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So, the money would still have to come out but, in theory, the Scottish Government could deliver the winter fuel payment as it currently is to the people whom it currently goes to—or would have gone to—but there would have to be reconciliation in two years, or within the two years.

On the spending commitment, I think that the position is that the Scottish Government cannot overspend its budget, but can overcommit its budget, to some extent. There are a number of areas that we can look at—social security is one of them. You said that the gap between income from the block grant and spending is, essentially, baked in. That could lead to serious issues, especially if the gap continues to grow. Even its just continuing to sit at the current level could have serious implications for budgets in the future because, as you said, that will be baked in—every single year we will have to find that additional money.

What size is the public sector in Wales, for example?

As you suggest, it is a question of priorities and what the Government chooses to do. I am not necessarily commenting on that, but there are options.

Do you feel that there is a slight contradiction there? The Scottish Government says that it has no choice but to remove the payment, at the same time as it announces policies on council tax freezes, for example, at political conferences. Those choices exist—it is about what the Government decides in making them.

Finally, as John Mason highlighted, there is the ScotWind money. We might hear in the next few days whether that is going to be used, but it is, nonetheless, available to plug some of the gaps.

When you say “national”, do you mean “reserved”, in effect?

I want to follow up John Mason’s questions and come back to the size of the public sector, before we move on. I represent the Highlands and Islands, so I understand that costs to deliver public services could be higher there. Is there a comparator for those figures for the size of the public sector in Wales, Northern Ireland and similar countries across Europe?

So the Scottish Government could defer it. Is it just for one year?

Good morning, Jeremy. On the points that you have just made, I was contacted by constituents about local roads in their area that were not suitable and were preventing them from leaving their homes, because of their limited mobility. I contacted the council and, remarkably, the council went out and sorted the situation. As you have been in many cases, I was the advocate, and I got that situation sorted out. Do you hope that a commissioner would deal with larger, wider and more general issues, and that we would still be the advocates on the smaller level? Large charities already come together on issues such as shared surfaces, so why would the suggested approach be a more effective way of dealing with those larger issues?

I do not want to put words into anyone’s mouth, but when we were talking about staff salaries earlier, Liz Anderson suggested, almost, that this was standard and that this would be the number of staff that people thought would be needed. What roles would those staff play?