3. Nobody who has looked at today’s report on the challenges that the national health service faces should pretend that there is a simple quick fix that would solve every problem at a stroke. However, is it not clear that challenges such as recruitment, retention and staff morale will be made worse, not better, if we fail to provide a fair pay settlement for the dedicated professionals who provide these essential services, who have seen a real-terms pay cut of 14 per cent over the past five years?

Yes. That is why the Government is committed to ensuring fair pay settlements for public sector workers not just in the NHS but across our public sector. Again, I say that I think that we are still the only Government in the United Kingdom that has given an unequivocal commitment to lift the 1 per cent public sector pay cap.

The commitment has been given to lift the 1 per cent pay cap, but no commitment has yet been given to an inflation-based increase—a real-terms increase to restore the lost value of pay that people have suffered over recent years. However, the Scottish National Party’s Kate Forbes, who works closely with the finance secretary as his parliamentary liaison officer, said on television this week that the pay settlement for the public sector should be

“at least inflation, if not above inflation”.

We have also heard a wider range of voices from multiple political parties accepting the basic Green proposition that fairer rates and bands of taxation can raise adequate revenue to fund our public services without resulting in cuts elsewhere and without cutting the pay of public sector workers. I do not expect the First Minister to publish her budget today, but does she agree with the basic point of principle that, through fairer taxation, we can provide an inflation-based or above-inflation increase without hitting low earners?

The First Minister:

We have given the commitment to lift the public sector pay cap. We have not made that dependent on actions being taken by the UK Government in the budget, unlike the Welsh Government, which has done exactly that. We have said—and I have said personally—that we must seek pay settlements that are fair. Of course they must be affordable, but they must also reflect the real-life circumstances that public sector workers face, which include the rising cost of living.

In the normal course of events, we will confirm the detail of our public sector pay policy when we publish the budget, because we require to know the overall budget that we have available to us before we do that. That is the normal way in which we do things, and we will continue to set out policy in that way.

The other part of Patrick Harvie’s question focused on tax. I have said openly that, notwithstanding the parties’ different manifesto commitments, as a Parliament we require to come to a consensus position on tax in order to pass a budget. Given the continuation of austerity and given the implications of Brexit, which are becoming clearer by the day, we as a Parliament need to ask ourselves how we will use our still-limited tax powers to protect our public services and provide the infrastructure that businesses need to thrive.

Next week, we will publish a discussion paper that sets out some of the options and principles that should guide that decision. That paper will form the basis of the discussions that we will have across the Parliament in the lead-up to the budget.

I suppose that that is a long way of saying that I agree with much of the sentiment behind Patrick Harvie’s question, but the fact is that we have to take proper decisions in line with the proper process of budgeting. Unlike the Opposition parties, the governing party in any Parliament has the responsibility of making sure that we can pay for the commitments that we make.