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—but it is an appropriate platform. Christine McLaughlin has gone through the information on wider population surveillance, which has developed remarkably in a short space of time and which provides us with significant levels of intelligence. We are monitoring that information carefully for any signs of development and deviance of performance that might raise concerns. We are also plugged into international networks on new variants and we are monitoring those carefully.

There is a level of testing capacity. We have maintained the laboratory at Gartnavel, which, as things stand, has the capacity to process 60,000 tests a week. That is a formidable level of testing capacity. We also have regional PCR testing arrangements in different parts of the country. We have stocks of lateral flow devices that can be deployed should a new variant emerge, along with plans for a new variant, should they be required.

We are following closely the thinking and expertise of the pandemic preparedness committee that is led by Professor Andrew Morris, who has given evidence to the committee, to ensure that we are maintaining an appropriate approach. As I said in an answer to Mr Fraser, a variety of other investments are being made routinely in the budget programme on PPE and other factors.

It is difficult to be precise about consequentials. If my memory serves me correctly, arising from the statement that the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave in November was a consequential for health and social care of between £200 million and £300 million. We have added to that to uplift the budget by about £1 billion.

As Jackie Baillie knows, the UK consequentials do not come with a badge on them, other than a badge of health. We have generally taken the consequentials from health and put them into health and social care. However, they do not come with a badge that says “Covid consequentials” or whatever. Uplifts in the English departments give rise to a Covid consequential for the Scottish Government. We have increased that by the contributions that we have made.

No, I do not think that we have. A lot of reform has been undertaken. There is a bit of commentary. When I look at all the magazine articles about the Christie commission, I do not think that people have been looking closely at what has been going on in public services and the focus on early intervention. I refer to the steps made in our education system or health service on early intervention. Of course there is more that could be done, but a lot has been achieved. In essence, we are trying to avoid crisis and acute interventions because the more of them that we have, the more difficult are the challenges that we face.

A lot of the evidence about presentations at accident and emergency departments in Scotland indicates that the people who are arriving at accident and emergency are much more ill and much more frail than would have been the case in the past. That is the result of a combination of the extension of longevity in our society, the ability to support people at home in the fashion that we have been able to and the success of some of the preventative and early intervention measures. However, if we have a population that has—I will try to word this as carefully as I can—more older people in it than it used to have, the pressures of frailty and old age will inevitably be more acutely felt in our health service than was the case in the past. That is why I say that demand requires efficiency in the health service.

May I make a final point? The cost of the vaccine is handled through a four-nations agreement with the UK Government outwith all the sums that I have just talked about. In theory, if we were to say that we were not part of a four-nations arrangement, we would get a consequential for that. However, on a variety of vaccination programmes including those for flu and Covid, we have generally taken the view that there are logistical and procurement advantages to being in a four-nations arrangement.

I will sharpen up my language for Mr Mason. My long and detailed text was designed to say that yes, of course, inflationary pressures are putting enormous pressure on the Government’s budget in general and will inevitably put pressure on the Covid recovery strategy.

Because of his membership of Finance and Public Administration Committee, and his assiduous following of financial matters in Parliament, Mr Mason will be pretty familiar with my current worry list. At the top of my worry list is the fact that there has been no restatement of the budget available to the Scottish Government during 2022-23 and no additional consequential funding to deal with inflation since the start of 2022-23. The budget was set when inflation was expected to be 2 per cent; inflation was at 10.5 per cent yesterday, and there has been no consequential funding to assist us. The Government has also had to wrestle with legitimate pay claims from public sector workers.

As a consequence, I have had to take some very difficult decisions to reduce public expenditure to try to balance the Government’s budget. At the same time, I have made provision for the Government to increase the value of the Scottish child payment to £25 a week, which is a direct investment to support families struggling in the cost crisis and which I know will be of benefit to many of Mr Mason’s constituents.

After all that, Mr Mason will be familiar with the fact that I am still wrestling with a predicted overspend of between £200 million and £500 million on the Government’s resource budget in this financial year. It is unprecedented for a finance minister to be wrestling with a problem of that magnitude so late in the financial year.

The pace of development is perhaps a challenge, but I would counter that by saying that the fact that we avoided local authority industrial action significantly across the country helped to maintain the impetus around the delivery of the Covid recovery strategy. The fact that we have, so far, avoided industrial action in the health service is a welcome consequence of the Government taking on the additional financial strain of wrestling with the public sector pay claims, which we have satisfactorily addressed.

Precisely, and I have made them, and I have made my point about tax.

I can demonstrate it with outturn data, which gives me confidence about the future data.

I am happy to look at that, but I think that we are in a strong position with the data that we have at our disposal. With regard to some of the data that we have through our health records, many people—internationally—have commented to me about the advantage that the Scottish data holds and how it can be used. The sequencing information that can be applied is quite remarkable and provides us with intelligence about how to position various early intervention measures. That point has been reflected on by the Standing Committee on Pandemic Preparedness, which is led by Professor Morris. We will continue to look at those questions, to make sure that we are using data as effectively as we can.

I am not sure that I would express it in that way. I understand that Mr Fraser is looking at it from an 18-month perspective, but if we look at the themes of the budget that I set out in December and those of the Covid recovery strategy, a dispassionate observer would see a very strong link between the two.

I think that the best way for me to express it is to say that the Covid recovery strategy is being mainstreamed within the Government’s budget and policy programme. For example, the emphasis that we place on the shift to person-centred public services is absolutely central to the budget programme, and the emphasis on eradicating child poverty, which is implicit in the Covid recovery strategy, is central to the budget priorities that I set out in December. The focus of the strategy and the indicators of performance is part of the performance framework of the Government.

With the deepest respect, Mr Whittle is not challenging me; Mr Whittle is asking me to spend money without showing me where it is going to come from. Unless he wants me to take money out of the health budget and allocate it to local government, he has to come up with an answer.

I am going to challenge the Conservatives on this all the way through the budget process, because the money has to come from somewhere. We have an ageing population that has a large number of frail people within it, and that will increase demand on the health service, which is why we are putting more resources into the health service and why I increased tax to ensure that I could put more money into the health service to address those issues.

Mr Whittle will not disagree with me about the extra money that I have put into the courts to ensure that we deal with the backlog so that victims get their cases addressed, and he will not disagree with me about putting £550 million extra into local government, so, somehow, I have to magic up some more money.

Those are the hard realities. I have confronted them, and others must confront them, too.