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We have yet to look at narrowing down the details, so I do not want to be overly prescriptive. However, my worry about that goes back to the worry that I expressed earlier about creating division rather than consensus. My instinct is that we are more likely to build consensus by adding more bands to make the council tax banding system more progressive.

There is also the issue of the complexity of delivery. Any major change or completely new system would be complex and take a lot of time and resource effort. There would have to be quite a lot of advantages to doing that instead of building on the system that we have already set up. I would be more drawn towards making incremental improvements than to trying to do something that would be challenging.

Yes. The figure could be much lower than that. The technical work will give us much more information. I ask Ellen Leaver to say something about that.

First, I think that a lot of good work was carried out through the 2015 commission. The commission did not recommend any specific form of taxation to replace the council tax, but it unpacked a lot of issues. The commission expressed a predominant view that local tax should continue to include some sort of domestic property tax, with a new system that was more progressive than the council tax.

The issue then is probably still the issue now—it is about getting consensus. That is why I have been pretty up front and honest in saying that I do not think that we will be able to move forward unless we can build enough consensus, not just in relation to identifying the problem, but about what to do next. Everybody will agree that 1991 property values are out of date and that something needs to be done about that. Everybody will agree that the current council tax system is not as progressive as it should be and that it needs to be improved. The difficulty is agreeing on what should come next in terms of improvements.

I am quite optimistic that we can genuinely build some consensus around the principles that we agree on. There will be a lot that we disagree on, but there are areas that we can agree on where we could begin to make some changes. It might not be about having a big bang, massive replacement for the council tax, but I hope that we can find areas of agreement so that we can take some incremental steps to address some of the issues, such as progressivity. It remains to be seen where we will get with that but that is, in essence, what Katie Hagmann and I are keen to do.

We have made demonstrable progress on the fiscal framework ahead of the 2025-26 budget, which has been acknowledged. The way that the budget is negotiated and discussed between ourselves and local government has been transformed. I think that Katie Hagmann and I have had about 15 meetings about the budget. The process has been quite resource intensive and there has been an open-book approach. The principles of the fiscal framework have underpinned the process and are being put into practice. I am keen to publish a version of the fiscal framework jointly with COSLA, but we need agreement on that. The discussions are on-going and we are keen to move forward on that. I think that that is where things have got to. Do you agree, Ellen?

I reassure you that a lot of work will be done between those meetings. Work has been commissioned since the first meeting, back in December, which I attended. We looked at a number of areas that we need to focus on across a number of portfolios, and we commissioned a lot of work to be done in advance of the meeting in the spring. The meetings are, if you like, check-in or gateway points to ensure that the work that we have commissioned to ensure that we are focusing on what we need to focus on is happening at the pace that we expect.

I hope that that gives you some reassurance that it is not the case that nothing happens in between the meetings. Work does indeed happen, and it is the most important work that is going on.

That work has been kicked off to ensure that the strategies that are the key reference points are clear and that, where strategies are perhaps more historical and have been overtaken by events, that is made clear through the work that is going on. I think that we were going to return with the outcome of that by the end of June. That is the deadline—the work will be brought back to the committee before the end of this session.

We do not need 100 per cent agreement on council tax reform and we do not have to run off into the sunset holding hands. I am realistic enough to sense that that is unlikely. However, we might be able to agree on elements of reform. If we could build enough consensus around those elements, that would enable us, following the election, to get on with work in those areas where we agree.

Previous attempts at reform have fallen at the hurdles because of a lack of consensus about what the overall replacement for council tax should be. Rather than trying to get everyone to agree on the optimum change, we should be realistic and try instead to get agreement on pillars of change that could lead to improvements.

On your first point, the figure that you used relates to directly employed public sector staff. The point that we have been making—I am sure that it will be made this afternoon—is that there is another cost that is worth £200 million or thereabouts, which affects organisations that are intrinsically part of the public sector fabric. General practice surgeries, social care commissioned services and so on, which work as part of the system, will inevitably also have costs and difficulties.

My worry is that the cost will inevitably end up at the public sector’s door one way or another. Whether it is through negotiation of general practitioner contracts or social care contracts, such as for national care homes or local commissioned services, there will be a price to be paid for those additional costs. We must acknowledge that that will have to be worked through.

The figure that the Treasury talked about in its most recent communication is, essentially, not far off the figure that it indicated to us previously—just over £300 million. We have tried to give certainty to the public sector. I did that for local government previously: we will provide 60 per cent coverage, and the cost of doing that is £321 million. The figure that we have received from the Treasury is just above that amount, so it is more or less in line with the assumptions that we made.

We will not give up on that issue with the Treasury. There will be a finance interministerial standing committee—FISC—meeting at the end of next week at which it will be a major agenda item. The Northern Irish and Welsh Governments have similar issues—we are all in slightly different positions, depending on the sizes of our public sectors, but we all have a gap in respect of costs in this area. We will address that issue with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury next week.

A range of options was available to the chancellor—she chose not to take any of those but chose instead to hike employer national insurance contributions. The problem needs to be owned rather than deflected on to others—as you seek to do, Michael.

I am sure that you will contribute.