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Included in that would be economic inactivity, which is another key area where there is some divergence, particularly among younger people. There is quite a substantial difference in inactivity levels. Those are the sort of statistics that we would want in order to give us a feel for whether there is improvement—whether the gap is narrowing in any way or getting worse. Both of those areas are relevant and important to us.

I will do so quickly, in the interests of time. Thank you for joining us, Mr Davies. I want to carry on with that theme and ask about a comment that you made to the committee in last year’s evidence session. You said:

“One of our big critiques of Government generally, including HMRC, is the surprisingly low level of investment in evaluation of the impact of different policies.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 19 February 2025; c 10.]

Is that still the case? Is it still a concern, or have you seen any improvement in the past 12 months in the level of investment that the Government or HMRC has made and in the understanding of how tax-divergent and tax-differential policies in Scotland have an impact on the Scottish budget?

Is that an inherent problem with the contract that HMRC has with Governments? Presumably, HMRC’s job is to collect the money and produce the data. Is it not giving us more data because it has not been asked for more? Should the Governments be asking for more?

Auditor General, it is over to you now, if that is okay.

I want to ask you about the statement in your report “Financial sustainability and taxes” that Holyrood’s budget has been boosted by more than £4 billion since the introduction of devolved taxes nearly 10 years ago. However, that figure is, and I quote your words,

“significantly less than the additional tax raised over the same period. This trend is set to continue.”

What do you mean by that?

It is about more jobs, better-paid jobs and a higher tax base—are those the solutions to the conundrum of that percentage in the pound not going into the Scottish economy?

I give the floor to Mr Simpson.

We have a small bit of time left, although not too much. We have covered quite a lot of ground, but I will ask just a few additional questions, Auditor General, if that is okay.

The most obvious point to make is that the issue of delayed discharges has been flagged by Audit Scotland for over 20 years. My briefing says that it was originally brought to the attention of a previous iteration of this committee, and Parliament, in 2001. Two decades have passed, yet here we are, looking at your latest report. It is clear that, while we are seeing some improvement in some health boards, it is still a massive issue. It is still costing the NHS £1 million a day, and tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of people are still affected by it.

I cannot get my head around how on earth, after two decades of flagging the issue to Government, we are still in this mess. It is not necessarily for you to answer, or to be accountable, for decisions that Government has or has not made over the years. However, in your view, what is the reason why it is still such a big issue?

I have to say that those three themes—better and more data, clearer implementation and planning, and more collaboration on what does and does not work well and how best practice is shared—appear in pretty much every report that you have ever written since I joined the committee. Why are those such common issues across all areas of policy in Government? Those themes are recurring—every report says the same thing.

11:30

That is a good point. If someone is medically fit to leave hospital and the doctors do not want them there, and if the patient does not want to be there and their families do not want them to be there but there is clearly a blockage, what happens next for that patient?

Mr Simpson went into some detail about the variety of issues that are causing the blockages. Are you saying that, ultimately, these are all social care issues and so they are community-based problems that are the responsibility of, for example, IJBs, local councils, the third sector and care homes? There are so many other partners involved in unblocking this that it is hard to see how it will all join up so that we can finally crack this nut.

That is helpful. We can pose those questions to the Government in due course, based on your helpful feedback.

I also want to look briefly at social care. Adam, I was quite taken by your example. It is one of many such examples that members hear, particularly from our casework, of people being unable to access care packages. You mentioned the availability of staff. That is certainly an issue, but there are also issues around the amount of funding that is available at the local level, in councils, for packages. We have heard that, if someone is unlucky enough to be a patient between January and March, and if the money has run out, they are more likely to be stuck in hospital until the beginning of the new financial year, when the money is unlocked. Is there any evidence of that happening?