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Good morning. I would like to pick up on that last point. While you were talking earlier, I had a quick look at the Scottish Government spreadsheet to find out the number of CPOs. I picked an arbitrary year—2021—and found 10 CPOs, of which four were retail units of the type that was described by Colin Smyth earlier, which is quite a low number. The other six seemed to be to do with road building. It would be useful for the committee to understand more about the number, the rationale, the process and so on, in general terms.

Before I move on to my main area of questioning, I want to address a point that Fiona Hyslop raised earlier. I would like to better understand why we cannot get registration of the beneficial owner or the legal owner of a property at the point of purchase, and why we cannot have a process that is similar to the one that we have implemented with regard to the register of persons holding controlled interests in land, given that it is such a big issue. Again, it might be that you are unable to answer that just now, but the feedback that we have heard during the inquiry has consistently raised that as an issue. Do you have any comments on that, before I move on to my main area?

That would be helpful—thank you.

I appreciate that that was a hard question to ask you. I revisited the culture strategy that Fiona Hyslop did, which is an excellent piece of work, but we need to get culture at the heart of all the Scottish Government’s different arms and activities, because of the importance of place.

I heard an interesting comment from Alistair Mackie, who is the chief executive of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He said that any public moneys that are given should be seen not as subsidy but as seed capital, because of the gross value added that they bring. That is an effective way of looking at the matter.

I am happy for you to come back to the committee, because I appreciate that that was a hard question. I am interested in what interventions you could make in relation to town centres that use the concept of culture being at the heart of place building, growth and all the touch points that we have covered.

Yes. I would like you to think about how we would do that, if we wanted to do it. It is clearly an issue, although I fully accept the complexity around it.

I want to cover our shared interest in culture at the heart of place in relation to town centres. We have heard evidence during the inquiry that culture must be at the table, and we have heard discussions about the extent to which culture can be involved in business improvement districts and so on. We have even heard commentary that bodies such as Creative Scotland should be made statutory consultees. Do you see culture as being at the heart of town centres? What is the Government’s thinking on how it might be able to assist that to be the case as we come out of the pandemic and deal with all the issues that we have covered today?

I totally agree with you about key stakeholders being at the table.

That takes us back to a point that Maggie Chapman made and on which you picked up, minister, about community entrepreneurialism. Arguably, musicians and artists are entrepreneurs. Perhaps we need to start to think about them in that way.

I will not press you for an answer, but I am interested in whether the Scottish Government has considered or is considering ideas that would practically support people who are in culture when we think of it as being at the heart of place. I refer, for example, to targeted rates relief, to go back to some of the points that John Mason made. Rather than thinking about it as a broad brush across the top—culture is good and it contributes to society—are we thinking of it as being at the heart of town centre regeneration and enablement, because it brings in many other things and supports many other types of business as well?

Thank you for giving such a clear illustration. I think that you are making the point that nobody would choose to start from where we are, as it is an inefficient way to manage the finances.

That leads me on to another issue that I found interesting when I read the spending review document. We are talking about people’s understanding of what is actually going on. I was attracted by the economies of scale that you are looking at getting through, for example, shared services, which to me is an absolutely obvious example of where we could derive value. You mentioned other areas to look at, such as grant management, procurement and the 129 or so public bodies.

That brings me to the point about the public’s understanding. I appreciate that it will be useful to have a conversation with councils about whether we might be able to do this, but I foresee difficulties in that people will not necessarily want a shared service, because they will see that as a loss of control. I agree with your approach of having a conversation, but what further challenges do you foresee? In principle, the approach is useful and good but, given the discussion that we have just had, I foresee that it will immediately throw up comments such as, “Oh, you want to get rid of this?”, even though we are all aware of the huge fiscal constraints.

Do you have any more thoughts on how you will approach that and the timescales involved? My experience is that, even if you get agreement, it always takes longer than you think, it is always more expensive than you think, and the return on investment is never quite what you think, either.

I was going to raise similar questions and ask how confident you are—accepting what Professor Breedon said about everyone else making the same prediction—that inflation will peak at 8.7 per cent in the last quarter of this year. When you read more detail about some of the uncertainties that you point out on the supply side—which we have much less understanding about—realistically, how confident are you? We know that the prediction will probably be wrong, which I fully accept because all these things can be wrong, and Andrew Bailey recently conceded that the fiscal levers that he has to exert control over CPI inflation are fairly limited. It is always uncertain, but how uncertain is it? If I asked you to place a wager of, say, £500 of your own money, how much of that money would you risk? Perhaps that is a better way of putting it.

It is there. Okay.

Good morning. I am sure that, for people who are watching the committee—I always say that, and everyone laughs and says, “No one ever watches this committee”—the discussion about whether or not there is a black hole is an important, pivotal point, because it is actually predicated on debt. You make the important point that whether or not there is a black hole comes down to actuals, not forecasts. Perhaps the media have tended to use that in a very florid way.

Dr Verne Atrill discovered that

“there is a precise point, a mathematical singularity, which we can measure as the Ratio of GDP/Total Debt, at which an economy stops expanding and begins to contract instead.”

On that point, I simply note that the UK Government is hugely in debt.

That leads me to the fiscal framework, and I want to get some reflections from you. We know that any Government, including the UK Government, will have frequent errors across a wide range of forecasts. The UK Government—unlike the Scottish Government—does not suffer any penalty as such for the forecast that, for example, it will have to repay £817 million in 2024-25. Of course, the UK Government does not then have to repay that in a single year’s cycle; it can repay it over several years and—to go back to my earlier point—it can borrow.

I, too, applaud the fact that the resource spending review has been done; it is a worthwhile exercise. However, it really brings into sharp focus the issues with the fiscal framework, utterly and fundamentally, with regard to what you are being expected to do within limitations that other normal Governments would not have. Therefore, perhaps the discussion is really about that. I would like some further reflections from you on that issue before I move on.

Okay. I will collect £500 from all four of you at the end of the session.

I am not clear about how and where you baked the impact of Brexit into all your forecasts. I assume that you have reflected all the way through your forecasts the hangover from the pandemic and the supply issues that we have talked about, which have reverberated around the world, but I was slightly surprised that there was no mention of Brexit in your report, given that we now know that the impacts are only starting to be felt. I appreciate that it is complex to pin Brexit on one thing, because it is a very fragmented picture, but I was surprised that there was no mention of it. How and where have you baked it into all the numbers?