Chamber and committees

Cleland Sneddon, you mentioned the UK Government’s levelling up fund. This committee is very much trying to re-engage with the UK Government on that—we are trying to get Michael Gove to come back to the committee to give evidence on it.

However, your joint written submission also makes the point about the value of multiyear funding, which is another area that is ultimately in the gift of the UK Government. The Scottish Government cannot give multiyear funding if it is not getting a multiyear settlement.

I am interested in knowing what direct engagement SOLACE and COSLA have had with the UK Government. Every year, when we come to the point of setting the grant for local government in Scotland, it feels very much like a two-way discussion between local government and the Scottish Government. One of your key asks, and the overall financial envelope, are ultimately in the power of the third level of Government that we are talking about here. What direct engagement do you have annually with the UK Government?

Mike Corbett’s point about not only reporting incidents but ensuring that what has motivated them has been accurately reported, particularly when it involves a protected characteristic, is really important. I am keen to hear from others on that, because I am aware that the Time for Inclusive Education campaign for LGBT inclusive education made the point that violence against queer pupils or staff was often being recorded as a generic incident of violence and that that motivating factor was not being recorded.

Personally, I am not remotely convinced that we are accurately recording violence against young women and girls in which misogyny is the motivating factor. Do the other witnesses believe that there is an issue there, too?

I also want to specifically ask Carrie Lindsay about the health and wellbeing census that she mentioned. There is really valuable data in that. I am interested to know how local authorities and schools have used that in the past to inform their policies on dealing with bullying and violence. I am also interested in how that data can be used, given the highly politicised discussion that took place about the census this year and the very variable return rate that we got. Is the census as usable now for that specific purpose as it has been in the past? I am aware that some schools got a 95 or 100 per cent response rate and that other schools and entire local authorities did not take part at all. Can we use the data this year in the way that we have in the past?

Thank you very much.

A couple of weeks ago, the committee had a round-table session with various representatives of public sector organisations. A point that came up during the discussion was that a number of bodies that were represented around the table had expressed an interest in the Scottish Government’s potential pilot of a four-day week. I say this with the significant caveat that this is by no means the universal position of trade unions that represent workers in the public sector, but a number of public sector workers in Scotland and local union representatives in various public agencies have expressed an interest in that to me, partly in recognition of the fact that they know that pay rises in line with inflation across the board in the public sector are not affordable right now. Although they are, obviously, interested in maximising the pay offer that is made to their members, they are expressing increasingly significant interest in other changes to terms and conditions that might be beneficial to workers. Do you have an update on the progress on the four-day working week pilot?

I have a factual question in the first instance, cabinet secretary, for which you might not have the answer to hand. Given that a number of public sector pay negotiations were concluded only after the Parliament passed the budget, do you know what the total public sector pay bill in Scotland now is for 2023-24?

Thank you very much. That is all from me, convener.

That would be fantastic. Just to clarify, is the intention to operate, or certainly start, the pilot at some point in the current financial year?

Grand.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the 500-ish initiatives and programmes that the Scottish Government has. I am interested in how we ensure policy coherence and best value for money across all of those, particularly in relation to the overarching missions around reducing poverty and net zero.

For example, there is something in the region of three quarters of a billion pounds of expenditure each year on non-domestic rates relief, or three quarters of a billion that is not taken in NDR income. Some of that clearly aligns with the Government’s overall objectives—for example, the renewable energy generation relief makes a small contribution to the net zero objective.

What instructions are being given to your Cabinet colleagues and SG directorates to ensure that they are getting the best value for money out of every initiative that they are responsible for, which, on the face of it, might not necessarily have an obvious connection with one of the overarching objectives, but which could contribute towards it?

For example, in other areas of NDR relief that are not necessarily about lifting people out of poverty, you could apply a condition that a company could get that relief only if it signed up to pay at least the real living wage. How are you ensuring policy coherence and best value for money across the board?

I am still interested in how we achieve the policy coherence aspects of that. Is each cabinet secretary responsible for ensuring that the books balance in their portfolio in their own way, or has a set of instructions been issued on the basis of the First Minister’s prospectus from April?

In the education portfolio, for example, I cannot remember off the top of my head whether there are conditions attached to the pupil equity fund. A lot of pupil equity funding is used by schools to pay for third and private sector organisations. That has clear additional benefit, but I do not know whether we attach, for example, a real living wage condition to the use of the PEF, which would align with the poverty objective in the prospectus. Is the overarching set of objectives being used to give instruction to each directorate and cabinet secretary to ensure that we are achieving policy coherence and value for money?

One would have expected a significant initial spike in the child disability payment as we transition away from what was a relatively hostile system under the Department for Work and Pensions towards the deliberately more generous system under Social Security Scotland but, according to the same table, the child disability payment is projected to continue to rise quite significantly. I understand why that would be the case for the adult disability payment, given that our adult population is becoming more ill as a result of a number of factors, but is the same driver behind the situation with the child disability payment or is it something else?

I apologise if I missed this in your answers to Michael Marra’s questions about digital enhancement, but are you able to quantify the financial savings from upgrades? For example, do you know how much the bed management and patient tracking system that you mentioned has saved you? I am interested to know how much you would expect to save from such an upgrade—not that it is all about the money, obviously.