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Vikki, you have said:

“To enable the economy to grow, it is critical that support is given to the small businesses who make up almost all enterprises”.

You have mentioned

“the reintroduction of targeted reliefs for the retail, hospitality, and leisure sector.”

We know that £685 million is going into rates relief across the board this year but, given that the Scottish Government is under severe pressure with its budget, which is more or less fixed—unless we put taxes up, which no one seems keen on at this point, apart from John Mason—and given what we heard from David Lott, who said that £10 million or £15 million of additional funding for research could perhaps bring in eight times that amount in economic activity, should scarce money not go to that sector to create greater innovation, productivity and output, rather than to small businesses, for example, if there is additional money available? That is the kind of question that the Government is wrestling with, so what would you say in response to that?

I am sorry to interrupt but, for the record, would you like to explain what a mandate letter is?

You think that the Government is paying lip service rather than seriously consulting with the small business sector.

I think, though, that you would prefer to participate more in the creation of such policies rather than just be consulted on them. Is that right?

You mentioned your concerns about regulation. For the record, will you say which regulations you feel are surplus to requirements and could perhaps be repealed and which others you feel should not be implemented? I will ask Vikki Manson the same question. Do not worry, Mr Lott—I will be coming to you, too.

You are telling us. We have to scrutinise it.

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. First, I congratulate committee members Liz Smith, Michelle Thomson and Michael Marra on winning the political hero, the back bencher of the year and, jointly, the business of politics awards at last week’s Holyrood political awards 2024. However, I am of course disappointed that colleagues did not refuse the awards in solidarity with the convener, who, through some oversight, was not nominated.

We have one public item on our agenda, which is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach, as part of this year’s pre-budget scrutiny.

For the first panel, I welcome Richard Robinson, senior manager for performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland; Professor David Bell, fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and Professor David Heald, emeritus professor and honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith business school.

As we have your submissions, we will move straight to questions. I will allow about 90 minutes for this session. If you wish to be brought in at any time, please indicate to the clerks and I can then bring you in. Without further ado, we will start at the very beginning, as Julie Andrews once sang.

Mr Robinson, we set out 11 questions on the Scottish Government’s priorities, and we got some very detailed and excellent answers. I thank you all for your submissions. In the second paragraph of Audit Scotland’s answer to the first question, you say:

“activities to eradicate child poverty will rely upon social security payments, education spending, well paid work in a flourishing economy, and many other factors. For the priorities to be meaningfully felt and understood in the annual budget, a clear articulation of how services and spending will work together will be required.”

Is that happening?

Professor Bell, would you like to comment? According to its submission, the RSE would like the Government to look at “all tax options”.

I think that, in the 2011 to 2016 session of Parliament, there was a £500 million three-year ring-fenced budget. The difficulty—John Mason has asked questions about this many times; he is quite messianic about it—was in trying to get organisations to disinvest in existing programmes. Even though there was that £500 million on top, people said, “That’s great. Thanks very much,” but there was still real resistance to disinvesting. It is very difficult.

Richard Robinson made an important point about co-operation. The SFC has emphasised that, on an issue such as peatland restoration, for example, although most peatlands are in Scotland, the UK cannot achieve its climate targets without peatland restoration, so co-operation is important.

I will open up the session to colleagues.

Thank you for that. We have so much more that we could explore, but we have another panel of witnesses. Just before we wind up, would our witnesses like to make any further points on areas that we might not have touched on fully in our evidence taking?

Omertà—that is okay.

I thank our witnesses very much for their responses to our questioning. We will take a wee break now before hearing from the next panel.