Chamber and committees

There is a UK policy and a Scottish policy, but you are assuming that both of them will carry on much as they are.

I certainly find it helpful to have had the issue laid out in that way.

This is my final question. We have looked at the split of the £1,092 billion. Would I be right in saying that the split will be changing a bit? At the moment, the Scottish child payment is about half the spend, but that will not be the case in future. Will you explain why that is the case?

I am looking at the overall picture of the additional spend of £1.092 billion that we have to find. I think that I am right in saying that roughly half of that is the Scottish child payment, which is completely ours because they do not have that in the UK, and that another big chunk is the extra money for ADP. Is that correct? Are there other factors in there as well?

So, they are kind of rolled into the Barnett formula.

As you said in answer to previous questions, you are assuming that there will be no change in policy and that both the UK and Scotland will carry on with their current policies. I presume that our figures could be affected by either of those changing. If the UK Government changes its policy, we will have more—is that right?

It is often said that, for both the UK Government and the Scottish Government, this is a demand-led area and that we cannot control it very much.

I will continue the questions on inflation. I am also on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, so I realise that you might have answered this question before. Professor Roy, in your opening remarks, you said that the cash increase for the whole Scottish budget was 2.6 per cent and that that was a real-terms increase of 0.9 per cent. The difference is 1.7 per cent, so can you explain that figure of 1.7 per cent? We are putting benefits up by 6.7 per cent; can you confirm whether Westminster is doing the same?

The Colleges Scotland paper talks about “repurposing existing resources”. Can you tell us what that means? Does that mean cutting funding for the universities and for richer universities especially?

Thank you.

Sorry to interrupt you. Does that mean that if the SFC was overoptimistic, by mistake or whatever, that would lead to a very negative reconciliation?