Seòmar agus comataidhean

How many ministerial directions have you had regarding the budget process?

No, I am afraid that it is not, Mr Marks. I am talking about the revised costings in the original financial memorandum, not the revised proposals.

We will wait and see.

When you were here last year, I asked you about the status of the resource spending review, the very large growth in the size of the civil service over recent years and the previous commitment of the then finance secretary to reduce the size of the civil service to pre-Covid levels. That finance secretary has now returned to the Government as Deputy First Minister. You were unable to tell us the status of the resource spending review at your appearance last year. Is that back on the table? Are we looking at that trajectory again?

The resource analysis that was done, at significant public expense, does not really inform that trajectory; it is just about where the ministerial plans are for each individual area.

Have they agreed to take those practices on board?

You are reported as having written to the then First Minister in August last year saying that there were “affordability risks associated” with his programme for government. A series of meetings took place about the commitments that the then First Minister had set out, which were clearly unaffordable to the country, but you received only one ministerial direction. We are moving towards a £1.9 billion gap between proposed policies and the money that is available. Should we have confidence that you are running this process properly with regard to the affordability of government?

I recognise that the problem is complex. I am talking about the cost and the difference between the two figures—instead of the cost being £1.2 billion over five years, it would have been £3.9 billion over 10 years, and the committee prevented the public purse from being exposed to that. That is a dramatic variance. It must worry you, as the head of the civil service, that your organisation produced those figures and then had to come back to tell us that they were egregiously wrong.

Dr Elliott, do you have any thoughts on that fine difference?

I would appreciate it if you could do that.

I have a final question. In your conversations with the new First Minister, has he agreed not to delete WhatsApp messages?

To date, he has given no assurance to you that he will change his behaviour from the way in which we has acted previously.