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As I have set out, the financial position across the board is challenging, and it is easy is to point to where it is challenging but harder to come up with solutions. Every part of the public sector is impacted—

There is no difference in the process that is being deployed. The process between the Scottish Funding Council and the college sector will continue. The position will be clarified as quickly as possible. The final position will take into account some of the demand-led expenditure, to make sure that the landing position of colleges is what is required for them to deliver the services that they are required to deliver.

No part of the public sector will not be impacted when it comes to the quantum, but the process is no different this year from what it has been in other years. I accept that things are challenging when it comes to the quantum, but the process is no different.

I will come back to Springfield in a second, but Stewart Milne did very little building of affordable housing; that was not its main area of focus. Springfield accepts that it is one of its bigger areas of focus, but it also faces all the other very challenging pressures.

We have to keep a careful eye on all our Government policies, and monitor and evaluate any impact that they have. Our measures on the protection of tenants’ rights and those to keep rents affordable were to ensure that some of the huge cost of living challenges were not impacting on in situ tenants’ ability to afford their rents.

The reasons for our actions were well set out, but we must monitor our policies and be careful about any unintended consequences that they might have. We are listening to the sector on the issue and keeping a close eye on things.

I would not accept any of that. It is challenging for every part of the public sector. The easy bit is to find examples of that; the harder bit is to come up with alternatives. Of course, everybody round this table is able to do that.

Yes, that is the intention. The problem at the moment is the level of uncertainty, which makes it very challenging to set out a position, because it could be buffeted and changed by forthcoming fiscal events. I hope that the publication of the medium-term financial strategy in May will be an opportunity to look at the longer term. Just before Christmas, I provided an updated report on some parts of the reform programme, which is a critical part of the financial outlook. Even if we set aside the fiscal decisions that were made in the autumn statement, the outlook is likely to remain challenging, for all the reasons that I set out in the previous MTFS.

My intention is to give you regular updates every six months on the on-going work to get us to a more sustainable position in relation to the size and function of the public sector, with a particular focus on the reforms that we are taking forward.

All those external factors in relation to where inflation will end up are concerning. We can make assumptions based on the best estimates of the key organisations that are projecting where inflation will land, but those estimates are not guaranteed and inflation is material to where pay lands, given the pay metrics.

It is very important that we try to encourage Scotland-domiciled students and those who come to study here to remain living and working in Scotland. We certainly try to do that.

If you are talking about the 1,200 places specifically, I would note that, had the money for those places continued to be invested—as we called for at the time; we said that the Covid money should not go off a cliff—we might have been able to make different decisions. However, that position was never going to be able to be sustained into the future, because that money was deployed as a mechanism to take account of the spike in university applicants as a result of the Covid period.

It was a short-term intervention, which we have delivered for two years beyond the period covered by the Covid moneys. In terms of support, the position with Scotland-domiciled students is that we want the universities to continue to provide and deliver opportunities for those students, but we cannot continue to fund the Covid-related 1,200 bubble that was funded previously. The resources are simply not there to do so.

That relates to critical infrastructure. We continue to support Scotland’s trunk road network by providing more than £1 billion for critical safety, adaptation, maintenance and improvement priorities. That will come in waves, depending on where investments are required. Because of the commitments that we have made on the A9 dualling programme, including Tomatin to Moy, the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful and the operation of the M8 Woodside viaduct, a number of projects require that investment. That will ebb and flow, depending on what the critical—

I anticipate that that can happen, although the delivery timeframes might need to reflect the challenging financial environment and the capital budget challenges. We will continue to work with SPT and Clyde Gateway on profiling the delivery of those projects, which remain important. We want to work with those bodies on how they can continue to deliver on the commitments.

The tax advisory group is more about the long-term position of our tax policies—about the strategy and the longer-term plan for our tax position. That involves looking beyond year-to-year budget horizons. The group was never intended to provide an input to each budget. Apart from anything else, the divergence of views around the table at the group would probably not land in a space of collective agreement. We have those divergent views to ensure rigour in and challenge to the strategic position of tax policy.

The performance framework remains important for priorities and delivering them. That is overlaid with the First Minister’s key missions, which home in on what is important and on how to focus and prioritise. Given that we have less to go around, how can we prioritise and focus on the things that really matter? That was the starting point to how we constructed the budget.