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Professor Hall, do you have any thoughts on the journey from McIntosh to Verity house?

My second question is aimed more at Jonathan Carr-West. When you came to the Scotland’s Futures Forum event in May, you told us that local government finances had reached a crisis point in England, although you said that they had not reached that point yet in Scotland. Given that it is budget day in Scotland, have you changed your opinion in recent days, weeks or months? What is your view on the situation with Scottish local government finances today?

Thank you all very much for your responses to those questions.

You are confident that you will not lose the intention to fund certain initiatives, but you might have to slow them down.

That is good to hear.

To turn to our third sector colleagues, the committee has had many round tables, and we always hear pleas about sustained funding for three or five years. SAMH was no different in calling for a shift to a five-year statutory minimum contract length. Caroline Lamb, how confident are you that we can get to such a place? Year in, year out, the committee hears pleas for funding to be sustained for three or five years. Are we able to get anywhere near to doing that?

The convener led on some finance-related questions that I was hoping to touch on, but I would like to return there. The Public Audit Committee is interested in following the public pound. Caroline Lamb, you mentioned the £1.3 billion investment in mental health services. The Auditor General’s report clearly shows that there has been a significant increase in funding for the directorate in recent years but, as the convener mentioned, there have been cuts to various parts of the service. What impact does that ebb and flow of being allocated more money and then facing cuts have on you in delivering those services? Does it mean that you have to delay things? Do you have to cancel work? What are the real impacts, and what are the effects of the spending changes?

You mentioned the distress brief intervention programme, as did the Auditor General in his report. Will you tell us a wee bit more about that? Is there a concern that we have removed dedicated funding for that, or is it continuing? Are the recommendations from the DBI programme being taken forward?

Do you give three-year indications of funding? Do you try to do that and then have to pull back?

We hope to get there one day, convener, on what is a big and important issue.

Caroline Lamb, an issue that came up in our discussions was how to demonstrate positive outcomes and benefits from our significant investment. Good examples are in the Auditor General’s report and were heard during our round-table sessions. How do we capture a bit more of that? It is easy to focus on the problems—funding variations and so on—but how do we capture those positive benefits in the area of adult mental health?

Other members will have questions about data collection issues, and the convener covered the impact of the emergency budget review a wee moment ago. My final question is for Caroline Lamb. Are our NHS boards on track to meet the commitment that, by 2026, 10 per cent of front-line health spending will be on mental health?