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Good morning. At last week’s meeting, the Scottish Transitions Forum talked about there being a “legislation salad”. The view has been expressed that the legislative landscape is already very congested. I am interested in exploring with you how easily you think the proposals in the bill would dovetail with existing duties and current policy development, such as the principles into practice trials, to avoid a situation whereby—regrettably, perhaps—that congestion would provide cover for more inaction rather than enable what we all want to see, which is an improvement in the situation.

With respect, we should not be sitting here, disputing whether the figures are out by a factor of three or a factor of 11. I am pretty sure that, in evidence to us last week, the minister indicated that, after a meeting with Pam Duncan-Glancy late last year, an undertaking was given to talk to COSLA about the issue and get the answers. Has that meeting, for that purpose, taken place? It sounds like it has not taken place, because there is no agreement on the numbers.

Are the passports all living documents that the young person, parents and carers can input to as time goes on? To what extent would you be prepared to require bodies to take account of the content? It is all very well and good having the passport, but if the relevant body does not act on it, it does not really serve a purpose.

I am trying to get into the nitty-gritty of the issue, because there is a lot of potential. It is good to hear that there are multiple options, but the passport needs to be something that the relevant people are feeding into, and the requirements that it contains need to be implemented.

Of course, in a practical sense, the existence of such passports should be hugely helpful to the very bodies that are interacting with those young people.

Thank you. That is very reassuring.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I go back to what has triggered all this—namely, how an additional sum of £145.5 million that was given for the purpose of increasing teacher and learning support assistant numbers was used, or not, by local authorities. A lot of muddying of the water has been attempted around that, and two points are being lost. One is that we should acknowledge that eight councils, and the grant-aided sector, used the money for the purpose for which it was given and have increased their numbers, but it is clear that the majority of councils have not done so.

I want to explore with you what the Government has ascertained with regard to how the moneys were used at local authority level. I have knowledge of one council—Angus Council—where the sums that were given were deployed to add 28 full-time equivalent teachers and 10 learning support assistants. However, Angus Council’s numbers have gone down by 27 overall, which gives the impression that it has clearly not replaced temporary and permanent posts that already existed. There has also been an admission that £1 million of that money was allocated—the council tells me that a strategic proposal was made—to meet the costs of a saving that the council was making, so the money was obviously not used for the purpose for which it was given. I apologise for the long-winded intro, but has the Government found that to be typical—is that what most councils utilised the moneys for?

Yes, I appreciate that, cabinet secretary, but the situation appears to be pretty clear when you look through the list of numbers for each council. The vast majority of councils saw their teacher numbers go down, so, in the majority of cases, the money clearly was not used for the purpose for which it was given.

Thank you, convener. I appreciate it.

We have talked about the bill and how it could be improved. However, imagine that the bill was not there. Shortly, we will have two Government ministers in front of us. If you were sitting with them, what would you say was needed to improve the experience of those young people in transition, and how should they go about it? Be as brief as possible.

However important and necessary it might be to have new strategies and strategy refreshes, a lot of people roll their eyes when they hear about them, because what they are actually looking for is real, practical change that will improve their experiences and the experiences of their loved ones. Through our evidence, we have heard that there are a lot of little things that could be done that, cumulatively, would make a huge difference to the experiences of people going through the transition to adulthood.

One issue that has been mentioned multiple times is that there is a lack of documentation that follows a young person and explains their needs, their requirements, what they react badly to and so on. We have heard that, at every stage of their transition, they have to keep telling their story over and over again.

I want to explore the issue of documentation further. I am aware of what is called a communication passport, which has been developed by My Communication Passport, details of which can be found at mycommpass.com. The communication passport is in operation in one school in my area, and I know that the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, has championed the document. Are you aware of the initiative? I have a copy here of a communication passport that belongs to a young constituent of mine. Do you feel that it might be worth exploring having a nationwide roll-out of the scheme? It is all very well and good that it is available in some localities for some individuals, but, given that it works, do you think that it is an example of one of the many little things that we could do to improve the situation?

Sorry—what is the embargo?