Chamber and committees

If that £900 million had been spent on, say, the health service instead of on social security, that would not make the budget any easier now. We would just have to cut health instead.

Is it that there are more people doing the same things, or are there people doing different things that are not being done in the public sector in England?

The ScotWind money was not spent when it was expected to be spent. Is there a time pressure to spend it, or is it like a reserve that can just sit there?

Okay. I think that I have spent long enough on that angle. Thanks very much for your answers.

On the question of multiyear spending plans or medium-term financial statements and how possible they are, I am frustrated, and the committee is frustrated, that we have not got to that sooner. Things always seem to come up as a reason for not forecasting three, four or five years ahead, or whatever it might be. We have already covered pay: we thought the UK policy was 2 per cent, Scotland came in with 3 per cent, then the UK went to 5.5 per cent. Are we just unrealistic to hope that we can make forecasts because all those outside things can come in and destroy them?

Thanks for that. You mentioned bonds and you said that, if the Scottish Government is going to issue bonds, it will have to do it fairly soon. Does it make much difference? We have a limit on what we can borrow, so it does not really matter where we borrow from, does it?

We talked earlier about public sector employment and the fact that it is 22.6 per cent in Scotland and 17.6 per cent in the UK. Are we comparing like with like? Things such as Scottish Water and ScotRail are in the public sector in Scotland, but the equivalents in England are not in the public sector.

I do not want to labour the point, but it seems to me that, whatever the Scottish Government did, we were going to have to face a similar problem. We cannot underspend the budget, can we? Some people have suggested that, if we had underspent last year, we could have saved the money up, but we are not really allowed to do that.

The ScotWind money does not count as part of the Scotland reserve.

You used the phrase “baked in”. Are other parts of the budget not baked in? I presume that a one-off payment could be given to somebody, but it would have to be taken away the following year.

To follow on the convener’s point, you are saying that the money for the children’s commissioner has not been diverted from elsewhere, but it does mean that the Parliament’s, the Government’s and Scotland’s budget is reduced by that £1 million or £2 million. Inevitably, there will be less money for other things. You might argue that that money would be better used for a commissioner, but would you at least accept that it would not be available for other things?