Chamber and committees

I will finish with the issue of cleaning, which has been brought up by both John Mason and Michelle Thomson. The cleaning budget will increase by 23.7 per cent to £804,000. That is not in itself a huge figure, but I wonder why there is such a large percentage increase in one year.

If the situation is not as bad as we thought, why has the housing budget been cut by a third, to £375.8 million, in the forthcoming year?

The housing budget has had a particularly serious reduction. You have mentioned one set of figures, but we must work with what we have in front of us. Page 53 of the budget document shows that the more homes budget has decreased from £740.1 million in 2022-23 to £564.6 million in 2023-24 and £375.8 million in 2024-25. That is almost a halving of that budget over two years at a time of a housing emergency.

We know that, at the same time, the Scottish Government has made very significant capital investments in other areas. For example, there has been a 12.4 per cent increase for Police Scotland and a 49 per cent increase for digital connectivity; I will mention one or two other increases in a moment when we move on to discuss other areas.

Why has that choice been made? The Scottish Government has quite rightly said that it is a matter of choices. I find it wearisome that no one other than the Scottish Government really makes choices. Everyone says that there should be more money for everything and no reductions in anything. We are in a situation in which capital is decreasing—that is just a fact of life—but why has housing in particular had such a dunt, relative to other areas of the Scottish budget?

For our second evidence session on the 2024-25 Scottish budget, I welcome to the meeting the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Shona Robison, who is joined by Scottish Government officials. Dr Alison Cumming is director of budget and public spending; Ellen Leaver is deputy director, local government and analytical services; and Dr Andrew Scott is director of tax and revenues.

We have just over two hours for this session. Before I open up the discussion, I invite Ms Robison to make a short opening statement.

Transparency is fundamental. We cannot be comparing apples with pears. We need to have confidence in what we are looking at when we are making comparisons.

One of the issues raised by a number of people who have given evidence to the committee, particularly on our pre-budget report, was the need to grow the tax base. It is fair to say that there is a level of disappointment with some of the decisions that have been made. I will ask about some of those decisions. In the wellbeing economy and fair work budget, there is a 15 per cent reduction to £348.7 million in the enterprise, trade and investment budget. You have already touched on the Scottish National Investment Bank; its budget is down 28 per cent. At a time when we need to grow the tax base, improve productivity and create economic growth and when we need to provide the tax revenues to pay for so much else, why have decisions been made to reduce the enterprise budgets?

We want to look at these figures three-dimensionally rather than two-dimensionally wherever possible.

I will go back to the issue of choices. You talked about protecting the NHS, and its resource is up 4.3 per cent. The resource for police is up by 5.6 per cent and support for ferry services is—I am pleased to say—up by 23.3 per cent. The figure has gone up in a number of areas, but how did you decide on those percentages? Why did you decide on, for example, 4.3 per cent for the NHS but 5.6 per cent for policing? What was the decision making behind that?

They are not as positive as they would be if you had bought a bottle of whisky for the raffle, John.

I call Michelle Thomson, to be followed by Michael Marra.

So the £3 million that was spent on the website wisnae enough tae actually deliver a quality website. Is that what you are trying to say?

I am still not sure why those things are obsolete. What is it that they do not deliver that they need to deliver? With the bulletin, for example—I mean, it is just a Business Bulletin.

Sorry—I meant this year.