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Could that figure have been higher at the start of the year? For example, if I was to say that we should spend another £50 million on child poverty, I would have to say where that money was going to come from. At any time, could I just say that that £620 million could be made into £670 million? Is there a flexibility for that to go up, just like the other forecasts?

In three years’ time, when it goes up by another 10 per cent, will that be around revaluation time, or might there be something else happening?

I struggle to see where the head count efficiencies—let us not call them reductions—will come from, given that they are not going to come from the NHS and you have already said that ELC expansion will continue, so there are new nursery teachers that we cannot get rid of suddenly. Where is the axe going to fall, cabinet secretary?

Yes, you are not dictating the figures in terms of head count, but you are holding the purse strings in relation to the amount to be spent on pay. That means that you are really dictating head count in all areas, are you not?

Are they on board with a reduction in their budget? That would be unusual for any organisation.

That ties into another issue. In the medium-term financial strategy, there is little mention of the national performance framework. Is that truly embedded right through this document?

You mentioned tackling child poverty, but what about preventing it? That is difficult when you have cuts to the local government budget, cuts to the universities budget and cuts to the enterprise budget. Surely those are the areas where we should be investing in order to prevent child poverty, as opposed to trying to tackle it.

Okay. Thanks, convener.

I guess so, but it still worries me that, for example, money comes out of that £620 million—the ScotWind money, for example—and, magically, other things appear that make that figure still achievable. That has happened once already, to do with Covid recovery money, and now we have it with ScotWind. I will ask the cabinet secretary about that.

My other question is about non-domestic rates. In the table, the tax take from that goes up from £2.7 billion to £3.3 billion next year. Some of that will be because Covid relief funding came through for retail, hospitality and leisure, but it is still a 20 per cent increase. Was there any narrative on why it would increase by so much? It also increases by 9.8 per cent between 2025-26 and 2026-27. Do you have any detail on that?

It is not really growth, because we can see that the growth is quite flat. Businesses will pay more because of inflation, which affects the forecast.