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On your discussions with Social Security Scotland, there have been some delays in other areas. Is it confident that it has enough staff to meet the target?

No.

At a previous meeting, the committee heard that, in addition to children, other groups of people are suffering from poverty, including young single people and older people, and that they need further support, too. First, do you agree? That will probably be a fairly straightforward answer. Secondly, how can the Scottish Government take that into account in its budget decisions?

Thank you.

Good morning to you and your team, cabinet secretary. It is always good to have you at committee. You might have seen that, last week, witnesses refuted the Scottish Government’s arguments for excluding 16 to 19-year-old carers who are in full-time non-advanced education from claiming CSP. What were the evidence and rationale for that decision?

The deputy convener has raised really interesting points, and I was interested in Paul Bradley’s response. I ask him to provide written examples of what he was talking about to the committee. Obviously, an organisation might not want to be named, but it would be helpful to have real-life cases that we can take up with the Scottish Government.

We are looking at this year’s budget, but we also need to look to future years. The Scottish Fiscal Commission has highlighted that there will be a fairly major gap of more than £1 billion in the budget over the next two to three years. Paul, I know that you said that you do not talk about taxation, but, using more general terminology, where do you think we should be going to bridge that gap? Do you or your members have any views on that?

Good morning, minister. I thank you and your team for coming along.

I will move us on. Your officials provide the committee and subject committees with a helpful weekly update of instruments that are expected to be laid in the following two weeks. Can you or your officials indicate the anticipated volume of SSIs that are likely to be laid between now and Christmas, and which committees are likely to be the lead committees? If you cannot provide that to us today, perhaps you could drop a note to us.

Without becoming too philosophical, do you think that there has been a change, both in the Scottish Government and at Westminster, with regard to using framework bills more often than was the case 20 or 30 years ago? If so, is that a deliberate policy decision or just something that has evolved over time?

In looking to the future and the programme for government that was announced just a few weeks ago, what balance has been struck with regard to what we just talked about, in respect of bills that are about to come forward?

Thank you. I will leave it there, convener.