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I think that Craig Hoy was inviting me to ask a question on bus subsidy earlier. The only thing that I would say is to reassure him that public transport subsidy will work much better once we have taken the system back from the notoriously inefficient private sector. I hope that he is looking forward to that.

I want to pick up on the comments that the convener made about the reduction in the climate and energy portfolio. It is a significant reduction, minister, and I understand the arguments that you have made about activity in offshore wind being a major element that is not necessarily within the Government’s control. However, how, and why, was the decision made to take that funding out of the climate and energy portfolio instead of redeploying it in another part of the portfolio?

I am thinking, for example, of the heat in buildings programme. The Government has scrapped the bill on that, but the programme is still there and, as far as I am aware, the commitment made by the Government at the start of the session to spend £1.8 billion on the programme over the parliamentary session is still there, too. At the end of 2025, £1.67 billion had been allocated, which is pretty close, but less than half of the £1.8 billion had actually been spent by the end of last year. Did the climate and energy portfolio at least make a bid within Government for the money that is not going to be spent as a result of changes in the offshore wind sector to be redeployed in other parts of the climate portfolio that are underperforming so badly?

I am slightly surprised that you are not able to tell us why the decision was made to take that funding out of the portfolio instead of redeploying it within the portfolio, given that it is one of the changes that you are making. If you can come back to us with an explanation and say what alternative uses within the portfolio were at least considered, that will be helpful.

Good morning. I only recently rejoined the committee, so I have not spent a huge amount of time on it in the current session, when its remit has included public administration. I was previously on the Finance and Constitution Committee, and I agree that the current remit is an improvement. However, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, is there a danger of the public administration framing of the committee’s remit feeling a bit like the Department of Administrative Affairs that the writers of “Yes Minister” created so that their principal character could have a role in pretty much any issue that was happening? Is there a danger of there being almost a blurring of the distinction between this committee’s remit and the subject committees’ remits, particularly if we are talking about potentially challenging public service reform proposals and looking through a principally finance lens at stakeholders and organisations that are experts in their particular remits and subject areas? Is there a danger of conflicts between portfolio remits and the overarching concept of public administration, or of stepping on toes?

I was wondering whether we need to consider what we are specifically saying to the next session of Parliament—not just because it follows this one, but because of the characteristics that we expect it to have. Dr Elliott talked about the forces that are undermining democratic institutions elsewhere, and I would like to share the hope that that will not happen here, but, if the polls are right, there will be a cohort from that part of the political spectrum.

Given the number of MSPs who are not seeking re-election, the expectation is that about half of those who will be elected to Parliament will be new. That means that we will have a Parliament that is the least experienced since 1999. Political parties could put more experienced members on a committee dealing with public administration, but, if we are trying to improve scrutiny more generally across the Parliament, how should we advise the next committee to inculcate that culture when the Parliament as a whole is relatively inexperienced? I am thinking about some of the councils down south, where Reform has won control. They said that they had expected to find lots of waste and frivolous spending, but there was none of that. Those are the kind of false expectations that could arise.

I acknowledge that we are very far from a perfect world. The underperformance of climate policy over the past few years, particularly on the heat in buildings programme, but also on other aspects, has been pretty stark.

Would anyone like to comment on the implicit meanings that can be drawn from the phrase “public service reform”? There are a great many people working in public services who know that the way that their jobs are delivered needs to change—that things are not ideal and not everything that they could be. However, there are times when the phrase “public service reform” is received as code for cuts or for a retreat of the state from people’s lives, which would be the opposite of what the Government says is its intention, which is to better deliver for people.

Do the witnesses feel that those who are most expert in delivering public services—the workforce that is doing it right now—have the opportunity to properly shape the concept of public service reform, in order to ensure that it enables them to do their jobs better and provide better public services, rather than its becoming a proxy for the retreat of the state from people’s lives?

Sometimes it is the other way around.

Professor Heald, could you go beyond purely the issue of council tax and address the issue of local government finances more generally? I am not talking simply about how local authorities raise money and whether we have a modern, efficient and fair system for that. We talk about the sustainability of the Scottish Government’s budget, but we are not having the same conversation about the sustainability of local services across Scotland. We are leaving that to councillors who have been given a legal duty that, as MSPs, we do not have—they all have to vote for a balanced budget, and we are making it increasingly impossible for them to produce balanced budgets.

I will finish by saying that the consultation proposed by the Government, which will be strengthened by the Government’s amendments, seems entirely adequate to hear from the industry or its lobbyists.

I simply think that subjecting the fine detail of regulations on an individual levy such as this to the level of parliamentary scrutiny that is required for major documents setting out long-term and broad policy direction from the Government seems unrealistic. If we expected every minor regulation to be subject to that level of scrutiny, with three days of parliamentary business a week, we would not get through half of what we need to across the entire session of Parliament.

On whether such a target can be met, I come back to the point that some factors are within Government control and others are outwith Government control. That does not change the fact that a target is helpful. However, I do not think it possible, in the real world, to legislatively hardwire, as Mark Griffin suggests, the outcome as opposed to the action.

Finally, on the proposed assessment against the framework for tax, the tax framework is a statement of the policy of the Government of the day, and I am not aware of any other legislation on tax or levies that requires a statutory assessment of that kind; it seems out of kilter with the more general approach.