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I am mindful that it takes a lot longer to do any—

I am mindful of how difficult big bangs can be, and the Welsh Labour Government experience of that should make us think about how we address the matter. There is a point about property values being 30-plus years out of date, but we must try to take people with us on this journey.

There are ways of moving forward. I stand to be corrected, but I think that a gradual change is being discussed in Wales and perhaps also in England. That would involve revaluation being done at the point of individual house sales, which would mean that it would be done in such a way that it had a soft landing over time, rather than as a big bang, which I think would scare the horses. The Welsh Labour Government has found that to be pretty difficult. It did one revaluation and it was looking at doing another, but I think that it has had significant pushback.

I am really wary of a big bang revaluation. Perhaps it is a case of getting public support to do something. From the point of view of fairness, there needs to be a gradual recognition of changes that have taken place over decades, but I would want to take people with me on that journey.

There was extensive consultation. Tom Arthur was asked about that issue on a number of occasions, and he addressed it at the time. I am happy to come back to the committee on whether or not—I think that there was very limited room for manoeuvre in relation to what could be done, given that VAT is a reserved issue. I cannot remember the detail of it, but I remember Tom Arthur addressing that point at the time.

I will come back to the committee on that. If consideration is being given to that, I am not aware of it. However, consideration might be being given to the issue somewhere else within Government, in relation to picking up the implementation issues around the levy.

Let me take that away. As with any levy, when something new is delivered, we always look at the implementation issues and what arises. I want to check on that before confirming one way or the other.

Yes. If you are saying that we should set up a whole system in Social Security Scotland to pay winter fuel payment for one year, because we could not pay it for another year because we would not have the money, we would essentially just be sending the problem down the road. Spending tens of millions of pounds on setting up a system in Social Security Scotland to pay one year of winter fuel payments on a universal basis, without having any certainty or awareness of where the money will come from, and having to pay that block grant adjustment back in future years, strikes me as being very imprudent and not something that I, as the finance secretary, could possibly agree to do.

First, that would involve staffing up a section of Social Security Scotland without any certainty of being able to continue that, and there would be no means of knowing where the funding was coming from in future years. That would be worst of all—

We were in preparation for doing that. Social Security Scotland was recruiting staff. Money had already been spent and it was about to staff up. All the programmes were being worked on, ready for delivery this winter. All that was happening, and when the announcement was made—there was no consultation—we had to stop that work dead in its tracks. The work was going on at pace, and the benefit would have been delivered this winter, but it had to be stopped—

We can get that information for you—we can find out. I think that that has already been discussed, but we can get the costs from Social Security Scotland.

It was not our fault; there was nothing that we could do. We were proceeding in good faith on the basis of what we thought was going to happen, but—

It would essentially be about which year the impact of the £160 million lands in. We would just be deferring the removal of that for a year. The money is coming out of the system one way or another, and part of our discussion with the Treasury is about whether there is any discretion about which year it comes out of.

Jennie Barugh may want to come in on that.

It will be part of the budget. Whether that issue is reconciled this year or next, it supports the budget.

The balance between taxation and spending it is important; they are two sides of the equation.

Tax explicitly supports the lower paid, which we think is a good thing. Spending provides support, through the social contract, that is not available anywhere else. That might be free tuition or any of the other supports that are in place, such as the Scottish child payment, which is an anti-poverty measure and could be regarded as a public good or a public investment to help the next generation out of poverty, therefore helping society.

All those social provisions are an important part of the kind of society that we are trying to create here. We wonder why people come to live in Scotland. For some, that might be to take up the job of a lifetime; some might come because of lower house prices; some will come because of relatively low council tax or because of free tuition and attractive social provision. People base life-changing decisions on a range of factors. When we look at it in the round, the things that are available only in Scotland are attractive to many people.