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I will stick with that theme for a minute. Is there an argument to do this the other way around? Could you set a budget that balances, recognising all the pressures in the first place? I totally take your point that that would involve saying at the outset, “Here is what we will have to cut to make that balance”, but as part of the budget, you could publish what are essentially scenario plans, which specify, if the Government receives X amount of in-year consequentials, where the cuts will be reversed and to which areas additional spending will be allocated. You could lay out the whole range of assumptions that you are making—you said that £1.4 billion was towards the upper end of the range.

There is a value-for-money point here, in that starting a process and then making cuts in-year does not only result in some people losing their jobs in-year, which is bad enough, but it represents low value for money. Projects are incomplete and you have to reinvent the wheel and restart again six months later when the projects get money reallocated in the next financial year, in the hope that they will get it for that whole year and not just for six months, with a cut to follow. Would it not be easier to start off with a balanced budget and scenario plans that show, if you get that money in June, September or October, where it will go and how you will ensure that it provides value for money, even though it is only coming into the system in-year?

Finally, I want to return to public sector pay. One of the more substantial lines in the revision is for the teacher pay settlement. That creates a wider issue. I recognise the difficulties in allocating ahead for pay negotiations that have not been completed—I mentioned that a moment ago—but to what extent does the Government look at the year-on-year cumulative impact of the path-to-balance exercises? I have previously posed that question to the cabinet secretary and to the permanent secretary. I apologise if I have also posed it to you and all the conversations are just blurring together in my mind, but I would be interested in your perspective on that.

The issue applies particularly to the health and education portfolios, although, because health is so vast, it is a bit easier for it to absorb the changes. My concern is about the education portfolio, which, over the past three years of budget revisions, has taken a disproportionate share of the burden. You could argue that the current change is ultimately to transfer money to local government to pay teachers, but plenty of money beyond the teacher pay settlement has come out of the learning budget, for example. When the Government is making such decisions each year, does it look back at the trend over previous years and at whether certain budgets are beginning to bear a disproportionate burden?

I will rephrase it then. Is there a recognition that the education portfolio has had to bear quite a lot of the revisions, year on year?

I will have a final crack at it. I recognise the Government’s ambition for the next in-year budget revision to be far smaller than it has been in the past couple of years but, when we get there, will you start by looking back at the effect that the previous rounds of in-year revisions and their baselining into future years has had on portfolios, before then looking at which portfolios to take from to achieve balance?

Thank you.

To clarify, there is a recognition from the Government that the education portfolio has borne quite a lot of the transfers over the past few years, just because it has had more discretionary spend than areas such as justice, where the budget is pretty fixed from the start of the year. There is a recognition that education has had to do quite a lot of the heavy lifting here.

I have nothing further to add, convener. I will press amendment 63.

Amendment 63 agreed to.

Amendments 64 and 65 moved—[Ross Greer]—and agreed to.

The question of randomising ballot papers, or the advantage or disadvantage of alphabetical order on ballot papers, is not unique to Scotland or the UK, and I am sure that members will be familiar with the issue. This is a long-standing area of debate in all parliamentary democracies.

There is strong evidence that appearing at the top of the ballot paper is an advantage. A quite comprehensive study in 2015 in Denmark found, on average, a 4 per cent advantage to the candidates at the top of ballot papers. In Scotland, the advantage might not be as significant as 4 per cent—there has not been the same rigorous study here—but there are plenty of other studies from across the world showing various levels of advantage to candidates who are at the top of ballot papers. Nothing can be done to prevent that, because somebody needs to be at the top of the ballot paper.

However, based on the principle of fairness, but also the perception of fairness, I think that we should randomise ballot papers so that there is no way to secure that advantage. I remember one particular incident in which a candidate from my party was accused of having changed their surname so that it began with A. That candidate was successfully elected—

Yes, by something in the region of 4 per cent.

I can confirm that that candidate was not particularly enthusiastic about being elected to the local authority in question, and most certainly had not changed their surname to secure that advantage. If they had realised that in advance, they perhaps would have kept their previous surname, although their partner might have had something to say about that.

Because of that unfair advantage, I am proposing randomisation, but I have not prescribed a method of randomisation. Local authority returning officers could simply draw straws or pick names out of a hat. They might want to do it like the cup draw for the football and get minor celebrities in, live stream it and make it a bit more exciting for the three people who will be watching. That is for returning officers to decide. I have simply stated that the ballot papers should be randomised to tackle the issue.

The committee will be glad to know that I will speak to the amendments only very briefly, because I believe that they align with the Government’s intentions. I will use two examples to illustrate why the amendments, which relate to agents and candidates, are necessary.

Amendments 64 and 65 deal with the current requirement for election agents to use their home address. In the relatively recent past, there was an incident in which an individual turned up at the home address of a party election agent on the weekend after an election, because they were seeking the successful candidate who had been elected. The candidate had, quite reasonably, not used their home address in the nomination process, but that individual was able to find the election agent’s home address. Thankfully, the incident did not escalate, but it illustrates the need for us also to give the option that candidates have to their election agents, to ensure that everyone can engage with the process safely.

Amendment 63 would give candidates a new option to state the ward that they live in. At present, candidates can state the local authority area that they live in or the constituency that they live in, when that is relevant.

The example that I will use for amendment 63 relates to the recent Arran by-election. Arran and Cumbrae are the two islands in the North Ayrshire Council area. As you would expect, it is very important to Arran residents that they know that candidates live on the island and, therefore, understand life in an island community. One of the candidates who was put forward by a party did not live on the island, which resulted in the candidates who were Arran residents feeling under pressure to publish their home addresses in order to demonstrate that they lived on the island. The other option was simply to state that they lived in the North Ayrshire Council area, but that could mean that they lived in Irvine, Kilwinning or Ardrossan—in other words, not on the island—and did not have lived experience of island life.

A number of people have approached me to say that they want to be able to demonstrate that they have a connection to the relevant community. That applies not only to islands: particularly in larger local authority areas, a candidate being able to demonstrate that they live in the area is important. People want to be able to demonstrate that without compromising their and their family’s safety by publishing their home address. Amendment 63 would simply provide candidates with the additional option of stating what ward they live in, which would clarify their connection to the community.

I move amendment 63.