Mr. Robert Watt:

I do not know. We have debated this for years. We like to have a prudent Estimate. We do not want to have a situation where we do not allow enough on budget day for the Vote because we do not want the Minister to have to go back and look for a Supplementary Estimate and because we want to draw the Estimate as close as we can to what we think it is. We might err on the side of caution, therefore. These are debates that take place a few weeks before the budget every year when colleagues present to me their updates for this year. We had a conversation a few weeks ago on what the update for this year is and on what that means for the base on which we make a decision for the Estimate for 2020. It is the inherent uncertainty of spending lines that are driven by demand that we cannot influence or control. It is ultimately a function of decisions that thousands of people will take. The big issue with the Vote in recent years has been the receipts. I mentioned the issue where there was a larger than expected remittance. Therefore, employers were effectively making contributions in respect of single public service pension scheme recipients but had not remitted it to the Vote during the years when it accrued and so there was a build-up. That was an issue we were working on so hopefully we have rectified that. We will not see the large apposition surplus that was surrendered in respect of 2019 again because it reflected the once-off reconciliation of previous positions.