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I might best address that question by looking at two different categories of people. The first is people who were economically active and, as a consequence of what happened during the past couple of years, have decided not to continue that economic activity. Covid has been very disruptive to lots of people in lots of ways. We have to find ways of motivating people to continue to make an economic contribution for perhaps longer than they want to. The key to that is entrepreneurship. A lot of those individuals probably have an economic contribution to make through entrepreneurship, and we have to make sure that our entrepreneurship activities reach them and provide them with a way of taking forward their ambitions. That is one grouping.

The other grouping is those who have been economically inactive for a lot longer. I see them as coming under part of the work that we are doing on the tackling child poverty delivery plan.

We have to erode the level of economic inactivity in Scottish society. As I think that I have said to the committee before, in a year, we have seen an improvement of about 1 percentage point in economic inactivity. The committee might say, “Well, that is only 1 per cent”, but it is pretty significant. Economic inactivity levels are about 21 per cent in Scotland, and they can probably only ever come down to about 15 or 16 per cent. Narrowing it by 1 per cent is therefore quite an achievement.

It is necessary to have a relentless focus, in a supportive and holistic way, on those individuals, because none of those cases will be simple. They will all be complex, and people will need complex interventions help them get into economic activity. However, we have to do that. As Liz Smith will know from all her dialogue across the economy, everyone is short of people.

I have made a solemn and absolute commitment to balance this year’s budget and we must accomplish that task.

That adds financial strain to next year.

I would think that the maximum cost in terms of the next financial year is likely to be a figure no higher than about £50 million. The financial memorandum will give greater confidence around that point.

Come on—I think that we are really stretching this point. The sum of money that I have put on the record is in close proximity to the lower end of the range in the financial memorandum. I think that we are at risk of making a mountain out of a molehill here.

Essentially, the Scottish Government and the UK Government have communicated the topics that we are interested in pursuing. We have not been able to make headway on that, largely because—and I am not saying this to point the finger; it is just an acknowledged reality—there has been an awful lot of change in the UK Government and a lot of other issues to wrestle with.

I will see the Chief Secretary to the Treasury later this week, so I will have the opportunity to pursue some of those discussions with him. I look forward to that conversation, because I am sure that we can make some progress. I can keep the committee up to date on any developments that emerge. I do not think that there are any blockages, but an awful lot of other things have had to be sorted out. Given what has happened in the UK Government in the past few months, I quite understand that the Treasury has had significant issues to wrestle with, and this is not mission critical.

The UK Government is committed to the fiscal framework review. I take that at face value. We will embark on those discussions in the most constructive way we can.

The genesis of the idea of having a tax discussion paper was as a response to a very dramatic change to the comparative landscape on taxation, as a result of the mini budget in September. When I came to the committee, I indicated that I thought that some further dialogue would be required, given the nature and significance of the divergence that had been announced. As we all know, that did not last very long, so that particular imperative moved on and the immediate urgency and necessity of that discussion was no longer apparent.

What I have charted in my response to the committee is that, in order to support the decisions that we took in our own budget in December, we undertook extensive stakeholder discussion and dialogue. I chaired a number of panel discussions with a broad range of stakeholders to hear their views, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth did likewise and a variety of other discussions took place. There was extensive consultation activity, but we did not have a consultation paper or a wide open consultation of the sort with which colleagues would be familiar.

There is a space and a place for us to embark on longer-term discussion of taxation and I am open to looking at those questions in the future, but the immediate urgency was driven by the quite dramatic changes to the tax landscape, which, as we all know, did not last long.

That is just not possible.

I will check where we are with the information that the committee should have had about that and will get that the committee as soon as possible.