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My questions follow the convener’s initial ones. You have all seen quite substantial cuts in your budget for the current financial year. During our evidence sessions on the budget last year, I challenged Neil Gray, who was, at that time, the economy secretary, about that. We have seen a change in Government personnel since then, with Kate Forbes coming into that role, and I think that there has been something of a change of tone from the Government, with perhaps more focus on economic growth.

Against that backdrop, my question is about your expectations—which might be too strong a word; “ambitions” or “hopes” might be better—as you look ahead to the coming budget round. Are you optimistic that the Government’s change of language will translate into a better budget settlement?

Who wants to start? You are all looking at each other.

That is very helpful. You will appreciate that, for the people whom we have spoken to, this is a crucial issue, because they are not able to properly plan ahead year to year. Even if they knew at the start of the financial year what the funding was, that would be an improvement on the situation that they are in. Ideally, they want to move to multiyear funding so that they can plan two or three years ahead.

You mentioned multiyear funding, which, as you fairly said, has come up in evidence a number of times. Organisations have told us that in some cases they do not even receive their award letters until they are several months into the new financial year, which makes it almost impossible for them to plan ahead. Because the staff whom they employ have no certainty about their future employment, they tend to drift away and do not feel secure in their jobs.

What more can the Scottish Government do to ensure certainty of funding for organisations that work in disability employment and are dependent on that support?

Good morning again, minister. I want to ask you about funding, because we took a lot of evidence from representatives of organisations that are involved in delivery of programmes to help disabled people to get into work. Many of those are third sector organisations that derive their funding—sometimes indirectly—from the Scottish Government.

In the budget for the current year, the total employability funding is £103 million. Last year, it was substantially more than that. There has been a cut of £30 million between last year and this year. That is a real-terms cut of 24 per cent in employability funding. You say that the disability employment gap is an issue that the Scottish Government is concerned about and that you want to support measures to get disabled people into the workforce. How does that square with the fact that you have cut the budget by almost a quarter?

Good morning, minister and officials. ICAS has communicated a number of concerns about the approach that the Government is taking. In its view, the current regime is working well on a voluntary basis, so it does not see the need for legislative intervention, which it regards as “disproportionate and unnecessary” at this stage.

ICAS gives a specific example. Regulation 5 would introduce

“A new procedure to apply to the”

Accountant in Bankruptcy

“for agreement to refuse to discharge a debtor from a trust deed.”

The provision has been introduced

“due to concerns that debtors were frequently being refused discharge inappropriately due to circumstances beyond their control.”

The ICAS paper says that there is no evidence to support that approach and that, at the last meeting of the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s protected trust deeds standing committee,

“it was confirmed that 732 applications to refuse debtors discharges had been received and all 732 were approved.”

ICAS has queried why it is necessary to put the requirements in legislation, given that there is no social ill that has been identified that needs to be cured.

Thank you. I will pick up on a couple of points, minister, if I can. In your last point, you were, in effect, saying that the system works well. I query whether it is necessary to put those things into legislation—I presume that we should legislate only when there is a requirement to do so. If the voluntary approach is working well, should we not persist with it?

The evidence suggests that it is working well in all cases.

I will expand on ICAS’s concerns. It is concerned that including in statute the provisions that are in the voluntary code will lead to market distortion. Currently, there is a very small number of providers of protected trust deeds and the market is concentrated. I am sure that neither you nor I have time to watch daytime television, but if you do, you will often see protected trust deeds being heavily marketed by a small group of operators that target the market aggressively. Current figures that are provided by the Accountant in Bankruptcy show that 90 per cent of protected trust deeds in Scotland are administered by only four firms, with two firms accounting for a 70 per cent share of the market.

ICAS’s concern is that, the more we regulate, the more burdensome it will become for other, smaller practitioners to want to take on the work; therefore, that would narrow the market even further for those who might benefit from protected trust deeds. ICAS feels that including the provision in statute would be a disproportionate approach.

Good morning, minister. In addition to the correspondence from the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, to which Colin Smyth referred, the Scottish Beer and Pub Association has written to the committee, raising a number of concerns. As you will be aware, it did not support the legislation in the first place. Notwithstanding that, it has a number of detailed issues to raise in relation to the regulations that have been made. They include the lack of definition of what a tenant is. The Scottish Beer and Pub Association says that that does not include franchise agreements, managed operator agreements or tenancies at will. There is a lack of clarity there.

The association also has concerns about the onerous information requirements of regulation 10 of the Scottish Pubs Code Regulations 2024. It has further concerns in relation to regulation 12 and the amount of information that is required on rent assessments, which it says is too onerous.

The association has concerns around the guest beer provision, as it is unclear how eligibility could confidently be determined. It also has concerns around the lack of clarity on the investment waiver in relation to the charging of market rent only.

There is quite a lot of detail in that, as you will understand. I suppose that, given that you are doing further work on the various provisions, we are looking for an assurance that you will consider those points as part of that.

Were you surprised when—I think this was three weeks ago—an existing commissioner told us that, despite having produced seven different reports, he had not been in front of a committee more than once?

We could debate the HMRC figures all morning, I am sure. You will recognise that they pre-date the most recent increases in income tax. We need to see what the impact of those will be, which will come through in the figures, in due course.