Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

Cabinet secretary, in “Equality, opportunity, community: New leadership—a fresh start”, the First Minister stated that there would be

“some tough decisions to ensure that we target every pound we spend and invest in order to get the maximum value, ensuring it reaches those that need it the most.”

How have those tough decisions affected the measures that were set out in the programme for government, and have you had to change or refocus priorities?

I think that we will ask about procurement and conditionality later.

Two thirds of children in poverty are in families where someone works. Will employability programmes support more working families, or do you expect other policies to be more relevant in tackling poverty in working families?

I presume that Neil Gray is the appropriate cabinet secretary to direct this question to, as it is on employability. Given that, as well as parents, there are other priority groups for employability programmes, how do you ensure that parents become a high priority for all delivery partners of the no one left behind strategy?

How do you go about assessing the potential impact of policies to ensure that resources are focused on the policies that are likely to have the biggest impact?

Will you give consideration to how much of that work can be shared with the committee so that we can assess whether we think that you have come to the right conclusions?

I would like to ask Ross Haggart some questions. The backdrop to this is a decade of cuts to the fire service in Scotland. Audit Scotland reported that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has an “insurmountable capital backlog” and information that was provided by the service to my office suggests that 45 per cent of the entire estate is assessed as being in either poor or bad condition, but in your reply to Pauline McNeill, you indicated that only five fire stations could be prioritised.

The FBU’s decon campaign highlights the health risk of contamination and some of that risk relates to the condition of the estate: for example, the availability of showers. What consideration has been given to the legal duty of care that the service is obliged to provide to its workforce and to the risks of litigation and the legal responsibilities of the service?

Have you had any advice about your legal liabilities and could you share that with the committee, perhaps in writing? Could you inform the committee, perhaps in writing, of the mitigation work that you referred to? It would be extremely helpful if you could keep the committee advised on that.

Thank you very much. As you know, we had a huge fire in the Highlands in June and two firefighters were injured. Across Europe over the summer there have been wildfires and extreme flooding—indeed, it is happening not just in Europe, but across the world. The implications of climate change must be at the forefront of your mind in relation to increasing demands on the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. What work is being done to look at what those increased demands are likely to be and how we will have to respond to that?