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The permanent secretary gave evidence to the committee on 16 May. He told us that it was not clear to him what the status of the resource spending review was within Government. At that time, the new First Minister had not given him any kind of direction. Do you understand what the current status of the resource spending review is?

To be clear, minister, I am in favour of locally based regional economic development, but there must be transparency and criteria must be applied. Your Government has two very different policies—one involves the criteria that you have set out today while the other completely lacks any criteria or process.

I do not want to labour the point any further, but it would be helpful if the minister and his colleagues could set out, in writing, the rationale for the distinctly different approaches to the two different policies. I would welcome that, and it would be useful in helping us to assess the general impact of the policies.

That is a fair point. The permanent secretary raised the issue of capacity and the ability of the civil service to be able to deliver plans. For instance, within the first two years of a Labour government, Labour is committed to building towards £28 billion of investments in green technology across the UK. We have to be in a position as a country to develop those plans. Do you have concerns about our capacity as a country to meet the aspiration of a new government to make those investments?

It is a significant area of public investment. Who would you expect to be doing that analysis? If increased productivity is one of the aims of the Government’s investment of taxpayers’ money in that area, we should be seeing those numbers.

The essence of the Scottish Property Federation’s submission is a concern about whether the plans can be delivered, and you mention the timeframe. How robust does the evaluation of applications have to be in order to make sure that we can deliver them? Do we need a robust process to evaluate the plans that are put forward?

I will stay with that area for a couple of minutes, if that is okay, convener. It is a subject of significant political debate, so the panel will understand why we are particularly interested in it. Given the level of volatility—from the sounds of things, that is partly tied to how few of such people there are and to small variations—how much confidence should we as a Parliament and the committee have in your work and predictions? Do Government predictions about the contribution of the top rate of tax to cover the deficit come with a strong health warning?

It would be useful if, as you do more of that analysis, you could apply a time series to it as well. It would be interesting to see, for example, whether there is a spike in awards versus applications against a particular timeframe. Some anecdotal evidence that I have heard suggests that part of the issue about delays in awards might be driving an increase in awards. It would be useful for the committee to have a way of understanding that, given how significant the area is in terms of spend.

In essence, this is about spending public money; that is what we are involved in here. Do you have confidence in the evaluation process for those bids?

Excellent.

My last question concerns modelling around productivity and childcare. In recent years, the country has invested a significant amount in the uplift in childcare to 1,140 hours. What can you tell us about the relationship between that investment and the productivity of the economy?

The Fraser of Allander Institute has told the committee that it could take up to a decade to provide sound modelling of behaviour effects. Does that sound realistic? You have said that having more data points is a good thing.