Chamber and committees

I will jump to a completely different area. I take on board what you said earlier about neither of you being an energy policy expert, but are either of you aware of any work being done on the impact of windfall tax loopholes? I think that Shell was the company that most recently reported that it has managed to avoid paying any windfall tax. That was as a result of its North Sea exploration activities giving it sufficient relief from the tax. Are you aware of any work being done to identify whether that loophole creates an incentive for companies to pursue exploration that they had not planned before the introduction of the windfall tax?

If the decision is made at a later point to include children’s services, that will presumably entail a calculation of how much of what local authorities currently spend on children’s services will be moved to the new delivery bodies. Given what I just said about the evidence on the high level of integration in some authorities between children’s care services and the other services that they provide to children, how will you make that calculation of what to take from what is currently in the local government general revenue grant?

I am sure that local government will welcome that statement, but I am interested in the process by which that will be achieved. At the heart of my question is the issue of how complicated the process will be, given how well integrated children’s services are in some places, which means that it will be very difficult to disaggregate them. I am interested in what process you will follow to make that calculation and to ensure that the change is cost neutral.

I am happy to finish at that point, convener.

I accept what the minister has said on the current state of play being a postcode lottery across local authorities in relation to the services that are provided to children. A lot of the evidence that we have taken in recent weeks, particularly from local authorities, made the point that, especially in the areas where children’s services are performing well, they are extremely well integrated with the other services that local authorities provide to children, particularly education.

Surely, centralising children’s care services to the new bodies would be a step backwards in relation to our attempts to create a consistent network of support for each individual young person from all the various places from which they might need that, whether it is an education setting, a care setting or something else.

Minister, I am interested to have a bit of clarity on which of the budget revisions are presumed to be one-offs due to underspends or unforeseen circumstances and which have arisen, as in the NZET portfolio, because of lower than expected demand. Which areas of lower demand are expected to reoccur such that the new figure after the budget revision will be baselined into next year’s budget instead of a return to the baseline figure that was in the budget at the start of this year?

I recognise that the NZET reductions are not in your portfolio so you might not be able to go into the specifics. However, given that they are some of the more substantial reductions, what effect does the Government expect them to have on hitting our NZET targets for emission reductions, nature restoration and so on and, separately, our child poverty targets as they relate to home energy efficiency?

I have a question that relates to the point about whether the savings will recur—that is, whether the baseline now includes them, rather than being the figure that we started the financial year with. Where the savings are being made in order to deliver what is required for public sector pay, we can presume that public sector pay increases are a recurring cost and not a one-off for this year. We will therefore need to find that money from somewhere in future years, although it will not necessarily need to come from the specific areas that it came from this year.

What instructions have been issued to ministers and civil service directors about evaluating the impact of those savings and whether it will be sensible to baseline the new figure in from next year because the potential negative consequences are manageable in some way?

My first question is primarily for Tony Buchanan, but I would be interested in hearing the other panellists’ thoughts on it. Do you feel from the bill and its financial memorandum that the costs of the potential transfer of children’s services have been made clear?

Just for clarity, do you believe that further costings should come before Parliament completes this particular legislative process, or could they come through the independent review?