Chamber and committees

I need to refer members to my entry in the register of interests. I want to ask a little bit more about wages and salaries, because that issue is part of your public sector reform agenda and you have mentioned it a couple of times this morning already. Economists often look at wages and salaries as a percentage of overall gross domestic product in the economy as a whole. Have you looked at wages and salaries as a percentage of public expenditure in Scotland over, say, the past decade? Is the percentage going up or down, or is it about the same? If you are not able to supply that information immediately, it would be of great interest if you could follow that up.

I conclude the evidence session by thanking Fiona Diggle, Richard Robinson and the Auditor General for the time and evidence that they have given us. We agreed that it would be useful for you to follow up some issues and get back to us on them, and we would welcome receiving that information when you are able to give it to us.

We will now move into private session.

Thank you. I want to bring Liz Smith in at some point, but I will turn to Craig Hoy next and perhaps bring Liz in after that.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 29th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.

The first item on our agenda is a decision on whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we all agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

The report that you published on Covid-19 spending indicated that a very high proportion—I cannot remember the figures off the top of my head—of additional spending that was available to the Scottish Government was the result of Barnett consequentials.

Craig Hoy has a supplementary question on that.

Before we turn to Craig Hoy, who has some questions about public sector reform, I want to interrogate a little the idea that, traditionally, certain parts of Government expenditure are protected at a time when there is a retrenchment in finances. We have had briefings and statements in Parliament about the areas that the Government is prioritising, but I wonder whether you have detected, in the work that you have been doing in this area, any sense that there has been any movement or shifting of resources between one protected area and another or within a protected area—or, indeed, that the protections are being reviewed.

That is helpful.

Turning to the autumn statement, what difference do the key points that were made by the chancellor in the autumn statement make to any conclusions that you have made in the briefing that we are considering this morning?

Let us look at the Barnett consequentials element. You make the point in the briefing that, if the Scottish Government—or the Scottish Parliament—wishes to allocate additional help to alleviate the cost of living crisis, the Government will need to find it from its own resource rather than necessarily or even at all relying on Barnett consequentials. Will you perhaps elaborate on that?

Okay. Do you have any idea when the end point will be reached? Have you had any indication from the permanent secretary or any other part of the Government about where that is?