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You say that the CCC is pulling out all the stops. I come back to the issue of resources—after all, this is a budget scrutiny session. Are you able to say how much money the Climate Change Committee has had or is getting in the current financial year and what it will get under the budget that we are scrutinising today? The key question is whether, if it had additional funds, it could provide that advice more quickly.

I assume that the Scottish Government makes sure that the CCC is appropriately resourced to provide advice.

Okay. That is the substance of what I needed to know.

I am conscious of the fact that, when you previously gave evidence to the committee, you suggested—I realise that this was for illustrative purposes only—that the Climate Change Committee might publish its advice on 24 March. You then ran through what the timescale might be for parliamentary scrutiny of the advice and the production of the draft climate change plan and the affirmative instruments and so on. Theoretically, we were looking at a final publication date of November 2025. However, we now know that the advice will not be available on 24 March and will not be available until late May. Are you in a position to give the committee a revised timetable for all the subsequent scrutiny?

In that case, I will ask the question in another way. Has the Climate Change Committee at any point suggested that it has not been adequately resourced to provide prompt advice?

I have no further questions, convener, but given Liz Smith’s earlier line of questioning about the financial impact of Scotland’s budget on Scotland responding to changes at the UK level, does the committee wish to pursue in the future how Scotland, the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government can have input into those discussions?

Before I move on to the next theme, convener, I want, if we have time, to ask the briefest of supplementaries to Jeremy Balfour’s question.

My understanding is that, if the budget passes, the pilots will be incredibly important. There is a budget line for them, but I know that there have been some really positive pilots elsewhere in the UK. Indeed, Crisis has told me about a pilot between the Department for Work and Pensions—mainly Jobcentre Plus—and local authorities in the Newcastle area, but despite really positive outcomes, everything dissipated when the money came to an end, and best practice was shared neither in that area nor anywhere else in the UK.

From a budget scrutiny point of view, then, are there any assurances that you can give us that, as part of these pilots, we will be thinking about how we mainstream, embed and sustain any success that might come from them? Having a budget line for pilots might allow them to flourish, but it does not necessarily mean that a budget line has been identified to allow them to be embedded and to endure over the longer term.

That is helpful. I would not want the committee to be here this time next year—when we start to get initial emerging outcomes from what will still be fairly early pilots—discussing whether the next year’s budget will sustain those pilots for the longer term. I am saying that so that, next year, we can get assurances that this will be enduring and that it will be embedded in future financial years.

I will move on to talk about the third sector and voluntary sectors. Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector has stated that Labour’s NI increases could lead to job losses, fewer hours for staff and a reduction of services for Glaswegians. Of course, the third sector and the voluntary sector stretch right across Scotland. The cabinet secretary and the First Minister are in discussions with the UK Government to get full cost recovery in relation to the impact, not just for Government and Government bodies, but for the third and voluntary sectors.

What data does the Government have on the impact on the third and voluntary sectors? If we get money from the UK Government, we need to ensure that we know how to pass that money on to the relevant organisations that are planning for future financial years. Is the Scottish Government well sighted on the organisations that will need additional support to meet the further NI burdens?

I would like to ask about fair funding from the Scottish Government. Has the Government accepted that we must do far more in relation to fair funding for the third sector? The cabinet secretary will know that we are looking for longer-term multiyear awards for more organisations across the third sector. The Government always says, very sincerely, that it is keen to do more of that, not just directly, but through its funding bodies. However, we are never quite sure how many further multiyear awards are likely to be made. We are not very good at monitoring that kind of thing, so what reassurances could you give that, should the budget pass, there will be more multiyear awards? How will that be monitored? We are talking about a long-game initiative, so how can the committee and successor committees scrutinise that for the longer term?

I will roll my second question into my first. In those future awards, will any account be taken of national insurance increases, despite the lack of clarity from the UK Government? Will there be any cognisance of cost of living increases that those organisations will have to make more generally because of inflation?

That would be helpful. I am not sure whether the information will be across the board or just about the organisations in the pilot. If it is only on a select group, that will not give us a feeling for what is happening across the country. Will we get details of how many organisations have two-year awards, three-year awards and awards of more than three years? Will that be baselined against what has happened in the current financial year?

Okay, so—