Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 3:56 pm on 13 September 2007.
I, too, thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement, and I congratulate him on his ingenuity in managing to link the national planning framework with the national conversation. It is quite an achievement to link planning with independence, but I rather suspect that there is more appetite for planning reform than there is for independence.
I appreciate that the cabinet secretary cannot comment in too much detail on future spending, whether in the short term or the medium term, but—given the welcome words in the statement on prioritisation of strategic infrastructure projects nationally—will he confirm that incremental spending increases will be targeted at the infrastructure projects that will have maximum impact on economic growth, and that the same tests will be applied to allocation decisions on non-infrastructure spending?