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They have higher rates of employment, low levels of business start-ups, low pay, job insecurity, high claimant rates and financial deprivation. Those communities may have financial deprivation, but they also have humanity, decency and dignity.
I will start on that, and Anton Muscatelli may wish to come in later. The Fiscal Commission grew out of the fiscal commission working group that we had as part of the prior council.
Is it the case that the public sector pay scales may be constraining, but we are paying more out the back door by bringing people in on contracts and agency work?
Before a sentence is passed, bail conditions may be in place to protect a victim, but we have noticed that once a community sentence is passed, the information does not seem to go across, so unpaid work could end up happening where the victim works or lives.
There might have been tax avoidance, whether inside or outside the EU, that has gone through a legal process, or breaches of health and safety, where a worker may have died or been injured. Those are examples of things that can be proved, because they have been through a legal process.
Mr Findlay mentioned 335,000 private sector employers, but what about all the employers who do not have public sector contracts and who may never have any interest in them?
Anything that we buy in the shop includes the cost of shoplifting and, when we pay for gas or electricity, the payment includes the cost of those who default. The Conservatives may try and make a big song and dance out of the situation, but we are doing only what any business or utility—or whatever—does pretty regularly.
As I recall, when the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil, announced that funding, it was focused particularly on tackling inequality by strengthening primary care services both in urban areas of deprivation and in rural areas where rurality was a significant factor. Alison Taylor may be able to fill in some of the details.
Face-to-face contact between experts and people with knowledge is as important as establishing a larger team, which may only be able to skate along the surface of the volume of work that we do.