Chamber and committees

I appreciate that. I do not want you to pre-empt the statement.

Thank you. Colleagues, I am aware that a couple of members need to leave before 12 o’clock. I am tempted to move our theme on NHS estate and sustainability forward to allow members to do that. I will go to Gillian Mackay first and then Tess White. I will then revert to our schedule.

Thank you. I did not mean to put you in an awkward position by asking for the figures—I know that you cannot give those until you make the statement. However, it is helpful to mention yesterday’s announcement. It would be strange if we had not mentioned the additional funding that is coming forth to deal with winter pressures.

I want to take you back to the emergency budget review. Some tough decisions had to be made in order to fund the pay offer that has been made to NHS staff. I believe that the offer is, on average, 7.5 per cent, which is a great deal higher than other offers in the United Kingdom. Questions have to be asked about that. You had to take funding from certain other areas to fund that offer. I want to know how those decisions were made, so maybe you can take me through that. How has the Scottish Government been able to make that increased offer to Scottish NHS staff when such an offer has not been made in the rest of the UK? How can we afford it?

Emma Harper wants to come in.

Thank you for your honesty.

Sandesh has a question on financial sustainability as well.

The next item on our agenda is an oral evidence session on the Scottish budget for 2023-24. We will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf. I welcome and wish happy new year to the cabinet secretary, who is joined by Richard McCallum, director of health finance and governance at the Scottish Government.

We obviously want to talk about the budget, but it would be remiss of me not to mention yesterday’s announcement of additional funding for national health service boards around the country to deal with the situation that we have seen over the past few weeks. I would like some clarity on the extra funding that is being provided. Will you take me through that? What extra funding is being provided and how will it be deployed?

Thank you. I will now hand over to Carol Mochan, who wants to ask questions about health and social care pay.

That seems to be all our questions. I thank the cabinet secretary and Richard McCallum for their time. We will see the cabinet secretary again next week, when we will be looking at the evidence of three public petitions that have been passed to us to consider. The cabinet secretary will also provide evidence on an affirmative instrument.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. Thank you.

We will move on to questions from Tess White, who is joining us remotely.