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I want to ask about how your centres are inspected and assessed, but before that I will follow up on a point that was made about financial viability. Nick March gave the example of Blairvadach, which is in my area. As he pointed out, it is pretty much fully booked for 48 or 49 weeks of the year, but in most years Glasgow City Council still considers closing it because it is quite a significant net financial liability. There is a tension in that, if the council reduced its school trips that it brings in and increased the number of commercial bookings, the centre might move towards viability, but that would defeat its core purpose and the reason why the council has the centre in the first place.

If we are to pass the bill and significantly increase the demand from local authorities and schools for class trips, how can we address the tension whereby centres such as Blairvadach could move towards financial viability but only if they decrease the number of school trips that come in and move to being more of a commercial setting?

Absolutely. Thank you.

Good morning. My questions are primarily related to the impact on teachers’ terms and conditions. Tara Lillis, you have covered that quite comprehensively already, but could you clarify whether it is the position of the NASUWT that, were the bill to be passed and the obligation to provide outdoor residential education were to be delivered in the typical way, through teachers volunteering their time, that would end up going to the SNCT for a formal discussion about changes to terms and conditions?

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.

With respect, that is not an answer to the question that I asked. It is clear that, year on year, the education portfolio has borne quite a bit of the burden, in cash terms and as a percentage of its overall budget. Does the Government recognise that, when certain portfolios bear the burden year after year, that eventually has a disproportionate effect?

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?