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Thank you for your thorough response.

Frazer Scott said at the beginning that it is not going to be a choice between heating or eating; it is just going to be a fact that people have no money. We all have real concerns about how that will impact people’s everyday lives.

We have people on prepayment meters; if you have no money, you have no money to put into a prepayment meter. I would like to see more advice coming from suppliers on the differences between debit meters and prepayment meters. Often, information from suppliers is extremely complex. Prepayment meters do not work for everyone and there can be real complications when people try to change from a prepayment meter to a debit meter; there can be credit checks. Would you like to see more from suppliers to assist people who will really struggle? We are expecting people to get into debt because of this; perhaps suppliers could be working with people and giving people a little bit more leeway over the coming months, which will be extremely hard.

To follow up on your first point, do you feel that energy suppliers are genuinely trying to keep costs down and that, without continued increases in the price cap, private energy firms would struggle? Are those increases necessary, when energy firms are still achieving high profits?

Good morning to the panel. Given the large number of failures in the UK energy market despite the significant increase in energy bills, is Ofgem’s price cap fit for purpose? Will Ofgem’s proposals to boost resilience in the energy sector—for example, the proposals on financial stress testing for suppliers and on increasing the number of times a year that the price cap can be adjusted—have a material impact on the market?

I put that to Dan Alchin first.

Good morning. A lot of my questions have already been answered, so I will try to keep this short.

Could the Scottish Government implement any additional policy solutions that could mitigate the worst impact of the increase—and the expected further increase—in the price cap, or are there any actions that the UK Government could take to assist in the crisis, such as increasing benefits, which was mentioned earlier? Could the UK Government go further in its dealings with Ofgem, for example by limiting the amount by which the cap could increase?

Alastair Wilcox touched on some of those points previously, so I ask Chris Birt to answer.

Thanks, convener, and thank you to the panel—it is good to have you with us. I have a couple of questions.

We have touched on some of the priority groups already, such as single-parent families. Do you feel that the delivery plan has done enough to support employment for the priority groups? Do you feel that the Scottish Government has utilised its devolved powers fully in the plan? In your view, could efforts be enhanced further with the devolution of employment law? I put those questions to Bill Scott.

That touches on one of my supplementary questions. You mentioned that employers are becoming a little bit more flexible in accommodating employees who might have childcare commitments or other issues—for example, by ensuring that people in poverty have financial support to enable them to afford the tools or clothes that they might need in their workplace or to get to work.

Can you reaffirm whether you feel that that is happening just now? Are employers giving that extra support and coming round to opening up those barriers for people?

That was helpful. Obviously, there is a real focus on employability, but families in poverty must still be able to see their children, and a universal basic income would open up a bit more flexibility in that respect.

I ask Philip Whyte and Emma Congreve to answer the same question.

Thank you, Bill—you are pre-empting my questions, because my next question is about hybrid working. I absolutely agree with you. There are issues with different types of employment. Retail, for example, can be quite inflexible. We need to focus on covering all areas of employment so that there is flexibility across the board.

Thank you, Alison. I do not believe that anybody else wants to come in on that, so I will move on.

Witnesses have mentioned an emphasis on more and warmer social housing and more affordable housing, but are any other measures that could address child poverty missing from the plan for housing? That question goes first to Bill Scott.