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I have probably used up more than my time, but I will ask one very blunt, bottom-line question. The overall budget request of £34.9 million represents a 4.8 per cent increase on your previous year’s budget. That 4.8 per cent seems incredibly close to the gross domestic product deflator of 4.8 per cent for the coming financial year. I want to understand whether that was your starting point or is it a bottom-up? I hope you do not mind my asking this question. I am sure that auditors would agree with me that you should always take a closer look at coincidences when they occur and when numbers seem to match each other.

I have just one final question and I am afraid that it is a bit of a cheeky one, to be honest. I could not help but note on page 22 what looks awfully like a rate card to me. What is your target number of chargeable hours per year for a chargeable person, for a whole-time equivalent? I know that, even if it is not expressed in those terms, that issue will be at the forefront of your minds when you are constructing rate cards.

My question is not about individual firms and your comparison to them, but to the profession as a whole. Given that it is a regulated profession and that there are industry bodies, I assume that industry-wide salary surveys are carried out. Do you use those and do you undertake a formal benchmarking process? If so, could you set out how that operates?

There are obviously benchmarks. I could not find the most recent figures, but the previous year that Hays produced was, I think, 3 per cent. It would be useful to understand where Audit Scotland stands on that and, indeed, your rationale for when you step away, which is ultimately the purpose of a benchmarking exercise.

If you have been running at 6 per cent, is 2 per cent a safe assumption?

I could ask more questions about the assumptions and your people budget line, but in the interests of time I will move on.

Given that the question of a contingency has been raised, can I ask you for some further details about how the £500,000 figure—that is not an exact quote—has been arrived at? Is that derived from your risk register? If not, what is the methodology for how it is arrived at? What proportion of the contingency is ascribed to the potential risks around salary costs and salary increases?

With the revised standards, it takes more effort to get to that point for colleges than it does for other bodies. Fundamentally, is that what you are saying? That then reflects the bids that you get from the private sector. Is that the fundamental driver?

Yes. Are you able to share with the commission in writing the standards that have driven the increase? I will not ask you to enumerate them now.

One of the issues that I stood out when I was reading through the document concerned your plans on innovation. The budget proposal outlines a reduction in capital requirement from £250,000 in 2022-23 to £150,000 in 2023-24. Given the increasing burdens and complexity—and, indeed, additional people you need—I might have expected you to have an associated increase in your capital requirement with regard to IT systems and automation to deal with that. What is the explanation for the reducing capital requirement?

I quite agree. It is useful to hear that on the record.

I will follow on from the early set of questions from the convener. Although we were all aware of the interactions in the economy between different budget decisions before, the autumn certainly brought that into very sharp focus, including in relation to spending plans versus debt.

The other issue that has become clear in recent months as we look at UK economic data compared with that of other countries is that our difficulties are confined not only to recent months—UK growth has lagged that of our comparator nations over the past decade, which seems to be a function of investment.

I also put this question to the previous week’s panel, which consisted of the IFS and others. Do we need a renewed focus on what spending within UK or Scottish Government budgets is genuine investment in order to track that consistently and have a good overall view of the level of Government investment and therefore what the likely longer-term impacts on the economy will be from an individual budget and over time when we see funding being altered?