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Let me be clear again, because we always like to be clear, do we not? I will produce the information that the Scottish Fiscal Commission requires. However, I am saying that I want to learn the lessons of single-year pay policy and to do something that is more meaningful, so—

I will come back to that specifically in a second. I have had a lot of meetings on the tax strategy with the Deputy First Minister. As well as the certainty and stability, aligning our economic and tax strategies has been a focus of the work, including more regular and systematic engagement to improve how we approach evidence and evaluation and the administration and delivery of the current system and future priorities. Although the approach is at a high level, it seeks to align objectives.

On the specifics and the evidence, I point Liz Smith to my earlier comments. We have engaged HMRC and others on the evidential base. We have the evidence, albeit that it takes a period of time to get the latest available evidence, and there will be future evidence at a future point. However, for the period of time that the evidence looks at, there is net positive migration across all tax bands to Scotland, and there has been very strong growth in earnings.

If you are asking me whether there is evidence of population flight that I should be worried about or of disincentives that are putting people off coming here, I would say that, on balance, people are still coming to live and work in Scotland, and their choice to do so will be for a whole variety of reasons. However, I am not complacent about that, which is why continuing to improve the evidence and evaluation is important. With HMRC and others, we will continue to ensure that we monitor all that and, importantly, respond.

A lot of that evidence is already in the public domain. I have referred to the HMRC work. I will bring in Lucy O’Carroll on that in a second, but that evidence shows that there is net migration and there is growth, even among our top-rate payers. Many of our sectors, such as financial services, are booming in Scotland. That is not to dismiss anecdotal evidence or concerns that are raised, because we have to listen to those. All I am saying is that the evidence so far should give us some confidence, but we have to be vigilant.

I bring Lucy in on that point.

Yes.

They are twofold. One of our priorities is to make sure that, through our continued success on inward investment, we are able to grow in key sectors, such as green energy. That growth is funded partly through our priorities with the Scottish National Investment Bank and others, such as the commitment to provide £500 million over five years to help to lever in private investment, which is very successful. There is a lot happening in that sphere. We also have the other key sectors, such as financial services, life sciences and artificial intelligence, in relation to which we would expect our economic institutions and SNIB to align to ensure that we continue our success in growing those areas.

Essentially, we want not only to create opportunities for people here, but to bring people to live and work in Scotland. Some of that will be in our more remote and rural communities. The growth in such areas is great to see. For example, the work around the Cromarty Firth green freeport, with the potential transformation, the housing development and so on, is amazing.

The other end of the spectrum is about getting more people into work. Indeed, I have already mentioned some of our work on employability and on getting parents into work. That is important, because it has the added benefit of reducing the need for the supports that we provide, at a UK level and in Scotland.

In a nutshell, we want to grow the economy in those key sectors and to keep people here and living in Scotland, but we also expect net in-migration, particularly in highly skilled areas. For example, Western Isles Council said to me that it could employ every young person in the work on offshore wind developments, but it will still need people to come and live and work in the islands. That is really important for repopulation and so on.

There is nothing that I have seen that says that the new UK Government does not agree with that—our assumption is that it is, in principle, in agreement. It is all about how we get on with it. I have no intelligence that tells me otherwise or that there has been any shift away from that principle—it is our working assumption that there is agreement on that. I should say that I am not the person who has been closest to the dialogue with the new UK Government on some of the detail in this area, but we can follow up with the committee on what exchanges of correspondence there have been.

The visitor levy is a local levy that councils can choose to deploy or not to deploy. We are either in agreement that councils should have fiscal powers—given their desire for more fiscal autonomy and flexibility to grow the quantum that they have at their disposal—or we are not.

I will bring Jennie Barugh in.

We will look at that as part of our budget, in terms of the best landing space for us. Obviously, there is a material issue in relation to which year the block grant adjustment is applied to.

No.

That has been the whole debate.