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Miles Briggs and I sit on the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee as well, so we could take that point back to it.

That is really heartening, because the matter has been discussed in the committee. I will move on, but we will probably raise that again.

My next question is about “The Outcome of the Targeted Review of the Capital Spending Review—Updated Spending Allocations for 2023-24 to 2025-26”, which was published in May 2022. It mentions

“a lower than expected capital settlement from the UK Government”,

which represented a reduction of around £750 million. Will that have implications for the affordable housing budget in the future? If it will, how will spending be prioritised, in that regard?

That would be helpful.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I will touch a little on the affordable housing supply statistics, which showed a slight decline in the number of approvals from quarter 1 in 2021 to quarter 1 in 2022. What are your thoughts on there being any specific reasons for that? In addition, you touched on trying to reach the target of building 110,000 homes. Will that impact on the budget?

It was about the budget.

I put to Sara Cowan the same points around the principles, impact analysis and any specific proposals, particularly with regard to how they impact on women.

I want to ask about taxation, which you have touched on, and fiscal flexibility, which I raised with the previous panel. A rise of 1p in income tax would bring in about £450 million. Even if we increased it by the 3p by which we are allowed to increase it, that would still not meet the £1.7 billion inflationary impact that we face this year, so it is important that we have fiscal flexibility. A key lever is additional borrowing powers. Another is the ability to raise allowances, which could be moved from the UK Government to the Scottish Government. If we had the ability to raise the personal allowance, we could raise it from £12,000 to £15,000, £16,000 or £17,000 and take a lot of people out of taxation altogether.

Do you support more fiscal flexibility? What are your views on those two issues: allowances and additional borrowing? I would appreciate brief answers.

I will pick up one point. You mentioned the genuine limitations of the devolved settlement. A prime example that you gave was HMRC. We have no powers in Scotland to deal with tax evasion, which costs us—as you suggested—£3 billion to £7 billion.

We have heard about discussions that the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the cabinet secretary, Kate Forbes, are having about flexibility and the fiscal framework. One point that we have debated and argued for is the ability to borrow more within that fiscal framework. I know that discussions are on-going at the moment. I am not sure whether you are aware of them.

Is there anything in relation to the fiscal framework, or around giving flexibility to the Scottish Parliament within the devolved settlement, that you think would be useful, specifically around the approach in relation to the social security budget?

My question is about tax policy more generally. Dr Hosie, you touched on the importance of tax policy before, and said that

“the Scottish Government’s focus would be more effectively spent on seeking to raise revenue than to believe the funding gap can be closed through efficiency.”

I would like to touch on that. We face a cut of almost £1.7 billion in the coming budget, because of inflation, which we have no control over, so raising taxation revenue is important. Sara Cowan, you also mentioned the impact of tax, and have stated that

“there is a need to embed human rights and equality as an overarching priority for Scotland’s public spending and revenue raising decisions.”

I am keen to touch on specific issues and also about the issues for women, which you have mentioned, but my questions, which I will roll into one are these: what principles should underline tax policy, what kind of impact analysis would you expect to accompany that tax policy and are there are any specific proposals that you would like to see in relation to tax in the 2023-24 budget?

Thank you for being brief.