Seòmar agus comataidhean

It used to be described as falling into desuetude. This might be apocryphal, but I think that, in the 1990s, it was still legal to kill someone with an arrow under a statue of Henry VIII, providing that it was in Nottingham. It was something ludicrous like that. I do not know whether that was the case. However, the issue that you raise goes back, to an extent, to zero-based budgeting.

12:00

The committee has tackled the issue of prevention—John Mason has been a terrier on that particular issue over many years. It is easy to say that we should spend money on prevention of this and that, but what should we deprioritise? That has always been an issue. Even in the 2011 to 2016 parliamentary session, when Mr Swinney allocated £500 million specifically for that, there was not the commensurate reduction in some of the services that were not delivering as much as possible.

I remember that Birmingham City Council gave evidence to the committee in which it said that it had had to tell social workers who had been working for the council for 30 or 40 years that most of what they had done during their entire careers had been completely worthless and might even have been counterproductive. That makes it hard to get people to buy into a new way of working. Prevention is not an easy task, but it is something that our committee is still keen to pursue.

We have now been engaged in discussions for an hour and a half. I hope that folk are not too exhausted. That is the limit that we set ourselves, but as no one else has put their name down to make any comments, I am keen that we have a wind-up. I will give each of our witnesses an opportunity to mention something that might not have come up in the discussion but which they feel should be raised. I will therefore ask our four guests if they would like to make any final statements. The last person to comment will be Mirren, as she spoke first.

As we appear to have no more questions, I turn to item 2, which is formal consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to move and speak to motion S6M-20639.

Motion moved,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Scottish Aggregates Tax (Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2026 [draft] be approved.—[Ivan McKee]

Motion agreed to.

I will call a break until the appearance of our next witnesses.

10:09

Meeting suspended.

10:27

On resuming—

Hold on a second, Craig. I need to let other people in, obviously, given that it is a round-table format.

Tiffany Ritchie is keen to come in, and I will bring in Jack Gillespie after her.

Tiffany, Patrick Harvie has touched on the issue of public sector reform, and your submission states:

“SFC’s contribution to public service reform is through the delivery of the most significant transformation of the tertiary education sector in over a decade.”

I am happy for you to speak to anything that has come up before, but I would be keen for you to follow up on that statement, too.

You touched on the health and social care service renewal framework, closer collaboration between NHS boards and the integration of systems. Do we have the right number of health boards in Scotland? There is an argument that we have too many health boards or that health boards should be better integrated with local authorities. For example, in the area that I represent, there are three local authorities that have been established for political, rather than practical, reasons. The college and the health board have the same boundaries. Is there not an argument for integrating local authorities with health boards and the college sector, so that there is one structure to help with economic development, skills and delivery of health and other services.

Thank you. Other folk are keen to come in on this subject.

Sarah Roughead, can you touch on Police Scotland’s estate master plan? It will release around £50 million to £80 million of capital receipts over the next five to 10 years, meaning that you will be able to invest in, for example, body-worn video cameras for front-line police officers and staff, as well as rolling out the digital evidence-sharing capability. I was hopeful that you would touch on that point in addition to whatever else you wanted to contribute.

Okay. I am sure that we will put those issues to the cabinet secretary when she comes before us.

I had just written that down. I think that we need an explanation from the Government. If we went round the table asking everyone what they thought “front-line services” meant, we would get different answers. People in services that you or I might not consider to be front-line services will consider those services to be front-line services. When I spoke at the most recent Scottish Parliament information centre briefing, I said, “Nobody in here would be considered front-line services by the general public.” However, some of those people consider themselves to be members of a front-line service. I think that we need a definition of that term.

I also make the point that front-line services do not work without having people behind the scenes. It is easy but lazy to say that more money should be put into the front line. What is important is what that means.

Planes cannot fly without air traffic control.