Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Our first agenda item is the final evidence session as part of our inquiry into the national performance framework: ambitions into action. I welcome the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, John Swinney. Mr Swinney is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Barry Stalker, head of the national performance framework unit, and Caroline Dodds, team leader in the national performance framework unit. I welcome you all to the meeting.

I invite Mr Swinney to make a short opening statement.

I probably put that quite crudely. It is not really about penalising organisations. It is probably about being more favourably disposed towards the ones that have engaged and accepted your encouragement, Deputy First Minister.

Thank you for that. It has set my mind ticking over with a number of things but, to reassure my colleagues who are now panicking at the prospect of another myriad of questions from me, it does not mean that I will ask too many more.

I point out that one of the pleasing aspects of the evidence that we took was that the third and private sectors were supportive of, and, indeed, enthusiastic about, the national performance framework. You talked about recovery, poverty and having to address the climate emergency. Fife Council said that it prioritised those three outcomes. There was concern about there being perhaps too many outcomes when we should focus on three, four or five certain ones, not the 11 that we have.

You talked about the importance of the economy but “Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation” has only two references to the national performance framework. There is no alignment with national outcomes. If the Government is trying to ensure that everything is cross-cutting and working to the same agenda, an important document such as that should surely have taken greater cognisance of the national performance framework.

I realise that I asked quite a lot of questions, but there are a couple of points that you have not responded to. Can you say something about the age profile of people leaving Scotland and whether you are including other parts of the UK when you talk about people going overseas? I do not know what the word, “overseas” means in the submission—does it mean people leaving Scotland or does it mean people going beyond the United Kingdom?

Attracting people to Scotland when a lot of people are leaving Scotland is like trying to fill a sink with the plug out. Surely, retaining people in Scotland is half the battle, and it is particularly important because, I believe, a disproportionate number of educated and highly skilled people are leaving. I know a number of people who have got, for example, a son who is an oncologist in Scotland or an information technology consultant in Boston—I do not mean Boston in Lincolnshire; I mean Boston in the States. Scotland continues to export an incredible number of talented people. We need to think about retention as well as attraction.

I want to talk about loads of things, but I will not, because colleagues want to come in. I will ask one final thing before I open the discussion out to colleagues, because there is so much to get our teeth into.

In your submission, you mentioned that

“The number of inactive people ‘discouraged’ has risen sharply during the pandemic but is starting to fall.”

I wondered what “discouraged” meant, so I looked at footnote 22, which says that it means,

“Those who are not looking for work because they believe no jobs are available.”

I find that point astonishing given that we have record levels of vacancies in the economy and that every aspect of the economy seems to have a chronic shortage. For example, the airports—not so much in Scotland but south of the border—have been clogged up, not just because of shortages of air crew but also of people in security and baggage handling posts. One would think that those vacancies would require all levels of skill. Where are we on that discouragement? Is the situation continuing or subsiding?

I have one final question about productivity. Reports differ on whether working from home increases productivity or decreases it and on whether a hybrid model is actually the best of both worlds. What is Skills Development Scotland’s view on that point?

I have forgotten as well, now that I think about it. It was just about discouragement and so on—I was asking about what is being done. No—you have answered that one.

The second one—that is the thing when you think on your feet and do not write things down—[Interruption.] It was about working from home. Has Skills Development Scotland carried out research on which model is more productive—working from home, working in the office or a hybrid model of the two?

The focus of my question was whether a higher proportion of people with disabilities are moving into employment; it was not so much about what you are doing to move them into employment. Is the strategy actually working?

We have moved on to a subject that I was about to touch on, and which everyone touched on in their submissions.

You say:

“We believe there is scope for funding to be more closely aligned to the national outcomes, and we would welcome the opportunity for discussion about how this could be taken forward appropriately.”

I am giving you the opportunity to do just that.

You say:

“Our manifesto calls for five-year funding timescales and we believe this stability would allow third sector organisations to be truly creative, ambitious and impactful.”

I think that it would, but the Scottish Parliament does not have a five-year funding arrangement, so it is very difficult for the Scottish Parliament to deliver that. Two and a half years ago, we would not have anticipated a pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and so on. There are always imponderables that can arise. The issue is in trying to have that stability when it is difficult to anticipate what lies further ahead and budgets are not made available so far ahead.