Chamber and committees

Traditionally, we have found it hard to match the south-east of England and London, and their earnings have tended to be higher. Therefore, it is surprising to me that we have things the other way round, in a sense, this time.

Okay. Thank you.

The big figure that was mentioned is the negative income tax reconciliation of around £712 million. Obviously, that has been in the media. How certain are we about that? I seem to remember that, in the past, the forecasts and the actual outturns were quite different from each other, even late on. We will just have to wait until July, I think, when we get the final figures, but is there a possibility that the figure could be very different from £712 million?

I congratulate the committee and the witnesses for keeping us to time—we have done quite well. Is there anything else that the witnesses wanted to touch on?

Michelle Thomson wants to make a quick point on IT, and then I will let the other two witnesses in.

Perhaps Garry McEwan can pick that up, as I was planning to bring him in, and then I will come to Karen Watt.

Right. We have given that area quite a good airing, so we will leave it—unless Ross Greer wants to continue on the subject.

Elaine Lorimer wants to come in.

Does Keith Brown want to come back in?

Would you like to aim that question at anyone?

I have a specific question for you. We are talking about trying to reform or simplify the whole system, but the fact is that, by creating SOSE, we have just made things more complicated. How do we strike the right balance between having more organisations that are more local, more focused and so on and driving more reform from the centre?