Seòmar agus comataidhean

James Dornan will be our final questioner.

That brings us to the end of our evidence-taking session. I thank John Dickie, Dr Colin Morrison and Satwat Rehman for their evidence, which has been very useful and insightful.

We were to have been joined by Matt Crilly, who is the president of the National Union of Students Scotland, but, for reasons that are completely beyond his control, he was not able to join us for the meeting. We have met him before and we look forward to meeting him again. It is appropriate that I congratulate him specially, because he graduated from the University of Strathclyde earlier this week. I say well done to him. He is now in the Official Report with our congratulations.

The public part of the meeting is now at an end. I ask members to reconvene on Microsoft Teams to allow us to consider our final agenda items in private.

Michael Marra wants to come in.

Yes, of course.

I listened to what John Dickie said about the different dimensions of the pandemic. Has the nature of child poverty fundamentally changed because of the pandemic? Are we measuring child poverty in the right ways?

Good morning, and welcome to the 10th meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2021. The first item on the agenda is a decision on taking business in private. Are members content to take agenda item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

You are describing the root causes of poverty.

Thank you Colin and Bob. We now go to Ross Greer.

In our main item of business, the committee will take evidence on the impact of Covid-19 on children and young people from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds. We will hear evidence from John Dickie, who is the director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland; Dr Colin Morrison, who is a co-director of the Children’s Parliament; and Satwat Rehman, who is the chief executive officer of One Parent Families Scotland. Satwat is joining us virtually, and John and Colin are present in the committee room.

It is nice to see you all. I thank all the witnesses for their time today. We will get the questions under way immediately. We hope to have you for at least an hour and a half, and perhaps a bit longer. We will see how it goes. Stephanie Callaghan will lead the questioning.

Thank you for that. I apologise for cutting you off earlier. I now turn to Ross Greer.