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I am sorry—I was asking that question to Professor Bell.

The obvious one is the additional room supplement or bedroom tax. The Scottish Government has been mitigating that for years, but I do not see much transparency in that respect. That is just one thing that it is mitigating. What should it do to try to make that sort of thing more transparent in the budget?

Folks, we continue our evidence taking on the sustainability of Scotland’s finances with a round-table discussion. I welcome to the meeting Adam Stachura, head of policy and communications at Age Scotland; Dr Judith Turbyne, chief executive of Children in Scotland; Philip Whyte, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland; Stuart Hay, director of Living Streets Scotland; Ruth Boyle, policy and campaigns manager at the Poverty Alliance; Michael Kellet, director of strategy, governance and performance at Public Health Scotland; and Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland. I thank everyone for their written submissions.

Rather than my asking a whole load of different questions, I will ask only one, which will be to Ruth Boyle, to kick us off. Anyone who wants to comment on what Ruth has said, please let me know. We will buzz around the table so that everyone gets the maximum opportunity to speak. I will come in only as and when, which will not be very often. That will satisfy John Mason, because he is always moaning about how much I speak at these events.

Ruth, your very detailed and excellent submission is called “The case for fair tax reform in Scotland”. You will have heard some of what the economists said earlier in the meeting. In your submission, you say that it is important that

“critical national priorities cannot be sacrificed due to a lack of funds”.

You talk about

“new and improved forms of local taxation that target under-taxed wealth, as well as business and polluters.”

You call for

“a fundamental rethink, from scratch, of how the Income Tax system can be best designed”.

You call for a

“cross-party process to replace the current Council Tax”.

You call for “a local inheritance tax” and a “local payroll tax”.

The economists said that we have a small, finite group of people who pay a very high proportion of tax in Scotland, and they have real concerns about behavioural impact, for example, if we were to decide to go down the road of increasing taxes significantly. How can we deliver what the Poverty Alliance wants to deliver on its social policy? How can we fund those objectives, given the constraints that the economists presented to us, not only the fiscal gap that the Scottish Government has now but the impact on higher taxpayers should some of these policies be implemented? Higher taxpayers might leave Scotland, they might decide to work less or they might engage in more avoidance.

Thank you very much. That concludes questions from committee members.

I am going to ask one more question. Given the talk about increasing taxes, I think that the Government is going to play it safe and impose fiscal drag on us all, as both the Scottish and UK Governments did last year. Professor Heald has said that income tax rises are always popular among those who will not have to pay them, but when the SNP brought in the “Penny for Scotland” campaign, which added 1 per cent to the basic rate, our opinion poll rating went down from 48 per cent to an eventual 27 per cent. I was standing in the constituency with the highest unemployment in Scotland, and people who did not have a job denounced us for that, believe it or not, even although one would have thought that they would have benefited.

My question is on an issue that we have not touched on. Yesterday, it was announced that some pension funds, such as the Strathclyde Pension Fund, are so awash with money that they are going to reduce local government contributions by about two thirds over the next couple of years, which will be a wee boon to local authorities. Is there a possibility that the Scottish Government could tap into pension funds to fund some of its capital projects? João, do you want to have a go at that one?

I was thinking about such funding being used for housing, for example, for which there would be a return to a pension fund in the long term. I appreciate that although funds are there specifically to maximise income for their members, some pension funds, over recent years, have looked at whether investments are ethical—in tobacco or carbon-intensive industries, for example.

You can have that when you are the convener.

Alastair, in your submission, you talk about how research and development in Scotland is still punching well above its weight, at 13.25 per cent of UK research and innovation funding, compared with 8.2 per cent of the population, but that funding is down from around 15.4 per cent just a few years ago. Will you talk about how important that is and how important the university sector is to Scotland’s economic growth, wealth and prosperity?

No one else has indicated that they want to come in, so I will make a couple of comments.

What has been done in Dundee with life sciences and gaming is phenomenal. Scotland really is on the global map when it comes to its universities and knowledge economy, which is important. However, have you tried to get a roofer, a plumber or an electrician these days? There is a real issue with the balance between people going to university and those not going to university. For example, we talk about building houses and the importance of affordable housing, but there is a chronic shortage across the construction industry. Sadly, some teachers in schools—I certainly found this in my area—say to children, “You will be a bit of a failure if you do not go to university,” so the people who would go into apprenticeships and probably go on to have really good and highly skilled careers are not doing so. We have chronic skills shortages in engineering and construction, for example. Where do we strike the balance?

What we need and want in Scotland is for our universities to remain cutting-edge, but what about the rest of the economy? What about the situation with apprentices perhaps not being valued as much and, therefore, not enough people doing apprenticeships? Of course, without those basic skills to support the universities and other sectors of the economy, we cannot grow as well as we could.

I am not sure that it is on the immediate horizon, but it is something that I wanted to throw into the mix. Stuart Hay wants to come in, but Michael Marra wants to make a comment on universities first.

Okay. There is no comment on that.

Adam Stachura, I will ask you a question and put the same question to the IPPR and the Poverty Alliance. Age Scotland’s submission talks about

“fair and multi-year funding for third sector organisations”,

and says that

“comprehensive investment in the support provided by these organisations is needed.”

The submission goes on to say that

“The continued delivery of significant funding programmes and activities which connect people, such as older people’s groups, is crucial”

and that

“We would like to see appropriate resourcing to address and reduce excessive waits for healthcare”.

How much are we talking about? It is one thing to say “appropriate resourcing,” or that we need to spend more, or that we need to make a significant investment, but the committee is taking evidence on the 2024-25 budget to make an impact on the Scottish Government’s decision-making processes. What additional resources are we talking about? How, specifically, will that be funded?