Chamber and committees

Good morning, Deputy First Minister. Lorna Slater mentioned the green industrial strategy and its consistency of purpose with NSET. I want to take that a little bit further and ask how it melds with the hydrogen action plan and the forthcoming energy strategy.

Beyond that, I would like your opinions on how all that fits or does not fit with UK strategies. You said that you are focused on actions. Are certain elements that are not within our control holding up actions?

What is your opinion on whether the co-operation that we require is as good as it should be? Let us take the example of hydrogen and the hydrogen action plan. There have been lots of discussions around this table and elsewhere about the possibilities for hydrogen. We see some of the possibilities in my neck of the woods, with the Aberdeen hydrogen project, which has been on the go for quite a long time now. We are told that some of the difficulties with that come from UK regulation on transportation and storage of hydrogen. How much are you doing to persuade the UK Government to make the moves to get this right, in order to allow the investment that our future requires?

You have talked a fair bit about having an effective voice and, in terms of the fair work agenda, that is spoken about a great deal. Mainly we talk about that from a trade union and worker perspective, but earlier you talked about the best models of ways in which to bring together workers, unions, employers and the Government, and gave Denmark as an example of somewhere where that works well. Do we have a job of work to do with many employers here to try to get them to see sectoral bargaining as a positive rather than a negative?

Good morning. There has been a lot of talk today about pay, and rightly so. The survey looks a lot at pay and associated scenarios such as health and safety and supporting families, including with childcare. However, there is not so much emphasis on conditions and things that are associated with pay. Has any work been done on maternity pay or sick pay—or the lack of those, in some cases—to see how we compare with other countries, including Denmark, which, as you rightly say, works with a social market economy rather than a liberal market economy?

We would probably agree that fair work is more than just fair pay and that the conditions are extremely important, particularly for women. You said that we have been creative with the powers that we have in Scotland. Do legislation and regulation in these areas need to be toughened up to ensure that women are treated fairly when it comes to maternity pay, that the same applies to men with paternity pay and that folk have equal access to decent sick pay?

I have one final question, which is about the disability pay gap and the measures around that across the comparator countries. Is there a breakdown of disability that takes account of neurodiverse folk? Do we have separate figures concerning neurodivergence? If not, should we think about having that?

I am a member of Unison. That information appears in my entry in the register of members’ interests.

Thank you; I think that it was important to go over some of the issues around conditions, particularly given some of the commentary that has been made this week about maternity pay, from certain quarters.

I want to change tack a little bit. We talked about conditionality, and I think that we would all agree that that can work to a degree, but we have not said a huge amount about sectoral bargaining and the part that it can play. I will ask a devil’s advocate question about sectoral bargaining. Let us take the example of social care, the issues around which we are all pretty well aware of. If we look at trade union membership and social care, the bulk of trade union membership exists in the public sector and local government, and not so much in the private and third sectors. Should trade unions have a greater role in persuading people to join them and trying to increase membership in the third sector and the private sector, so that we can get a real balance when it comes to sectoral bargaining?

As they always do, the words, “dignity”, “fairness” and “respect” have come into play today. As the person who first got those three words into legislation as an amendment to the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Bill, I recognise how important they are. I also recognise that we should not pay lip service to them but should ensure that dignity, fairness and respect are at the very heart of all that we do.

I want to hear from the cabinet secretary, in her summing up, about certain aspects of what is proposed, because various things have been said this morning. I recognise that the Government has a duty to steward public funds appropriately, and I am concerned about scenarios in which people could ignore requests for information, which in itself would cause real difficulties from an audit point of view. The amendments of Mr Balfour and Ms Chapman could mean that there would be an inability to produce robust fraud and error estimates, which I think that others would want to have as part of the audit process.

I would like to hear more from the cabinet secretary about the commentary in which it has been said that there are adequate procedures to deal with fraud. I would also like to hear from her on the exemptions, because I think that that is an extremely important area. Overall, I would like to know how else the Government could come up with robust fraud and error estimates, which I think that everyone would require the Government to do, if Mr Balfour and Ms Chapman’s amendments were to be agreed to.

Convener, before we move on, I do not think that we agreed to section 16 before the break.