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First, let me say, as I have said many times at this committee, that work is absolutely the best route out of poverty. We want to support families into work, whether through employability measures or support through childcare. A lot of work is going on to support the families you might describe as furthest from the labour market in order to break the cycle of poverty, and work is the best way to do that.

However, the issue in the here and now is that families with more than two children are struggling because the costs are not recognised by the UK social security system. The question for society is about the societal impacts of children living in poverty, because it is children who suffer at the end of the day. The later impacts of those children living in poverty and the cycle of poverty continuing will be that there is less chance of their becoming fully contributing members of society, working and contributing to the economy and getting a good output from education, as well as all the social and societal impacts that come from poverty and child poverty.

The fundamental judgment is that we should make an investment to break the cycle of poverty and lift children out of poverty, because we know that there is a societal and economic benefit from that. We believe that to be the case, and we would rather that the UK Government changed its policy. That is why all the child poverty organisations have focused their attention on lifting the two-child cap, because the evidence is that it will have the biggest impact on our remaining child poverty rates. I think that everybody accepts that they are too high and we need to do something about it.

If we do not do this, the question is, what do we do? The evidence shows that it will have an impact.

COSLA made that decision. Are you asking me whether, if the 32 local authorities—which are of various political colours, I might add—come to a decision that the Government does not like, we should overrule that?

We felt that we needed to do more to tackle child poverty, particularly given the statutory child poverty targets, and, when we were deciding on the best way to proceed, we looked at a number of options.

It is partly the issue of cliff edges, which the convener touched on earlier. There is a balance to strike, and we are thoughtful about whether the Scottish child payment becomes a cliff edge or a barrier to work or incentivisation. From the information that we have, we understand that the poorest families are most impacted by the two-child cap. By targeting them, we will achieve a bigger shift on the dial on child poverty than we would with a more general approach.

Those are our judgments. I assure you that we looked in detail at what is the best thing to lean into to achieve the biggest impact, and the child poverty organisations were also very much in the same space. Some of them still argue for an increase in the Scottish child payment, but many have focused on the two-child limit because it affects some of the poorest families, and we think that, by mitigating it, we can achieve the biggest shift on the dial in relation to the child poverty targets.

I have just told you that the civil servants who work in Angus Robertson’s team also have a number of other responsibilities. We are not disbanding any team; I am just saying that it is a small team that does a number of other things as well, and one of the things that it has done is produce the BANS series. As I understand it, there is some further concluding work to be done on that. If you want further detail on it, I will get something from Angus Robertson to give to you.

First, I very much recognise the role of universities. One of the committee’s recommendations was a fund to turbocharge the output from universities into enterprise. I am trying to remember its name. I think that, at one point, the committee called for £5 million in order to do that. I understand that work is on-going in the enterprise space to look at how that can be done and at how we can support our universities with better link-ups to enterprise and to the Scottish National Investment Bank, for example.

We should always keep the tuition fee payments under review to ensure that we are taking some of the headwinds into account. Some of the main ones that the sector has spoken to me about are the drop in international students, particularly from certain areas of the world. The number of international students that universities assumed would attend has fallen off a cliff, as they are no longer coming to Scotland. Some of the UK Government’s changes, such as students not being able to bring partners with them, have also had a major impact. Employer national insurance contributions is another issue that will have a major impact on universities.

I do not accept that there is nothing that the UK Government can do about, for example—

Yes, I can do that.

First, I put on record my apologies for being late and for keeping people waiting.

In line with the request from the FPA Committee, we provided comparative information in the budget document to show the latest approved budget position, which is the autumn budget revision. I am very happy to reflect on what more needs to be done.

There has been a recognition of the improvement in the position from last year, but there are still issues around in-year transfers. Some of that is quite difficult to resolve, because the issue will sit within a policy and the money will transfer in-year. We have baselined further funding, but if there are more improvements to be made, I am happy to work with the FPA Committee on what those should be.

You know my ambition on the fiscal framework. Previously, the scope for change was very limited, albeit that we got some adjustments. We absolutely want there to be a more ambitious review of the fiscal framework, but, despite our communication with the Treasury being better, I do not get the sense that it is keen to have a fundamental look at the framework. We will keep pursuing that issue as well as issues relating to migration policy and many of the other levers that will be really important to the Scottish economy, but that will require us to face in the same direction on those issues, and, so far, that has not been the case.

I have sympathy with the principle of the issue. We were concerned about the unintended consequences of crofts being captured, so it would need to be done carefully. The data issue remains problematic. I am happy to come back to you, Ross, with an update on where we have got to on that, if that would be helpful.