Chamber and committees

What would a wrong turn be, for example?

Of course.

In the 20th century, Scotland had the lowest population growth of any country on earth. I think that 2 million people migrated in the half century before this Parliament was established, so that is a long-term issue.

I am very keen on radical reform in that area. We will not go into that specific reform, but I have a couple of final questions, one for Professor Bell and Richard Robinson and the other for Professor Heald.

My first question is for Professor Heald. This is not specifically about reform but it follows up what you said. In your answers and responses today, you have been really good at putting a lot of what is in your document on to the record. I appreciate that. We have not really talked an awful lot today about the issue of improving public services. Your submission says:

“I have long been worried by the squeezing out of public services expenditure ... by expenditure which is volatile and not amenable to precise forward planning.”

You have talked about some of that already. You say:

“In England, such expenditure is

annually managed expenditure

(with the Treasury funding overspends due to higher claims on pre-set eligibility criteria), whereas in Scotland such expenditure is effectively”

departmental expenditure limit

“(with the Scottish Government having to finance excess expenditure out of the combination of the Barnett formula-determined Block Grant and Scottish tax revenues). This constitutes a serious risk to public services expenditure.”

How do we mitigate such volatility in our current situation?

Professor Bell, on the issue of public service reform, the Royal Society has noted

“that there has been more growth in public sector pay at the lower end of the workplace scale than there has been at the top.”

We know that, on average, the average public sector employee in Scotland earns £2,400 a year gross a year, and £1,500 net, more than those south of the border. You have said:

“The public sector pay policy should align with the market value of the skills needed to deliver transformational change.”

Do you think that the Scottish Government was wrong to emphasise pay rises for lower-paid workers? The alternative is to increase the size of an envelope that is already under strain from higher pay settlements.

Because of the numbers.

We continue our evidence taking on “Managing Scotland’s Public Finances: A Strategic Approach”. I welcome our second panel: Vikki Manson, deputy head of policy at the Federation of Small Businesses Scotland; David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium; and David Lott, deputy director for funding, reform and accountability at Universities Scotland.

I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this session. If our witnesses would like to be brought into the discussion at any point, they should indicate that to the clerk and I will then call them. We have already seen your written submissions, so we will move straight to questions. The first question is a bit of a strange one. I thought that the answer to it might be just a wee bit different from the answers to the questions that we have been asking so far. It is one for you, Ms Manson. You said that

“there have been consultations published proposing changes on a number of different areas”,

and you raised concerns about the level of consultation that has been embarked upon. Will you comment on that?

Are you looking for a 3 per cent increase or three percentage points of increase?

The former or the latter?

Is that all? That is not incredibly ambitious.