Chamber and committees

I thank our witnesses—Da-Lo, Da-Lo and Vikki—for their evidence this morning. We will publish our thoughts once we have taken further evidence. We now move into private session.

The issue that you have touched on is politics. The Scottish Government is in a minority situation and we are 18 months before an election, so one would think that the Opposition parties are very unlikely to get on board with whatever the Scottish Government says. Given its huge majority, could the UK Government perhaps not take the lead on an issue such as council tax reform?

We are going to see a lot more fiscal drag.

Professor Bell, is the pace of progress adequate, given the situation that we are in at the moment, or could the Government do more to accelerate work on delivering its priorities?

I am going to call our next witness Mr Lonsdale, rather than David. As four of the five male witnesses today are called David, that will make life a wee bit less confusing. We had a Richard on the earlier panel, just as a token, but you really have to be called David to give evidence here. For example, on previous occasions we have heard from David Eiser and David Phillips—there have been loads of Davids.

Mr Lonsdale, Vikki Manson touched on the regulatory burden, and you expressed concern about that in your submission. Will you expand on that a wee bit?

I am sorry, but I was going to let David Lonsdale speak first, because he was already discussing that topic.

In relation to the question that we asked about capital expenditure, one issue that you talked about in detail was transparency. You said:

“the Scottish Government should understand what effect its prioritisation of its capital projects will have on achieving its ambitions of growing the economy, improving public service and tackling climate change.”

However, you added:

“The Scottish Government should be transparent about these decisions, how and why they have been made and the impact they will have on public services.”

Do you have concerns that the capital pipeline programme, which we were supposed to receive early this year, has been repeatedly delayed and will not now appear until after the budget?

Professor Heald, you have also expressed great concern about productivity. Where should the Government take forward its capital expenditure, given that you have been very critical of the reduction of capital expenditure in recent years, as allocated by the UK Government?

I remember visiting the Faroe Islands and being astonished at the low cost of building tunnels that were 10 or 20km long. At one time, we were talking about building a tunnel under the Forth bridge, which was costed at some ridiculous figure of about £2 billion. Years later, the Faroe Islands can build huge infrastructure projects for a fraction of that price. That is a very important point.

I have one final question to ask before I open up the session to colleagues. It is about tackling the climate emergency, which is one of the Government’s four priorities. Earlier this year, I and other colleagues attended a presentation by the Scottish Fiscal Commission in which it said that the cost to the public and private sectors in Scotland—obviously, this is not an exact science, given that we are talking about the period to 2045—would be a combined £185 billion. While much of that would have to be paid by the public sector, whether devolved or UK, a lot would have to come from the private sector. Per capita, that is a lot of money—it comes to about £35,000 each. Those figures were broken down by sector.

One point that the SFC emphasised was the fact that the longer we delay taking action on the issue, the more expensive it will be to mitigate it. Do you think that, in its budget, the Scottish Government should do more to focus on tackling the climate emergency and to make it clear how it is doing that in the various portfolios?

Professor Bell, you are looking skyward, so I will ask you first.