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That is all right—many of your colleagues have done so privately. [Laughter.]

That would be great.

Incidentally, when the committee suggested an annual parliamentary debate on public service reform, I was quite surprised that your response was that you would progress such a debate in the coming months, subject to parliamentary business accommodating it.

Given some of the stuff that clogs up the weeks’ parliamentary chamber sessions, an annual debate on reform should not be too difficult to organise.

I will put my tuppence-worth in regarding ENICs by saying that the Government did not have to raise as much tax as it decided to raise. As you said, it could have brought in a wealth tax or an online-sales tax to boost the high street. It could have taxed gambling, gaming or big tech, or it could have reversed the tax cuts on banks. It is important to look at the package and to see where the best balance would be.

We will take a five-minute break before coming back for stage 2 of the budget bill.

Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2025 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We will consider the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill at stage 2, but before we turn to formal stage 2 proceedings, we will take evidence on the Scottish Government’s response to the committee’s report on the Scottish budget for 2025-26.

We are joined by Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. She is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Jennie Barugh, who is director of fiscal sustainability and exchequer development; Richard McCallum, who is director of public spending; and Lucy O’Carroll, who is director of tax. Before we turn to questions, I ask the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.

One of the issues that the committee has pressed you on, since about December 2023, is the capital infrastructure pipeline. In the response to our committee report, you said that you have

“instructed officials to work on a reset of the infrastructure pipeline to 2026-27 with the intention of publishing this in September following the outcome of the UK Spending Review.”

That is nearly halfway through the financial year, and 21 months after the committee sought that. With a 12 per cent increase in capital spend, surely that matter should be at the forefront of the Government’s thinking and we should have much more information at this point on what that infrastructure pipeline contains if we are to ensure that it is fully optimised in the forthcoming financial year.

I do not think that anyone is in favour of compulsory redundancies per se, but it is important to optimise the delivery of services. If, in order to continue paying people who, frankly, no longer have the required skills and are effectively not able to deliver the services that are needed, you have to give others over and above what you would like to and say, “Look, if we give you this shedload of money, will you just leave?” We all know that is happening and that it is just inefficient, ineffective, expensive and not really affordable in the long term.

On what you said about the contingent workforce, it is important to put on the record that some £200 million savings have been brought about through the work that the Government is doing, which is very positive. However, we are looking for flexibility. Everybody accepts a one, two or three-year thing during a crisis, but the Government is bringing in policies such as that ludicrous one of not giving ministers a pay rise for 17 years or whatever it is, which, let us be honest, is just bonkers. I see that you are smiling, cabinet secretary, but you know that it is; people are bewildered by it, frankly. The Government must occasionally revisit policies; they should not be written on tablets of stone. That lack of flexibility means that we do not have the efficient delivery of services that we should have.

No members have indicated that they wish to comment, so I invite the cabinet secretary to wind up.

You hit the nail on the head when you pointed out that, frankly, revaluation is electorally toxic because of the impact of loss aversion on those whose council taxes would rise.

At Westminster, Labour has a majority of more than 150 and I am not seeing any big moves to change the system down there, which it could do without facing anything like the difficulty that we have here. It would face the same issues that any Government would face, as we do in Scotland.

I am referring not to portfolios but to specific projects, if you know what I mean. Money might be allocated to transport or whatever, but there is no pipeline that allows us to see what is being prioritised in particular portfolio spends, which is what the committee is keen to see.

We do not want there to be a considerable capital underspend this time next year. I know that it is very difficult for the Government because, with a 12 per cent increase in a year, you could end up with inflation if the capacity of the workforce to deliver what the Government wants does not exist. We do not want a 2 per cent increase in delivery and a 10 per cent increase in costs because of it. We are keen to see the budget being delivered in the most economically effective way.

That is four months away, and this session of Parliament has only another 13 months to run. A lot of the details in the response are about things that would seem to be fairly reasonable if we had another five years in the parliamentary session. However, from what I can ascertain, there seems to be not a lot of urgency in some of the work. My colleagues might think differently—although I would be surprised if they did—but these things just seem to roll on.

Incidentally, yesterday, the Minister for Public Finance, Ivan McKee, had a summit with a body of leaders about moving forward to look at public service reform and—lo and behold!—to develop a strategy on that. We still have strategies coming out of our ears.