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David, do you want to come in?

It has been a very useful evidence session. We have come to the end of it, you will be glad to know. It is helpful to hear the perspective of COSLA.

I think that Stephanie Callaghan has a supplementary question.

We will get into some of those details now.

Katie, do you want to come in on that?

Under agenda item 2, the committee will take evidence from two panels of witnesses on the Scottish Government’s 2024-25 budget. For our first panel, we are joined online by Councillor Katie Hagmann, resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and we are joined in the room by Mirren Kelly, chief officer for local government finance at COSLA; and David Robertson, finance lead at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers and chief executive of Scottish Borders Council. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.

We will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate as much to the clerks. Councillor Hagmann, as you are participating virtually, you can do that by typing R in the chat function.

I will direct my first question to Councillor Hagmann initially. The Deputy First Minister told the Parliament that the 2024-25 revenue settlement represents a 5 per cent real-terms increase on last year’s budget. However, COSLA has stated that the settlement is actually a £62.7 million reduction over the year. The committee is interested in understanding how COSLA arrived at that figure and why it appears to be so different from the Scottish Government’s interpretation. At a meeting last year, we heard from the directors of finance that the provisional 2024-25 budget allocation should be compared against the final budget figures for 2023-24.

Thanks very much. That experience at local authority level is why you ask such good questions.

I just want to note that we had quite a lot of food metaphors this morning, so we have had a cake and apples while we have been busy with all those numbers. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. [Interruption.] I have just been reminded that we also had pizza—I forgot about that one.

I briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses.

On our second panel, we are joined by Joe FitzPatrick, the Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning, and, from the Scottish Government, by Ian Storrie, who is the head of local government finance, and David Cowan, who is the head of regeneration and place.

I welcome you all to the meeting and invite Mr FitzPatrick to make a short opening statement.

Do you have anything to add, David?

Thank you for coming along to give evidence, minister. I thank Ian Storrie, too; it was helpful to get the background and to hear about the process involved in the fiscal framework and the complexity that you have come up against over the months in which you have tried to develop it. There is a sense that, this time next year, we will—we hope—be in a different position.

Given that, at the start of the meeting, we agreed to take the next two items in private, I now close the public part of the meeting.

Okay. David Robertson, do you have anything to add?