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Okay—that is fair. That meeting is obviously of significant interest to the committee.

I will pick up on a point that was made earlier about the relative competitiveness of council tax rates. It sometimes feels as though that aspect is commented on less often. For example, over the past few years in our home city of Dundee there has been a cut of 180 in the number of teachers, and the number of additional support needs teachers has dropped from 165 to 93. A cut in attainment challenge funding has resulted in 22 posts being lost, including speech therapists in nurseries and schools. Those are all significant issues. Does not having a supposedly competitive rate of council tax therefore incur real costs for some of our most vulnerable people?

I am interested in the specifics of how that would work. Between 2010 and 2022, the number of additional support needs teachers in Dundee dropped from 165 to 93—it almost halved. It is about the balance. The other week, the report from the national discussion on education said that, in essence, there is a crisis in additional support needs teaching across the country. That is one of the principal concerns of the whole education system—from children, to their parents and families, to teachers. How can we drive through the kind of change that you are talking about in relation to fiscal arrangements to ensure that we address that problem? Surely that trend cannot be allowed to continue.

I am taking that answer as a yes. It is important to have clarity, given the frank lack of clarity from the permanent secretary, whose department seems to be pursuing a particular trajectory, but who said that he had no clarity on the stated policy of the Government. It might be useful if that were stated in clear terms. Am I correct in saying that your answer is yes?

Okay—thank you.

Do you have a date for a meeting on the fiscal framework with ministers from the UK Government?

So, the “blunt tool”, as you put it, that was used by your predecessor, Kate Forbes, has been dropped.

That would be useful for the committee and for the permanent secretary and leaders of departments.

Part of the commentary recognised that there would be pay growth, which you have outlined today, and that we have to understand affordability in the other areas. On that basis, commentary about the medium-term financial strategy was that some areas are light on costings—the national care service and childcare have been mentioned by a number of colleagues. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that there is little sense of how the gap will be closed. Having read the strategy and listened to you—if I can characterise it this way—it feels a little bit like you are hoping that something will come along.

Can you say anything more specific?

Thank you for all the information that you have given so far, cabinet secretary. On 16 May, we took evidence from the permanent secretary on a range of issues regarding operation of the civil service. One issue that the committee is interested in is the status of the resource spending review and the objective of returning the public sector workforce to its pre-Covid size. The permanent secretary talked a little about progress in that area. When we asked about the status of that policy within Government, he said:

“I do not think that that has been publicly stated by the new Government.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 16 May 2023; c 36.]

Can you give us clarity on whether that approach remains the policy of the Scottish National Party Government?

I will return to the issue of the workforce, if that is okay. The resource spending review said that the Government was going to seek

“to return the”

overall

“size of the public sector workforce ... to pre-COVID ... levels”.

You are saying that you have not baked any of those figures relating to policy intent into your forecast. Is that correct?

On workforce planning, you have said in your submission that you have “around 9,400” permanently contracted full-time staff. Is that correct?