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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?

I sympathise with the Government on public sector pay, because the moment that any figure is published, that figure becomes the floor for negotiations from the union negotiator side. There is no winning when it comes to transparently setting out public sector pay in a way that does not undermine negotiations or make them more difficult.

Michael Marra mentioned some of the specific cuts that have been made, such as to the nature restoration fund, which you referred to in your response to Michelle Thomson. Is it still the Government’s position that there is no way to press ahead with some of those very small pots, such as the £1 million for the nature restoration fund—although a larger figure of £5 million has been mentioned—and the £2 million for the asylum seeker bus travel scheme had it proceeded?

If we take asylum seeker bus travel as the clearest example, the Parliament has now voted that that should still go ahead. Your group and the Government were part of that vote. We are heading towards the end of the financial year, so it would not even be possible to spend £2 million at this point, but allocating something—£1 million or £0.5 million—would allow the project to get under way, with the intention of funding it fully and delivering it from the subsequent financial year. Is there really no scope to allocate back in the region of £1 million or £0.5 million?

Apologies, convener—I read the wrong number at that point. You are right: the proposed threshold would be 0.01 per cent of voters for constituencies, and it would be 0.05 per cent for the regional list. Sorry—I should have made that clear.

Amendment 68, on by-elections, is designed to address what I see as democratic distortion caused by having single-member by-elections for multimember wards. Again, it might seem a little odd that this amendment is being moved by a Green, given that, as of this year, we have finally started winning some by-elections. However, I think that it is important to air the distortion argument in Parliament.

For example, at the moment, Perth City North has three Scottish National Party councillors in a three-member ward as a result of a by-election. That is despite the SNP having less than 50 per cent support—it still has substantial support—and there being strong support in that ward for both Labour and the Conservatives.

Four out of four councillors in the Drumchapel/Anniesland ward were from the Labour Party after our colleague Bill Kidd stood down from his council seat to focus on this Parliament. If there was another by-election in Hillhead, in Glasgow, because Councillor Ken Andrew decided to move on and do something else with his life—I emphasise that I do not believe that he is going to do so—the Greens would win that ward and would have three out of the three councillors in a ward that elected only one Green at the last election.

The Scottish Parliament made the choice to adopt a proportional system—the single transferable vote—for council elections. Other countries that use STV for their local elections do not generally have by-elections. For example, the Republic of Ireland does not have by-elections. Of course, Northern Ireland also does not have by-elections, but that is for very different reasons—it is about maintaining balance between communities—so I generally do not use that as an example. The Republic of Ireland does not because it has a similar system to what I am proposing.

If a vacating councillor was originally elected on a party ticket, that party’s nominating officer would be able to appoint a replacement for them. I would propose maintaining a by-election system for independents, so it would not go as far as it does other systems. In Ireland, for example, if an independent councillor vacates, it is up to the council to decide how to appoint their replacement. I would not go quite that far, as I think it is reasonable to have by-elections in the case of independents.

To start off, I would just say that, as much as I am grateful for the minister’s various offers to take to consultation some of the issues that have been raised as part of this process, the fact is that we are now heading towards the point where the Government is committing to a consultation on dual mandates, residence requirements, deposit reform and by-election reform. Indeed, we are getting to the point where there will be further consultation on more issues than are contained in the bill in the first place, which I think brings us back to the issue that I raised before—that this has been a missed opportunity to take forward a more holistic and substantive package of reform.

Nonetheless, amendment 58 seeks to end the anomaly in which peers, quite rightly, cannot be MPs—they cannot even vote in a general election—but they can be MSPs. This is not a judgment on individual peers who have been MSPs; it is purely about the principle of democratic accountability. In that respect, it is somewhat different from Graham Simpson’s dual mandate amendments, because it is not concerned about somebody's ability to do two jobs simultaneously. Instead, it is more focused on the issue of democratic accountability.

The Lords is not, by definition, a democratic institution. It is unaccountable; it makes law, but it is not accountable to the public. I find that an affront to parliamentary democracy, and I think that it is contrary to the values of this Parliament, too. Peers are absolutely free to become MSPs—they should just resign from the Lords first. This simple amendment follows through on that simple principle. I welcome the Government’s commitment to consult on the matter, although I do not find that, in and of itself, necessarily a reason for Parliament not to move forward with it for the 2026 election. Nonetheless, we are where we are on that.

I should also put on the record that I spoke directly to Katy Clark before lodging this amendment, particularly to emphasise that this is not about individuals but about a democratic principle. Of course, it would apply only from the next election; it would not apply to anybody currently in that position—that is, Ms Clark herself.

On amendments 60 and 62, which relate to the aggravators, I want to give a little bit of clarification with regard to what the minister was indicating. The amendments would give those sentencing someone convicted of an offence against the categories of people involved in the elections the ability—and the option—to reflect on the harm done to the democratic system at large by the offence. It does not mandate the giving of a more substantive or different sentence; it simply gives those sentencing the option to consider the matter. We should recognise that, as well as the harm that is done against the individual, these offences do harm against the democratic process as a whole.

The minister, quite rightly, made the point that we have seen rising concern in recent years. Our democracy is under a bit of pressure—not as much as in some other nations, but increasing nonetheless. Indeed, those who are involved in our democracy face increasing hostility, something that I have no doubt we have all experienced, and the amendments simply give those sentencing an additional option. The measures would apply only to those convicted of an offence that had been directed at one of the six categories of people in question, and there is also the option to consider it as an aggravator in the way that the minister mentioned—that is, with regard to emergency service workers.

With amendment 61, on the disqualification register, I have lodged what I think is quite a simple amendment. As has already been mentioned, there is no list of disqualified individuals. We have a system that relies on self-policing by those who, by and large, have been disqualified because of their conduct in relation to the electoral process and offences committed against those involved in it. These people are generally going to be on the disqualification register because, by definition, they do not particularly respect the democratic process as it stands.

I think that the Electoral Management Board is the appropriate body to maintain such a list and to make it accessible to the returning officers. As I have already pointed out, nobody will be required to check 2,500 names off the list. For a start, that 2,500 gets divided by 32 at the local council elections, but, in any case, you would be checking the smaller list against the larger one, rather than the other way round. I think, therefore, that this is a simple amendment that would come with a small additional cost, as we would be talking about a—thankfully—relatively small list and a small number of individuals.

We are talking about a group of individuals who have already, by definition, disrespected the democratic process, so relying on self-policing by them would seem to be a vulnerability.