Chamber and committees

Ms Ritchie Allan, do you think that having a council would inevitably mean an increase in the benefits that are paid out?

Another financial issue is the cost of the benefits. Lorna Glen, you and other witnesses have suggested that more people would be entitled to benefits. Have you done any work on what that might cost?

I take your point about preventative action—this could save money for employers, the state and so on. If the scenario was that the Scottish council could only do preventative work, give advice and do research and the total amount of benefits stayed static—I believe that the figure is about £78 million—would it still be worth going ahead?

Where would you suggest that the extra money should come from? Should the Scottish Government take it off teachers’ salaries?

I was impressed, I have to say, by the STUC—

Okay. I ask Mr McKenzie to respond.

We can ask future witnesses about that, unless anyone particularly wants to come in on that point.

In your written submissions, some of you have talked about the importance of research, yet only £30,000 has been put down for that annually. Linda Somerville, is that enough?

I will move on to finances. I do not know whether the witnesses heard some of the questions at the end of the previous evidence session. First, the financial memorandum gives the set-up costs as £149,000. I do not know whether any of you are IT experts, but that figure includes £50,000 for IT and website set-up. Do you think that that will be enough?

Similarly, the running costs are expected to be £372,000 per year. Paul O’Kane has already mentioned that research is less than 10 per cent of that, at £30,000, which seems quite a small amount. Do you have you any thoughts about those figures? Are they reasonable or unreasonable? Somebody said that IIAC is underresourced. Was that you, Ms Ritchie Allan?

Assuming that SEIAC is set up and there is all that unmet demand out there, including in relation to women, football injuries and all the rest of it, will the amount of benefit that we pay out therefore inevitably increase?

I get your point that there might be savings to the health service in the long run, say, but, at the moment, we are considering a budget of something like £78 million in benefits. The Scottish Government does not have any spare money that I am aware of to pay for that. We could say, “Let’s take it off the NHS, as the health service will save in the long run.” Is it worth having the new council, however, if we are still stuck with paying that £78 million?