Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. On the previous conversation about books, I hope that we are not going down the road to where politicians can determine what people can and cannot or should and should not read. People who make purchases must be able to justify them within whatever framework they have in place. If we ever reach a position where people say, “You must not and cannot read this book,” that is not a direction of travel that I would like to follow.

On the issue about the Post Office that Mr Simpson raised, is it your understanding, permanent secretary, that the Post Office and Fujitsu will also provide a compensation fund for the cases that emerged as a result of the Post Office scandal?

Okay. I think that I am with you. I thank you for your explanation, which was really detailed.

Do you think that we will get to a position in which we can draw down or receive—whatever the terminology is—UK whole-of-Government accounts in order to get to phase 2, which we had originally planned to get to? Will that happen soon, or is that unpredictable?

When would the committee see that? Would it be next year?

Thank you so much for that. I had not quite finished—

Okay. On that positive note, thank you very much.

Thank you. I will leave it at that, minister.

Do David Robertson or Mirren Kelly have any comments on workforce?

Has there been any progress with colleagues in the UK Government on that big issue, given that it recurs year on year? Has there been any progress on that whole direction of travel?

Let me ask you about ring fencing, un-ring-fencing and directed spend. You have removed nearly £1 billion that was formerly ring fenced and highlighted some of the policy areas that that removal had reached. Last week, however, the committee heard from the directors of finance that they were a bit sceptical about even that figure. First of all, can you clarify whether you have removed nearly £1 billion of ring-fenced funding and baselined it?

From the discussion, it sounds as though directed spend is some kind of constraint on local government, but I always understood it to be about shared priorities. Do you see scope for further flexibility to address the issues that COSLA keeps raising?