Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank you and your officials, cabinet secretary, for joining us. We will take a five-minute comfort break.

We will now move into private session. Members who are joining us remotely should use the Teams link in their calendars to join the meeting.

Emma Roddick will finish our questions for today.

Welcome back, everyone. We move to agenda item 3. I refer members to paper 3, which relates to the committee’s child poverty and parental employment inquiry. To assist the committee with consideration of its next steps, we are invited to consider and agree to discuss further approaches, evidence received, correspondence and draft reports in private at future meetings. Are we agreed?

Members Indicated agreement.

I have no further questions, convener.

Good morning. I will change the theme and move on. Cabinet secretary, in your opening statement, you mentioned that inflation is at a 40-year high. We are living through a severe cost of living crisis and there is a huge strain on family budgets, of which the cost of the school day is just one aspect. In response to one of my colleagues, you mentioned progress on the provision of school meals. Will you expand on how the budget will support the priority of reducing the cost of the school day for families?

Thank you. That can be a difficult issue, because it involves a range of things and it can stretch across different portfolios.

I will move on again. There is a large increase in funding for the delivery of the Promise. Will the minister elaborate on how that will support the ambitions for 2023-24?

We will move to questions from Pam Duncan-Glancy.

Yes, we all received that correspondence. In the private session, I intend to allow committee members to discuss the letter and our approach to the issue and to agree next steps, such as formal consideration and how the committee will take it forward. We can certainly discuss that.

The committee will now take evidence from Social Security Scotland on its performance and operation. I welcome to the meeting David Wallace, the chief executive; James Wallace, the deputy director for finance and corporate services; and Janet Richardson, the deputy director for client services delivery. I invite David Wallace to make any opening remarks before we move on to questioning.