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I am an MSP for South Scotland.

It strikes me that some of those barriers are going back up again. I see that Bruce Adamson wants to comment.

I will bring in the Auditor General first and then branch out from there.

Auditor General, your briefing says that, overall,

“£3.3 billion was spent on tackling child poverty between 2018/19 and 2021/22”.

By my very basic—and often flawed—maths, that works out at about £3,400 per child who is living in or experiencing poverty. Will you give us some insight into how that money is being tracked? Is the measurement to which Bill Scott referred in the evaluation sufficient, bearing in mind that your briefing says that

“child poverty has not reduced”

and that there is “no evidence”—admittedly, that was at the mid-point when the assessment was made—to suggest that the actions in the delivery plan have reduced child poverty? How is the money tracked and how effectively is it being spent?

No—that was helpful.

In relation to the Scottish Government’s perspective, I note that, when Joe Griffin appeared before us, we discussed the pupil attainment gap and the £1 billion that has been spent on tackling that, but we were left with the impression that he was not sure whether the money had been effective or whether it was spent in a way that would close that gap. Should we have similar concerns in relation to child poverty? It is clear that there is a will to tackle child poverty, but are we likely to repeat the same mistakes by spending the money in a way that is not proving to be as effective as it could be?

I would like to open up the discussion to other stakeholders. There is an issue around the ring fencing of funds for local government, which limits local authorities’ ability to target child poverty in their areas with a laser-like focus, but there is also an issue in relation to the way in which funds are allocated to third sector organisations.

Ryan, will you say a bit about the way in which funds come to you? In a fast-moving situation such as the Covid pandemic or the cost of living crisis, the funds that you apply for are often for specific projects, which limits your ability to spend those funds on other projects. Would more flexibility in how you can spend the funds that you get from Government and other organisations allow you to target your work in a more innovative way?

But there was a clear point at which nationalisation became your preferred option.

Obviously, you are aware that we visited the yard this week, and the management made clear that, as a result of the issues surrounding the yard, the order book is not as healthy as it could be, and that a fresh injection of working capital will be needed to avoid redundancies. That means more taxpayers’ money. How can it be that painters, welders and cleaners might lose their jobs as a result of the fiasco, but you keep yours?

On the question of transparency and the Government’s engagement, you said that the 8 October submission very clearly set out the issues highlighted by CMAL. When that was released, some fundamental elements of the email thread attached to that, including those about the likelihood of the threat of a legal challenge to that decision, had been redacted. Is that the kind of transparency that your Government believes in?

Okay. Let us take a helicopter view of the whole issue.

We have a dodgy procurement process that has been described by CMAL as—

Okay. In a previous—