Hansard

Labour members also endorse the written agreement between the committee and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth. We record our thanks to the Finance Committee for the work that it has done in achieving that agreed and consensual document. As the convener made clear, the agreement clarifies, improves and expands some elements of the budget scrutiny process, and it clarifies the budget strategy phase, which takes place in spending review years.

The agreement also includes what I guess is a recommitment to the provision of level 4 figures for scrutiny. The amount of information with which committees have been provided has been a continuing problem, but there is a clear commitment in the agreement to provide greater detail than is found in level 3 figures, which is good.

As the convener and the cabinet secretary described, the agreement outlines how the scrutiny process will deal with the new powers that the Scottish Government and Parliament are taking, which are mostly on raising finance through the land and buildings transaction tax, the landfill tax and the capacity to borrow. That is all welcome, as is the broadening of the opportunities that committees have to influence budget decisions and to propose their own amendments. It seems that that will also improve the scrutiny process.

However, I am afraid that I cannot let the matter pass without noting the irony that, having reached a consensual agreement, the Scottish Government immediately invokes paragraph 12:

“Where the Scottish Government believes that it may not be able to meet the 20 September deadline”—

that is, the deadline for publication of the draft budget—

“the Scottish Ministers will consult the Finance Committee on a revised timescale”.

Of course, that has been necessary this year as a result of the change to our recess because of the referendum on September 18, and the committee has, indeed, dealt with that with the cabinet secretary.

We have often argued that the referendum process has stopped important decisions being taken and that it has delayed scrutiny of the normal governance of this country. Late publication of the draft budget is a classic example of that, because the late publication of the draft budget potentially squeezes the amount of time that Parliament and committees have.

Of course, it is clear that the draft budget could not have been published at the usual time; it would have fallen in recess, which would not have been appropriate. The simple question is this: why not publish the budget early rather than late? The cabinet secretary must surely already be working on next year’s budget. On past occasions, he has published indicative figures, so there will be some idea available of the basis on which he is calculating next year’s budget.

That rather begs the questions what the Scottish Government is hiding and what difficult spending decisions have been pushed back beyond the referendum. No doubt the cabinet secretary will feel that that is an unjust accusation. If he does, the simple solution would have been for him to have published early, rather than late.

Nonetheless, this side of the chamber welcomes the new framework. Once again, we record our thanks to the committee and the cabinet secretary for reaching agreement on it.