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Okay, but the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce has suggested that

“removing the reference to the economy risks losing the focus on something that is a critical enabler of people’s wellbeing.”

You have mentioned wellbeing on a number of occasions. Many of those who responded to the consultation suggested that the framework should be renamed to something somewhat less tedious and boring than the national performance framework to, for example, “Scotland’s wellbeing framework” or even “Ambitions for Scotland”—that is, to something that is a bit more dynamic.

I know that the national performance framework has been the title since 2007, but it has hardly caught fire with the public. In fact, it is very similar to the national planning framework—it even has the same acronym. Why has the Government decided not to call it “Scotland’s wellbeing framework”, given that that is clearly the direction of travel from almost everything that you have said so far?

Good morning, and welcome to the 28th meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We are joined today by students and staff from the University of Dundee, who will observe the committee taking evidence on our pre-budget scrutiny. I welcome them and look forward to chatting to them after the meeting.

Moving on to today’s agenda, the first item is to take evidence from the Scottish Government on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach. I welcome to the meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, Shona Robison. The cabinet secretary is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Jennie Barugh, director of fiscal sustainability; Richard McCallum, director of public spending; and Lucy O’Carroll, director of tax. I welcome them all to the meeting and invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.

One issue is widening the tax base to ensure that the Scottish Government has more resources. That is important whatever we do.

I want to talk about a successful Scottish Government initiative, which is the data-driven innovation initiative. That was signed in 2018 as part of the Edinburgh and south-east Scotland city deal, and it is delivered by the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University, which I visited last week. It set a goal of supporting more than 400 entrepreneurs to raise £50 million within 10 years, and that has been resoundingly successful. In six years—not 10—it has managed to lever in more than £200 million of investment, rather than the £50 million target. Instead of 400, it has 500 cutting-edge companies that are raising funds to boost work that drives innovation.

However, I feel that the Scottish Government is not investing enough in such initiatives. For example, Universities Scotland gave evidence to us that, relative to the rest of the UK, investment spend has fallen by 16.2 per cent to 13 per cent in recent years. It said, and has given us the research sources that prove, that for every £1 that we invest in that area, 12.7 times that is put back into the Scottish economy. It said:

“If Scotland can recover its competitive position back to a 15.4% share of UKRI funds”,

which we had a few years ago,

“this would deliver an additional economic impact of at least £640 million to Scotland’s economy.”

Should we not be spending more than a minuscule proportion of Scottish resources in areas where Scotland is globally competitive—including, in your neck of the woods, the University of Dundee with its life sciences, and Heriot-Watt University with its robotics and research into marine and space and a myriad of other areas—so that we can have a prosperous, highly skilled workforce of the future?

We are really struggling for time, to be honest, given that other members have still to come in, and we have another session to come.

It will be lost twice next year because it is an on-going £160 million every year. It will be £320 million next year.

Okay, but economic growth is obviously important if we are going to provide the resources to do all that the Parliament wishes to do and, indeed, the Government wishes to do. There are concerns regarding the omission of explicit references to economic growth. For example, that led Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, which responded to the consultation, to say that it feels as if the Government has “downgraded” economic growth, which is exactly the opposite of the message that we want to convey, given that it is one of the four priorities, as you have already touched on.

You also touched on the UN sustainable development goals. Goal 1 is “No poverty”. It was unclear whether the national outcome seeks to reduce poverty because, in Scotland’s NPF, the national outcomes are more realistic about what will be achieved within a devolved setting. Is that the case?

One of the UN’s sustainable development goals is that there should be no poverty, whereas the Scottish Government’s aim is to reduce poverty. Is that because we cannot eliminate poverty within a devolved setting? Is that the reason for it, or is there another reason why the Scottish Government does not have the same goal as the UN?

Thank you. I will open up the session to colleagues round the table.

I think that Keith McDonald wants to come in. [Interruption.]