Chamber and committees

I did not pull that comment directly off your papers. It is from page 17 of our own paper; I do not know where it comes in yours, but in ours, it comes in a list of

“Projects to be funded in 2024-25”.

The final one in that list is “other projects”, with a figure of £415,000.

I have recently joined the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. It is absolutely delighted about the spending increase on social security. The jump from £5 billion to £6 billion is quite an increase compared with the position in other parts of the budget. Do you have any concern that spend in that area is getting a little bit out of control?

I will move on to another topic. I have had a fair bit of interaction with the hospitality sector recently, and it has been going on and on about how it wanted the kind of relief that was given in England. I think that England made a mistake in providing relief across the board, because it seems to me that some hospitality businesses are doing incredibly well.

I agree with your principle, as I understand it, of targeting some of the NDR relief at a specific sector. You have chosen to target the islands. Will you explain why that is your focus? Are there any other sectors that also need the relief?

I will finish with a more general question. A number of suggestions have been made about how national outcomes and the national performance framework have informed the budget. Were those elements taken as the starting point for the budget or did they come in at the end? Was the tax advisory group part of forming the budget?

I will pick up on one or two points that have been touched on already. Concerning the housing budget and the number of affordable houses to be built, it has been suggested that there might be more private investment coming in. Would that include giving lower grants? Obviously, the Government money goes into housing association grants, mainly. Are you thinking of reducing the level of grants so that there is more borrowing?

Part of that, probably, is the embedding of sustainable development.

I will not pursue that issue.

I assume that you are always looking at ways of saving money, doing things more efficiently and that kind of thing; indeed, efficiency has already been mentioned. I do not know how often the MSPs’ offices are cleaned, but I get the impression that someone goes into all the offices every night. I do not think that that is necessary. My office is fairly tidy, I think—indeed, people do not tidy it; they just clean it—but it appears that my desk gets rearranged every night. I wonder whether something like that could be reduced to, say, once a week.

My final question is about the Parliament shop, which has not been mentioned so far. It occurred to me that there is a bit of a challenge in that respect, given that members of the public who might want to buy something from the shop have to come through the whole security system in order to get to it. Have you thought about making some of the products available in another shop on, for example, the Royal Mile, perhaps on a franchise basis, so that we could boost sales and maybe make a bit more profit from the shop?

Lots of items on sale in the shop are attractive, such as the Parliament-branded chocolate, scarves and ties, which are presumably not available anywhere else, except online.

Is that right?