Chamber and committees

Linda Somerville, your submission talks about the

“need for restorative pay settlements”;

the

“need to massively expand publicly owned housing”;

and the need for

“a street-by-street home retrofitting programme”.

It also mentions a number of other issues, such as Government support for

“providing good quality, unionised jobs.”

Have any costings gone into that? As I mentioned a few minutes ago, there are obviously significant pressures on the budget. You talk about taxation in your submission, so perhaps you can expand on that in your response.

David, the NPF has been around for some 14 years, so do you think that there are some transparency issues in relation to the NPF and how it works across Government?

Does David Eiser or Susan Murray wish to comment?

In that case, I will move to questions from committee members, and I am pretty sure that one area in particular is going to be focused on very quickly.

We probably all need to do that, to be perfectly honest. Lastly, what is the STUC’s view on targeting versus universalism?

Thank you. I thank all our witnesses. We have run over time, but we will have a break until 11.15.

We now turn to our second panel of witnesses on Scotland’s public finances and the impact of Covid-19. We are joined by David Eiser, senior knowledge exchange fellow, Fraser of Allander Institute; Susan Murray, director, David Hume Institute; and Ray Perman, fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh. I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this session. Members have received written submissions from each of our witnesses. I welcome everyone to the meeting—I give the witnesses a particularly warm welcome for coming here in person, which the committee greatly appreciates.

I start by asking something of the David Hume Institute. Under item 3 in its submission, it says:

“At a time of multiple challenges and tight public finances, hard choices are almost certainly going to involve choosing to stop spending money on services or initiatives that are achieving public good, and are valued by their recipients or stakeholders in order to start or increase spending on other areas that are now judged a higher priority.”

With many of the witnesses we have heard from, it has been like drawing teeth to get them to say where they would disinvest. Everyone has come to the committee and said, “We require additional funding in our areas.” We have explained that we might have only a 2 per cent real-terms increase in the budget, but all our witnesses appear to feel that that should be specifically targeted at their sector.

I hope that Susan Murray and other colleagues will help by contributing some ideas as to where disinvestment can take place, because, if we are going to spend money more effectively and deliver better outcomes, that will need to happen. Do you have any examples that you can share with the committee?

Indeed—I suppose so. However, it would affect some people disproportionately. If they then had to invest elsewhere, they might not necessarily gain proportionately.

What is David Eiser’s view on the matter? Where should we look to disinvest if we are going to spend or invest—however you want to phrase it—in order to have more effective outcomes for Scotland?

I wonder if we can hear briefly from Ray Perman and Susan Murray on this question. After all, it is fundamental to what we are trying to achieve.

Good morning and welcome to the fourth meeting in 2021 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Agenda item 1 is to invite Ross Greer to declare any relevant interests.