Seòmar agus comataidhean

Excellent. Thank you.

I want to press you on that a wee bit. I agree that the uprating of social security payments in line with inflation will be widely welcomed, particularly by people who are in receipt of them and who really need them. However, uprating in line with inflation will not lift anybody out of poverty; it will just prevent people from falling further into it. That is not a bad thing in and of itself, but I am trying to understand whether the £1 billion of additional spending, which I welcome, will take us any further forward. Will we reduce poverty and inequality as a result of it, or is the £1 billion simply what we need to spend to mitigate the decisions of the UK Government and the context of the cost of living crisis?

Deputy First Minister, after my questions, I will have to pop next door for about five minutes to substitute in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, before coming back here. I apologise if I finish my questions and then get up and leave.

Michelle Thomson asked about public sector reform and the disposal of public sector assets. In mentioning shared services between different public bodies, you have touched on some of the discussion in last week’s debate on the estate. How much co-ordination is there when it comes to reducing the size of the public sector estate? I am thinking in particular of Glasgow city centre. I realise that most of the Scottish Government’s office space in Glasgow is rented rather than owned, but there is a lot of owned property in the public sector there.

The city council has an objective to increase the city centre population significantly, and the city centre does not particularly need more office space. Is there active, on-going discussion with the city council on that? If we are disposing of what is currently office space, what potential is there to have it converted into housing to meet the city council’s objectives? I am not asking about that specifically, but that is an example of co-ordination across the public sector. Sharing services is one thing, but when we are considering reducing the size of the public sector estate, is there on-going co-ordination at that level or is a siloed approach being taken such that the Government simply needs to get property out of its portfolio and, if anybody is willing to buy it, that is great—they can have it?

Looking at the spending side, I believe that there is total cross-party agreement that, wherever possible, we should focus on outcome-based budgeting rather than on inputs, but that is pretty hard. Ultimately, your primary obligation is to produce a balanced budget and then to try to do outcome-based budgeting within the confines of that.

Taking that as the approach, I note that £1 billion more is going into the social security budget, which is a really significant increase in cash terms and as a percentage of the overall budget. What will be the outcomes of that in meeting our statutory commitments around child poverty reduction, for example? Will that £1 billion of additional spending prevent poverty and inequality from getting worse in the light of the cost of living crisis? Will it take us further forward towards meeting the objectives that are in statute, such as the child poverty target, and those that fall under the Government’s broader missions, particularly concerning equality?

That is useful. Thank you.

I have a similar line of questioning on spending on climate and net zero. Specifically, it is on the offshore wind supply chain money that you mentioned, which is £69 million or thereabouts. Towards the end of last year, we had a positive report from the Fraser of Allander Institute that showed 50 per cent job growth in the sector in just one year. I cannot remember the exact number, but there were between 12,000 and 17,000 additional jobs. What do you expect to be the benefit of that £69 million? Has there been an attempt to quantify the jobs that are expected to be created, the return to the public purse in tax revenue and so on? How can we measure the value for money of that £69 million?

As you said, that work is independent analysis by HMRC or the SFC, but does the Scottish Government ever pose questions to them? Knowing that HMRC is about to undertake exercise X, does the Government ever say, “We would particularly value having data point Y? Are you going to collect that data and analyse it?”

I can see that in the number of planning applications in my region for various elements of the renewable energy economy.

I will jump on to tax and behaviour change, to follow up on some of the convener’s questions. I would like to understand a bit better how much in-house analysis the Government does of potential behaviour change versus the work that the SFC does for the Government. For example, concerns have been raised—I think that a lot of instances are overegged, but there you go—around avoidance of the new income tax rate or people simply putting more money into their pension pots.

Does the Government conduct any analysis, even within the public sector, of how many higher-paid public servants have increased their pension contributions, given that we are now five years into income tax divergence? It would be good to get an understanding of how much of that analysis takes place within Government versus SFC work. Where it is SFC work, are there questions that you specifically pose to the SFC or data points that you would like to have?

That point about data and where the gaps in the evidence are is interesting. Knowing where there are key gaps in the data that we need in order to measure success has been a running theme not just for the committee but across the board in Parliament. We are gathering huge amounts of data, but not necessarily what we need.

I realise that this is a little bit meta, but how are you reporting on that? The Parliament would be interested to know where you have identified gaps in the evidence that you need before we get to the stage of publishing a report on what the outcomes have been. We would be interested in knowing where you have identified those gaps and how they can be addressed.

Minister, I am interested in going back to the level of engagement that you have had since coming into post. What has been the response to the publication of “Purpose and Principles for Post-School Education, Research and Skills” and the framework surrounding that? Do you have an initial sense that colleges and universities were expecting that level of direction? As a former member of the committee, you will be familiar with the evidence that we took from colleges; they were crying out for a sense of direction from Government. They wanted to know what they were supposed to be doing. “Purpose and Principles” was supposed to be the first step towards that. What has the response been since its publication?