Chamber and committees

I have to say that it was £142 for the week in Greece, and, because my parents had nae money, I had to pay for it by stocking shelves in the Co-op at 41p an hour.

One issue is that, if the Scottish Government is expected to blanket pay for everything, there will be no incentive to reduce costs at local authority or school level, because someone else will be paying for it. That is just human nature.

Going back to the trust issue, you talked about people being willing to come in. Without naming anyone, do you have any examples of people who are willing to do so? As you know, my local authority has outdoor centres, one of which is at Clauchlands on Arran. It is less than 20 years old and cost £5.5 million. Every single year, when the budget comes up, people talk about all the potential savings that can be made, and every single year, one of those savings, which is always rejected by the council, is the closure of the Clauchlands outdoor centre. It is a resource issue rather than a capital issue; the centre has already been built and is already there, but the real issue is staffing. It is always in the paper that Clauchlands is under threat and there is always a stooshie about it locally, but I have not noticed anyone coming in and saying, “You know what, I’m a multimillionaire and I’m quite happy to fund the retention of that facility.”

Therefore, if you think that people from the private or charitable sector will be coming in on a huge, all-Scotland scale, I have to wonder how realistic that is. I know that you have talked about Ireland—I am not sure how much funding has come in there—but, at this point in time, I am not seeing anyone who is willing to chip in money to save something that is threatened with closure, let alone something that is, in effect, backstopped by the Scottish Government.

Ross Greer wants to come back in.

Obviously, you are not in control of income tax and so on.

Where land and buildings transaction tax is set has an impact on behaviour, does it not?

You talk about upholding four founding principles that underpin the Scottish approach to tax—certainty, convenience, efficiency and proportionality to the ability to pay. Do you think that six income tax bands is efficient?

I also note that there will be

“significant upgrades to accessibility and assistive technologies”

on your website. I take it that that means that it will not take four years and cost £3 million to upgrade the website like it did for the Scottish Parliament.

One issue that has come up in the evidence is the lack of capital funding. You talked about some facilities for the delivery of outdoor education that were closed but have been repurposed and are coming back into use. If there is going to be a surge in demand, with additional numbers, surely that will mean that additional capital will be required. For example, if we think about how the Scottish Government increased the number of funded early learning and childcare hours from 612.5 to 1,140, or about the addition of free school meals for primary 5s to 7s, which is still being deliberated on, a lot of that is about schools’ capacity to provide those things. For nursery school children, they have to build places, in effect. Why is there no capital budget for your proposal in the financial memorandum?

If 60,000 pupils a year are involved, it will not be 1,200 a week. We have a 38-week school year, but nobody will go in the week or two before Christmas, for example, or the week before the summer holidays. Demand will not be even throughout the year. You will find that it will be pretty skewed. Some centres will fill up very quickly and people will probably have to book them years in advance. I would have thought that the capacity will have to be significantly higher than it might be on paper. On paper, a capacity of 2,000 might be needed, but in reality it might need to be nearer 3,000 or 4,000 simply because people will want to go at certain times because of how the school year operates.

We will see if there are any more questions from John Mason.