Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have experience of retendering and the devastation that that caused.

The next set of questions will be asked by Natalie Don.

Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Our first item of business is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private and whether to consider pre-budget correspondence or our report in private at future meetings. Do members agree to do so?

Members: indicated agreement.

Thank you. I have written down “employerability”, because we definitely need to chase that up.

The next theme is the impact of the reduction in spending that we will see in 2023-24.

Thank you for that answer, Dr Hosie. My colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy will come in on that theme.

Thanks for that, Natalie. We move to questions on the same area from Foysol Choudhury.

Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee in 2022, and our first meeting after the summer recess. Our first item of business is a decision on taking items 2 and 3 in private. Do members agree to take items 2 and 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Good morning and welcome to the 21st meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. This is our final meeting before the parliamentary recess. We have received apologies from Foysol Choudhury.

Our first item of business is a decision on taking item 2, consideration of our draft report on our low income and debt inquiry, and item 3, consideration of our work programme, in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

That concludes our public agenda items for today.

Yes, that would be helpful. Do you have any further questions, Pam?

Our next item of business is an evidence session on the resource spending review. I welcome to the meeting Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, and Kate Forbes, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy. I welcome the cabinet secretaries’ officials: we are joined in person by Gemma Dalton, who is the public spending team leader, and Kevin Stevens, who is the head of strategic and programme finance. Good morning. Thanks for coming in early to join us today—that is fantastic. We are joined remotely by Julie Humphreys, who is the deputy director for tackling child poverty and financial wellbeing, Sarah O’Donnell, who is the strategic lead for finance and governance, and Joanne Farrow, who is the deputy director of employability.

I will hand over to the cabinet secretaries to make their opening statements. Shona Robison, do you want to go first?