Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Official Report 656KB pdf

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Covid-19 (Impact on Businesses, Workers and the Economy)

Agenda item 3 is the committee’s inquiry into the impact of Covid-19 on Scotland’s businesses, workers and the economy.

I am pleased to welcome our first panel of witnesses, who are Nora Senior, chair of the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board, and Gordon McGuinness, director of industry and enterprise networks at Skills Development Scotland. Welcome to you both.

I will start by asking Nora Senior to set out the measures that the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board’s sub-group has recommended should be prioritised to minimise unemployment caused by Covid-19.

Thank you. The sub-group was formed in late May and submitted a report at the end of June. The sub-group remit was to consider what practical actions could be implemented quickly, not only to help people in employment and keep them in employment, but to help those facing the threat of redundancy or who have lost their jobs. In developing its recommendations, the sub-group looked particularly at the challenges facing young people. Alongside that, we considered the strategic objectives of the Scottish Government and, in particular, the transition to a net zero carbon economy and the importance of embedding fair work in the labour market.

We looked at a number of significant recommendations—we had 63 across four areas. The four areas for immediate action were support for employee retention; assistance for those facing redundancy; training to enable unemployed people to transition into employment; and helping vulnerable people into employment.

We considered a number of areas, including expanding the single portal to help businesses access the information that they require; integrating accessible support; creating a toolkit, which we are working towards, to enable business to consider more innovative business models and workplace innovations embracing fair work principles; scaling up partnership action for continuing employment to offer proactive tailored support—so, reshaping the PACE model—and supporting sectoral and regional specialist approaches using local authorities’ insights and intelligence; scaling up job search and job matching tools, looking at upskilling and reskilling and improving the My World of Work website, which Gordon McGuinness can give you more detail on; looking at the apprentice pathway programmes and the innovations and flexibilities that might be necessary in order to help businesses to recruit and, importantly, retain apprenticeships; flexing college and university provision to address the key challenges and opportunities; and looking at how we could provide a series of short courses, particularly through online training. That also embraces a reintroduction of the transition training fund to expand scale and support for individual training accounts and the flexible workforce development fund.

We also adapted the delivery of the developing the young workforce programme and, working alongside Rob Woodward, we have looked at particular areas of the experience for under-25s. We are also reviewing additional measures for the longer-term unemployed, under the same remit. That is a broad overview of the areas that we have covered. I am happy to answer questions on those.

Thank you. Could Gordon McGuinness comment—briefly, as time is limited—on the My World of Work website, on which Nora Senior mentioned that you might have something to add?

Given the requirement for social distancing, we have tried to put as many of our services as possible online and in a digital format, particularly for areas such as PACE. Obviously, staff were furloughed, so we have tried to create as much content as possible. For example, there are YouTube videos that give a broad introduction to PACE services.

We have also developed a facility called the job hub. In the early days of the pandemic, we worked with the Food and Drink Federation Scotland, which was concerned because it had many short-term vacancies for additional staff. We developed the job hub as a way for people to quickly indicate job vacancies and it has had 99,000 views so far. The number of vacancies has tailed off a little, but it was never our intention to compete with the private sector on job vacancies. The facility is there, and we can ramp it up and down as required.

We also created an online portal for free-to-access learning, particularly on digital and information and communications technology. That service has had more than 185,000 hits. We send people on to other sites, so our analytics on that are probably not too revealing, but it has had good traction. It involves organisations such as the Open University, Microsoft and others. It has been well used by people who have been furloughed.

Thank you. We will move to questions from Richard Lyle.

Thank you, convener. Covid-19 will be a challenge for everyone, but it may be a crisis for young people. Is there any evidence that employers are already recruiting fewer young people? If so, what should the Scottish Government and its agencies be doing to address that?

The headline labour market statistics for quarter 2, which is April to June 2020, suggest that the negative impacts of Covid-19 have been felt most acutely by young people. Sixteen to 24-year-olds have experienced the highest percentage-point increase in unemployment and inactivity rates, as well as the highest percentage decrease in employment rates of any age group.

The latest statistics that were quoted to me were that the employment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds was 52.7 per cent, which was a decrease of 6.9 percentage points compared with the same period last year. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds was 13.5 per cent, which was an increase of 6.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year. The focus therefore is on how to protect young people and keep them in employment. Sandy Begbie is taking forward the job guarantee scheme, which the sub-group recommended, and the Scottish Government has put £60 million towards incentives and support for business to keep young people in work. I am sure that Gordon McGuinness can say more about apprenticeship pathway programmes.

Gordon, do you have any comments on that question?

Our first quarter statistics for apprenticeships were published on 11 August—they are official statistics. They show that apprenticeship recruitment was sitting at around 20 per cent of where it was at the same time last year. That is perhaps not surprising; a lot of companies were in lockdown, and many training organisations, whether private or colleges, had also suspended business. We will need to wait and see—the second and third quarters will be important in those areas. There has been a huge impact on some sectors, such as tourism and hospitality. In other areas, such as ICT and digital, recruitment held up well, reflecting the importance of the digital focus brought about by the pandemic.

The measures that we have outlined in our reports suggest what can be done. We are looking for support to protect those apprentices. A number have been made redundant and the job retention scheme has probably masked the number of redundancies, as it has unemployment overall. As that scheme starts to be wound down, we will get a better picture of the impact of the employment situation on apprentices.

The adopt an apprentice scheme offers an incentive of £2,000 for rehiring an apprentice. We are working with the Government on recommendations on how that scheme could be enhanced. We also have policy papers with colleagues in the Government on employer recruitment incentives and, as Nora said, Sandy Begbie has been asked to look at the Scottish youth guarantee. Our chairmen, Frank Mitchell and Damien Yeates, have been working with Sandy in the advisory group, and there has been significant input from our senior team.

We are working with the Scottish Government and with the Department for Work and Pensions at UK level on the kickstart scheme. There has been a series of round table meetings. It is Sandy’s intention to give a unified offer to businesses in Scotland, so that there is no competition. We are keen to get as much support as possible to maintain apprenticeship recruitment through any additional measures that may be introduced.

Thanks, Gordon. How are Skills Development Scotland careers advisers supporting young people? What advice are they giving young people who are leaving school and looking for work? To explore what you have just said, do we need more incentives, and, if so, what should they be?

09:15  

Given the pandemic and school closures, we had to remodel our entire service proposition to young people. We have a system called data hub, which records information on all young people aged 16 to 19 and then aged 19 to 24, although the service for the second age group is not as comprehensive. It is a data sharing system with local authorities, using the SEEMiS system, with colleges and with the Department for Work and Pensions. In schools, we can target the young people who have recorded additional needs and requirements. We looked at those who were coming up to leaving school and targeted specific support at them. That was developed online but there is also telephony support.

We are now back working in a number of schools, and we are working with schools on our engagement process. We have an agreement with each school on how services will be delivered, and, obviously, that must be done in line with social distancing arrangements. It is a challenging time—I do not think that it has been any more challenging. We can look back at the lessons from the last big downturn, which was in financial services, when we saw many more young people staying on at school for a fifth and sixth year than would normally be the case. We are likely to see that happening again. Colleagues have been working with our careers teams, because we have stated preferences from individuals on where they want to go after school, so we will start to track them through the system.

You asked whether we need more incentives. I think that we need to get incentives into the labour market more quickly, so that employers can make informed decisions around that. The incentives also need to be co-ordinated so that there are not competing offers, resulting in employers making decisions that are based not on the longer term but on what they can secure financially from the system. We encourage people to offer a job with training, and we need to ensure that the system balances those things equally. Co-ordination is what is required rather than significantly more resource, because I think that the investment from the Department for Work and Pensions is substantial. Nora Senior also made reference to the additional resource that has been provided through the Scottish Government for the youth guarantee.

[Inaudible.]—just a small piece. I know that the convener wants to move on.

Thank you. I appreciate that there is a lot to say on many of these issues, but I ask members and witnesses to be succinct. There is the opportunity after the meeting for either of our witnesses to add information in writing on any question that has been asked. We would welcome that. Perhaps committee members could say which of our two witnesses they are looking for a particular answer from, which will help us to be focused. I now turn to the deputy convener for further questions.

Thanks, convener. I invite Nora Senior to look back at the previous recession, following which it took about seven years for youth unemployment levels to get back to pre-2008 levels. Could you say a bit about the youth employment strategy and how that helped us to get youth unemployment numbers down a bit earlier in Scotland? In fact, I think that we met the target four years early. Is the pandemic now putting that progress at risk? Could you say a bit more about the apprenticeship programme that was mentioned a moment ago? Are we going to reach the target? Will the investment of £10 million—I think that that is what we have announced—for the modern and graduate apprenticeship schemes help to cushion us from the impact, or do we need to do more?

First, I am not an expert on youth employment policy. The sub-group took a lot of evidence on youth unemployment and the impact on young people. We know from previous recessions that young people are four times more likely to be made redundant. We also found out that it is better to build on and enhance a list of measures that are already proven to be effective than to try to invent new programmes. Sheltering young people in employment or education is one of the better ways of keeping them in the workplace and in the employment area. We should not be looking at short work programmes that will not lead to long-term employment.

I could not say whether the impact will be greater this time. On employment figures overall, I fear that business is going to be under very severe pressure, so it will be a challenge to keep unemployment down, particularly among young people. The sub-group has tried to make a determined effort to tackle the problem. The measures in place mean that we are still well placed to tackle the problem, but we perhaps need to accelerate those areas.

Gordon McGuinness might be best placed to answer your questions on apprenticeship programmes, particularly around the adopt an apprentice programme.

On targets this year, we are in dialogue with the Government team on those areas. We have not seen disruption like this before, and, as I touched on earlier, until the furlough scheme has been wound down, we will not see the impact on the numbers of apprentices who are already in the system—of which there are about 36,000—and on recruitment activity. I have been doing a lot of work in the aerospace sector, where there has been a huge impact, but some of those employers are saying that they are not going to change their plans for apprenticeship recruitment, because they recognise that business will come back, and they have been plagued with skills shortages in the past. Therefore, there are positive signs. Scottish Engineering has been doing some work with its members and although investment in training has subsided, there is still a recognition that apprenticeships are a positive.

I offer one word of caution, which is that we tend to focus on school leavers, but there is a real challenge in the numbers leaving further and higher education. There probably could not be a worse time to hit the labour market as a graduate, and we need to provide more focus for those individuals as well as for school leavers.

Thanks, Gordon. I appreciate that.

We move on to questions from Andy Wightman.

Thank you, convener. I have three questions, so I will just throw them all out and the witnesses can respond as they see fit. First, one of the key recommendations in the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board’s report was about further and higher education. Could you give us a sense of the position that universities and colleges are in to take on many more people and to develop short courses? Secondly, do you have any concerns about digital inclusion? What are you doing about that? Thirdly, how much intelligence are you gathering about potential forthcoming redundancies? Obviously, employers are making plans, and, in a sense, we have never been in a better position to be able to predict what is happening, but that depends on having intelligence from employers. Are you getting that intelligence, and, if so, is it helping to deliver the support that you anticipate having to provide?

On further and higher education, there is a review, which is being led through the Scottish Funding Council, with Richard Lochhead as the minister. These are challenging times with the number of foreign students falling, so there are income challenges. I am on the board of Glasgow Clyde College, so I see things first hand. There has been a period of disruption, as there has been with schools, and the colleges are moving to find a safe way of working, but probably with more blended learning than we see in the school system. There will be challenges with that.

At SDS, we have tried to lead a programme of engagement with the regional colleges, drawing in the labour market information, and we have shared the labour market insight reports that we have had. We have been working with colleges on a regional basis, looking at the intelligence that we are getting, because the pandemic will land differently in rural and urban areas. We are looking at how—[Inaudible.]—colleges can, where possible, tweak the type of services that they offer.

You touched on digital inclusion, and, right from the high end to the inclusion end, we need to consider the issue of working from home and the work environment. We need to rethink how we are going to deliver some of our education programmes and gear people up with the skills, technology and access to broadband to support those services. Those are some of the biggest challenges that Glasgow Clyde College has faced.

On intelligence on redundancies, we have the PACE support programme. We normally pick that intelligence up from notifications through the HR1 form, but the Resolution Foundation has done some work on things such as the furlough scheme and who anticipated that they would lose their jobs. We have done some stronger work across the enterprise agencies on setting up an alert system for companies that we know are struggling and on how we support those. Our fear with regard to companies where many staff have been furloughed is about how they approach the process of redundancy. We are encouraging companies to use the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service as much as they can to keep themselves and the workforce right, so that, where redundancies are considered, it is done in a fair and appropriate way rather than in a way that leaves companies open to challenge. We are doing as much as we can. Sometimes, companies are reticent to open up to the public sector about the challenges that they face, but the systems are as open as we have ever had them, and support is available.

Does Nora Senior want to add anything?

On further and higher education, colleges and universities have been flexing, through the workforce development fund, their ability to put on more short courses. The Open University is also recording record applications, including 675 for one digital course for which there were only 40 places. Therefore, the sub-group considered colleges and universities to be central to reskilling. There is demand for short, sharp training courses for those facing redundancy. On partnerships with business, we are encouraging employers to co-design schemes so that we create learning areas that will lead to employment. We have also asked for collaboration across courses and joined-up working across institutions, to ensure the maximum impact of public spending. Therefore, colleges and universities are already flexing to take on as many people as they can, and they are moving, where possible, to online platforms.

Thank you.

Gordon MacDonald is next.

Nora Senior, what progress has been made towards increasing collaboration and alignment in the school system between SDS, the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the new South of Scotland Enterprise? How will that progress be measured? Gordon McGuinness, what support is in place for those young people who have left school and are struggling to make the transition from school to work?

09:30  

Thank you. On collaboration between agencies, when the Covid pandemic became an emergency, the agencies immediately created a joint working group. Many of the responses were created across the system. The enterprise agencies considered how to share best practice for dealing with the volume of businesses that were seeking support.

As members of the sub-group, SDS and SFC have collaborated on how to flex the education system to ensure that those facing redundancy are either sheltered within education or provided with a series of short, sharp courses that focus on a pathway to employment. Labour market statistics have been used in that regard. SDS has been particularly good at gathering information on labour market demand and where there are vacancies and passing that information to colleges and universities, which use it to align some of their available courses and signpost individuals to those areas of learning. Just as we saw the team come together to deal with Brexit, I have seen considerable collaborative working between the agencies from the start.

The next stage is to consider each of the sub-group’s recommendations, agree a lead agency or partner—or it might be led by a Scottish Government department—and then consider the milestones, actions and outcomes, which are what the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board would look at. We discussed the framework for the implementation plan at our board meeting last week. We have another board meeting in September, and we have asked the Scottish Government and the agencies, collectively, to come back with an agreed implementation plan against which the board will be able to clearly align milestones and actions.

With regard to young people who are leaving school or are currently unemployed, colleagues have developed a strong offer through the next steps programme. That is for school leavers aged 15 to 18 who do not have a positive destination, those who are already registered as unemployed and those who are care experienced. I mentioned our data hub information resource. Those young people are intensively case managed through a transition programme. They will be supported through either weekly or fortnightly coaching systems and services on care management skills, and we are working with partner organisations on opportunities for them.

We are starting to consider alternatives to the apprenticeship programme, in case of a downturn, as well as pathways to apprenticeships. We are working through the Scottish apprenticeship advisory board, which would help us to design and set up new programmes, potentially with an initial phase in college until we see more stability in the labour market, when we hope that young people would move into the formal apprenticeship programme.

A range of intensive, targeted support for individuals is under way, and we have staff and resource designed around that. We will flex that as required for the numbers of unemployed young people, and we probably see that as our priority service, again learning the lessons of the past.

On the earlier question about what is different now, through the wider developing the young workforce programme, the work and activities of partners on data sharing are much slicker now compared with the previous recession.

Thanks.

I want to ask about aspects of local authority involvement. In responding to our call for views, some local authorities suggested that a focus on the young could be to the detriment of other target groups. Do the witnesses have a view on that?

There was evidence during the last downturn that, when the problem of youth unemployment emerged to the extent that it did, what happened, as has been the case historically, was that the whole artillery swung towards youth measures and there probably were gaps in services for people over 25. There were policies in colleges, which were asked to prioritise young people, that were detrimental to the services for older workers.

We now have systems in place, and, as I said, we have shared our labour market insights. We are using data much more effectively to monitor how recessions and growth play out and where support is required for the over-50s, females and people who are disabled. Through that process, we need a strong focus on the types of support that are required, and we need to do more diagnostic work.

A great deal of the support that would be delivered through PACE for older people takes account of career history and transferable skills. There will be people who have been displaced from the labour market who will require enhanced support. We probably also need to think about financial stimulus. If all the incentives were targeted at young people, it could have a negative impact on older people going back into employment.

Therefore, you tend to agree with local authorities that, if the full focus is on young people, there is a risk that other target groups could lose out. Is that because of limited resources or something else?

It could be because of limited resources. It could also be about the type of opportunities that present themselves within the labour market. PACE works very well where we have a downturn in one sector while other areas are still increasing, but we are now seeing the labour market being disrupted in a way that we have never seen before, and how things might fall out is very unpredictable—in the context of supply chains, for example. I touched on the work that we are doing as part of the aerospace response group. Some of the engineering companies, where there has been a big impact on supply chains, were probably flying high and in good health this time last year. Therefore, the factors that are causing this situation are falling in a way that is different from what we have experienced before.

We need to be alert to such things, use the evidence that we have and work with partners. So much of the work that we do now is with local authority partners, whether it is through business gateway or with our colleagues in the employability divisions across local authorities. I agree with you, but the responses should be proportionate, based on the evidence that we can gather.

On that last point about evidence, the sub-group studied evidence and the latest Scottish labour market position. It is interesting to note that, although there are impacts associated with women and older workers, by far the greatest impact in relation to unemployment is on those aged 16 to 24. That age group is the most vulnerable, and not looking at the 16-to-24 group would have consequences for Scotland; there would be a long-term scarring effect.

It comes down to priorities. We expected a greater impact on labour market outcomes for women than for men, but the early evidence is that women have had a smaller reduction in employment, lower rates of furlough and a lower reduction in hours worked than men have had. That might be partly because many women are currently insulated from job losses because they have high employment in education and healthcare, whereas men have high employment in construction.

The sub-group’s recommendation is to focus on young people, and that is our focus, because the long-term scarring effects on that group would be detrimental to the country and to economic recovery.

Given what Gordon McGuinness said about improved tools and data that we perhaps did not have previously, is it correct to say that we would quickly know whether a focus on young people was to the detriment of other target groups and that we would be able to respond to that?

Gordon can say something about SDS, but in essence, yes.

Yes, I think that that is true; we just need to be alert to the issue. We are monitoring developments nationally and regionally to see how things land, and we are considering impacts across urban and rural areas; there is evidence of the impact landing differently in the rural economy. We need to be alive to changes in labour market dynamics.

I would like to follow up on that. I was interested to hear what you said about the impact on women. My understanding was that unemployment among women had risen by 50 per cent. That demonstrates a heavy impact. What is happening to protect them? Disabled people have experienced a similar impact. From the answers that you have just given, it seems that that has not really been factored into your response.

With regard to the recommendations, our response was focused more on young people, but we recognised that women and people over 50 would be affected as well.

On what I said about the labour market outcomes, that is what we are seeing at the moment. We think that that may be a temporary outcome and that women may face a longer-term impact. Women are overrepresented in part-time and insecure work, so a sustained recession in Scotland will probably mean that women will be more vulnerable than men, but we are not seeing that yet.

When the sub-group considered the critical areas, we prioritised young people. That does not mean that we are not considering women or people over 50. In particular, through the upgraded PACE activity, we are considering the types of one-to-one advice that will provide specific guidance to those who already have skills on how they can be reskilled in line with the labour market.

At the moment, the evidence on women’s employment does not support what you are saying. I am happy to get the analytical unit to write to support that.

09:45  

That would certainly be helpful.

Another issue that has been touched on briefly is taking a more regional approach. I cover the Highlands—[Inaudible.]—dependent on the hospitality sector. How are you ensuring that you take a regional approach, so that the responses are different, depending on the challenges in each area? Given that people have embraced home working during the pandemic, are there opportunities in remote rural areas? For example, we could transfer jobs out to rural areas—certainly Government and civil service jobs, but jobs in other businesses as well.

I agree that there are immense opportunities to transfer jobs. The pandemic has made business collectively move to online working in a way that it had not done previously. As one commentator has said, the adoption of digital working by business has moved forward five years in the space of three months. Therefore, there are great opportunities.

To go back to Gordon McGuinness’s comment about digital poverty, one of our recommendations is that we need to ensure that our digital infrastructure throughout the country, but particularly in rural areas, is as robust as possible, to take advantage of those opportunities.

On tailored assistance to businesses, working through local authorities and having a regional focus, we and SDS are using local authorities’ insights and intelligence for those who are facing redundancy. We are also tailoring assistance for businesses, again working through local authorities, and specifically focusing on sectors that may be affected in particular areas. Scottish Enterprise is working with partners in three regional economies—Glasgow and Clyde, Ayrshire and the north-east—on how more focused collaboration can work in practice.

On the tourism side, on a regional basis, Rhoda Grant will have been working with Mr Ewing and Mr Hepburn around the Scottish tourism recovery task force, which was set up by the industry. SDS, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise have been active participants in that. We are also working jointly on the hotel recovery programme, which represents a further £14 million of funding.

On remote and digital working, we have already seen a change in some of the inward investment inquiries and the reshoring of work. Some financial services companies had really struggled with system security in places such as India when the pandemic struck, so we are already seeing a number of inquiries. There may be digital hubs but with dispersed workforces. Different business models could be exploited to get more work into rural areas.

Is work on-going to encourage businesses to do that?

Businesses themselves will see that there are advantages from more flexible working patterns and hours of work. Businesses will not necessarily have the high costs of maintaining buildings in city centres, so business logic will drive some of those models, where that is appropriate. However, in areas such as financial services—I am not necessarily talking about just entry-level jobs—there is the ability to do some pretty sophisticated work if the models are right.

My questions are about the Scottish jobs guarantee scheme. What role should Skills Development Scotland and other agencies have in delivering that? Where does its delivery sit in practical terms?

Sandy Begbie is leading that work, which I referred to earlier. He has established a small advisory group, and our chairman and our chief executive have played an active part in that. I understand that his independent recommendations are at the final stage, ready to go back to Government.

As I mentioned earlier, Sandy Begbie is keen that we unify service offers as much as we can, that we make the most of the resources from the DWP’s kickstart programme and, as Nora Senior said, that we learn the lessons of what has worked in the past. Obviously, he has had a strong interest in the inclusion agenda and the Government’s no-one left behind policy.

As I said, we have made a significant contribution through the development of the data hub. Part of the work that we want to do is to extend the data-sharing process further through the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs so that we get a comprehensive picture of young people up to the age of 25. We can put a very robust system in place through such developments.

The expenditure details are still to be settled. SDS would stand ready to play whatever role Government wants it to. I understand that some of the kickstart-type discussions at the United Kingdom level could mean that employers could go into a direct contract with the Department for Work and Pensions. However, discussions on how the collaboration between the UK and Scottish resources can be managed are on-going in Scotland.

I have a brief supplementary question on that point. Obviously, you are still waiting to find out exactly what Skills Development Scotland’s role will be and what the offering will look like. Once that has been confirmed, what is the likely timescale for Skills Development Scotland to set that up? For example, if you have to set up a new team to facilitate that offering, are we talking about a wait of months from that confirmation point?

[Inaudible.]—will be central to delivery. We would be delighted if we are.

I do not think that we can wait months. As I touched on earlier, we need initiatives in the field and employers making informed decisions about how they will recruit, train and develop young people. The Government will be as ambitious to achieve that as we are, and I would expect to see more detail in the programme for government next week. From some of the dialogue that we have had about the transition training fund and the national retraining fund, I know that those are in the process for the programme for government, so I hope to see a timescale developed there. However, I expect that some of that will rest with ministers—obviously with input from Sandy Begbie and the programme of work that he is taking forward.

That is really useful.

Would both witnesses outline what role they might expect to play in delivering the transition training fund? What lessons can be learned from the previous £12 million oil and gas fund? In particular, how was that fund targeted at individuals who had directly transferable skills—I am thinking about engineers—as well as those who may not have had such transferable skills because they were more specialist, such as subsea divers, for example?

That question is probably more relevant for me than for Nora Senior.

We hope to play a strong part in the delivery of the new programme. Again, we need to wait for decisions from ministers. Reference has been made to a budget of £25 million in the current year. That gives members an idea of the scale of the potential programme and how quickly that needs to be taken to market. However, bearing in mind some of the challenges that we will face as the furlough scheme is wound up, there will be significant demand for that.

The lessons that can be learned from the previous programme are very positive. I was involved in the oil and gas task force. There was a flexible fund, and the fact that individuals were given ownership of some of the decision-making processes meant that they could tailor the support package. Our staff played a significant role in the design of the fund and in supporting it. The feedback on the programme, even from those who did not receive financial support, was very positive, because the interface with our staff helped people to recognise their transferable skills.

Another lesson that we learned was that taking things to market could be a bit slicker. I think that we might be looking at trying to use regional structures in a sort of brokerage system and working with training organisations to gear up to deliver a service at the necessary scale without SDS having to contract some of the work to training organisations and colleges.

On working with people with higher skill sets, the programme must respond to need and, beyond the programme, we need to look across the support that is available from the wider public sector, because there may be college courses that are more appropriate for some individuals. We have been working with a number of engineers who are leaving Rolls-Royce, so they probably have the highest possible engineering skills. They are looking at transitioning to become renewable energy technicians, for example. We are trying to organise some information sessions and webinars, and we are working with Scottish Renewables, employers and training organisations to provide a picture of the sector. Helping people to make informed decisions about the type of training and future employment that they might want is an important aspect of any new development.

I hope that that answers your question.

Thank you. That was a very comprehensive answer.

If there are no supplementary questions, we will have a brief suspension before we move on to the next panel of witnesses. I thank Nora Senior and Gordon McGuinness for their evidence today.

09:59 Meeting suspended.  

10:06 On resuming—