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In terms of getting people who are furthest from the labour market back into economic activity, our record is pretty good—it is certainly better than the record of the people around us, so that is where you are going to get the biggest bang for that buck.
Our first report, to your predecessor committee, covered 2014-15 activity. Today’s report looks largely at activity in 2015-16, which, from HMRC’s perspective, is the final formal year of the implementation process.
Covid cannot simply be wished away, although I think that Douglas Ross sometimes believes that it can. We must take active measures to get it, and keep it, under control.
With regard to whether things are getting better, it will be easier to answer that question in April, when we get the public sector equality data back.
That has been worked on for a number of months, so it would be great if we could increase the pressure on that working group. We need to start getting answers and getting those policies in place.
Obviously, that does not include the Scottish child payment at the moment. We are getting people used to the best start grant systems so that they can do some live activity.