Chamber and committees

It is reassuring that the error has been picked up, but it raises the wider question whether the UK Government is making more errors that we do not know about.

That is right. I fully accept that design will help. However, some people have the attitude that they will drop litter in the street, because that is what guys do; they will not pick up their dog poo, because macho men do not do that; and they will not recycle, because that is not macho. Sadly, good design is not going to tackle that attitude. Somebody needs to go to the doors.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay—that has clarified that.

Just to follow up on the convener’s point about reserves, I fully agree that we should use reserves and not leave money sitting. Will doing that put more pressure on future budgets, because it will be something that we cannot do again?

If we take Creative Scotland and Forestry and Land Scotland as examples, they are able to top up their budget from reserves at the moment. In future, however, you would either have to trim their budget or find more money from elsewhere to put back in.

The Scotland reserve, at the start of 2022-23, was approximately £699 million. All of that was then put into the budget but, at the end of the year, there was still £244 million put back into the reserve. Does it make any difference if we take everything out of the reserve and put some back in or if we instead take out just the net amount at the end of the year? Are those simply just different ways of doing things?

Okay, that is fair enough. The point has been made that the Ukraine resettlement costs have been higher in the current year than we had perhaps anticipated. Are those costs completely open-ended? In other words, is there still uncertainty?

As people know, I am a committee substitute, so I am not quite as familiar with some of the issues as colleagues are. Coming in from the outside, my feeling was that the idea of a just transition fund should be quite clear cut and in a space that nothing else is in. However, I have heard this morning about things such as planting trees or getting an electric vehicle in order to get money quickly and spend it. I would have thought that both of those things could have happened elsewhere and that a just transition fund was not needed to make them happen. Maybe I am being slightly cynical, but is it simply about more money for things that we are already trying to do, or is there a specific space for that fund?

Perhaps the process could be led by the three local authorities.

Although you are not actually elected, are you?