Seòmar agus comataidhean

If I remember the election period correctly, the IFS was very fair in that it was equally withering about all the manifestos, which was good of you.

In the previous evidence session, we were looking specifically at the nature of the rise in income tax receipts, noting that Scotland was not seeing such big increases and that we were seeing big differentials between sectors, which brings challenges. Is there sufficient public policy focus on how we plug gaps in particular labour markets or address those differentials? That seems to be a new challenge, and one that is more challenging because of Brexit, but it does not seem to be getting the focus in terms of public policy that it deserves, north or south of the border.

If you had both come up with exactly the same answer we would be asking much tougher questions.

I will follow on from the convener’s line of questioning on income tax forecasts.

It is of critical importance that since the introduction of the fiscal framework, income tax is a large component of what we have available to spend in Scotland. I am interested to understand why the OBR projects growth in income tax receipts being slower in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. If that is the case, mitigating that should be a real focus of public policy in Scotland. Can you explain the underlying assumptions behind that forecast?

Bearing in mind what Mr Hughes said regarding the attempts of the OBR and the SFC to reconcile their methodologies, I note from your paper that it looks as though there will be a £380 million difference between what you and the SFC forecast for income tax receipts. Will you provide a summary of that difference of opinion? I assume that the SFC is looking at the same demographic figures.

In the interests of time, I will hand over the questioning, but I hope that one of my colleagues will pick up on that interesting insight.

I know that the convener wants to come in, but I have one more question.

I am tempted to ask you the same question in private and see what response I get.

I recognise your point that compartmentalisation is an issue, and part of it is about putting the right levers in the right places and ensuring that things are not split up. With that in mind, do we need a more fundamental reappraisal of what is under the control of local government? Douglas Lumsden alluded to the local governance review, which is about how local government engages with people and makes decisions, rather than what it actually does. You gave the example of the library, the sports centre, the primary school and the health centre all being in one place, and one of the best ways to make such things happen more often is to make sure that the decisions are all made in one place, rather than being split apart.

In line with my previous question, I will ask my next question in a slightly more impudent way. Why do we treat Douglas Lumsden’s and Liz Smith’s colleagues from 1994 with such respect and assume that Mr Lang’s local government reforms were perfectly formed and should remain unaltered by your Government—or, frankly, by the Labour Government? Should we not be asking much more fundamental questions? Is the solution not to push as much decision making as possible down to the local level and to give local government the powers that it needs to make those decisions properly?

Deputy First Minister, you have always struck me as someone who is frustrated with the pace of change. In your opening remarks, I think that you were hinting at something when you said that we should reflect on the fact that many of the things in Christie had not become as embedded, either institutionally or in policy terms, as we would have liked. Let me be expansive and ask you this question: if the 2007 John Swinney were able to travel here from the past, would he be pleased with what has happened or would he be frustrated with the lack of institutional change? Equally, if the 2021 John Swinney could provide that John Swinney with advice, what would it be?

I should have asked a bridging question, because there is an interesting point about the natural level in areas such as education and health, and whether it is the same.

Okay. I will challenge you on one point, Deputy First Minister. In response to Liz Smith—and you alluded to a similar point in your response to Ross Greer—you spoke about whether being accountable to ministers was a sufficient level of accountability for organisations, whether they are health boards or NDPBs. I would challenge you on whether accountability to ministers is the same as public accountability. With public accountability, there is an intermediary. We can hold ministers to account in Parliament, but we cannot hold health boards directly accountable. There is a difference there, and in some ways that is a frustration in our democracy.