Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, cabinet secretaries. I apologise that I cannot be with you in the committee room.

I want to expand a little on the issues relating to the fiscal framework that Kate Forbes mentioned. You talked about the vagaries of Government forecasting. The Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast the cost of interest on Government borrowing as £87 billion. This morning, it has said that the cost will be more than £100 billion. That highlights the vagaries in trying to forecast. An extra £13 billion has literally just been added on.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the restrictions under the fiscal framework. You talked about increased borrowing powers and mentioned a figure of about £300 million. Does the Scottish Government have an estimated figure that would give us that flexibility, particularly on demand-led spend, as you have said?

I also want to ask about the impact of spillover issues. I do not know whether you want to tackle those two issues together. I have one other question, but those are my main two on the fiscal framework.

Good morning, cabinet secretary and minister. I apologise that I cannot be with you in the committee room this morning.

A few weeks ago, three or four of us from the committee met people with lived experience. That was a very worthwhile exercise. One chap mentioned the financial problems that he had got himself into. He went to his general practitioner and was told about social prescribing. He said that that referral literally saved his life. What are your views on the role of social prescribing in relation to accessing debt advice? That is one example; I am sure that there are many others.

We can see that more fiscal flexibility would help both the cabinet secretary and the committee.

Thank you.

Last week, I hosted a parliamentary reception with the Scottish Mental Health Partnership. It talked about the refresh of the mental health and wellbeing strategy and mentioned that debt plays an ever-increasing part in people coming to it with mental health issues. How can we ensure that debt and mental health is included in the refresh of the mental health and wellbeing strategy, and can we apply any metrics on how effective it has been?

One major expenditure is energy costs. Some local authorities will hedge their energy costs for a period of time, so they will know the impact. One of the main reasons for the rise in inflation is energy costs. Have you had any feedback from directors of finance in that regard? Obviously, energy costs were forecast to go up but not by as much as they have, and we have another rise coming in October.

As the convener of the cross-party group on wellbeing economy, I totally agree. Thank you for your answers—they are much appreciated.

The overview report mentions the levels of change in funding between 2011 and 2021. There have been big increases for pre-school, home care, looked-after children and primary schools, but there have been decreases for libraries, street cleaning and parks, among other things. Have you done any assessment of the impact of those reductions? The financial overview report states that councils need to accelerate

“progress with transformation programmes that have stalled”.

Will you bring that into the answer and say where you see local authorities in that regard?

Yes. You mentioned benchmarking. The key thing for me is to look at outcome-based performance indicators. We can look at a service and see that the budget has been increased or reduced, but the key thing for the committee is to look at the outcomes. As you said, part of that is customer satisfaction. We need to measure the specific outcomes and the impact on outcomes, rather than any budget increase or decrease. That is a key point for the committee to look at.

That is helpful.

My final point follows on from the point that Carol Calder made. One of the most important things as we recover from the pandemic is economic recovery. Funding for economic development and planning departments is key as part of that recovery. Do you have any thoughts on funding of those services and do you see that as part of the business recovery from Covid?

Again, I ask Bill Moyes to say who is the best person to answer that.