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Okay. I will move on a wee bit from that to the area of co-design. You have emphasised a number of times the importance of co-design. I have already pointed out that local government is keen on the co-design element, but there are still one or two issues in relation to that. For example, Charlie Devine of Dundee City Council said:

“I think that co-design at this level would be really difficult and it would probably lengthen the process considerably … The co-design thing can be as big and complicated as you want to make it.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 October 2023; c 28.]

There is a real fear that we will still be discussing the secondary legislation on co-design many months into the future.

Kirsty McGuire of South Lanarkshire Council said:

“It is pretty difficult to attribute costs when you do not have the full picture. We do not know what the secondary legislation will look like, what form the other legislation will take or what form the EPR scheme will take.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 October 2023; c 27.]

Even with co-design, there are considerable concerns that we could be going down a rabbit hole with no clear ending. When will the co-design process be concluded? When would you like to conclude that in order that we can get some of the positive aspects of what the bill is intended to achieve up and running at the earliest possible opportunity?

In your opening remarks, you mentioned the £1.2 billion per annum that is expected to be brought in through EPR. However, a concern of our witnesses was how that would be distributed to local authorities. For example, that is a UK provision, so how would Scottish local authorities gain from that? What would be the mechanism? Obviously, we want to have certainty about that for forward planning purposes.

Thank you for that—as always—helpful opening statement, minister. When we look at the top-line figures, what is interesting is that, although the addition is around £361 million, which is about 0.6 per cent of the total budget, once again we see considerable movement within portfolios. There has been, over the years, as you said, a difference between policy intention and delivery. If we look, for example, at health and social care, we see movement of about £1,059.6 million into other portfolios. There are detailed explanations of that; I am heartened by the information that the minister and his officials can provide. Compared with how it used to be, the information that is provided is, obviously, very extensive.

When we are looking at movements of such scale in-year, would it not be better, in terms of delivery, for the funds to be baselined into the areas where they finally end up? Many of those movements appear to happen almost annually. It almost seems as if, when the policy intention is created, there is a real mismatch between it and, ultimately, delivery. What is your comment on that?

However, £44 million is quite a substantial percentage of that, which is why one asks why that cannot be envisaged at the start of the financial year. As I said, if it was just £1 million here or there, you might think, “Ok—fair enough.” It seems to be a significant amount that one would think could have been predicted when the budget was being drawn up, therefore we would not have to have the portfolio transfer that we are witnessing now.

Colleagues around the table will want to dig into some of the figures. I will just touch on a couple of them, especially given the fact that I overdid it in the last session. [Laughter]. I will give folk a chance to claw back some time.

Under rural affairs, land reform and islands, I will not go into detail other than to mention that you have said the portfolios were reduced by £31 million as part of the budget revision, and you gave some context to that. You also talked about services for agricultural support being reprofiled in future years with no loss of funding. Why does that change have to take place in the first place?

I have just one more question, which goes back to the issue of reserves. As we know, Scottish Government reserves represent about 1.1 per cent of the budget. At local government level, it is recommended that about 3 per cent of annual expenditure be held in reserve, although many councils have less than that and some, such as Shetland Islands Council, have more, for historical reasons. I was intrigued when it was revealed in recent weeks that Creative Scotland appeared to have a reserve of £17 million against a £66 million Government award that had been reduced by £6.6 million. That means that about a quarter of its annual award is kept in reserve. I am not sure what the £6 million would represent for Forestry and Land Scotland, say, but does the Scottish Government have any guidelines on what the level of reserves should be?

What we are talking about is those reserves being dipped into, as appears to have happened with Creative Scotland and Forestry and Land Scotland. If that has been going on, surely there has to be a set of guidelines—I am sure that there is. It would be interesting to hear your view on what level of reserves should be held. If the Scottish Government reserves represent 1.1 per cent of the budget, why does Creative Scotland hold reserves of 25 per cent of its award? What are we looking at here? There has to be consistency across the public sector.

I thank the minister and his officials for their evidence. We will publish a short report to the Parliament, setting out our decision on the draft regulations, in due course.

That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. The next item on our agenda, which we will discuss in private, is consideration of our work programme. We now move into private session.

Good morning, and welcome to the 28th meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We have apologies from the deputy convener, Michael Marra. His substitute today is the former committee stalwart Daniel Johnson, whom I welcome back.

The first item on our agenda is to take evidence on the financial memorandum to the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill from the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity. I intend to allow up to 75 minutes for this evidence session. The minister is joined by Scottish Government officials. Ginny Gardner is head of the circular economy unit; Janet McVea is head of the zero waste unit; Alexander Quayle is team leader, recycling; and Gareth Heavisides is circular economy team leader. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

They cannot take those decisions if they do not have the resources to implement them, regardless of what they may wish to do. They are saying to us, “Look, we actually want to do what the Government suggests, but you cannae squeeze a quart into a pint pot.” The bottom line is that the resources are not being made available. Will the Scottish Government fully fund the bill? That is the issue in a nutshell.

Yes. As I mentioned, if those transfers are to be regular occurrences, they should probably be baselined into those portfolios in the first place.

On the technical adjustments, I know that there will not be any issue with the actual amount that we are able to spend in each portfolio, but the guide states:

“it is likely that the IFRS16 figures will be baselined into the 2024-25 budget, meaning that a direct comparison to starting budgets is not possible.”

One of the issues that the committee is concerned about is that, when we have our Punch and Judy show at stage 1 and stage 3 of the budget, people talk about different figures. Obviously, we on the SNP benches will denounce the evil Conservative Government for slashing our budgets, and the Conservatives will stand up to talk about how incredibly generous that same Government is and say that it has been lavishing us with ever greater record sums. Would it not be easier if figures were put together for the outturns, as we have asked for, to enable us all to sing from the same hymn sheet, at least on the figures that we are arguing over?