Ready? Okay. April 1st, joke. Okay, we are semi-mitting the agenda. Should I read the agenda or how do I do it? I would just say it's April 1st, 2020, and this is the SMI community call. And we are moderated today by Stefan, please introduce yourself and get us started. So I'm Stefan Prodan, I work for WeWorks, and I'm an SMI maintainer. On the agenda today, we have the talk about celebrate the CNCF membership. The versioning of the API, how we want to do that, to move forward. And yeah, we have a couple of more issues, a lot of issues actually here, governance. And the project board, I think it's also a good topic to have. Amy, you want to go first on the CNCF membership and what that implies. Welcome, you're here.  It's good to see all of you. Hooray. We've got a bunch of other items here. So as a sandbox project, we don't get much, right? Part of that actually means that you have a neutral space to be able to grow in towards being whatever it is that you want to hear. We're here to help. We're here to be able to make sure that you get what you need to be able to be successful in this. And I know there's a lot of other questions around like logistics and pieces further down, but we can get to those in the agenda, but welcome. Good to see you all. Thank you. We want to talk about the versioning thing, Richard. Yes, I noticed, Stefan, that you commented on that. And I know that it's a ticket that Michelle had opened in the spec repo issue 88. And it says that you mentioned consolidation of API resources under the same version, blah, blah, blah. And I just wanted to bring it up in terms of if we wanted the specification to have information about previous release versions, we should probably make a chart or something. I'm not sure. I mean, we're going to solve it on this call, but since you put that comment, I'm wondering if you wanted to kind of say more about what you think the next step is. I think that we have two approaches to this. I think we should at least now in the alpha stage, we should list all the API versions that we currently have. And I think it's also important to specify what implementation works with what version, for example, I don't think it is on alpha one, maybe others are on other versions and I think it's for someone that wants to integrate let's say through SMI with service mesh or other operators. You can really tell right now what works with what and what version works with what other version because we also have dependencies between the API objects. One proposal was to list all the all the versions consolidate them under alpha four or something like that. And every time we make a change we bump the version on all of them. In that way, people don't have to worry. Hey, I have, I don't know, HTTP routes alpha two does it work without a traffic split alpha two or alpha three, the answer is alpha three and so on. So, in terms of representing that in the in the repository, there are two propositions one will be to create directories for each version and copy the specifications and everything in there. And then another approach that I suggested would be to create branches for each version. When you say create branches, do you mean branches in GitHub. Yes, and so there'll be like all these long live branches that would diverge from each other. I have any concerns about because long live branches. Either way we could have like, you know, a compatibility matrix that we maintain either on the webpage or in a markdown file and GitHub, that people could look at at a glance and see if this is the current compatibility. I just worry that if we have a whole bunch of branches people will still need a chart. I, I only have one ask and that is a kind of weird sounding ask and this the negative example. I don't want to say that this is like in bad practice but if I look at client go, I always, although I wrote a book about it I always get confused, trying to figure out what actually abusing I'm sorry but so if we can keep it as simple as possible, do it once properly and keep the matrix as possible to not confuse people. That would be awesome. That's my only worry. So I think we can totally avoid the metrics compatibility metrics if we bump the version on each modification. If we are going to do 100 changes to the API in the following month will have view on alpha 100. Are we going to do so many modifications are we. I don't think SMI will have so many things inside. And maybe bumping the version every time it's the right solution. If we do what I think is really effective in the Kubernetes project, which is we define what a regular release would look like. And we, we make commitments to the release and if the releases are because the pace of change is not so rapid. We've always got the option of kind of being ahead of the release if you want but but I think if we can make an agreement and an agreement that we will always try to be on the release and let's say we do every two months on a release. Maybe, maybe that's the way. So this is a specification of the software. We cannot commit to a release every two months if you don't check the spec. I don't think the software release pattern applies to specification at all. Oh, I don't know. I mean I think I don't think you have to do a release but but I think there's definitely. I mean if we kind of backtrack there's there's definitely been there are definitely changes which are happening all I'm kind of really suggesting is that we we bundle changes into a, you know, we don't release before or something. So we have no release of the SMI spec as it is. I guess what Nick was alluding to was more or less this kind of, you know, breaking, breaking or not right way and say, up to this level we reserve the right to change something so you know, if you want to use it, feel free to but we do not make any guarantees that you will see it face up to better or whatever. And once it's ga we kind of commit and say we do not change the API anymore. And if we then do something changing it would definitely get a new API, like major tool or whatever. I think this at least that was how I interpreted Nick. I'm going to say quick time check since we're going to try a condensed version of this meeting we're trying that today and we'll see how that goes. But since we've allocated a third of our time so far and we've talked about this item. I'm going to point people to the issue because I think that there's a lot of detail we could dive into here so people who have opinions about this. That's the issue to go and hopefully by the next meeting everyone will put their comments on the issue so that's unreasonable. Should we talk about the governance documentation. So we have a government governance doc right now. That states that maintainer will be removed after three months. If he's not active. If he's not active means. I'm guessing it's not only about writing some new spec it's also about responding on issues. And all the stuff so do you want to discuss that. Also adding removing projects. What's yeah we don't have, we don't have nothing around it. We don't have a mechanism also to voluntarily do that. I have seen that for for the ambassador program where you can essentially say like yeah you know I've changed focus or whatever it's like, you know, I'm not going to wait for these three months. I'm out of here. So yeah maintainers must remain active, if they are unresponsive for more than three months, they are automatically removed. So maintainer may step down by submitting an issue starting their intent. Okay. Yeah I think the only thing in there Stefan is maybe what active means, and specific with the cleanup I did I did actually reach out to everybody and they specifically said I guess I could have had them comment on an issue. I reached them by a slack. But I did ask Suraj, you know, are you willing and he said no please put me in emeritus. So but yeah, I mean we could say what what defines active. Have you been to a meeting have you contributed have you open an issue. We could we could just say what does active mean is that really the crux of what we need to define here. I don't want to make things too complicated but I think we should take it a step further and say hey this is what document specifically what a maintainers responsibilities are. And then the definition of active will be more clear in that, you know, they have not been doing their duties for X amount of time, and a number of responsibilities might be helping with issue triage attending meetings, resolving issues submitting Let me let me just go look for prior art in the CNCF I'm sure somebody's documented this and I'll put an issue together. And if the verb edge looks similar to what we agree on then we can just bring it over. I guess we that sounds like a great idea, lucky, but I really want to make sure that we don't have too much process on the one hand. On the other hand, like, it's a bit like a prenup right you. As long as everything is good you don't need it right. You exactly need it if if something goes right. And then it's like you know, what if like you know I've been, I don't know. I still want to but they're just after three months immediately get kicked out or do I have a wage appeal and like you know we, if we do it properly you know listing all the responsibilities then you know, what does it mean after two months you get a warning, you have a chance to you know pick it up again or like, how does it actually play out all the way through otherwise it's like, we just deferred to the first time word happens and making up these rules when it happens is almost never a good idea. Okay, so it sounds like we're putting together an issue and people can take a look at that. Okay, let's move forward about the renaming of the SMI adapter for Istio, do you want to rename it into Istio operator or what was the second? Yeah, I put that one on the agenda because it was kind of an old issue but since we were in the middle of removing or rearranging all the GitHub repos I was like, interesting. That's, do we need to do this? I think Michelle you were in that mix. I'm not. If you have any repulsion about renaming it anyway anymore I think the term adapter is used in the Istio community and so that's why it was named adapter and that's fine. Let's, I don't really care to run that said script right now, but is anybody else passionate about it? I really like the adapter naming makes sense. It's also in the SMI read me right now the main read me where we list the environments we say hey Istio think it's an adapter and console, the console connect thing it's also through an adapter. Can we close the contenders for name? Were there any other suggestions? I don't have the issue up. Operator. It's fine. I would be fine word. Yeah. My vote is governor. Istio governor. We're going to confuse everyone. I can't. Naming is so hard. Do we have any representatives from Istio in SMI on spec yet? Not that I know of. And we can totally troll them. We can call it the Istio. Mixer. If somebody, by the way, if somebody knows off topic, but if somebody knows the right person on Istio to reach out to to find out if they want their logo. That's them and console connect actually are looking at you Nick are the ones that have not signed off. You didn't sign off on the issue. You were like to care of it and I look at the issue and I'm like, it doesn't agree. So I'll drop a link in the chat. But yeah, so like, we don't want to use anyone's logo if they haven't said we can use it. So Istio, because members of this community wrote the adapter. By the way, if you are interested in working on the Istio adapter, please do because I've noticed in trying to get pull requests through there that we have a minimal amount of maintainers who focus in that particular repo. Yeah, Michelle. I haven't really been super active on it lately, but I am but it's just, I'm trying to update the metrics piece of it. So not the adapter. I haven't gone issue with contributing to this adapter since he's using the, it's using the OpenShifter SDK, right? It's using what? Sorry, I didn't hear. OpenShifter SDK? Oh. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Why specifically? I don't know. Is it just because it's hard? It's over complicating everything, like. Okay. Yeah, it needs a lot of updates, right? It doesn't use Go modules. Yeah. Do you want to like throw up any issues, Stefano, I would be happy to take a look at them. I'm going to have some more time for that. Yeah, I think the, what it does is fairly simple. So cube builders should work just fine without using all these frameworks. I think it's an overkill and complicates, makes the contribution harder. I think that's valid feedback and we should look into it. I think I inherited decisions and didn't really, I have like a lot of things to focus on. So don't really make those changes, but that's valid feedback. Yeah, I think when, when we build this, it was a cube builder wasn't where it is today. And now it's like the de facto way of building operators and it should be fairly easy to migrate. I don't know if we still use the project board or if we discuss that, but I think making it, making a priority for the AC adapter to be easier to contribute to is something that I'd like to prioritize for you to do. Yeah, anything that was not finished, I did move with the exception of a couple of things that I was thinking we'd be able to wrap up. But anyways, Stefano, go ahead. So do we want to archive the old slack? I guess so. Do we have to like, do we have some kind of need to keep the data from it? I don't really know what Nick you have ideas. Oh, you're waving because you're heading out. Okay. Yeah, I'm just apologizing. I just got a balance. Sorry. I'm not, it's not clear to me if anyone has anything in the old slide that they really, really want, but I feel like we should pick a time that we're going to either archive or delete and then let people, you know, decide to do what they want to do. Does anyone have any strong feelings about that was why I brought it up. No none here. My preference would be sooner rather than later. The only thing I want to keep is my statistics so that everyone knows I'm the most talkative person on earth, but I can't keep those forward to the CNCF one unfortunately. I'm for deleting all together. Okay, so we'll probably do that in like the next month. We already set them general channel to read only so. I've just noticed there's like 395 people in that slack. I guess some of them are already in the CNCF slack but they aren't in our channel so maybe go out and reach out to the people you think want to be in our channel. Next, and the last thing, talk about the project board. Yes, so basically anything that's on the Q one project board still if you want to go click on and write things on it if you care about those. I'm going to try to get those ones resolved or moved. And if you think things should be on the project board for Q2, we haven't put a ton of formality into what goes on a project board versus just the main thing that I did was I moved all the stuff from the SMI spec project board now that we have an organization we can have an organization on our project board and you can add cards from any of the repos. So, that is like open to people's ideas of how they want to organize it. I don't really want to be happy handed with it I just want to make sure that anything that we care about we are moving forward on. So, maybe that's a discussion topic, you know, what we want to move forward on specifically, like in Q2 could be a discussion meeting if people want everybody wants to take as a homework assignment from this meeting. Go think about what you have open that you care about. We did skip by the way there were a bunch of open pull requests and we did skip the discussion of it and I don't think that person showed up to this meeting, but if they did, and they are just under a different name. The pull request to add support for routes is actually something that I was not positive. I saw that Stefan maybe you can address that because you did the most review of that code but is that something that changes the spec significantly at the point where because it looked like he was adding some things. Anyway, yeah, maybe if you want to address that Stefan. Yeah, I was waiting for Thomas feedback on that request. I saw a pull request from that guy on this topic on almost every repo. Like, it looks like he's really trying to dive in and get this specific thing done and so I was like, someone to care. Yeah, it's a, it's a push from linker D to consolidate the metrics on the SMI right to us. Yeah, to give a background. I'm trying to get everything in linker D multi tenant SMI metrics would give us all of the read multi tendency so you just have Kubernetes are back. But a lot of it was missing and so Alex has been working at updating the spec to support all the existing like your D functionality routes is the biggest change there. There's not anything necessarily to the spec it's mostly just additive, but it's definitely something that we should be comfortable about moving forward on. This is going to involve more documentation updates to then or what's your approach there. Definitely needs. I think some of the one of the things that's come out of this is Alex has been frustrated in trying to figure out where to add things he's approaching it a bit from an engineering perspective, and so most of the PR is an information has gone into the spec. So I think an outstanding piece is updating the documentation inside the spec repo to go and give a feel for what use cases this is and what the responses are and how what we actually intend from a support perspective. It should block anything but it's definitely provides a discussion point which is, I think we should have a document written up that explains the checklist for how to propose a change to the SMI spec itself and what we expect to get out of it. Yeah, so, so the metrics changes got proposed in the SDK as a client go implementation or go line implementation for SMI. And afterwards we try to push Alex and say hey, this should be documented in a spec first then implemented in the SDK. And he's trying to do that right now I reviewed the changes in SDK and also the changes to the spec. In the current state, the pre-quest looks good to me I will prove it but we need another look at it for someone else and that's it we should move forward. There were a couple of things like the version wasn't bumped everywhere. It was only in the header, the examples were on the old version. And yeah, I missed some of those I realized later I asked Alex hey, please make all the changes like it should and then Alex realized okay but we also need the old version. And this is how we got to the versioning discussion like I managed to add all the old versions in the SDK so now whoever uses the SDK can use older versions as well. So it's easier to upgrade inside your own implementation from one version to another. But we also need the same approach in the spec because you look at the SDK case is V1 alpha one. What does this mean you look at the spec and you don't see it anymore so you have to look in the get history. So that's why I propose either a branch or let's make directories in there but we should have everything until I don't know beta one or something like that when you can archive the alpha versions. Okay, so if you want to look over the full request. So it sounds like Stefan and Thomas have the most context on this so if you two want to look through all of the pull request that this gentleman has put in and kind of help guide those first. What else do you have anything else. We did have, I did have an item in there about the meeting length. All right, we've now tried a condensed meeting. Do people prefer the hour long meeting or do they feel like we hit enough of the high points for discussion interactively in this one. Anyone have strong feelings when we're the other. I like to have an hour. We could discuss about versioning for hours. Yeah, that's a great sign. But just because if it's that important, it would be great for everyone to get a chance to read what you what you said. Yeah, I did my life is that can get up but there are like three issues now on versioning and we should make sure we link them together. So we don't lose one one side of the story on the other. Michael H moderating next time we need a volunteer to be short. Yes, shorter meeting is wonderful volunteer to be quick on the typing and the interpretation and the guidance. Next time. Do we have a, do we have a taker for that for the notes. I'm ready better typing but I'll do it with no one else. I'll beat you to it by 10 seconds to fun. You want to arm wrestle. Or Stefan can be assistant to the note taker, which is the very title we had last time. Hmm, wonderfully on time. Thank you, Michelle. All right. Bye everyone. Okay, so. Thank you. See everyone next time. April 15. Bye.


Alrighty, so I haven't done a construction update in quotations or an update on Canada's Wonderland in quite some time. I'm actually working on a really big project involving contacting some local MPs and government officials for a video to help get some answers on Wonderland. But before that I got a new drone, so I have the new DJI Zoom. I do not know how to fully use it. I didn't know how to use the Zoom to its max. This is as close as I can get for now. It can go much closer by the way. So I'll be able to see really far into Wonderland. This is pretty good. I'm like pretty far back near the house while zooming in with this right now. So that's pretty cool. This is the finished product for Mountain Bay Cliffs. I don't know if any of you have seen it. I've been missing in action for quite some time. I'm dealing with some medical stuff now as well which is going to take a burden on me. But as you can see, other than the water in Mountain Bay Cliffs, all the water for the most part has been drained out of Splashworks other than a few slides here and there. There is some weird storage going on in the Winterfest storage lot now. I can't tell if that's New Frontier Canada theming coming or how we haunt theming mixed with Winterfest theming or just Winterfest theming and then they got a bunch of tables and chairs stored there as well. But nonetheless, not too much going on. There is, again, I have to go back to some older footage. I don't know if that digging up is new in between Mindbusters, Lift Hill and the Break Run or if that is old. But nonetheless, it is just electrical. So as you can see, there's a white van down there near the helicopter that is a permanent electrical company that is working pretty much on property at Wonderland, upgrading Wonderland's electrical as it used to have a lot of problems. So they're just looking to fix that. Nothing else that I could notice right now. My drone only had nine minutes of flight. So I wasn't able to look too closely because pretty much I went up, I started filming and then the battery died. So I didn't get too much. I just got this. So you're about to see the storage lot. I can see the some Winterfest sets. I can see the tables, those cylinders with the wooden poles, our Winterfest things. There's a few things in here where I'm like, are they howling hot? There's weird cages and then weird bins. I don't know if that's Frontier Canada theming or just storage bins or what? I have absolutely no idea what those things are. So I can't even begin. I know that's a parade float, white tent that we've discussed in previous videos. But that's all that I could really update you guys on right now. I can tell you that the roller coasters are still all on the tracks. Nothing has been dismantled. The landscaping in the park is completely done. So fresh cut grass, all the flowers are planted. There is a new lighting package on the mountain that I saw when I was actually driving away. So I wasn't able to film that. I'm going to go back and film that or someone in the community might film that now after watching this video. But there is a cool, what looks like new lighting package, which almost makes it look like sun is shining through the mountain on the front facing. I don't know if that's new or if I was just a new angle that I'd never seen it on before, but I thought it was really cool. So I'll check that out. Anyways, thanks so much for watching guys. Have a good one. Bye.


The minister will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Tom Arthur up to 10 minutes, minister. Presiding Officer, I welcome the opportunity to update Parliament on the provisional outturn against the budget for financial year 2021-22. The provisional outturn demonstrates once again that this Government has prudently and competently managed Scotland's finances. This again has been another exceptionally challenging year. The Scottish Government has had to respond quickly and decisively to significant challenges, in particular the on-going impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of living crisis, and the tragic illegal war in Ukraine. However, our effective and prudent financial management has meant that every penny received by the Scottish Government has been channeled to where it was needed the most. In 2021-22, we spent over £5.7 billion in relation to Covid. That includes just over £2.6 billion of supporting health and wider public health initiatives, and around £1.5 billion in business support and self-isolation grants. Part of the business support was a £375 million package announced to support firms impacted by the unexpected spread of Omicron. That was proportionately significantly more than the chancellor announced for the UK as a whole. We continued to roll out a highly successful Covid-19 vaccination programme, including those vital fford booster doses to combat the unexpected Omicron variant. We spent over £3.5 billion on social security benefits, including £57 million as we started the game-changing Scottish child payment. We also committed an additional £4 million of Scottish Government humanitarian aid as the first part of the contribution to support of the Ukraine crisis, supporting those inside Ukraine affected by the conflict and for vulnerable people who were displaced from Ukraine whilst they were in transit. Looking forward, the Scottish Government remains committed in ensuring that, as a country, we continue to effectively manage the on-going recovery from Covid and provide stability and support against the impact of the cost of living crisis. Responding to the pandemic, sharply rising inflation and the cost of living crisis has once again put a spotlight on the challenges that we face in managing such volatility within the narrow, restricted fiscal powers that we have. We face the same interrelated challenges as other Governments across the world, but we do so currently without the tools and levers that other Governments have at their disposal. The current fiscal framework is inadequate and leaves us with an imbalance between the risks to which the Scottish budget is exposed and the levers that we have to manage those risks. We have uncertainty over our UK Government funding. The UK Government does not confirm our final funding envelope until six weeks before the end of the financial year, materially changing it with no prior warning right up to that point. That limits our ability to do long-term optimal planning and makes efficient and effective deployment of late funding changes extremely challenging. That is an important point and links directly to the management of the budget and spending well. The total resource funding confirmed solely in the year was over £1.1 billion. Some of that was expected, but large elements were not. We want to make the most of that funding and do so requires managing programmes of spending across the cut-off that is our year end. That is not underspending, it is maximising the effective use of our budget. There is a challenge of managing this volatility in our funding envelope and it is compounded by a funding model that means to carry forward other budget between financial years is tightly restricted. Our priorities need to be managed using a multi-year model. Those challenges, unfortunately, do not stop at the end of a financial year. We also have to manage within strict limits on how much and for what purposes the Scottish Government can borrow, leading us to be overly dependent on UK Government policy. That has been compounded by the UK Government's decision to remove necessary Covid consequential funding at a time when we undeniably need to continue to provide additional support to our public services. That is why, until such a time as the people of Scotland choose a different constitutional path, we will also continue to make the case to the UK Government for more proportionate financial powers to help to manage pressures and volatility in Scotland's financial position and allow the Scottish Government to respond fully to its priorities. The forthcoming fiscal framework review must take place in that context. A narrow technical review of the framework will not deliver what the people of Scotland need or want. Turning now to the 2021-22 provisional out term, under the current devolution settlement, the Scottish Government is not permitted to overspend its budget. At the same time, the carry-forward of budget between financial years is very limited, meaning that phasing of expenditure between financial years is extremely restricted. The UK Government does not constrain its economy and businesses to manage their finances through one single year, so why do they expect a devolved nation to do this? This is the situation that we currently face in Scotland. There is therefore a balance to be struck to ensure that we maintain spend within our budget limits, but we do not generate high carry-forward between financial years that would risk breaching our reserve cap and result in loss of funding. However, we have once again managed to maintain this balance under those strict fiscal constraints. I can report that the provisional fiscal out term for 2021-22 is £47 billion against the total fiscal budget of £47.6 billion. The remaining budget of £650 million, which represents just over 1 per cent of our total budget, has been carried forward in full through the Scotland reserve. It is made up of £421 million of fiscal resource, £183 million capital and £46 million of financial transactions, which, of course, can only be used for loans or equity investments in entities outside of the public sector. It is important to note that there is no loss of spending power to the Scottish Government as a result of this carry-forward. As I have said, every penny has been allocated in full, allowing us to implement measures at the most optimal time rather than being constrained to a single financial year. That is evidenced by the fact that the majority of this carry-forward has already been proactively anticipated in the 2022-23 spending plans that have been approved by this Parliament, including £324 million anticipated within the 2022-23 budget, published on 9 December 2021, and the £120 million announced on 27 January of this year by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy to support local government costs at stage 1 of the budget bill process. £265 million of that funding is directly linked to late UK Government consequentials, which was finally confirmed only six weeks before the end of the financial year. The remainder represents just not 0.4 per cent of our budget and is already built into our 2022-23 plans, funding expenditure in 2022-23, with the full budget allocations being disclosed to Parliament as part of our autumn budget revision process. I highlight that the outturn figures for 2021-22 remain provisional, as they are subject to the on-going audit process. Finalised figures will be reported as usual in the annual Scottish Government consolidated accounts and a statement of total outturn for the financial year of 2021-22 later this year. To conclude, the provisional outturn demonstrates that the Scottish Government has maintained a firm grip on Scotland's public finances in the context of a year with significant challenges. We have delivered on our priorities, maintained a balance from not breaching our fixed budgetary limits and ensure that we have sufficient backbalances to fund our 2022-23 spending commitments. That is despite the challenges and fiscal restrictions that the UK Government places on us. I commend today's figures to Parliament. Thank you. The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business. I would be grateful if members wished to ask a question where to press their request-to-speak buttons now. I call Liz Smith. Thank you. I thank the minister for prior sighting. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that that remains a very challenging fiscal environment in which many factors are combining to make the path to recovery uncertain. It is perfectly true, as the minister said, that the Scottish Government cannot overspend on its budget. However, what the whole of Scotland wants to know is why ministers have not acted upon the demands that they themselves have repeatedly made to ensure that both businesses and public receive financial support as quickly as possible. That is exactly what the cabinet secretary demanded of the UK Government just a few weeks ago. However, today we learned that there is a large underspend of £650 million, and yesterday we learned that the Scottish Government has still not decided a month on what to do with the £41 million that it received in Barnett consequentials from the household support fund. Why, when we have businesses who are collectively struggling with debt, with a recruitment crisis and rising costs, and many families really struggling with the cost of living, is the SNP not releasing more money now so that it can deal with the current financial constraints? Secondly, will the minister confirm to Parliament that the cabinet secretary will make a statement prior to recess to announce how the Scottish Government will spend the £41 million Barnett consequentials to help low-income families that she has been sitting on for a month? I trust that the member has received the provisional outturn briefing note for MSPs, and I am sure that she will have familiarised herself with the annex of that, which details all of our spending on Covid in the last financial year, including in business support. In business support over the course of the pandemic, we spend £4.7 billion. That is £500 million more than we have received in consequentials from the UK Government. As I stated in my statement, all the money that is in the reserve will be disclosed to Parliament through the autumn budget revision process, which is a formal process for parliamentary reprieval. Ministers, as always, will appear before the committee as part of that process and be subject to scrutiny. As we regard the future parliamentary business, that is of course a matter for the bureau to determine. Daniel Johnson Thank you very much and I thank the minister for early sight of his statement. Indeed, both Covid and the cost of living crisis necessitate the Government gets the money that it has at the door as quickly as possible. Of course, the minister cited £5.7 billion of Covid spending. That is £100 million less than was received in consequentials that year. Indeed, the total consequentials due to Covid was £14.4 billion over the last two financial years. Can the minister confirm how much of that £14.4 billion has been spent cumulatively over the two financial years and how much of it, given the issues raised by Audit Scotland, remains in reserves not just of the Scottish Government but in local authorities, NDPBs, health boards and IJBs? I also ask the minister for clarification that £650 million is very close to the threshold permitted by the Government to hold in the Scottish reserve. Given that those numbers are provisional, is there any risk that that threshold will be breached? I thank Mr Johnson for his questions. On his last point, in terms of our management, there is that headroom of £50 million, but he raises a very important point, which is the fact that these reserve limits are now out of date. They are not indexed, they do not increase as with inflation in the Scottish budget. That is a key issue that will have to be addressed as part of the fiscal framework review. As regards the total money in the reserve, I will be happy to confirm to the member in writing, but there is no carry-forward from any Covid funding into the reserve. The money that was spent in the last financial year has been detailed in the annex. There are similar publications available detailing Covid funding that has taken place in previous years. That information is available and I am happy to write to the member to direct him to it if that would be helpful. John Mason, to be followed by Douglas Lomstone. I thank the minister for his statement, which I thought was very clear, and yet we still had the words, large underspend, being used by Liz Smith, somewhat misleading for the public, I would suggest. Can the minister confirm that the Government has to underspend because it is not allowed to overspend? Yes, and the member makes a really important point. This is the fundamental reality, and it would be a reality faced by any party and Government. We cannot overspend our budget, and if I was standing here reporting that we have spent above and breached our cap, I am sure that I would be rightly being criticised by Opposition politicians. However, I think that the important thing to look at as well is also the context, because when you look at the actual underspend, if you look at the money that was not anticipated, not 0.4 per cent. I would just draw members' attention to the fact that in the devolved administrations, our devolved administrations, where we have outtorned figures for 2020-21, the Northern and Irish Government had an underspend to budget of 1.1 per cent, and the Welsh Government had an underspend to budget of not 0.5 per cent. In England, where we have an underspend for this year, the figure was 6 per cent. The SNP Government recently claimed in its spending review that tackling climate change was one of its key priorities for the rest of the parliamentary term. However, it has now emerged that in the past year there was a £511 million underspend by the SNP Government in this portfolio area. How on earth can the SNP Government claim to be tackling climate change when it is not using all the financial resources at its disposal? This Government is absolutely committed to tackling climate change, which is why we have introduced world-leading targets. The reality is that many of those projects have been impacted by a combination of the pandemic, supply chain issues and workforce. If the member would care for, I will give him an itemised breakdown of some of the challenges. The £123 million in resource is ultimately a reflection across the SNP portfolio of improved passenger revenue in respect of rail. There was underspend in Norwin Isle ferries due to lower cost of fuel, and there is significant underspend in energy. That is ultimately a reflection of the fact that all capital delivery programmes are demand-led and have been severely hampered by continuing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In financial transactions, a majority of the underspend there within the NZ portfolio is in energy, where loan income was higher than anticipated. As the ministers outlined, the pandemic caused considerable uncertainty in terms of budgeting with the need to respond quickly to rapidly changing circumstances, and he has mentioned the additional uncertainty caused by late notice or indeed lack of engagement from the United Kingdom Government in terms of when funding could be expected. Despite that uncertainty in its recent report and Scotland's financial response to Covid-19, Audit Scotland has concluded that the Scottish Government managed its overall budget well. Can the minister advise what lessons can be taken from the experience of public spending during this crisis, and can he advise what changes can be made to better manage such uncertainty? The pandemic has brought into sharp focus the existing deficiencies in the fiscal framework. Unlike other countries across the world, we cannot respond quickly to emerging needs by borrowing, and that leaves us overly dependent on decisions taken by the UK Government. I think that we can all remember specific moments during the pandemic where that poses very severe challenges. Being reliant on consequentials with little clarity and certainty over their scale and timing makes response and recovery planning extremely difficult. The current fiscal powers are also being eroded by inflation as I touched on. Key borrowing powers on reserve limits within the fiscal framework are currently set in nominal cash values and hence are not protected in real terms from a growing tax base. As I said earlier, the fiscal framework review must consider the challenges faced by these fixed nominal limits on the current borrowing and reserve powers, as their real-time effectiveness continues to deteriorate over time. Paul Sweeney, to be followed by Stuart McMillan. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The minister knows only too full well the scale of the cost of living crisis and the misery that millions of people are living through at the moment, and the reality is that people need that underspend money in their pockets, not sitting in a Scottish Government reserve being saved for a rainy day. Can the minister tell us why he believes that it is appropriate, or indeed fiscally prudent, for the Scottish Government to recently announce the potential loss of up to 30,000 public sector jobs during this cost of living crisis, while sitting on an excessive £420 million resource underspend, that is money that could be used right now to alleviate hardship faced by millions of households across Scotland? It is money that is going to be used. It was anticipated in the budget last December, and the full process for disclosing how that money will be allocated to current and on-going commitments will take part, as it always takes part during the budget process at the budget revisions. That is just normally how things operate in this Parliament, and that is what we will continue to do. I want to work collaboratively and constructively on the cost of living crisis. I think that we saw a great example of that yesterday afternoon in the debate that we had when we saw agreement amongst parties across the chamber, not one party, but against most parties on taking measures to go and help people. The reality is that every penny in the reserve is committed to spending in this financial year, and that is exactly what we will do, and we will disclose that as we always do through the budget revision process. I thank the minister for the statement and the clarity regarding the substantial sums allocated to business support during the pandemic. It is clearly very vital that effective systems are in place to detect and prevent fraud, which is certainly very much in comparison to the situation down with the UK Government, which the Public Accounts Committee there found that billions of pounds of taxpayers might be lost to fraud and error as a result of the UK Government's approach. Can the minister, however, provide any further information about what assessment has been made while the effectiveness of systems, which the Scottish Government put in place, to detect and prevent fraud within its business support scheme? The risk of fraud was mitigated through a number of control mechanisms built into the design and delivery of the business support schemes, including the decision to ask local authorities to administer many of the grants based on non-domestic rates and their existing administrative capabilities, including fraud detection and prevention. That meant that local authorities could use a well-established, robust, existing dataset and other information relevant to determining eligibility to enable a large number of businesses to be paid quickly with appropriate checks in place to mitigate fraud. In late 2021, the Scottish Government undertook a retrospective fraud risk review on 11 major business support funds administered by local authorities and other bodies. That concluded that there was a reasonable assurance against fraud risk for business support and the appropriate controls were in place. That work is reflected in our unqualified consolidated 2020-21 accounts opinion, but Auditor General recognised the fraud estimate that was reasonable and acknowledged actions that have been taken by the Scottish Government to minimise fraud risk. It is the responsibility of delivery partners to recover payments that have been made fraudulently. The Scottish Government's initial work on assurance for fraud risk found comprehensive fraud prevention measures in place within local authorities, together with the experience of managing fraud risk in areas such as local taxation and the application of exemptions. There were high numbers of rejected applications within the largest scheme delivered by local authorities, which indicates proper scrutiny at a point of application. Thank you very much indeed, Presiding Officer. With the crisis in our NHS and social care, the cost of living crisis and businesses struggling to pay the bills, particularly in the aftermath of Covid, every pound needs to be put to work and fast. I echo the words of Liz Smith when she says that the Government cannot afford to sit on this money. We need to get it out the door as quickly as possible. It is important that the Scottish Government properly account for how the Covid funding was used. We have heard something in the last answer about fraud detection, but lots of money will have been lost to fraud, albeit mistakenly distributed by the Government. Can the minister provide further analysis to the Parliament and an update on how much the Government has lost to fraud or error, the steps that are being taken to reclaim the money, and how many people the Government has working on it at this time? As I made reference to in my response to Mr McMillan, we utilised delivery partners, and recovery will be the responsibility of delivery partners. I can say that, based on available data and a number of factors, we believe that undetected fraud, on an estimated level of fraud, was around 1 to 2 per cent of overall spend. However, the available data tells us that of the fraud detected, a loss of around £600,000 was realised as of April 2021. The total spend for the largest local authority delivery scheme at that time was £1.6 billion. Our estimate of 1 to 2 per cent would have put fraud at £16 million and £32 million respectively. We are currently working with delivery partners and Audit Scotland to improve our estimates based on an improved understanding and management of fraud risks to improve consistency and quality in the capture of data on fraud and error and to increase post-delivery testing of control effectiveness. The output of that work will form part of the Scottish Government's 2021-22 consolidated accounts. The need for a fiscal framework review has been reinforced through the pandemic and now the cost of living crisis. That has clearly demonstrated how difficult it is for Scottish ministers to act without sufficient fiscal powers and often with late notice or lack of engagement regarding bannock consequentials. Can the minister provide an update as the Scottish Government's latest engagement with UK counterparts regarding the fiscal framework review and the changes that it hopes to see as a result of this review? We are clear that the review should be broad and scope and it should look at not only the operation of the framework today but also the balance of risks and whether further levers are required to grow Scotland's tax base and support economic recovery. The review must ensure that the Scottish Government and Parliament have the necessary powers to manage the risks that we face within our devolved responsibilities and to support economic recovery. I understand that the joining secretary committee will be meeting later this month and the cabinet secretary for finance will discuss further arrangements for the review with the chief secretary to the treasury. I thank the minister for his statement. The pandemic and cost of living crisis have had and continue to have extremely harsh impact on the Scottish public sector and on our economy more generally. Those crises show the need for reflexive fiscal powers to deal with the shocks that affect Scotland in a unique way. Does the minister agree that the outturn statement illustrates the increasing extent to which the fiscal framework and devolution settlement more generally fail to meet Scotland's needs? Can he say how independence would ensure that Scotland has all the fiscal levers and flexibilities that it needs to invest in its own vision of a green recovery? There is a very important point within that question. Firstly, we have the upcoming fiscal framework review that I referred to in my response to Mr Gibson. I will not repeat what I stated there, but it is clear that we need movement. When the fiscal framework was agreed, it was recognised that there should be a review, and that in itself was an admission and an understanding that this would be a process and an event. I think that we have a number of areas, regardless of what our constitutional views are across the chamber, that we should be able to unite on, for example, expanding borrowing powers, expanding flexibilities around the reserve and making sure that limits and caps move with inflation. Those are simple, straightforward measures, but there are other things that we could do in the well to enhance the powers of this Parliament through the fiscal framework review, full powers over income tax, full devolution of national insurance and devolution of VAT. However, the member is absolutely correct to say that the best option for Scotland and the option that the people of Scotland are going to be presented with in the near future is that of becoming an independent country. I call Alexander Stewart to be followed by Co-Camp Stewart. We understand that those figures are provisional, but it is crucial, minister, that getting the detail when it comes to social justice, housing and local government. Therefore, can I ask the minister to further comment on how this spending will be broken down, given the tight financial difficulties facing local government? The member is asking specifically with regard to the outturn, with regard to local government. He will note that there is a £210 million overspend in resource. That was a reflection of money transferred for a range of measures such as business support and employability from the finance and economy portfolio. If it is with regard to the variance on capital spend, that is similar to the case with capital across the board. It is specifically focused on the affordable housing programme, and it is a reflection of the challenges around emanating from the pandemic supply change in workforce that have impacted the construction sector. I hope that that provides the detail around that portfolio that the member is looking for. Brexit continues to have a substantial economic impact on the UK and Scotland. Could the minister provide any further information about the assessment to which the Scottish Government has made of the impact of Brexit on Scotland's economy? Can he say more about the steps that the Scottish Government is taking to mitigate the impact of Brexit on Scotland's public finances? We do know that it is six years to the day when Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain within the European Union. We are closer to rejoining the European Union than we were to the day that we were forced to leave. We know that Brexit is contributing to the 19 consecutive monthly rise in prices charged by businesses in Scotland and causing UK food prices to increase by over 6 per cent, hitting the poorest family's hardest and contributing to the cost of living crisis. According to the OECD, the UK will have the lowest growth in the G20, apart from sanctioned Russia, and the OBR forecasts that Brexit will hot GDP growth by twice as much as the pandemic. Brexit has direct implications for public finances through lower working-age population and GDP, resulting in lower government revenues in the long run. Since 2019, Scotland's good exports fell by 20 per cent, largely driven by a decline in oil and gas exports, amounting to a falling goods trade with the EU of 16 per cent, whereas trade with the EU—non-EU countries dropped by only 4 per cent—but even as Scotland tries to cope with the fallout of a reckless hard Brexit, the UK Government is irresponsibly risking a trade war with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol. That, once again, reinforces the need for this Parliament and this country to become independent.