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We will address that through the workforce plans to reduce the number of directly employed staff in the civil service, but we will do that in a managed and careful way.

The fact that we have a larger public sector with better paid workers is because of an investment that we have made over a number of years. The fact that nurses are better paid in Scotland helps with the recruitment of nurses. Recruiting nurses is really difficult, and paying them less is unlikely to help with recruitment, so we think that those are good investments.

Wales has a larger public sector as well. My simple point about employer national insurance contributions is: should devolved nations be punished or lose out on funding for that because we have invested in public sector services and staff over the years? I do not think that that is a fair proposition, and I do not think that the Welsh think it is, either. That is why we proposed that the actual costs should be covered rather than our just getting a Whitehall Barnett share. We have made our position very clear on that, and we have got to the position that we have got to. The discussion and debate will continue, not least this afternoon.

We believe that investing in our public services has also avoided some of the costly industrial disputes that we have seen south of the border, which have a cost to the public purse as well. These things are choices, and the choices that we have made are the choices that we have made.

You are right to say that the Government always balances its books. That happens on a year-to-year basis, so we have to manage the pressures. There is a whole debate about the constraints on borrowing powers—we are pushing for, and want, more flexibility around the fiscal framework, beyond what we have secured, in order that we are able to manage the headwinds that would come at any Government.

The medium-term strategy gives us an opportunity to consider the fiscal outlook. Given that the UK Government will set out the fiscal outlook in June, the Office for Budget Responsibility will be able to draw from the information that it has put in the public domain, which will set the fiscal outlook for the Scottish Government on the medium-term horizon.

On the spend side, as we have talked about many times at the committee, that will require us to ensure that there is headroom for commitments, whether they are on social security or any other spending. The sustainability delivery plan, which I have said will be published alongside the MTFS, will go a bit further than the outlook in the MTFS and will bring together in one place all the pillars of work across Government, including on the workforce, social security, growing the economy and so on. Public sector reform is another key pillar. That will enable the Parliament and the committee to see how all that work will impact on the ability, over the longer term, to ensure that we have sustainable finances and that we can afford the priorities that the Government has set out, of which social security is a key one.

I hope that, from that, the committee and Parliament will be able to see that we will be making absolutely sure that we can sustain the expenditure going forward.

On the point about local government, the settlement and distribution group will decide on the distribution of the £144 million. That is how such things normally work. It is fair to say that, across the board, there will not be a percentage that each of the 32 local authorities gets. As you know from your own experience, convener, each local authority has a different configuration. For some of them, almost all of their social care services are commissioned; for others, they are entirely in-house. That will affect what the settlement and distribution group ends up doing. Ministers have no involvement in that whatsoever; it is for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the leaders of the 32 councils to agree on.

On your point about the impact on the third sector, social care services and universities, the challenges are incredibly difficult. The Scottish Government does not have the difference between the £300-odd million coming from the Treasury and the £750 million of costs that those organisations will face—and private businesses will have costs in the same way. We do not have the funding to be able to financially support the sectors: the money has gone out of the door. As I indicated at stage 1 of the budget, we have maximised the funding to our services as much as we can, and I hope that that will provide a degree of resilience.

We can help them in other ways, though. I have been clear with colleagues that we must look at non-cash ways to support the third sector. One way in which we can help the third sector is through multiyear settlements so that organisations know what their funding will be over several years. That approach can help them to plan, retain staff and work through some of those challenges in a way that single-year funding does not. We have asked all the cabinet secretaries to look for ways to do that within their portfolio areas.

There would have to be discussions about the various pressures and how we work through those priorities. The Cabinet and the First Minister will have a view on that. We have said that, if we were able to introduce the two-child limit mitigation a bit earlier in 2026, we would look at how that could be done. What we are not able to do is to introduce it next month or the month after that, for practical and financial reasons—that just could not be done.

It would not be an easy thing to do. We would have to look at the funding that is available, whether any underspends have emerged in other areas and what we would be able to do. You are right to say that there will be other pressures from other sectors with regard to resources that become available in-year and what the relative priority of those is. As a Cabinet, we will discuss that.

We want to be fair to public sector employees, and we want to progress any workforce reforms in partnership with the unions. That partnership has been really important in helping to manage change and the way that things are done, to bring stability and to avoid industrial disputes. We want to do that in partnership as far as we can.

As you pointed out, change has already taken place, with around a 39 per cent reduction in the contingent workforce. That has been very much supported by the unions. It is an expensive area of the workforce, because contractors come in with contractor rates. A massive reduction in that has led to our being able to reduce the overall figure, but we need to go further than that.

The invest to save proposition is also partly intended to help with that issue. You mentioned that voluntary severance schemes can be expensive. Some invest to save propositions will, no doubt, come forward that might be in that territory.

On your point about no compulsory redundancy, as far as I am aware, the position of public bodies has always been that they should look to do everything that they can to seek redundancies on a voluntary basis and that they could have compulsory redundancies only when there is absolutely no other option—if all other options have been explored and cannot be pursued. That has always been the case. Public bodies will obviously want to avoid that situation, but that has been an option available to them—in extremis—and that remains the case.

I will not comment on the issue of ministerial pay, but—

I have nothing to add.

Amendment 1 agreed to.

Amendments 2 to 5 moved—[Shona Robison]—and agreed to.

Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.

Section 2 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Section 3 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Section 4—Overall cash authorisations

Amendment 6 moved—[Shona Robison]—and agreed to.

Section 4, as amended, agreed to.

Sections 5 to 11 agreed to.

Long title agreed to.

Yes. I am happy to take that away.

Would you have made different choices?

The tax strategy was based on a lot of consultation with a number of organisations. That included the tax advisory group, which has a number of stakeholders, tax experts, the Fraser of Allander Institute, the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We received a wide variety of views on what the purpose of tax is. Where we got to with the tax strategy is a recognition that, first of all, we have to make sure that people understand the system. We drew on evidence from around the table and empirical evidence from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and others that looked at the behavioural impact of tax, and we made sure that we took cognisance of all of that.

However, that is not the end of the process. That work continues and we continue to gather evidence, because it is important to do so. That got us to this point.

The issue is that, if tax cuts are proposed, people have to say where spending would be reduced to accommodate them, and that has been lacking in the debate so far.

The strategy, in principle, has been quite warmly received by commentators. It is not something that the UK Government has done regarding the purpose, outlook and vision for tax.