���˿���

This is just an opportunity to put these things to the Government and ask it what its thinking is about how we can make sure that the acceleration is there. I take on board colleagues’ points about my predilection within this issue, but we need to make sure that the system is as simple as possible and that it can be cross-border and clean while thinking about what we can do to accelerate it.

There are clear economic effects from people not participating in the workforce. That would be of concern to us because of the impact on the taxation take. I know that you are not in the Cabinet, but do you know whether that is being discussed in the Cabinet? The trend appears to me to be more pronounced in Scotland, although it is significant across the whole of the UK. We also have a higher unit cost in Scotland because of the Government’s decisions and how it is spending money on social security payments. We are more exposed in this country. We already know of the £1.3 billion shortfall in the block grant allocations by 2027-28 against the social security budget. Do you think that the Government is getting a grip of this and understands its exposure? Does it have a plan to do something about it? I know that you are saying that you are aware of it, but what will the Government do to try to deal with it?

Coming back to the NHS capital budget, I look forward to seeing the detail that you can provide on the list of projects. You mentioned this in one of your earlier answers, but do you have any indication of how much of the £235 million has been taken up by inflation? Will that amount cope with construction inflation, and do you have an idea of the proportions in that respect?

The contrast is quite striking, though. You are right in the detail that you have provided—there is a lot of delayed capital spend, including for heat in buildings projects, vessels, piers programmes, and port works at Uig, Ardrossan and Gourock. None of these things is happening. Is this portfolio worse at delivering capital expenditure and its capital programmes than the NHS?

Given that there is also a net decrease of £98.8 million in expenditure on the education side of things, it feels a little bit as if you are saying, “We can make this kind of short-term coping investment, but we are really struggling to do some of these longer-term projects and invest in the economy, net zero and education.” Is that representative of your feeling with regard to how we are delivering this capital expenditure?

My final question is about capital expenditure and capital investment in the user case side of things.

Mr Neill, the facilities and technology that you want to put in would increase quality and assure the marketplace that you have a high-quality product, and it would open up new possibilities, but it will require additional investment from the industry. At the moment, your model for that is that if you can sell more, then you can invest back. It feels to me as though that is not necessarily something that we will do at pace. Is there more of a case for saying that we would be better off with a tax credit against the landfill tax that might be against the residual, unprocessed part of that waste?

The quarry that we visited last week spoke about the significant amount of money that it had to pay to put a residual amount of waste into landfill. I am just wondering whether there is a different mechanism that we could advocate for. It might not necessarily be in the bill, although it could be, but is there a different mechanism that would help you to make that capital investment more quickly?

I start from the position of wanting to make sure that the tax is as simple as possible for business across the board, and that we should differentiate things as little as possible. However, at the same time, we want to maximise the recycling rate. That is the tension that we are trying to investigate through various questions.

From the evidence so far, it strikes me that the tension is probably in two different areas. One is about expanding the marketplace. That might be done through price competition so that recycled aggregate is more competitive on price—in essence, it is cheaper because you do not have to pay the tax—or through broadening the use through the classification of aggregates and where they can be used.

I want to push you a bit on what the convener asked about at the start. How much more could we actually achieve? Given both of those variables, how much more is out there for us to try to put in place a policy regime to advance the cause of maximising recycling? Mr Neill said that we are in a lull at the moment but is this an infinite process in that, as long as the price conditions are there, we could just keep finding material? What is realistic when it comes to how much we could push up our recycling rate and get the environmental benefits of that? I will start with Mr Neill.

If the marketplace is there, you will be able to get more supply and you will be able to sell it.

Is that really the case with capital, though? We have a very under-delivered programme that already has huge backlogs, and you are pausing all new developments to try to bring the backlog of programmes in the capital development plan forward.

Mr Doak, I want to bring you back to my original question. That was a bit of a segue and we went back and forward, but it was about the capacity or potential. Do you have a sense of the scale of potential growth in the area?