Seòmar agus comataidhean

There are time lags in the data because it takes a few months for things such as job offers or decisions to wash through. The process is much tighter than it has been, but, to my mind, we need to take more steps to make it even tighter.

Good morning. As the committee will be aware, over the past year, persistent high inflation, the continued cost of living crisis, public sector pay deals and wider geopolitical events have created a challenging financial situation. Despite those challenges, the Scottish Government is once again on track to balance its budget. That balance has been achieved through savings and spend controls, improvements in block grant adjustments, a more favourable net tax position, incorporation of consequentials received in the United Kingdom autumn budget and other sources of funding.

The improved funding position has allowed us to remove all use of ScotWind revenues in 2024-25 to target those revenues on a range of projects that will be of longer-term benefit to Scotland. Resource borrowing has also been reduced to nil, while capital borrowing has been significantly reduced.

The spring budget revision, which sets out funding changes and final amendments to the budget for 2024-25, allocates almost £1 billion of additional funding to support our public services. It contains the usual four categories of changes. Net funding changes increase the budget by £971.3 million. Those changes include the provision of £688.5 million to health to support services and fund capital projects, £84 million to local government to fund pay deals for teaching and non-teaching staff, and additional funding for the increased Scottish welfare fund.

Alongside those allocations, £350 million of funding is being held in the finance and local government portfolio as contingency against year-end audit adjustments, movement in demand-led programmes and tax receipts, and a £60 million carry-forward to support the 2025-26 health budget. Including that funding in the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government’s portfolio, rather than leaving it unallocated, ensures that the amounts are reflected in the annual accounts, while we retain the ability to carry forward any underspend in full through the Scotland reserve. The technical, Whitehall and internal transfers are presented in the document in the usual way.

The supporting document to the spring budget revision and the finance update prepared by my officials provide further background on the net changes, as well as updates on information requested by the committee. I am happy to answer any questions.

The approach is what we, as a team of ministers and officials, have arrived at in working to understand how we can best configure the finances to deal with the challenges that we have identified. The contingency seems to be the most effective, efficient and controlled way of doing that, because it gives us the flexibility to approach those challenges at the year end.

Let us see how it works this year. There are clearly a number of factors, including the extent to which the budget is challenging, the extent to which the forecast on demand-led programmes looks accurate, and the extent to which the borrowing profile plays through. In principle, the approach seems to make sense at this stage, but as we work through the year, we will learn more about the details of its operation.

What we are talking about now is the end of this financial year. There are, as we move into the next financial year, many moving parts to consider, such as consequentials, other potential challenges that depend on the UK Government’s spending profile, demand-led resource and capital slippage, and a range of other things that we have talked about. Based on what transpires over the year and depending on what we learn from this financial year, it might make sense to repeat the process as we move into the next financial year, in order to give us that flexibility. That relates to the point that John Mason made about how we make sure that we stay within the fairly tight limits in respect of borrowing requirements.

In general, Registers of Scotland brings in enough revenue through its various activities to cover its costs, which, from a public finance point of view, is very welcome. That is the principle to which we operate in order to understand the costs of running the service and the likely number of transactions. We used that to arrive at a fee structure that would allow ROS to cover its costs as a consequence.

The initial £80 was based on an estimate of the number of transactions. That estimate was then revised as more work was undertaken in order to have a more thorough understanding of that. We estimate that there will be 25,000 transactions or thereabouts over the period of a year once the registers are up and running. If we do the calculations on that, with our estimated running costs, which are close to £1 million when everything is up and running, we come to that schedule of charges. That is why it is there.

It is about getting the balance right with regard to what people will feel is reasonable. Extensive consultation was undertaken on the matter, and many of the points that you raise were made. That was part of the reason for reducing the £80 charge to £30. I am not sure how many sheep you can buy for £30, but, in the grand scheme of things, if you are running sizeable transactions with many other fees involved, and borrowing against assets, I would expect that that figure would not be a significant issue.

As we move forward, there will be scope to revise the fees depending on whether more, or fewer, transactions come through, or how we see the costs working through.

That is a good question. I will undertake to log in and see how it works to verify that. My experience of other registers that Registers of Scotland provides is that they are very easy to use and very accessible, but others may have different views on that.

The registers exist to create that visibility, so that people can search them. Exactly.

Who can make a correction is limited to the parties that were involved in the transaction. To some extent, it depends on the definition.

Are you talking about who should make the correction or who would be liable if there was some fraud as a consequence of the entry in the register being incorrect?