 Dyw iawn. Mae'r cyfrifolio cyfrifolio. Rwy'n gynhyrchu'r sefydliadau mwybodaeth, sy'n cyfrifolio ddoch yn iawn, a mae'n gyfrifolio gyfrifolio willogau cyfrifolio ac mae eich teimlo yn cerddwydau, ac mae'n gynhyrchu cyfrifolio gwyddonno gyfrifolio gyfrifolio gyfrifolio, mwywys i gyd yn tifärio. Yr hyn o gyfrifolio, ysgolwyd yng nghygrifen ym Glifrin, ytwyngus cyfrifolio a'r a'r ffordd iawn o'r ffordd iawn a'r ffordd iawn o rhanau cychwynnol oes iawn yn porod ddych chi'n gwyllref honno. Mae gwahodd iawn yn ffordd iawn, ac mae'r ffordd iawn ar gweithio cychwynnol ac mae'r ffordd iawn yn cydweithio'r cychwynnol. Bydd arddai cerddwydol yn gwirio gwahodd iawn i mewn, pechio eu cael eu ddrwg mae'r ddylgrifennu yn fradw'r cymdeithasol yw'r gwyllteidio? Ac mae', erbyn byddau'n gwirio gwahodd iawn i ymddir ond mynd i fod yn llyfrfod oedd o'r gwaitheg arllust i'r fanion i Gwladheisydd Unidol ac i'r dificiogau ar gyferon. Mae ein bod yn gyllid dusgogi i'r gweithio ar gyferon, gan lasom meth oeddeniaid neu ddysgrifetau, i'r ddysgrifetau Dŵr yn gweithio bydd yn ei gilydd ac ein ddysgrifetau sydd yn hyn ysglesiaith i gaeloedd gyda'i gweithiau bydd yn gweithio'r ddylch chi'n gilydd. Oedden nhw'r gwrth ymdweud yn mynd i gael'r hunghau geitimol o hynny yn osud i gael'r ysgrifoedd rydym yn cyhoeddfodol i'r chwarae cyfnod y cyfrifeddrwyll, ac fuignau'r pathfawr o'r bydd i'r cyfrifcydd. Y 7 yma rwyf wedi'u gweithio ddatblygu'r parly lui fyrdd arfer o'r ddechrau cael hefyd, ac dym ni wrth i'r cyfrif fod eistedd cyfrif o'r gwrthod o'r bydd y mae'r cyfrif yma. A oedd y cwsig yn gweithio'r cyfrif yma, The inactivity of the UK government gave way to calamity. The United Government's mini-budget sent shock waves through the markets, driving up borrowing costs for government, businesses and households. So disastrous was the package of unfunded and uncosted tax cuts for the rich, that not only did the mini-budget not survive the month but neither did its architects, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. The utterly needless upheaval has created significant damage for individuals and great uncertainty for Scotland's finances. Initially, the Scottish Government was told that we would receive an additional £660 million through the block grant adjustment. Now, with the new Chancellor scrapping the plan to cut the basic rate of income tax in the rest of the United Kingdom, our funding will be reduced by £230 million over the period of the UK spending review. That represents a swing of almost £900 million in the space of less than a month. Now, under a new Prime Minister and a new Chancellor, calamity is giving way to austerity with deep spending cuts expected. As members will be aware, I had intended to present the outcome of the emergency budget review to Parliament last week, but paused that announcement while we awaited the fiscal statement of 31 October. However, that date has now changed to 17 November. While I would have preferred to see the OBR forecast and the outcome of the UK statement prior to publishing this review, I have concluded that we can wait no longer. The scale of the challenge is so severe and the impacts and uncertainties for people, households and businesses is so significant that the imperative consideration must be to provide as much stability, certainty and transparency as possible. We now also once again face the prospect of tax changes from the UK Government. It is only right then that we take the appropriate time and care to consider any impacts on our budget and devolve tax policies. I will wait until after the UK Government's next fiscal statement before deciding on the content of any tax discussion paper. I cannot overstate the degree of challenge associated with undertaking this emergency budget review. I have said before that in all of my experience, now and during my previous tenure as finance secretary, there has never been a time of greater pressure on the public finances. Inflation means that our annual budget today is worth £1.7 billion less than when it was published last December. At the same time, demand for government's support and intervention is understandably increasing. I must balance the books, but I am committed to doing so in a way that prioritises funding to help families, to back business, to provide fair pay awards and to protect the delivery of public services. This emergency budget review delivers on these objectives. The Government is determined to enhance pay and target support to the lowest paid where possible, as a crucial part of our response to the cost of living crisis. This support includes offers in the region of 7 per cent for front-line workers in the local government non-teacher and NHS agenda for change workforces. This would increase salaries for the lowest paid staff and agenda for change by over 11 per cent. Although some pay negotiations have still to conclude, I have already committed over £700 million of additional resources to fund enhanced pay settlements. I am grateful for the efforts of employers and trade unions to facilitate those vital collective bargaining processes. To be absolutely clear, every additional penny for pay has had to be found from existing, previously allocated and agreed budgets elsewhere within the current finite Scottish budget. We have reached the limit of what can be done in terms of reprioritisation. When I set out the initial package of £560 million in savings in 2022-23, I was clear that additional savings would still be required. Today, I have published an emergency budget review that sets out a further £615 million in savings. That includes £400 million from reprioritisation of spend within health and social care to provide a fair pay offer for NHS staff and to meet the extraordinary pressures from inflation and demand as the service begins to recover from the pandemic. That has included refasing some social care spending in line with expected spending profiles and repurposing spend in other areas such as mental health. Despite that, we continue to progress our work to deliver a national care service, as well as commitments to fair work and adult social care, and we continue to provide overall increases to mental health spending, as well as delivery of dementia, learning disability and autism services, and cross-cutting trauma work. These are extraordinarily difficult choices that no Government wishes to have to make, but the full balance of health and social care reprioritisation will remain within the portfolio. A further £33 million of resource savings and £180 million of capital reductions have also been made, including reducing our marketing expenditure to below pre-Covid levels. Taken together, those decisions are those that are already set out in September, total almost £1.2 billion. They are not decisions that we wish to make, but, in the absence of additional funding from the United Kingdom Government, they are decisions that we are compelled to make. They ensure a path to a balanced budget, first also prioritising fair public sector pay offers and recognising that this is critical to the delivery of key public services. The Government will also always do what we can to support those most affected by the cost of living crisis. I can confirm that we have identified and allocated the resources that are required to double the value of the December Scottish child bridging payment, benefiting around 145,000 school-aged children registered to receive free school meals, to double the fuel and security fund to £20 million, to increase funding to local authorities for additional discretionary housing payment support to mitigate the UK Government's benefit cap as fully as possible within our devolved powers, to introduce a new £1.4 million island cost crisis emergency fund, to introduce new payment break options to help protect those who have taken control of debt through the highly successful debt arrangement scheme and to implement reforms to remove cost burdens for the most financially vulnerable. In our efforts to support business, we have also looked closely at regulation and how we can make it easier for businesses to thrive and we have used today's review to set out a range of improvements. After extensive engagement with business organisations, industry groups and individual businesses, including industry summits on energy and financial services, we will introduce a range of measures set out in the emergency budget review today. Those include building on the additional £300,000 provided to Business Energy Scotland this year by doubling the energy efficiency cashback element of the loan and cashback scheme to £20,000, protecting the small business bonus scheme, the most generous scheme in the UK, which takes over 111,000 businesses out of rates altogether, and establishing a joint task force with COSLA, local authorities and our regulatory agencies in business to consider the differing impacts of regulation on business. Alongside our counterparts in Wales and Northern Ireland, we have repeatedly called on the UK Government to do more, given the considerably greater flexibility available to the UK Government. The First Minister reiterated those calls to the latest Prime Minister, highlighting the essential need to provide further targeted financial support to low-income households, urgently provide clarity on what support will remain available for both non-domestic consumers and households following the early end to the energy price guarantee next March, and to make additional funding available so that devolved Governments can support people, provide fair public sector pay uplifts and protect public services. The First Minister has also reiterated our deep concern about the risk of social security benefits not being increased with inflation in April. A permanent £25 uplift to universal credit should be introduced now alongside the reversal of the two-child limit for universal credit and tax credits and the abolition of the benefit cap. We have been clear that an enhanced windfall tax should fund the support in place of increased borrowing or spending cuts. We are now anticipating a package of eye-watering cuts and tax rises in the autumn statement that will be evident to all members that the emergency budget review has involved extremely difficult decisions. Even when such decisions need to be made quickly, as is the case now, I believe that it is essential that we use the best available evidence and be as transparent as possible. To that end, I would like to thank the members of our expert panel for the consideration and advice that they have provided over recent weeks, which I also published today. The panel has assessed the outlook that faces the Scottish Government in its budget and advised the Government to proceed with caution to achieve its objectives in these difficult days. In addition, I published a new analytical report on the impact of the cost of living crisis in Scotland, alongside a high-level summary of the evidence around the equality and fairness impacts of the emergency budget review measures. The outlook for 2023-24 and beyond is clearly even more difficult than when we set out the resource spending review earlier this year, and measures for efficiency and reform in the delivery of our public services will be even more important. Nonetheless, I can assure Parliament that this Government remains firmly committed and focused on continuing to support our public service recovery from the impacts of Covid, on tackling and reducing child poverty, of taking forward our net zero ambitions and supporting strong and sustainable growth in our country. Thank you, Deputy First Minister. Deputy First Minister will now take questions on issues raised in his statement. I know that we have slightly overrun, but I still intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will need to move to the next item of business. I would encourage Members and the Cabinet Secretary to be as succinct as possible in questions and answers. For those who have not already done so, could you please press your request-to-speak buttons if you wish to ask a question? I now call on Liz Smith. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for Prior Sight and I also acknowledge the difficult circumstances in which the Scottish Government finds itself. Some of them, obviously, are international. Some of them have been domestic, and I fully acknowledge that part of the difficulty is the timing of the forecast and of the budget. Those difficulties are substantial for the Cabinet Secretary, and I fully understand why he cannot say a bit more about tax policy just now. The Cabinet Secretary is always challenging the Opposition parties, quite rightly so, to come up with budget suggestions of their own. Here is one, and he refers to this at the bottom of page 2, and that is regarding health and social care. Can I ask the Cabinet Secretary? Does he really think that now is the appropriate time for his Government to be proceeding with a national care service bill that has drawn so much criticism from virtually every stakeholder and which Audit Scotland is predicting to be costing £1.3 billion? Secondly, he has outlined further cuts to health, to education, to justice. Can I ask why there have been no further cuts to the constitution budget? Thirdly, he has outlined some measures that he has agreed with business—I think that it is on page 3—but can he tell us what specific measures will be put in place to boost productivity, which, as he confirmed himself at the finance committee, is a serious issue and which undermines the tax taken Scotland? I think the complete sentence that Liz Smith was trying to get out at the beginning of her state of her contribution was to acknowledge the difficulties created for me by the decisions of the United Kingdom, as well as the timing decisions. I think we should just allow me to just complete that sentence for Liz Smith. In relation to the national care service, it is a situation in which we have a very high level of delayed discharge within our hospital system, which is creating enormous strain in the delivery of national health services. We have to recognise and acknowledge the necessity of reform, because the current arrangements are not working. We therefore have to take the steps to establish a national care service for two reasons—to ensure that members of the public are assured in all parts of the country about the quality and the range of care that will be available to them, and secondly, to ensure that we are able to support the sustainability of the national health service. That is why that expenditure is required. On the constitution budget, I suspect that what that was code for was expressing the commitment of the Government to spend £20 million on a referendum on independence. I would point out to Liz Smith that expenditure does not arise in this current financial year, and it is this current financial year that I am wrestling with to its greatest extent. Lastly, in relation to productivity, I have announced a set of savings that have been made here today. At the same time, I am protecting very significant levels of public expenditure in skills, in our universities and in our college sector to ensure that we can invest in developing the capability of individuals in our society to maximise their economic contribution. What would be the biggest single thing that would help productivity in this country is if we had a sensible approach to population growth and migration, and that has been abruptly halted for us by the total folly of Brexit. If I can appeal to Liz Smith and the Conservatives about anything, the health secretary points out social care. The social care sector has lost thousands of employees because of Brexit, so we need to have a sensible discussion about migration, because the behaviour of the Conservative Government, especially of the Home Secretary in recent days, is directly undermining productivity in the Scottish economy. I would encourage the cabinet secretary to ignore sedentary interventions either from his own bench or the opposition bench, as I call Daniel Johnson. I thank the cabinet secretary for his statement, and where there are additional measures on the cost of living, I welcome them. There is no doubt that the chaos emanating from the UK Government makes a challenging situation that much more difficult, but that underlines the need for clarity and transparency from Governments, be they Scottish or UK. Proportionately, which portfolios have the largest savings to make against the budget passed earlier this year in order to achieve the £1.175 billion worth of cuts announced? As confirmed by the Fiscal Commission in paragraph 34 of their May forecast, the Scottish Government had planned to carry forward £279 million from this year's budget to next and £250 million to 2425 using the reserve. Is that still the case, and if not, how have those sums been allocated and what are the impacts on next year's budget in the following? I am sure that the cabinet secretary views that we must all tighten our belt, but I note that the cabinet secretary for her external affairs has travelled to eight countries in as many months, clocking up almost 22,000 air miles. What cost control measures are being applied to the expenditures of members of the Government and civil servants? I think that the steps that the Government is taking about clarity and transparency are evident by the fact that I am here today and that I appeared before the finance committee several weeks ago on the subject at a session chaired by Mr Johnson. I also appeared in Parliament in early September to explain openly the changes and choices that I was making. On the question of transparency, the Government is delivering on what would be expected of the public. I have not approached this from the perspective of applying a random reduction across portfolios. I have had to look at this very advanced stage in the financial year at what options remain available to me to reprioritise spending. In some areas of government activity, there is more scope to do that than in others. In the case of the changes in relation to health and social care, I was absolutely clear with the health secretary and the health portfolio that whatever savings we were able to identify would be retained within the health and social care portfolio to support the very strong payoff that has been made, particularly for low-income staff. In relation to the reserve, we have carried forward the resources from the last financial year into this year that we planned. Obviously, the budget for next year was predicated in the resource spending review on a carry-over from this year to next year. I have yet to identify those resources. That remains an on-going challenge before the end of the financial year, and I am still working to ensure that I can balance the budget this year, which is my statutory duty to do so. Lastly, on the question of the international engagement of the Government, we are a Government that we cannot be insular. We have to be in contact with the rest of the world. I am quite sure that it is really important that we maintain that dialogue. The Prime Minister was being criticised just yesterday for not going to COP 27, and I am delighted that he is now going. International dialogue is essential for every single Government, including the Scottish Government. I encourage members not just to listen to the questions but also to listen to the answers. I now call Alex Cole-Hamilton to be followed by Keith Gibson. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Make no mistake, we are here in large part because of the calamitous decisions by the Conservative Government. They have added hundreds of pounds to people's mortgages, and it is unforgivable. That is why we need a general election. But the choices that this Government have made are manifestly wrong as well. Irrespective of when that £20 million is allocated for, we are still spending civil service time and money on the production of constitutional papers—£17 million on national testing every year—and up to £1 billion on the ministerial takeover of social care. All the while, councils are being squeezed to the pits, long Covid sufferers continue to struggle without, and £38 million is being stripped from mental health. On this last point, can I ask the Deputy First Minister what has changed in the severity of the national mental health crisis that he can find that level of money to cut from the mental health budget? Let me address two particular points that Mr Cole-Hamilton raises. First of all, in relation to local authorities, local authorities will be getting significantly more resources, as a consequence of the reprioritisation exercises that I have gone through to support very strong paydeals that are assisting local government employees on low incomes. I am sure that that is something that Mr Cole-Hamilton would welcome. In relation to the question on mental health, I acknowledge the significance of the questions around mental health. Indeed, in my dialogue with the health secretary, we have both been determined to ensure that we protect the mental health services as much as we possibly can do. What has been announced today will mean that the resources allocated to mental health are not increasing as fast as we had planned. They will still be growing, but they will not be growing as fast as we had hoped. I am not going to suggest or to minimise the significance of that decision, but it comes about because I have limited options at this stage in the financial year, and it is an indication of anything else to any Member of Parliament of the severity of the situation that we face in public expenditure terms that I am having to take decisions of that type. As I said in my statement, I would prefer not to be taking those decisions, but I have to do that to fulfil my duty to balance our resources in a financial year and also to make sure that I can support employees, particularly in low incomes, in dealing with the cost of living crisis that they all face. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that the emergency budget view is stark about the difficulties caused by inflation eroding the Scottish budget, the limited fiscal powers of this Parliament and the refusal of the UK Tory Government to either increase the resources available to Scottish ministers or devolve those powers necessary to deliver for the people and communities of Scotland in these challenging times? Can he advise of his engagement with business and trade unions throughout the emergency budget review process? On the question of dialogue with business and trade unions, we have obviously taken forward a number of discussions with business and trade unions. I have held business round tables myself. I met a whole range of trade unions to hear their views and their perspective on those questions, and it has informed the conclusions that we have come to. Mr Gibson raises a key observation about the limited scope that I have to take a different course of action, because the budget for each financial year is largely fixed unless the United Kingdom Government changes its position. Obviously, I have made the case to the United Kingdom Government to recognise the unprecedented effect of inflation in this financial year. There has been no financial year under devolution in which we have come anywhere close to the inflationary pressures that we are facing, and that merits an intervention that I have asked the United Kingdom Government to undertake. We have eight further speakers in seven and a half minutes in this session, so I am going to have to speed up both the questions and indeed the answers. Presiding Officer, the Scottish Government has received specific Barnett consequentials this financial year for things like the UK Government's housing support fund. However, the Scottish Government has not always been transparent on how this money has been spent. Could the Deputy First Minister commit to publishing information on how the Scottish Government has spent all consequential funding that it has received throughout this financial year? How consequential funding works is that the UK Government takes its decisions, the money is transferred to the Scottish Government, and we publish in extraordinary detail our budget plans, the autumn budget revision and the spring budget revision to give a complete picture during the financial year. Mr Arthur will be going to committee shortly once the autumn budget review is published to explain its contents, but I have also come to Parliament with two additional substantive financial statements in early September and today, transparently setting out what the Government is doing with all the resources available to us. John Mason to be followed by Paul Sweeney. Can the Deputy First Minister confirm that this statement is based on the assumption that Westminster will not either increase or decrease our block grant in the current year 2022-23 and if they were to do that on 17 November what would happen? This statement is predicated on the fact that we receive neither an increase nor a decrease in the funds that we expect to receive from the UK Government. That risk is not just apparent on 17 November. That risk also extends until the moment at which the UK Government undertakes its supplementary estimates, the date for which I am not yet certain. There is risk involved in all of this. There could be an upside, but equally there could be a downside. I have to take decisions to properly set out the budget choices that the Scottish Government is making and at times I have to do that without the complete picture of information that ordinarily would be available to me. We need to be followed by Michelle Thomson. I note the Deputy First Minister's comments regarding the potential impact of the imminent UK fiscal statement on our devolved tax policies and his intention to wait until we hear that statement itself to consider further discussion on tax, but if I could push him ever so slightly on that, there are a number of underutilised devolved tax options that we should be fully considering that could generate revenue to invest in the areas outlined today, which are stretched so thin. Will the Deputy First Minister commit in principle to a comprehensive review of devolved tax policies within the gift of the Scottish Parliament following the UK Government's fiscal statement? I have to do that because I have to take tax rates on anio basis, so that will be undertaken if there are particular propositions that Mr Sweeney would like me to consider. I would be very happy to receive them in writing or I could meet with them and hear the points that he would like to put to me. The cabinet secretary is faced with two aspects of risk of particular concern. First, the uncertainty created by KL to UK Government economic policies and, secondly, the undoubted harm about to be inflicted on the average citizen, come the Chancellor's autumn statement, that the Chancellor's taken advice from George Osborne, the architect of austerity, is no comfort on either front. Can the cabinet secretary therefore indicate the basis of discussions with the latest UK Chancellor or indeed if he has been consulted with him by him at all? I have had an initial discussion with the chief secretary to the Treasury on the approach to the November 17 statement. That has not in any shape or form covered substantive details. I have been promised substantive engagement before the UK statement and, obviously, I will make myself available for any of that dialogue at any opportunity. Further to that answer, can I ask the cabinet secretary what response he has received from the UK Government to the Scottish Government's specific requests that the financial settlement for this current year be inflation proofed? I have not had a positive response to that yet despite the fact that we have asked for that on a number of occasions. Kate Forbes asked for that issue to be addressed in the summer before she went on the term to leave. I reiterated that. The First Minister has made that point. I will continue to stress that point because, as I said in one of my earlier answers, this is a year without precedent of the scale of inflationary pressures. Ordinarily, if inflation is 2 or 3 per cent, it is not really going to cause much of a financial strain. Inflation at 10 per cent is a real financial strain. The Criminal Justice Committee this morning heard evidence from the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service about the issues that a public service like the prison service was wrestling with. The point that Mr Greer makes to me and which I will be taking to the UK Government is an entirely valid point of view. Stuart McMillan, to be followed by Alexander Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. With the key levers to address the Scottish Loving Crisis in the hands of the UK Government and the Scottish Government, it is severely constrained in terms of the funding that is available to it to take action to support people in Scotland, including my current number of client constituency. That clearly shows the deficiencies of the current fiscal framework. Does the Deputy First Minister agree with me that the full suite of powers available to an independent Scotland Parliament would have been able to more fully deal with and mitigate the cost crisis? There are very clearly constraints on what we are able to do because our budget largely is fixed because of the nature of the arrangements that we face. Mr McMillan makes the fair and reasonable point that there are a range of other powers and responsibilities that could be used to provide us with much greater flexibility in addressing the challenges that we face. The Deputy First Minister has announced spending reprioritisation worth £400 million across health and social care portfolios. That includes cuts to mental health and primary care spending. Can I ask the Deputy First Minister whether the Scottish Government has carried out an analysis on the impact of these cuts to those receiving mental health treatment or primary care funding and where exactly this money is to be taken away from? As I explained to Alex Cole-Hamilton, the issues will vary in different budget lines in relation to mental health. The budget will not be increasing as fast as we had hoped and wanted to ensure. In relation to some of the work around primary care, we will be asking for reserve funding that is held by health and social care partners to be used as an early priority rather than it being retained while further strain is carried by public funds. I would point out to Mr Stewart that we are having to do this because of the severe financial pressure applied to us by the mismanagement by the United Kingdom Government of the public finances and the economy, where inflation has been allowed to rage rampant across our society. Those are the hard choices that we have got to address as we deliver on the expectations of members of the public. In relation to the impact of members of the public, we have published on the quality assessment, which addresses many of the issues that Mr Stewart raises. The rising cost of living is having a substantial impact on families across Scotland, and so far the UK Government has failed to provide any certainty to families on low incomes. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that the UK Government should give a clear commitment in its upcoming fiscal statement that social security benefits will be increased in line with inflation? I think that that would help members of the public in facing the acute challenges. Obviously, we have taken decisions to boost the support available to families facing financial hardship, and I would encourage the UK Government to do likewise.