Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament on 6th October 2022.
As I just said in my answers to Paul O’Kane, we will continue to meet the SCVO and others to talk about multiyear funding. We are already doing that and will continue to have those meetings. However, I make the point to Jeremy Balfour that, if our budgets continue to reduce, either through inflation—there has been a £1.7 billion reduction in the value of existing budgets—or the potential £18 billion-worth of cuts to public services that could come at us from UK Government decisions, that will put at risk funding across the board, including the support that we give to the third sector. I urge him to have the same discussions with his UK counterpart about the importance of maintaining Scottish budgets for those reasons.