Chamber and committees

One thing about the level 3 figures on the roads budget that I found interesting is a transparency issue. It says that trunk road network public private partnership payments will rise by 3 per cent to £133.9 million. We know that there is PPP expenditure all over the place, such as for schools in my area and in Edinburgh for hospitals. I do not see PPP payments anywhere else in the budget document, unless I have not read it properly. I wonder why it is on this page but does not seem to be anywhere else. I know that the Scottish Government had to compile the document in a rush, because of the autumn statement, the Scottish Fiscal Commission forecast and negotiations between parties. I wonder why that figure appears here but PPP repayments do not seem to appear anywhere else.

I am not sure that we have heard many alternatives, to be honest.

You talked about levering in private resources to housing. Are we on track to deliver the 110,000 houses that the Scottish Government has pledged to deliver? Is private finance keeping up with the demand and filling the gap that has been left by the reduction in public finance?

Sticking with capital, some interesting figures have been bandied around. I am looking at page 62 of the Scottish budget, and there are a couple of issues that I want to raise with regard to the level 3 figures on the trunk road network.

An article in The Sunday Times said:

“The collapse in infrastructure spending”

to appease the Greens

“is a national disgrace”,

and it alleges that there has been a 4,000 per cent decrease in spend. I am not really sure how you can have a 4,000 per cent decrease—I thought that 100 per cent was the maximum decrease that you could have—so the article is somewhat innumerate. It claims that only £12.4 million is being invested in A-road trunk routes. However, when I look at the figures on page 62 of the budget document, I see that critical safety, maintenance and infrastructure spend is increasing to £524.7 million, which is a 41 per cent increase. Can you tell us a wee bit about those figures and why there is a 41 per cent increase over one year in that particular budget?

Do you recognise the figure of £12.4 million?

We are expecting details in the next week or so on the amounts that you were discussing.

It has been a bit of a marathon session; thank you, colleagues. Deputy First Minister, thank you for your input in particular. I will just ask two or three quick questions. When can we expect the updated infrastructure investment plan?

Okay, thank you.

This committee recommended that the Scottish Government produce a full response to the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s fiscal sustainability report, setting out the actions that it will take to start addressing the longer-term challenges ahead. We have not yet received that, so when can we expect it?

Finally, with regard to non-domestic rates, the budget includes £685 million of reliefs. I certainly appreciate that, as do island hospitality businesses in relation to the extremely helpful reliefs for those businesses, with 100 per cent relief up to the amount of £110,000.

Given our earlier discussions, has the Scottish Government done any work on looking at the positive economic impact of reliefs relative to the sector, for example? Obviously, we have had a lot of people lobbying us on that particular issue. I would like to know, not necessarily right now, whether the Scottish Government is looking into how effective those reliefs are in terms of the sustainability and growth of businesses and the overall economic impact.

Thank you very much. I realise how exhausting it must be to have to answer questions for two and a half hours.

Okay, but if you look at page 88, you see that the budget for enterprise—Highlands and Islands Enterprise, innovation, industries, trade and investment, South of Scotland Enterprise and so on—is £348.7 million, which is about 0.6 per cent of the entire Scottish budget. The reason why I am quite confused about the prioritisation that has been involved is that, looking at some of the other figures that the Scottish Government has in its budget, we see that the amount for student support has increased from £925.1 million to £1,484.6 million, which is a 60.4 per cent increase in a single year. That cannae be right, surely, yet that is the amount sitting in the level 3 figures on page 72. The increase in student support alone is almost twice the entire enterprise budget, which is there to help grow the economy.

As you know, one of the things that we discussed with Tom Arthur when he came to discuss the autumn revisions was the budget moving in year. We talked about reductions in the Forestry and Land Scotland budget, and also about Creative Scotland having reductions in its budget in year. Of course, it turned out that, in fact, Creative Scotland was not getting reductions in its spending power in year, because it had £17 million in reserves. I am not sure how much Forestry and Land Scotland had, but it was able to find £6 million in its reserves. I asked Mr Arthur at the time whether the Scottish Government would look across the piece to see how much money all those bodies have in reserve. That is about £131 million in reserves for just two bodies, so there must be hundreds of millions of pounds stashed in all those organisations. Has that work begun? Is there any likelihood that additional resources will be found?

Local authorities and the Scottish Government do not have huge amounts of cash reserves—one or two local authorities might, but most of them are down to their bare bones. Is it appropriate for all those bodies to have the equivalent of up to three months’ revenue held in reserve while, at the same time, front-line services are being squeezed?