Chamber and committees

We are ahead at the moment, though, are we not?

You suggest that we should not raise income tax, in order to give people more money to spend in shops. On the other hand, there seems to be quite a lot of money out there. Given the prices that people were paying to see Taylor Swift, Oasis and, I believe, the Euros—they say that 200,000 people went to Germany for the Euros; if they spent £500 each, that would be £100 million—some people out there have a lot of money. I am not sure that changing their income tax rate would impact on your sales.

Do you accept that there needs to be some redistribution of wealth or income within the population? Some people have a lot of money and can do a lot of luxury things, but other people are in poverty. It is not automatic that, if we grow the economy, people in poverty are helped, is it?

Thanks.

Other members might want to follow up on that.

There have been calls to accelerate the pace of change. It sometimes seems that any change or reform takes a long time while consultations, surveys and reviews are undertaken. One of the First Minister’s themes is that there should be more action and perhaps a little less thinking—that might be the wrong word, but perhaps there should be a little less consultation and review. What is your response to that? Can we increase the pace, or is it inevitable that those things take time?

That is helpful. As you know, I am also on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, which is looking at public sector reform and trying to simplify things. This is a fairly small country, yet we seem to have an awful lot of organisations out there. I want to make that point, if you are committed to simplifying things.

I made a couple of visits during recess. I visited Glasgow Kelvin College, which is in my constituency, and went with the Finance and Public Administration Committee last week to visit the University of Dundee. Both were clear that they face financial challenges. Will the reform agenda help them to address those challenges?

Other members might want to explore that issue more. Are you worried about the financial state of some colleges and universities? They seem to be in quite a serious position down south.

I will follow up the point about funding. I accept that what we are paying for Scottish students has not increased. However, some of the universities are sitting on quite large reserves. If we are all having to tighten our belts, can we not expect the universities to contribute a bit more to students’ tuition? The last time I looked, the University of Glasgow had £1,000 million of reserves, and I think that the University of Edinburgh’s reserves might be even higher. I accept that some of the newer universities do not have that kind of money, but surely they have to contribute, too.

Early on in the “Fiscal Update”, you make the statement that

“Decisions by the Scottish Government have played a role in these budget pressures.”

I would like to explore a little what that means.

We could have spent our budget in different ways, but the fact is that we must spend all of it. If a hard year comes along, we have to make cuts. In one sense, the Scottish Government does not have a lot of control over that.