the college, who believe that, at the same time as the compulsory redundancies are taking place, new management positions are being created. If well-paid senior management positions came into being at the same time as lower-paid support and front-line teaching and lecturing staff were losing their jobs, would that concern you?

I think that Mark Ruskell has contacted you. Thank you for that.

On the wider point about reserves, I agree that universities should maintain sufficient reserves for operating costs and that not all reserves are in cash, but the University of Edinburgh’s reserves have gone up by £36 million to £2.5 billion, which is far in excess of six months’ operating costs. You are right that not all of that is cash, but a significant proportion of it is.

Has the Government analysed the reserves that Scottish universities hold and does it have a policy position on that? There is an issue for the public finances. It is right that we give our universities a very large amount of money each year. Some universities use that to be a going concern, but others are banking almost £40 million a year and now have reserves that are about four times what the Scottish Government can legally hold in its reserve at any given time.

The college’s principal earns a salary that is far in excess of the First Minister’s.