Chamber and committees

Obviously, we can look at what is happening in other countries, such as Estonia, which, incidentally, has a straight 20 per cent tax across the board. I do not think that we in Scotland will be in that position any time soon, but having six tax bands does not help—having rates of 19, 20 and 21 per cent just seems daft to most people. I understand why that was brought in, but it is a nonsense, is it not?

I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials very much for appearing today.

That concludes our evidence taking on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach. We will consider all the evidence received as part of our inquiry and publish our report in early November.

We will now have a short break to allow for a changeover of witnesses before we move on to our next agenda item.

You are looking at capital, but the £984 million is resource. It is not going into house construction or anything like that. Of course, the £984 million will, to an extent, have gone towards being spent in local shops. People are not likely to have spent it on cars or overseas holidays. That is why I am looking at whether specific work has been done on the opportunity cost. Maybe Jamie Robertson has some information on that from CIPFA.

We are looking to make recommendations to the Government on where we get the best bang for our buck in tune with the Government’s own priorities, one of which is eradicating child poverty. We look at local government, and you are saying that that money could be better spent on providing local services to support campaigns against poverty and delivering on all the areas that you have talked about—for example, enabling people to get back into work as, ultimately, the best way of reducing poverty is for someone to have a well-paid job, although not everyone in work has a well-paid job.

I am just asking whether you have anything hard and fast on the opportunity cost. It seems to me that you are advocating that, instead of putting additional funding into welfare in the next year—over and above what is currently going into it—that money should be redirected to local government.

Incidentally, being here is like being at an auction—if you twitch, you will get called to speak.

In your submission, you made the quite stark point that, in the years since the pandemic, the number of young people who volunteer has fallen from 52 per cent to 37 per cent, which is quite a significant reduction. How would an indicator help to increase the number of people who volunteer?

Not quite.

I come to Adam Boey. Sarah Latto touched on consultation. You were not very enamoured with the consultation, were you?

Incidentally, on local government employment, Malcolm Burr mentioned the fact that the number of people that his authority employs has reduced from 1,900 to 1,600. However, the figures that I have show that, between the second quarter of 2018 and the second quarter of 2024, the local authority workforce in Scotland grew from 242,000 to 262,000, although I realise that about half of those jobs are probably in early learning and childcare. Across Scotland, the trend is upwards, not downwards, according to official Scottish Government figures.

Time is against us, so I will give our witnesses an opportunity to say one final thing to the committee about anything that they feel we have not covered and which they think we should incorporate in our report to the Scottish Government on our budget deliberations.

Katie, you went first, so you will have the last word. Which of the three gentlemen would like to go first? If you have nothing to add, you do not have to say anything, but if there is something that you feel we should include in our report, now is your opportunity to mention it. Malcolm, you seem to be keen to comment.

The next item is a round-table discussion on the Scottish Government’s proposed national outcomes, which form part of the national performance framework. I welcome to the meeting Allan Faulds, who is a senior policy officer with the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland; Dr Shoba John, who is head of Obesity Action Scotland; Carmen Martinez, who is policy and engagement lead at the Scottish Women’s Budget Group; Adam Boey, who is the business planning and performance manager at Stirling Council; and Sarah Latto, who is a senior policy officer at Volunteer Scotland.

I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this evidence session. As with the previous panel, if witnesses want to be brought into the discussion at any point, please indicate that to the clerks and I will call you.

I move straight to questions. The first is for Dr Shoba John and it regards the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. You said in your submission that Obesity Action Scotland is

“concerned that there is no mention of making any amendments to the Act as it reads currently. The current wording of the Act states that public authorities are required to have regard to the National Outcomes. However, we feel this is weak and needs to be strengthened to ensure the legislation is effective”.

Will you expand on that?

Before I bring in Allan Faulds, I will let in Shoba John, who has been waiting for a while now.

That is coming through quite a lot in the submissions. I call John Mason.