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Surely they do that already.

I will let colleagues in soon, so I am not going to ask many more questions or wade through the whole report.

In response to paragraph 112, you said:

“we have prioritised funding for the Scottish National Investment Bank.”

However, I do not see how that statement can possibly bear scrutiny when there is a reduction of 28 per cent in its funding. That cannot be classed as prioritisation by any measure. I would have thought that that organisation, which is required to lever in private funding, could get a bigger bang for its buck. I fully appreciate the need to spend money on public services, but if you are not generating additional wealth, you will not be able to do that for long. That means, in effect, that, next year, we will be in the same, or a worse, position. How has the Scottish Government prioritised the Scottish National Investment Bank if the funding is falling so dramatically?

You have also talked about how important it would be for the spring budget to reverse some of the reductions in capital allocation. Although many commentators managed to avoid mentioning the reduction in the Scottish Government’s capital allocation—surprise, surprise—the percentage reduction in the housing budget has raised many eyebrows at a time when there is serious pressure on housing demand in Scotland.

Thank you.

I think that more colleagues will wish to ask about this area, but I will first touch on one aspect, which is covered in paragraph 102 of our report, regarding

“how the Scottish Government has, as intended, prioritised its spending towards supporting the delivery of a fair green and growing economy.”

I was struck by what your response says. At the bottom of page 9, it states:

“The Scottish Budget also commits to exploring future multi-annual funding for employability services, in recognition of the benefits of greater certainty for those planning services and the people accessing support.”

We have called for multiyear funding settlements; I am well aware that the UK Government does not give multiyear settlements. In fact, we had an autumn statement in November, and we will now have a spring statement in March, so I realise that it is not easy to pin those things down, but that area of the Scottish budget almost jumps out as being the one with long-term funding. Why is that not the case in other areas? People in local government have been calling for long-term multiyear funding, which would be more efficient and would allow councils to plan better.

Thank you for that helpful opening statement. I realise that you have to operate within certain timescales. However, given the continued reference, not only in our report but this morning, to the UK Government’s spring statement being on 6 March, it seems to me that it would have been more helpful if our budget had been announced after that date. That would have given the Scottish Government greater opportunity to reflect on what the UK Government was doing. Of course, given that we had already scheduled our budget announcement, it would have been more helpful if the UK Government had announced its spring budget before our stage 3 process.

The main reason for holding this evidence session prior to stage 2 is to go through our report and the responses to it. I will not go through all of those, because I know that six colleagues want to come in on certain areas. However, I will touch on some aspects and other members might wish to build on those.

The first aspect was covered in recommendation 41 of our report, which was on the potential impact on business and the economy of the differential income tax policies in Scotland and the rest of the UK. In your response, you said that

“the move to a five-band system, alongside additional government spending as a result of the policy change, had a relatively negligible impact on the size and growth rate of the economy in the short-term.”

What long-term work is being done on whether those policies will have longer-term impacts, whether they be positive or negative?

I am keen to move on and to take us back to the report.

I thank colleagues. As I have said, I have been very generous with time today—and particularly with your time, Deputy First Minister—so we have been asking questions for an hour longer than was proposed.

Thank you, Deputy First Minister, for answering so many questions in such detail. Of course, I think that we were all probably guilty of wandering off the report at certain points.

We know that stage 3 of the budget is next Tuesday. Given some of the questions that have been asked and the comments that have been made, can you tell us whether any Opposition parties have come forward with alternative fully costed budget proposals?

That is why I said that there is politics involved—