Chamber and committees

You say there are lots of disparate bodies.

Charlie McMillan, are there any specific gaps on which we should focus or is there generally just nothing?

Money—that is probably the most important element in the mix. You talk about funding and you talk about investment. They are not necessarily the same thing, of course. Your annual report refers to £9.8 billion of investment, but there is no detail. How much money is needed to deliver NSET plans? Where is the funding coming from?

I will leave it there with funding. However, I cannot say that the responses that I have had are very satisfactory.

You must have some idea of the funding needs. You have not given me any impression at all of where the funding will come from, what its scale is and where there might be potential shortfalls because of a struggle to put the cash together to achieve what is needed. I am not hearing any of that.

You might not be able to tell me what it will cost in 10 years’ time, but you must have some idea of how much the things that you are working on cost and where funding comes from. I would have thought that you would look at funding for projects right up front, otherwise they will not happen. The funding can come only from private investment or from Government. How is that being managed?

I find it disappointing that there is a lack of detail around the funding. Maybe it is something that the committee needs to pursue in order to get some understanding as to how this is all working, because I am none the wiser than when I first started asking the question. I know a bit more about process, but I do not have any real grip of what the figures are.

I will move on from that. There are obviously connections needed across the different Scottish Government directorates and so on. How do the directorates work together to agree on shared NSET funding priorities? How does that work? How do you prioritise?

You cannot be stumbling forward blind without knowing what the costings will be and where the money will come from, yet I am hearing nothing. You are giving me process and a lot of verbiage around it. However, at the end of the day, there are no hard facts on where the funding is coming from—whether it will be private or from the Government—and where there could be shortfalls. I would have expected all that to be key information that you would have at your fingertips.

My concern is that, in all that you have said, you have not mentioned a single figure. You have given no indication of the scale of funding that will be needed at any stage. You surely must have some idea of what the funding will be this year or next year, in the short term, even if you cannot talk about the long term. Where is the money coming from and where is it going?

Yes, I can understand that prioritisation happens in the budget process, but there must be on-going discussions between the directorates as and when opportunities arise, and perhaps when there are gaps in the funding and you have to prioritise where you plug these gaps and who will be prioritised. There must be something on-going.