Chamber and committees

I would welcome further discussion of that in the committee.

I will turn to a couple of points that you have made about the resource spending review. In your response to the committee’s report, the language that is used around the resource spending review mentions the need to make “difficult decisions”. The committee would acknowledge that, given that our report makes a point about the challenging public finance situation over the coming years.

I am trying to get a sense of exactly what is meant by “difficult decisions”. I think that we would all acknowledge that if we are to hit the Government’s three strategic targets on tackling child poverty, tackling climate change and economic recovery, it will require greater spending in those areas. All five parties in the Parliament agree that those three areas are important. We might mean different things when it comes to economic recovery, but we all broadly agree that it is needed, and we all agree on the climate and child poverty objectives.

However, that requirement for greater spending means that we need to make difficult decisions—about making savings in other areas, about where else to raise revenues or a combination of both. What is your expectation and intention in relation to that balance of difficult decisions in the resource spending review? Will the focus be purely on areas of spending that are to be disinvested from, as was mentioned previously, or will there be a wider discussion about where the money to hit those targets will come from? Would it come from other areas in the current budget or from other revenue-raising options that have not yet been explored?

I have one question for clarification from your conversation with the convener, cabinet secretary, and then I will move on to a more substantive line of questioning.

You explained that the additional £120 million that has been allocated to local government was given on the basis that you are confident that the previous instalment of £440 million will not have to be paid back. That leads me to the obvious question of how we reconcile two figures, one of which is almost three times the other. I presume that you were confident in allocating £120 million this year because the previous understanding was that the £440 million would be paid back over a number of financial years. If that is the case, does that leave us in the situation—I realise that this is grossly oversimplifying the matter—in which that £120 million can be baselined in budgets for future years because you made an assumption that similar amounts of money would need to be paid back in 2023-24 and 2024-25?

That is all from me, for now. I am keen to come back in later, but I want to give other members a chance.

I will start with a point of clarification on the process for potential updates to the ministerial code off the back of the procedure. The progress report that you submitted to the committee mentions that, from March, James Hamilton and Elish Angiolini will be asked to consider potential changes to the code. The paper notes that the timescale for that will very much be dependent on their availability. Does the Government have an indicative or preferred timescale within which it would expect to receive a response from both the independent advisers?

Is it, on the timescale as outlined, the intention to have asked the advisers in March and to have received a response for consideration by June?

Just for the record, can you confirm which staff networks were involved in the process? I am aware that the civil service staff network for LGBTQ people is very well thought of, but I personally am not familiar with the other staff networks that are active and engaged.

That will be very useful. Those are my questions for now, convener.

I just want to follow up John Mason’s questions about engagement with trade unions. It sounds as if that engagement has been good and has had the desired outcome, but has there been any engagement with those who specialise in representing marginalised groups or those who are disproportionately likely to be on the receiving end of inappropriate behaviours? Given how we have ended up in this situation, I am thinking of groups such Scottish Women’s Aid or, in a different context, the Equality Network or Enable. Has there been any engagement with such organisations, which specialise in representing, in particular, groups with characteristics that are protected under the Equality Act 2010?

That is really useful. I have one brief follow-up question. I accept what you are saying about how the obsession with gathering data often results in taking folk away from delivering the service that they need to and about it being schools that will resolve the issues. However, for a school to have the right skilled professionals to resolve the issues and support young people with the challenges that they are facing, there is a wider workforce planning issue for local authorities and Government, surely. For example, we need to know whether there will be a significant increase in demand at national level for educational psychologists or speech and language therapists. There are long-term workforce implications.

We knew a couple of years ago that we were short of educational psychologists, so the bursary was brought back to get more folk going to university to study for that profession. However, we do not know whether the demand in early primary, for example, will now be for speech and language therapists instead. If so, do we have folk who are qualified to go into that workforce to meet the increased demand? Is there not a wider workforce planning issue? That cannot be resolved at the level of individual schools because they can resolve the issue only if there are skilled professionals and there is money to hire them.

That is grand. Thank you. I believe that colleagues want to ask further questions on ventilation, so I will move to my other area of questioning.

I want to get a sense of how local authorities and schools are quantifying the social and developmental impact of the disruption on young people not just of the omicron wave but since the beginning of the pandemic. To some extent, we can quantify the impact on educational attainment through the testing regime, national qualifications, exam results and so on. Trying to quantify the wider social and developmental impact is much harder.

I presume that, at the individual classroom level, teachers are able to identify what additional challenges their young people are facing as a result of the pandemic. I hope that teachers are able to direct them towards and ensure that they can access school counsellors or educational psychologists. However, there is an implication for schools and local authorities’ workforce planning if you are to have a clear idea of what the level of demand will be for the additional pastoral support services that you will be providing over the coming period.

Some national survey work has been done on the impact of mental health—for example, by YouthLink Scotland and Young Scot. What work are local authorities undertaking to quantify the additional social need that will have to be met through schools?