Rwyf wedi taith yn eich baith cerddurio ddullus yn yr ysgol a'r mirwm ysgol ar ddyddrach ond ffraenginig i'r cyflawn. Fod ar ôl i'r gweithgareddfaedd ym Llywodraethol siaradau yn Llywodraethau oherwydd ei i'r sefydlu newydd ym Llywodraeth agor, ddarparo i'r gweithledig i ddefnyddio i Llywodraeth ym Llywodraeth i'r sefydlu amser Gwyrdd. Mae Llywodraeth i fan, i'r ysgol, gyda un News Carlyne Dodd, ganwyl Llywodraeth I welcome you all to the meeting and I invite Mr Swinney to make a short opening statement. Good morning, convener. I welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee today on the inquiry that the committee is undertaking into the national performance framework. Though the national performance framework is highly regarded domestically and internationally, we must grapple with the complex question of how to translate the ambition that it sets out into concrete actions for improvement. There will not be one straightforward answer to that question, but by drawing on the experience of those who use the national outcomes to shape policymaking and service delivery across local government, the public sector, business organisations and the voluntary sector, I am confident that effective solutions can be found. Drawing on those experiences and voices exemplifies something of what the national performance framework is all about—about encouraging partnership, collaboration and recognising the part that we all play in improving the wellbeing of people in Scotland. Meeting the challenges of Covid recovery, achieving net zero and reducing child poverty will require more and more of this kind of collaboration and we must therefore listen carefully to unlock more of the national performance framework's potential. I have been grateful to see the responses that the committee has already received from the call for evidence and the oral evidence sessions as part of this inquiry. The breadth of responses from across Scottish society demonstrates the wide appeal of the national performance framework and the potential it has to bring together different sectors across the same outcomes. The responses underscore the strength of commitment that there is to the national performance framework and the progress that we have made since 2018 in making the framework an approach for all of Scotland, not just for government. We must learn from organisations who have effectively shaped their policies, programmes and systems around outcomes and who can demonstrate impact on the national outcomes. They do, however, present important evidence highlighting issues and areas where we can improve. Issues such as accountability, budgeting for outcomes and integrating the national performance framework into the systems and processes of government are all areas where improvements can be made and I will continue to listen to these important contributions and consider how we will respond. This inquiry is also timely as the upcoming review of the national outcomes presents an opportunity to put ideas into action. The review undertaken in partnership with COSLA will consult widely with communities across Scotland on the national outcomes and will go further by considering how the national performance framework can achieve greater impact. Public engagement is due to start from 23 June to be launched at the national performance framework conference and will give communities, charities, businesses and organisations in Scotland various opportunities to influence what our national outcomes are and how we can create the environment for them to be achieved. The findings of this inquiry will be considered as part of that review. As the committee has requested, we will provide Parliament with ample time to consider the findings of the review and any proposed changes to the national performance framework that it will lead to. I am very happy to address any issues from the committee. Thank you very much for that opening statement. I think that, in the opening statement, you kind of hit the nail on the head a wee bit in terms of probably the most significant issue, I think, which has come out of the evidence sessions so far, certainly from what I have been hearing. That is really about accountability and budgeting for outcomes, particularly in the round table. In other sessions, a number of witnesses have given evidence that the national performance framework is not actively used to shape scrutiny. It provides sponsorship, undertake commissioning work or shape the allocation of funding. Indeed, what they have said is that the national performance framework could be more closely linked to budget planning. Questions have been asked about that without any real answers forthcoming. I am just wondering how you believe that we can make the national performance framework more responsive to those concerns. That is a central issue. For the national performance framework to be effective, it has to be a statement of what we as a country are trying to achieve, the outcomes that support those aspirations. Inevitably, funding and policy decisions at an operational level will be of enormous significance in whether or not those aspirations are achieved. I was interested in some observations shared with the committee from North Ayrshire Council, which is well known to you. North Ayrshire Council provided the input to the inquiry. The national outcomes influence the development of our council plan, which outlines our priorities agreed with our communities and is North Ayrshire Council's central plan. It forms part of the golden thread linking national outcomes through to each employee's daily activities. In a sense, that captures the sense of importance that we want to attach to the national performance framework of establishing a relationship between, in that particular example from North Ayrshire Council, the contribution from an individual employee is connected right through to the national outcomes as part of the national performance framework. Similarly, budgeting should be so aligned. I think that that is an issue that we have got to be constantly mindful of in all of the planning and decision making that we undertake, that we should not be taking decisions or making judgments that are not aligned to the aspirations that are set out in the national performance framework. Accordingly, we should be able to link decision making at an operational level with the achievement of those outcomes. I think that the point that you have made is a really important one. I think that the phrase, golden thread, actually ran through a number of submissions, was certainly raised in evidence. What I found, both in the workshop and in D, and indeed in talking to Government officials, talking to people giving evidence across the board, was that there is really strong support and strong backing for what the national performance is and what it is trying to achieve. However, there is an issue about how patchy it can be in terms of Government's response to the way it sets its own outcomes. Failure to align budgets to outcomes has caused an element of frustration that came out last week. For example, organisations that take the NPF very seriously feel that they are following that, but there is no real reward if you want to put it that way for aligning themselves very closely with the NPF and other organisations that are much more loosely associated with the NPF. There is no backlash for that. The Government does not take that into account, either. It is almost as if the Government has set these outcomes and then has allowed people more or less to get on with it without any real focus on what we can do to encourage more people from a financial perspective into pursuing those outcomes. That is why we have a patchy situation across the country, which I do not think that any of us wants to see. We want to see best practice being followed everywhere. It is just about how we can tighten that up a wee bit. A number of witnesses gave evidence to suggest that, in its own documents, sometimes Government departments do not even mention the national performance framework when they are actually setting out objectives. That, again, makes some organisations feel that, perhaps, it is not really something that the Government is as focused on as it says it is, or it should be. How will the Government address those issues? The first thing that I should have said in my original answer to your question, convener, is that I think that I would accept that there will be a patchy degree of engagement about those issues. I do not think that that is satisfactory, but I think that it is an acknowledgement of reality, so I am not going to sit here and deny that reality. The point that you raised from that is whether there should be a reward or penalty mechanism about that is an interesting one. I think that it is one that should be in a whole variety of different respects. We should consider that as to whether there is a place for the performance of organisations and their utilisation of public money to be a source of influencing future decision making. It is not a route that the Government has gone down. We have gone down more of a route of encouragement, of engagement with organisations to get them to acknowledge the significance of the national performance framework and for that to be reflected very much in the Government's priorities. However, as I said in my opening statement, the Government will look with care at the outcome of this inquiry and, obviously, if the committee comes to conclusions on some of those questions, we will give those issues further consideration as we look at what is the role and the content of the national performance framework as part of the review that the Government will be undertaking. I will put that quite crudely. It is not really about penalising organisations, it is probably about being more favourably disposed towards those who have engaged and indeed accepted their encouragement. We might settle on a term like incentivising, convener. I might sum up both of what you and I are going on about this morning, so that might be a better way to think about it. This is all quite serious, because, obviously, the Government has outcomes that it wants delivered and there is clearly going to be an element in Government if those outcomes are not delivered, so anything that helps to achieve those outcomes is surely something that we should try to focus on. There is also an issue about who owns the NPF. It seems to be a whole society approach, so it does not seem to be a focused driver of the NPF. Again, people feel that perhaps there is not the same prioritisation that has been given to it, as there was initially. It has been now some 14 or 15 years. I think that there is a feeling that perhaps it should be re-energised a wee bit with a focus on just exactly who is driving that, so that people are aware of exactly who that would be. I think that the ownership of the NPF is, in my view, very clear. It is owned by the whole of society, but it is driven by the Government. I think that that is the best way that I could express it. The delivery of the outcomes within the national performance framework will not be all delivered by the Government. We need to engage business, for example, as part of that. We need to successfully engage the business community on some of those questions. Ultimately, the framework must be owned by the whole of society if we are to have any aspirations to deliver the contents of the national performance framework. I think that what then emerges is the degree of priority that is given to this by the Government in its own agenda and how we go about encouraging and motivating participation in the framework from a range of different organisations. As to the relevance of the national performance framework at this moment in time, in my view, it is more important than ever today. If I look at the principal areas of the policy agenda that the Government wishes to achieve, which are in summary form an economic recovery from Covid, the eradication of child poverty and addressing our commitments on net zero, those three principal aspirations of Government policy will not be achieved in neat little compartments within Government, and they will be spread across a range of the national outcomes that are part of the national performance framework. As a consequence of that, there has to be an encouragement of a collaborative, non-compartmentalised approach to policymaking to ensure that we are achieving the policy objectives of the Government and by virtue of achieving the policy objectives of the Government, we are doing so in a fashion that is achieving the aspirations of the national performance framework. That has set my mind, taking over a number of things to reassure my colleagues without panicking at the prospect of another myriad of questions from me. It won't mean that I will be asking too many more questions, but I would point out that one of the pleasing aspects of the evidence that we took was that both the third and private sectors were actually supportive and enthusiastic about the national performance framework. You touched on issues such as recovery, poverty and having to address climate emergency. Fife, for example, said that those were the three outcomes that they prioritised. There was a concern about the fact that perhaps there were too many outcomes when perhaps we should really be focused on these three or four or five, but not really the living 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, and there is no alignment there with national outcomes. If the Government is trying to ensure that everything is cross-cutting and that everything is working to the same agenda, an important document like that should surely have taken cognisance to a greater extent of the national performance framework. I wouldn't share your assessment of the national strategy for economic transformation, convener. I'm happy to debate it. Obviously, if the committee concludes on some of those issues, our ministers will reflect on that. If I was to take off the national strategy for economic transformation, it sets out an approach in relation to economic development, which is inextricably linked to those three themes that I talked to the committee about. I raised in my last answer to you, convener, on Covid recovery, on eradication of child poverty, on the achievement of net zero, all of which are embedded in the national performance framework. If we are judging some of those questions by the degree to which we structure a strategy document, for example, to align with the contents of the national performance framework in a structural way, you might have a point. On the thinking that is in the national strategy, I think that the thinking that is in it is non-compartmentalised, it is collaborative, it is about engaging the various sectors of society to contribute towards the common goals, which are reflected fundamentally at the heart of national performance by the purpose, which is to focus on creating a more successful country with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through increased wellbeing and sustainable and inclusive economic growth. It is important that the national performance framework and such documents are seen to underpin it. It is not always easy for people reading that to second guess the Government. Maybe that is what the Government has in mind, but if it is not actually there in black and white, people will wonder whether or not the Government is really prioritising the NPF the way it should be. I think that that is more or less what I am saying about it, not that it diverges in any way. It may be conveyor that there is an argument for some of the description and the presentation of that argument to be more explicit, which we could certainly consider that. Incidentally, a number of people said that one of the difficulties of the national performance framework in terms of the wider population, most of whom I believe probably will not have even heard of it, is the remarkably dull name that it has. The national performance framework, which is in my national planning framework, is the same as I am in the NPF. People have suggested what about calling it the national wellbeing framework, although ambitions for Scotland to me sounded much more a better title. Whatever the title is, is there any way in which, if we are going to be reviewed, people can feel a bit more vitality? For example, somebody said last week that the one way to ensure that a document is not ready is to put the words framework and performance in the title. That was not a flippant comment that was serious about trying to ensure that we get a kind of buy-in for more people. That is an issue that I would just ask the Deputy First Minister to take away when we look at the document as we move forward. I think that wellbeing is an issue that the Parliament is much more enthusiastic about and has much more knowledge of than simply the two-dimensional GDP that we used to look at in the past. The framework talks about that. There are a couple of issues that some of our witnesses have struggled with. That is about how we use the national performance framework, or what we want to call in the future, to help to declutter the public sector landscape, because there is a plethora of documents, and it seems that whenever the Government wants to do something new, it brings out an additional document that does not seem to replace existing documents and strategies. On how we can share best practice, we tried to ask our witnesses directly about best practice. They talked about how they ensured it internally and what I was clearly asking about is how they shared it with other organisations. For example, a local authority has got an excellent way of working and is delivering in terms of the set of poverty outcomes, how that can be shared with other local authorities. One would assume through COSLA that it does not seem to be working perhaps the way it should be, so it is about decluttering in best practice. How can we use the NPF to underpin also? First of all, on your questions about titles and terminology, I think that that is a reasonable point. I will take that away and reflect on it. If I was asked today to give my preference between ambitions for Scotland and the national wellbeing framework—not unsurprisingly, convener—I would be in agreement with yourself on ambitions for Scotland being a bit more uplifting. There is a fair point that has got to be explored in there. On the question of decluttering—I think that you make a fair point, convener—as time goes on, new policy initiatives have come forward. There are moments at which you have to take stock and simplify some of those exercises. That is what we will be looking to do as part of the work that is undertaken on the national performance framework, so that it becomes ever more meaningful to people and organisations. Its purpose is not really to reach—we do not need to build public awareness about the national performance framework. We need to build public awareness of the effect of the national performance framework. That is what matters. What is the difference to people in their experience of public services and their experience of the workings of various organisations? What difference does it make in their lives, as opposed to, can the answer, 20 questions about the national performance framework? I think that there is an opportunity for us to make that more meaningful and more impactful, and we will certainly reflect on that as part of this process. Every effort is made to ensure that best practice is shared across the community of governance in Scotland, if I can express it that way, within local government. The improvement service focuses extensively on that work. We undertake a lot of activities through social investment partnerships, for example, which are looking at new ways in which we can support some of our more vulnerable populations and support individuals into activity. We are sharing some of that best practice across a range of different organisations. The challenge is about trying to make sure that there is an appropriate platform to enable that to be undertaken. I think that I would express a frustration that there can often be very good and innovative elements of practice taken forward in some parts of the country and that it takes a long time for it to reach all parts of the country. That is something that is unsatisfactory, but the national performance framework gives us an opportunity to try to enable more organisations and more individuals to see where that best practice lies and how they can learn from it. Yes, I recall that the improvement service was very misianic about best practice when Colin Mayer, sadly, was at the helm. I am now going to open out the session to colleagues around the table and the first will be Michelle to be followed by John. Good morning, Deputy First Minister. Thank you for attending today. I have just got a couple of questions. The 2015 Community Empowerment Act states that, as you are well aware, the public sector bodies, including local authorities, are required to have regard to the act in carrying out their functions. We are also aware that that does not apply to city region deals and the new replacement for EU funds. The secretary straight for levelling up attended this committee and noted and agreed that policy differences could occur, but stated that, ideally, the engagement would be done through, I am quoting here, regular dialogue and honesty on our part about where we might diverge, in other words, conceding that there could be divergence. Given that the Scottish Government remains accountable for national outcomes, is there a possibility that the 2015 act can be reviewed to ensure that all spend, even for those areas that go through public bodies or local authorities, must be aligned to national outcomes? I am sure that Tomson raises an interesting point. The first term that Tomson raised was the requirements of the 2015 act on public bodies to have regard to. Have regard to could be replaced by must. That is a much higher level of obligation on a public authority. She raises an interesting point about some of the measures that could come forward that might not align with the policy direction that we wish to take forward. The Scottish Government has made absolutely clear to the UK Government our frustration and dissatisfaction with the arrangements that have been put in place around about the shared prosperity fund, for example, because it does not provide, in our view, the satisfactory opportunity for us to ensure that that expenditure, which pre-arrangements would be aligned to the direction of policy travel in Scotland, will be so aligned in the future. I think that that makes no sense. I think that it is a foolish route for the UK Government to take, but I have said all this to the UK Government and the Scottish Government said it to the UK Government and the UK Government is proceeding with its arrangements. Michelle Thomson might be raising an issue that the Government could consider as providing some greater opportunity to align that expenditure with the prevailing direction of policy travel, because it is about achieving the national outcomes. We are going through a democratic and consultative process about those outcomes and they may provide a better route to achieve some of those objectives. It is an interesting issue, but I think that the terminology of the 2015 act, as it stands just now, I do not think would put that obligation on organisations, but it might be able to be made to in the future. Thank you for that. I look forward to hearing more as part of the reflection process. A slightly different question, just picking up on some of the threads that the convener was progressing. Obviously, I cannot imagine that many members of the public are watching the committee, but I am sure that some other bodies might be watching it. I do not think that it is generally understood the challenges and complexities that exist in factoring budget or rather creating that alignment of budgetary spend to outcomes. It is highly complex and it is very difficult. I would like the Deputy First Minister's to consider the flavour in those areas where he thinks that it is practically difficult. Of course, one example that is often cited is our crude measurement thus far globally on GDP as compared to wellbeing indices. Perhaps a follow-on question is that, in reflecting on that at some point in the future, might the Scottish Government look to adopt more forcefully some of the newer emerging softer measures around wellbeing rather than just hard GDP or hard measures? I know that it is a complex question in itself, but I just like the DfN's reflections. There are two elements to that question. The first is in relation to the choices that are made about aligning spending to try to achieve outcomes. I think that I could go through endless examples of where that is difficult, but as a general theme, I think that there is a substantive challenge to allocate public expenditure to measures that are designed to be preventative as opposed to measures that are essentially reactive to events. There are many examples of that. You could take a sum of money and you could have a judgment about whether you deployed that on reactive services such as the provision of some degree of healthcare that is picking up the consequences of illness or whether you spend the money on encouraging much greater engagement in healthy living and exercise and active travel and all those different things, which will be, although longer-term investments, much more significant and impactful on improving the general health of the population. However, the challenge in that example is that if you have an immediate need of emergency or critical intervention, it is difficult not to fund that at the same time as trying to encourage the preventative interventions. More and more of our funding decisions are being aligned to preventative interventions, but that does not take away the need for emergency and critical interventions as well. I think that debate and dilemma is an ever-present debate and dilemma with which we have to wrestle, but that probably best sums up the challenge about how we shift spending to a more supportive direction in relation to the achievement of national outcomes than the current position in which we find ourselves. That is probably the best way to express some of those challenges in that respect. The second aspect of the question relates to the effectiveness of public expenditure and how we are able to measure that effectiveness and what we are as a whole judging to be the central indicators that we are looking at to make a judgment about the health, wellbeing and vitality of our society. If I look at the debate over the past 15 years that I have been a minister, the debate has changed from a very focused discussion on, frankly, GDP growth in 2007 to a much broader range of considerations today. That reflects part of what the convener said in his questions to me earlier on. I think that the national performance framework similarly has to reflect. It is a broadly-based—when I look at the national outcomes, there is no way that you could look at those national outcomes and say that they are all about GDP because they are not. There are a broader range of factors, so that has to be reflected. The revision of the wording of the purpose—if I go back to the 2007 wording in that version, I think—if I remember, she asked me right, and I will know that it would be corrected—was to focus on creating a more successful country with opportunities for all to flourish through increased sustainable economic growth. The wording is broadened in the intervening years, so I think that that is a point that we need to continue to consider as we review the framework. It is important that we take people with us because there will be voices within our society that say that that is too broad. It needs to have a harder, sharper edge. For example, we are talking about GDP, and part of what we are trying to do is—I come at these arguments on the point of view that economic opportunity is really absolutely fundamental to the health and wellbeing of our society, because if people do not have economic opportunity, they cannot support those that they love. Economic opportunity is relevant right across the spectrum of Scottish society, but I also recognise that just having a job will not necessarily meet everybody's needs and requirements within society. Therefore, there has to be a broader range of considerations. I do not want to take everyone's time. This is a highly complex area to consider, but I think that it is a good example that you have furnished the diffuse green preventative spend and that preventative spend has a longer site of funding to lock that in, given that we have a five-year review point. I think that that is an important point that the DFM has made. John Swinney, you follow on some of what Kenny Gibson was asking you. The whole thing about the public is not getting excited about this as far as I'm aware. None of them send me abusive emails about the national performance framework. Is that important? You seem to be saying that it's the thinking that's important so that we and the local authorities and charities in the third sector are all thinking about those values and not necessarily using the words and talking about them. Are you satisfied with that, or would it be better if more people throughout society were just talking about the national performance framework? We need to have enough people talking about the national performance framework, but I think that if I was to come to committee and say that I am going to launch a marketing campaign which is going to spend—you see, Liz Smith is reacting to—as I predicted, she might react to this. I am going to launch a marketing campaign of £8 million to raise awareness of the national performance framework. I think that it would get the reaction from Liz Smith that it just got. It might not be just Liz Smith that gave that reaction. What is critical, however, is that members of the public, in their experience of society, experience the benefit of collaborative policy making focused on the achievement of those outcomes. I would venture that people want to live in a country where we tackle poverty by sharing opportunities' wealth and power more equally, where our children grow up safe, loved, safe and respected so that they can realise their full potential. I think that people in society want to have those experiences, but they do not necessarily need to be able to pass the national performance framework entrance exam through raised awareness. However, for them to experience those outcomes, public organisations, private businesses and third sector organisations have to be working together to try to achieve those outcomes so that people experience them. One of the comparisons that has been made has been with Wales and their future generations act. I believe that they have a commissioner who therefore can challenge from outside and challenge the Government. We have got commissioners on lots of things already and I presume that we are going to have lots more commissioners going forward. What about the idea of somebody outside whose specific job was to challenge all of us about how we tie in with the national performance framework? I think that we have got a lot of these organisations already. I dare say that End Day of the Week Audit Scotland could decide to look at the questions that they have in the past, so I do not think that that would add an awful lot of value. There are also parliaments here to challenge on those questions. I welcome the committee's interest and engagement in the question because it gets to the heart of some of the things that occupy a lot of my time as Deputy First Minister, which is about trying to encourage more collaborative approaches to policymaking and to service delivery, because the Government inevitably is compartmentalised. We spend a lot of time trying to use the national performance framework as a tool to say to compartments that we have to collaborate a great deal more with other compartments to achieve outcomes, because we will not transform some of the challenges that affect the constituents that John Mason represents in terms of their experience of poverty and resolving those issues of poverty if we do not work in that more collaborative way. That has come up quite a lot, the idea that we should not work in silos, we should be collaborative, and I fully agree with that. The counter or a slightly different suggestion was made to us by some organisations that it would be helpful to have specific organisations, be that local government or universities or the health service, tied in more to specific outcomes rather than just saying, well, everybody is responsible for everything. The kind of thinking was that it is harder to hold people to account, like, say, the Greater Glasgow NHS, if they are responsible for everything, whereas if they are responsible for one or two things, it is easier to hold them to account. I just think that it is impossible to break things down in that fashion, because if we take the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board example, yes, they are exclusively responsible for open heart surgery. Nobody else is responsible for open heart surgery, but their actions are also relevant and significant in the general health and wellbeing of individuals that, in a number of years, time might end up needing open heart surgery because of what they can do in terms of healthy living, a nutritional advice, support to communities in terms of projects that will assist in alleviating poverty, which we know to be such a driver of poor health within our society. Some organisations will have exclusive responsibility for certain things, but there will always be a general contribution. It is absolutely essential that the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board is able to undertake open heart surgery, but it is equally, in my view, important that they are contributing to the wider health and wellbeing of our population. Talking about outcomes, Oxfam suggested that there is not really an outcome related to care, and they were suggesting that we might add an outcome or make it a bit more specific. Have you any thoughts on that? That may well be a reasonable point to consider, and that may well come out of the exercise, although the committee has heard that evidence, but it may also come out of the exercise that the Government undertakes in reviewing. There are 11 national outcomes. There will always be scope for people to say a but. The question that we have to consider is to what extent do those a buts merit changing the framework? I think that we should be open to that question. We are open to challenge on that question. Ross, to be followed by Daniel. Deputy First Minister, you acknowledged a moment ago that it is not essential that every member of the public has a comprehensive understanding of what the NPF is, but it is important that those who are involved in relevant organisations, public bodies and so on, have some understanding of what we are headed towards. I am trying to understand, though, the difference between those who are responsible for on-the-ground delivery versus those who are responsible for a level of strategic planning. How important is it that the heart surgeon has an understanding of NPF outcomes versus the senior management team at the hospital or the health board? How important is it that a classroom teacher knows what NPF outcomes specifically they are working towards versus the school senior management team or the council education department? At what level do you expect people to be able to recognise tangible and specific NPF outcomes and their relationship to them? I think that the ethos of the national performance framework should be known about by those who are delivering public services and engaged in trying to achieve anything—we are not just public services—engaged in trying to achieve any of those outcomes. So, making sure that—to take one of the examples that Mr Greer puts to me—a classroom teacher versus senior management, in my opinion, is both. I think that any classroom teachers that I meet see the wider picture because they see that it is—I do not think that classroom teachers generally will think that all they need to attend to is that we are well educated, skilled and able to contribute to society. They will be very mindful of—we grow up loved, safe and respected so that we can achieve our potential—that we tackle poverty by sharing opportunities better and that we protect and fulfil human rights and live free from discrimination because they will be living out all of this through the strength of curriculum for excellence. I think that what I am distinguishing between is an awareness of the national performance framework, which needs to be a household understanding versus—the household understanding should be that people should experience those outcomes. Whereas in terms of the practitioner's awareness, it needs to be at a higher level than that household awareness. You used the phrase, the ethos of the NPF there. I think that touches on quite a lot of the feedback that we got when we were doing focus groups. The group that Dianne Johnson and myself spoke to ended up landing on the word and, plus it, when we were asking about how their organisational plans and strategies align with the NPF. My interpretation of that was that a lot of the people that we were speaking to from a variety of public bodies used the NPF as a set of guiding principles—something that shaped the culture within their organisation rather than—for the level that they were at, it was not chief executive senior managers on the whole that we were speaking to—the folk that we were speaking to are much closer to the level delivery. For them, it was that set of guiding principles shaping their culture rather than being able to rhyme off the specific outcomes and how they were contributing to them. Is that satisfactory to you? Is that, when we are talking about level of practitioners, that approach of being guided and having your broad approach shaped by the NPF rather than being able to list off specific outcomes? Is that what the Government is looking to achieve here, or are you trying for a deeper level, a more specific level of understanding than that? I think that that is good and beneficial but probably not quite enough. The terminology, the reason why I used the quote from North Ayrshire Council, was that I thought, in all the material that I looked at in preparing for this committee, I thought that quote where it talked about it forms part of the golden thread linking national outcomes through to each employee's daily activities. Best captured, what are my aspirations here? It is not that people have got to rhyme off all of the national outcomes but that their contribution to what they are doing is significantly guided by the aspirations of the national performance framework. I thought that quote probably best expressed what the Government is trying to achieve here. Just one final question, this is perennial one that is asked every time the Government tries to get broad public engagement. How, through the review exercise that is about to take place, are you going to engage with those who—that overwhelming majority of the general public have absolutely no idea what the NPF is, who do not necessarily have an immediate and obvious relationship to delivery of NPF outcomes? How do you intend to engage with those who are otherwise disengaged from this, who do not work at the relevant level within a public agency or a third sector organisation? We need to undertake external engagement that will allow us to identify what essentially what type of country do people want to live in because that is the question that fundamentally drives the contents of the national outcomes. What type of country do people want to live in? We need to hear that from members of the public as distinct from those who are the practitioners of delivering services or interventions. Fundamentally understanding what type of country do people want to live in should shape much of our thinking in this respect. We will do that by a range of engagement mechanisms, some that may be by community gatherings, some that may be by survey material, but we will use different tools to gather that information. I just want to go back to some of the points that the convener was raising. I do think that, ultimately for this to continue to be successful, this is about accountability and responsibility for taking it forward. The thing that has struck me throughout our conversations is that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for this coming from places such as agencies, but particularly the third sector. I think that their observation is that that is not necessarily reflected in what they are being asked to do.  We have had multiple accounts of organisations saying how they found it useful to consult the national performance framework, but they are also saying that they are not necessarily being asked to frame their plans by government. I wonder if there is a need to re-examine how sponsorship ownership is at the government level. I mean, do we need to be asking your colleagues around the cabinet table, for example, to make specific actions with regard to their portfolios? Indeed, one of the observations that has been made is that when you held both the responsibility for the performance framework and the finance portfolio, that sort of glued the priority together with the money, which ultimately tends to drive things. When things are split apart from the money, it does not need to. Do you think that there needs to be a re-thinking about responsibility at ministerial level and, indeed, about where the performance framework is owned within responsibilities across government? I do not think that the particular solution that Mr Johnson puts to me is necessary to do it, but I think that the point that underpins it is necessary is that the point that Mr Johnson is putting to me is that it has to be meaningful in government and influence decision making. I agree wholeheartedly with that. I think that it does, but the Government probably needs to look at whether it is as influential in decision making as it could and should be. The cabinet looks at the issues in relation to the national performance framework on a reasonably frequent basis. The cabinet is also looking very extensively at the delivery of priorities, and the delivery of priorities should be shaped by what are they contributing towards national outcomes and the national performance framework. If we find ourselves taking decisions that are at odds with the national performance framework, that is a completely different question. That would not be an appropriate place for us to be in. The committee may reflect on some of those things in its report, and that brings me back to the point that Mr Mason raised with me about external scrutiny. I do not think that that is consistent with the national performance framework. Parliamentary committees and Audit Scotland could say that to us, but ministers are looking at those questions to be satisfied that we are taking decisions that are in line with the framework. Mr Johnson has a fair point to put to me. If you take a perspective of a third sector organisation, I think that third sector organisations will still feel that they are getting asked to do compartmentalised things rather than collaborative things, if I can put it that way. I think that they will probably feel that they are still being asked to undertake transactions, as opposed to providing holistic support to individuals. That is an on-going challenge within Government to move from the transaction to the holistic, and getting more to the holistic would get it more in line with the aspirations of the national performance framework. I really recommend the Scottish Leadership Forum's work on how to apply the national performance framework. I think that it has done a level of work that goes beyond what the Government has. On that note, I was wondering if I could put three suggestions that have come up to the Cabinet Secretary, but I did not make a lot of sense. First of all, I think that what John Mason was guessing at in terms of responsibility is important. I do not think that, in my view, it is wise to ascribe particular measures to particular organisations because of the nature of the measures. However, I do think that perhaps having a policy of asking either individual departments or when strategies are published, having a policy of a greater explanation as to how they fit and contribute towards the national performance framework, could be sensible. I do not think that that needs to be a statutory requirement. That could just be a matter of policy, but much like we do around sustainability targets, I think that having that front and centre making explicit, almost the first and last thing that we are asking people in Government to do and report against would make a lot of sense. Likewise, another suggestion that came forward—again, try and eliminate the issue of everyone agreeing in broad terms that the national performance framework is good, but no one is taking specific responsibility for specific things. There is the idea that you could have agreements between Government and agencies, whereas that has made it a lot more explicit about the contributions. That does not necessarily mean that they are having hard targets. A lot of that could be very much a qualitative description, but I think that putting in black and white some of those interdependencies and relationships that the cabinet secretary was just alluding to in terms of third sector organisations could those sorts of agreements that wrap around, sit on top of the formal contractual agreements would be one idea. Thirdly, one of the points that was made a lot was that no one is going to disagree with any of the outcomes, that they are all good things, that they are pretty unobjectial and unarguable. The issue actually comes when you come up with plans about how to influence them. That is actually the difficult bit. Is there a need, rather than necessarily picking at individual targets, at the very least having a sense of a medium-term plan about how certain things will be influenced within the framework? Indeed, there are other two points around reporting an agreement that would then flow from the plan that was in place to implement it, because otherwise simply having metrics, without any sense of how you are going to influence them, potentially is a recipe for making no progress at all. The first thing that I would say is that I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Johnson's point about the Scottish leadership forum, which I think has, we essentially said to the forum, we need to translate the national performance framework and the achievement of outcomes into practical realities. I think that they have really advanced the thinking about that. Of course, that is a reflection. The Scottish Leaders Forum is a collection of people who are influencing all this whole area of delivery. I hope that that gives the committee some confidence that that practice is actually going on within different aspects of the public sector. I think that there is an opportunity to ensure that we build on that work in responding to the points that Mr Johnson has put to me. We need to be testing ourselves as to whether our actions are consistent with the national performance framework. When I read a cabinet paper that is developing a particular policy position, it will narrate the relationship between the policy intention and the national performance framework. That has to be reflected all the way through. That is at a policy development angle. It then has to be reflected in budget choices, operational decision making, because if I come back to some of the points that Michelle Thomson has put in to me, an approach that is based more on the picking up the pieces rather than the early intervention is going to be less aligned to the national performance framework than if it was on the side of the preventative interventions. In all aspects of policy making, where can we establish that alignment? I think that there is an on-going challenge about recognising the fact that solutions to issues that face members of the public are not generally found in neat little compartments. Government operates generally in neat little compartments.  If you take, for example, the formulation of the child poverty delivery plan, which was published by Shona Robison, behind that was an extensive amount of cross-governmental dialogue, which I chaired to make sure that the child poverty delivery plan was going to get cross-government intervention and support. What came out was a collection of measures that looked at direct financial support to families, employability support and wider holistic support, which draws on transport, childcare, early intervention, mental wellbeing and counselling for people who are economically inactive. The plan had a much broader plan. To get to that point, that involved a lot of cross-ministerial dialogue. Probably more than I think that it should be necessary, but it was necessary to get across all those compartments. What we produced was a much broader and much more relevant intervention, which is much closer to the aspirations of the national performance framework than if we had just left it to the compartment within the Government that is dealing with poverty, which is formally shown by Shona Robison's responsibilities, but if we are going to tackle poverty, that needs the work of education, the work of health, the work of transport and the work of employability. It is not just in a neat little compartment. In my explanation to the committee about the focus on the big themes of eradicating child poverty, economic recovery from Covid and net zero, those are all big issues that have been tackled on a cross-ministerial basis to give us some chance of making sure that our interventions are commensurate with the scale of the challenge. Lastly, Mr Johnson asked me about essentially how to influence methods of achievement. I suppose that this is where I come back to where I started in this answer on the Scottish leaders forum. We have got to be turning this into practical reality, and we have also got to be operating in an empowered system. I do not think that we need to be waiting just for Scottish leaders to say, oh, we shall do this. Some of the best outcomes that I have seen achieved have been members of staff feeling as if they are confident in what they are doing to do the right thing and deliver better solutions for members of the public. In so doing, they might not have been thinking, oh, I must do this to satisfy national outcome 5. I think that they are thinking about what is expected of me through the national outcomes. Ultimately, the success of this is largely reliant on the quality of the data that sits underneath it. It has always struck me when I looked at the national performance framework when you click through it on the website, you get presented with lots of bullet points. That is actually probably more words than numbers, and it is not very digestible. There is a broader point around data and approaches and how you do that. On a simple, presentational point, do you not think that we need to do better at presenting the data? I became a real addict of the public health Scotland's dashboard through the pandemic. It was incredibly helpful for actually seeing what was going on. Do you think that we need to have a bit of a refresh and have something similar for the national performance framework to actually bring the data to life? I think that we all are addicts of public health Scotland, believe you me. I suppose that there is an important point that comes out of that. That was absolutely the focus for a certain amount of time, because Covid was the absolutely overwhelming issue. That tells us that all the data that we might sometimes think that people do not want to plough through all this data—actually, the experience of Covid was that people did want to plough through that data because they wanted to know where we were heading. That is the crucial point. Where are we heading? I think that we have to learn a lesson from that as we look at this material. I have certainly been part of discussions that have wrestled with the question of data presentation on the national performance framework, where we have taken the view that we cannot present all that complex data because people will never plough their way through it, whereas the example that Mr Johnson puts to me refutes that completely, because it mattered. We have got to find a way of making sure that we identify the data that matters. We have had various attempts at this, performance maintaining, performance worsening, performance improving, and there are vast data sets that sit underneath that. However, I think that it is a fair point for us to explore as to whether or not there is a collection of data sets that really tell the picture about whether we are progressing. Some of those are to hand. I am mindful of the fact that colleagues are not looking at a GDP date and saying that that is it. It is one of a number. I can think of a number of particular data sets that I am looking at all the time to make me think about well. Do I think that Scotland is moving in the right direction at this particular time? What am I troubled about? We will be looking at those data sets on a constant basis, so perhaps we need to draw them out and label them officially endorsed by Public Health Scotland and everyone will look at them. I think that that is a very important dilemma in all of this. It has been raised by three sets of witnesses, one last week when we were taking evidence from Five Council, one about four weeks ago when we were taking evidence from the third sector and one at the workshop that we had in Dundee. Those are all people, incidentally, who are broadly in favour of the principles of the national performance framework. However, there are also people who said that the best outcomes are those that are owned locally when their own local communities have come up with ideas where they feel that they are making the best progress when the local community, perhaps led by local government, has real ownership of what they are trying to do. The dilemma is that, if the best performances can be driven from a local as a bottom-up scenario, it may be that some of the projected outcomes in the national performance framework get more of an emphasis in one region compared with another region or one local authority compared with another local authority and that others are less up-the-agenda for them. I cite the example that Dundee City Council gave us where they felt that they were making very good progress when it came to tackling child poverty, but they said that, as a result of that, they were not focusing on some of the other things. I want to ask you about that dilemma. Is it the case, as far as you are concerned, that some of the best outcomes are being driven by that local empowerment? In which case, does that challenge the need for quite such a prescriptive oversight from the national government about what it is that we are trying to achieve? I agree entirely about the importance of locally-empowered solutions. I think that there is a lot of fascinating work going on just now. I am very closely observing the work that is going on in Dundee City Council and some of the pilots in relation to that complex relationship around child poverty, employability, engagement in society, and there is some really interesting work emerging there. It is emerging there, but it is not emerging in other places. That is great, because that will then give us an approach to best practice that we can share with others and we can begin to move on in that respect. I think that there is a really sound platform that enables us to take that forward. That inevitably probably gives rise to the fact that greater emphasis is placed on some areas of activity than others, but that would understandably be the case. I am interested in the characterisation that Liz Smith puts to this, that that there is a prescriptive approach by the Government. I do not think that there is a prescriptive approach here indeed. As I look at the evidence, some voices are saying that the Government needs to be more prescriptive because we need to have folk absolutely complying with this. As you probably sensed from the evidence that I am giving to the committee this morning, I am not really persuaded by the get more prescriptive approach. I am much more interested in the, let's make sure that people are empowered at local level to find the solutions that work out for them, providing they are contributing towards the national outcomes. If that is true, does that imply that when it comes to accountability and measuring the outcomes, the Scottish Government has to allow for that measurement and the ambitions to be developed much more from a local perspective, rather than from what some people have described—they have used the word prescriptive—the 11 outcomes on a diagram? They feel that, for their local communities, they can do things their way to considerable effectiveness without having to worry too much about what the national performance framework says. I have some sympathy for that because, certainly, I have seen that there are some examples of very good practice, but that good practice has not been informed by the national performance framework. It has been informed by what works for a local community. Last week in this Parliament, we were debating community wealth in principle. We have obviously had the levelling up agenda in principle, even if we might debate about some other aspects of how things run. What I am getting at with the dilemma is that, for many local communities across Scotland, they feel that they have got an awful lot of ambition and talent and resources that they can best use if they are the ones who are the decision makers, rather than having to apply themselves always to a national performance framework. I think that that is the issue. I am not sure that we might be in danger of talking potentially across purposes here, because I think that if a community is developing its approach to tackling child poverty, that is obviously going to be with the objective of eradicating child poverty, which is, of course, right at the heart of the national performance framework. I think that we would, where Liz Smith might have a point in this, is if the Government was saying that you must do the following. The Government is not saying that. The Government is saying that we want to buy our collective efforts to eradicate child poverty. The Government will put in place certain things, but that is not exclusive. If there is other things that you think can be done in your community, drawing on resources and capacity to eradicate child poverty, you get on with it.  The Government is saying that this is the type of country that we are trying to create. We are inviting a variety of organisations, private, public and third sector organisations, to work with us on that journey. What we are not specifying is that you must do the following. I am citing comments from the wise group that has done some fantastic work. Yes, the principles of the national performance framework are extremely important, but, if they are doing their job properly, they do not really need the national performance framework telling them what to do. They have lots of examples—very collaborative, I might say, with the third sector, with local government and the private sector—that feel that they have got enough examples of really good practice, which is helping to develop national performance outcomes, but they do not actually need it to do them in the first place because, if they are doing their job properly, it is there. From that observation, do we need to be slightly less prescriptive about the national performance framework so that people buy into the principles of it, but we do not have to set too many parameters about how it is delivered? I think that we will come back to award the convener that put to me at the very start of the session, which was the word patchy. I would be stunned if the wise group found itself at odds with the national performance framework or the need to refer to the national performance framework, because much of the practice of the wise group over the last—I have known the wise group closely for about 25 years—30 years, probably—and the thinking ethos outlook perspective of the wise group has heavily shaped the national performance framework, but I would also accept that there were some organisations in the country that are not operating at that level who need the national performance framework to give them a clear idea of where they should be heading. On the specific example that Liz Smith puts to me, I do not think that we have anything to really teach the wise group to any discernible extent, but I think that there are other places in the country that would benefit from learning some of that experience. Just to finish, you said something very interesting earlier on, where you said that if people—if you did not feel people were performing as well as they should be, the accountability level might be raised slightly so that there are sticks rather than carrots to get them to perform better. Is that something that the Scottish Government is seriously considering? If you look at our performance approach with organisations, we will put down challenging demands on organisations of what we expect of them. The Government is not entitled to do that in relation to local government, but if you look at some of the comparative reports that the Accounts Commission looks at individual local authorities, it will on occasion have some pretty bruising things to say to individual local authorities, and it might have some bruising things to say in a comparative sense. There will be challenges to performance, and we should be willing to consider those challenges to performance. I just want to go back to the point about golden thread and local authorities. You mentioned North Ayrshire Council submission, also a submission from Fife Council. In its submission, it said, that in terms of funding to the voluntary sector, we do not assess grant awards against their contribution to the national outcomes directly, nor do we map awards to the national outcomes that they contribute to. I asked them about that, and they rightly said that what they do is that it is mapped against their loyp instead. I made the point that the local outcome improvement plans instead of the local authority. I made the point that I would say that the golden thread would still flow, because of course the loyp has to have due regard to the NPF. I guess that those third sector organisations may not actually be contributing to the NPF, but they are maybe not aware that they are contributing. Do you see that as a problem or not an issue at all? I suppose that the question that would raise for me is, are the local outcome agreements genuinely contributing towards the expected outcomes of the national performance framework? I suppose that that is what I would be. That is the question that would raise in my mind. Theoretically, I can see exactly the point that has been made by Fife Council, but I suppose that I would have a question in my mind as to whether it was all as closely aligned as it is being expressed. Would it be a problem that the voluntary organisation is not aware that they are actually probably making a good contribution to the NPF? I do not think that it matters. No. As long as we are all operating in a way that is contributing constructively towards the direction of travel expressed by the national performance framework, I suppose that comes back to some of the earlier comments that I have put on the record today. If organisations are using public money and operating in a contradictory fashion to the direction of travel, that would give me concern, because I do not understand what the point of that is, because we have decided that this is our direction of travel and that is what we should be aiming towards. That does not mean to say that every approach has got to be identical in every part of the country. It is not saying that in any shape or form, but we want to be satisfied that people are moving in a complementary direction to the national performance framework. You made the point that it is all fine, as long as the loyp does align with the NPF. Where has that check and balance done? It has not done formally. If I were to look, for example, at an accounts commission report on an individual local authority, I would be surprised if I did not see some commentary about the degree to which the local authority was aligned in its planning and thinking to the national performance framework, because the accounts commission will be mindful from a regulatory perspective that that is a relevant issue for them to consider. I guess that might be ties into the Auditor General last year. He raised issues around accountability and delivery, and what he said was that Scotland is suffering from a major implementation gap between policy ambitions and delivery on the ground. He went on to say, I am not convinced that public sector leaders really feel accountable for delivering change. Would you agree with that? I do not think so. If we go back to the point that Liz Smith made about the Scottish Leaders Forum, it is generally made up of the public sector leaders in Scotland at operational level, not at political level. As I look at the work that comes out of that forum, I see those individuals very much signed up to the agenda that I have talked about extensively this morning, recognising the fact that service changes have to be made, improvements have to be delivered to enable that to happen. I do not really think that there is an absence of engagement and accountability on those questions. I suppose that the point that I would make is that we have to be satisfied that there is sufficient pace and intensity around about that work. Given some of the challenges that we face, for example, in child poverty, I want us to move at pace to eradicate child poverty. We would have to ask ourselves, do we think that we are moving quite as fast as we could do and that all public authorities are moving as fast as we could do? That is about the political leadership that we need to put in place to move those organisations and potentially to think of different policy solutions to put in place that enable that to be the case and to give greater priority to, particularly as a policy than to others. Is it about looking at how they are funded and using the carrot or the stick to make sure that they are aligned to the NPS? There are always different approaches that can be taken. I think that we have to satisfy ourselves that organisations are operating with good will in a direction that will help us to achieve the national outcomes. Thanks to colleagues around the table, I have one area that I want to touch on, because it has not really been covered by the members of the committee. We talked about delivery of priorities. One of the focal points of the national reforms framework is continuous improvement. Of course, it used to be more target-driven. In response to Dougal Slumson talking about the need to move at pace to eliminate child poverty, you have also said that you want to ensure that the outcomes are delivered in a less patchy form. If we have continuous improvement, what does that mean? Does that mean that the Government is satisfied with a 1 per cent improvement a year, a 5 per cent, a 10 per cent? If we are not going to return to targets, would milestones be a more effective way of assessing where we were in terms of reaching each of the outcomes and enabling you to incentivise and encourage organisations more, if, for example, some are not doing as well as they could? I think that there is a mixed picture on some of the requirements. If you look, for example, at the issue of child poverty, we have statutory targets. The Parliament has put into law statutory targets that have got to be achieved. The same exists on net zero. There are certain elements that the Parliament has already legislated for, and that is a matter of fact that they have got to be achieved. We have to have a degree of intensity that we believe is commensurate with achieving those targets. That will, however, exist in all areas of policy. I do not think that it can exist in all areas of policy, because we inevitably have to give more attention to some areas of activity than others, and the Government has made its choices. We have made our choices around Covid recovery, child poverty net zero. I think that the national performance framework helps us to do is to have as clear a shape and a concept of being able to judge whether or not progress has been made. Mr Johnson put to me quite fairly the issues about data. The national performance framework should enable us to look at that and say, well, here is the difference today, compared with 12 months ago. Do we think that that really is satisfactory on where the country is reaching just now? That is a very important measure for us to take as a society and to be able to make a judgment about whether we have advanced as much as we would have hoped to have done. That is a fair point, but a number of organisations, including myself, are goal and task driven. Continuous improvement to one person or one organisation might mean something completely different to someone else, and that is where we come back to the issue of the delivery of the NPF being patchy. That is why I mentioned milestones. Is there a way in which we can try and, if you like, square the circle of those two philosophies in order that we can optimise the response that we actually receive in terms of the delivery of the NPF? We have to look at that question, convener, because nobody wants this whole process to be vague. That is what we are trying to avoid. It has to not be vague, it has to be meaningful. It has to be meaningful and discernible. I think that there is a genuine effort by the Government to try to construct a national performance framework that enables us to do that, but we have the opportunity of the review that we will undertake, which will reflect on the feedback from the committee and its inquiry to judge whether or not there is more that we could do in that respect. The point that you put to me is an important one that we consider. I want to thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for attending today and, indeed, the Deputy First Minister for his very frank and detailed response to our questions. That concludes evidence gathering for our national performance framework inquiry, and we will consider a draft report after a summer recess. We will now take a short break until 10 past 11 before we move on to the next item of business, which is an evidence session with Skills Development Scotland. The next item on our agenda is to take evidence from Skills Development Scotland on the trends behind income tax forecasts. The session follows on from issues raised during our budget scrutiny 2022-23. It also sets the scene for a pre-budget scrutiny this year, which will be informed with the Scottish Fiscal Commission's next forecast to be published later today. I welcome to the committee meeting Chris Brodie, director of regional skills planning and sector development, and Andrea Glass, head of regions and enabling sectors. Good morning. I understand, Mr Brodie, that we would like to make a short opening statement. Good morning and thank you for the invitation to give evidence to the committee today. I would like to begin, firstly, by thanking the committee for agreeing to reschedule this appearance, which was originally due to take place five weeks ago. After managing to avoid Covid for two years, I took a short trip to Spain and brought back an unwanted present. Unfortunately, I am very grateful for the rescheduling of this session. I will briefly set some context for Skills Development Scotland. We are the national skills agency for Scotland, and we deliver a number of core services on behalf of the Scottish Government. We have more than 800 career staff who are embedded in every secondary school in Scotland and work across a range of public access centres. We run the modern apprenticeship programme on behalf of the Scottish Government. We delivered over 25,000 modern apprenticeships last year, and we jointly deliver graduate apprenticeships and foundation apprenticeships with colleagues in the Scottish Funding Council. Andrew and I, the part of SDS that we work in, is the Skills Planning Directorate. We play a central role in working with employers to understand their skills needs now and in the future. We develop a range of evidence and insights, some of which we have shared with the committee as pre-reading, and that essentially is cascaded out to training providers, colleges and universities with the intention that that is used to inform skills provision in Scotland. Finally, we also have a small team who delivers direct support to companies to help them at an individual business level to understand their skills needs and to look at upskilling and reskilling opportunities. Finally, it is really important to say that we have a direct influencing role in a number of the areas that I have just described, but we also have an important indirect influencing role in respect to the skills system. Scotland currently invests somewhere in the region of about £2.1 billion, £2.2 billion a year in post-16 education in skills. That is excluding the costs of student support. SDS's annual budget is in the region of £216 million out of that £2 billion, and we directly invest somewhere in the region of £85 to £90 million a year in terms of apprenticeships. We look forward to giving evidence to the committee this morning and hope to be of help with your inquiry. Thank you very much for that. I will start with some opening questions and then we will go around the table. First, I would like to say that the national strategy for economic transformation was published on 1 March. That included what has been described as five bold new policy programmes of action, including creating an entrepreneurial nation, developing new markets and industries, enhancing productivity and innovation skills, and delivering high rates of employment and wage growth. In the three months since that was published, what, if any, has skills development Scotland done? What changes, if any, to its approach in order to take on board those priorities? I will begin with some follow-up. The first thing to recognise across the national strategy for economic transformation is that it has five pillars. Instinctively, the SDS's primary role would be around a skilled workforce. It is important to say that we have a role right across the national strategy for economic transformation. We are working with colleagues around the Imperson's Guarantee. The team that I mentioned that works directly with businesses is also supporting ambitions around new market opportunities in terms of inward investment, and that that team also supports some of our work in terms of the business support partnership and direct support to businesses. Our primary areas of action are around the skilled workforce, so there are probably a couple of examples that I will pick out. One of the named projects in the national strategy for economic transformation is the Green Jobs Workforce Academy, which we launched in August 23rd last year. I will be in front of SDS's board next week talking about the development proposition for the second phase of the Green Jobs Workforce Academy. At the moment, that provides a resource that connects people with emerging opportunities in relation to the transition to net zero. We expect that the scale of job opportunities that will emerge over the next five to ten years will be significantly greater than we are seeing at the moment, so we are building both functionality into that resource and looking at how we align upskilling and reskilling support for individuals and for businesses through that work. Probably the other area that I point to, and this gets to the heart of the discussion today, I suspect, around productivity and the skills. We are working very closely with colleagues in the Scottish Funding Council around the alignment of skills provision in Scotland's regions and for Scotland's sectors behind the needs of the economy. We have some sectoral work, again looking at the transition to net zero. We have some work in the north-east of Scotland and the south of Scotland, which is working with education partners, the universities and the colleges, the regional economic partnerships to ask that question, where do we think jobs are going, and is the skills system currently delivering against those ambitions and what may need to change? It seems to me that what you are basically saying is a strategy based on a lot of the work that Skills Scotland is doing in terms of the area, would that be right? No, not really. I was asking what you were going to change up to differently as a result of the strategy and you talked about what has been done, for example, in terms of your green jobs programme from last August, so that is why I was wondering is the strategy being built on some of your work, or as opposed to the other way around? I can maybe explain that slightly better than I did, convener, so a direct answer to your first question, yes, like other public agencies. We were involved in the discussions to shape the national strategy for economic transformation. Some of the areas that I picked out were deliberately referencing some of the actions that have been identified. I think that there are 78 actions across the national strategy for economic transformation. What I was looking to do was to pick out some of those actions that specifically relate to our work in SDS and give the committee a sense of the progress that we are making in relation to those actions. You are quite right to point out that the Green Jobs Workforce Academy is something that predated the publication of the national strategy for economic transformation, but I think that the importance of that work and the potential contribution that it can make is one of the reasons why it is a named project. The UK unemployment rate is at 3.7 per cent and, in Scotland, it is at a record low of 3.2 per cent. Is that a realistic figure, for example? In terms of those who are in employment and we understand that the number of people who are economically inactive in Scotland is more or less the same as the UK, it is 75.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent lower than the UK. Is it realistic in terms of full-time involvement in the economy and what percentage of those people are economically underact, less and fully active, i.e. working part-time? Is there a hidden unemployment? I understand that Sheffield Hallam University produced a study to say that more than a million people are not working who should really be included in the figures but are not. Where are we in terms of the reality of the picture? It looks much rosier on paper than it probably does in reality. A lot of that is possibly because of a time of a huge number of vacancies, skills and geographic mismatch. There is a lot in that question and I will try to pick my way through it. I will warn the committee that this is an area that has been known to talk about at great length. I will try to be brief. I think that the first thing to say is that you are absolutely right in terms of that characterisation of the headline figures. Adult unemployment is at a historical low. Youth unemployment in Scotland is remarkably low. It is something like 5.6 per cent at the moment, but I agree with you. I am not sure that that tells the full story of what is currently going on in our labour market at the moment. Economic connectivity is somewhere in the region of about 21.4 per cent. I think that you have slightly earlier figures. We updated our Covid labour market insights yesterday. That has now closed that economic connectivity rate to close to the UK average as well. If you look at the long term, the issue that we have in Scotland is about rising or fairly stable economic connectivity. I will come back to that in a moment. I think that there is a flip side of the labour supply perspective and that is what is going on in the economy. In short, every indicator that I look at in terms of the jobs market suggests that we have a very hot labour market at the moment. From a certain perspective, that is a good thing. The number of vacancies that we are seeing posted is higher than it was pre-pandemic. We are seeing lots of evidence around employers having challenges in terms of recruitment. You might not have asked that question, but I may offer what you can do around that. We need to think differently about the labour supply challenge. Part of that is about looking hard into that economically inactive. You are right to point out that a significant proportion of that group—I think that from the top of my head the number is about 110,000 out of the 230 in Scotland—is looking for work. I think that we need to reframe our thinking about that group and say, how do we get those people back into the jobs that we know employers are looking to recruit into at the moment because they are having difficulties? I think that there are other dimensions to it as well around demographics and around some of the implications of what is going on in the scale system around the pandemic. I agree with the premise of the question that driving into economic connectivity is really important, because those are people who would want to work if they could find a job, I suspect. We know that employers are having difficulties recruiting. Two parts of that question—I apologise for that—was about part-time working. Where are we in terms of the proportions in part-time working? The other thing is the geographic balance. For example, I represent a constituency in North Ayrshire, where the market is not particularly hot relative to, for example, Edinburgh and Asakina. I am certainly concerned by myself and other colleagues in West Scotland, but it is more of an east-west divide in Scotland—it might be north-south of England, but it seems to be east-west in Scotland. It is about how we address those specific challenges. You can look at Scotland and talk about percentages, but there are marked differences between different parts of the country, so I am sure that you are well aware of that. I will begin just in terms of part-time workers. I have an extensive briefing in front of me that has just about every statistic that you can imagine in the labour market, but not in part-time workers. I will undertake to provide some written input into the committee after the appearance. You are right to point out the difference in terms of unemployment rates across the country. For a long time, there has been the emergence of east-west divide in Scotland, both in terms of population growth and economic growth in terms of unemployment. I think that that picture is beginning to change. One of the bits of data that we have been tracking since 2014-15 is the change that has taken place in the northeast. Typically, 10 years ago, when I visited Aberdeen, the flippant comment was that you could count on one hand the number of people who were unemployed in the northeast because of the buoyancy of that labour market. That is not the case now. The northeast is now moving back towards the national average, so that east-west breakdown is breaking down. I will turn to Andrea Moelman in terms of some of the things that we might do around it, but the heart of the matter for me is three issues. In terms of those areas that have significant unemployment, how do you ensure that you have the conditions to create good-quality jobs? Secondly, it is recognised, particularly in the North Ayrshire context, that you are 20 or 30 minutes away from a really strong labour market in the wider Glasgow city region, so the transport infrastructure plays an important role in connecting people to jobs, but the important thing is around skills. That is where I go back to the focus on both skilling, reskilling and upskilling people for the jobs of today, rather than the jobs of 20 years ago, and also looking at how we improve people's employability skills. Andrea, do not know if you have anything you wish to add? I think that it is worth noting that obviously the work that is done around regions and through the regional economic partnerships is very, very important. The SDS regional skills planning leads manage the relationships with our regional partners right across Scotland, and part of that is about understanding in those localities within the regions and within the local authority areas where the challenges lie. It is very important that what we have is a really, really good evidence base of understanding what the problem is that we are trying to solve. It is on that basis that local partners can come together to begin to address the challenges, be they employment or otherwise, within a particular locality. Having that really, really strong evidence base is how we can begin to make sure that we are solving the right problems because we have identified the challenges that we are facing. The reason that I asked about part-time is because many people prefer working part-time, but a lot of people work part-time because they do not feel that there is a full-time job in the area that they are qualified or skilled for. Talking about skills, I went to visit one of the major employers in my constituency national apprentice week and I talked to a number of apprentices and all of them said the same thing to me, which was that when they actually were thinking about a career post-school they were all being told by their careers advisors that if you did not go to university you were a failure. If one person says that to you, take it as anecdotal, if a whole wiener people tell you that, you think that there is really an issue there. You said earlier in your opening statement that you have 800 careers advisors in Scottish schools, so I am just wondering what kind of message is being told to younger people about that, because quite clearly we have a huge shortage of, I mean we are trying to build more houses in Scotland but we need more roofers, plasterers, electricians, plumbers, you name it, as well as engineering skills as well as people getting their stems all of that. If everyone is going to university we know that there is a shortage of people who will be able to go and carry out those apprentices, especially as we do not have the same number of migrants coming into the country and the birth rate is an historic low, so it is a perfect storm that we are actually facing in the years ahead. Just to respond immediately to the comment around careers advisors, I would say that the issues that influence young people's career choices are wider than careers advisors, their teachers, their parents, their peers and careers advisors. Of course. I can assure you that our careers advisors in Skills Development Scotland do not push that message that if you do not go to university you are a failure. It is really important that we communicate to young people the range of choices that are available and that we deliver modern apprenticeships. If there is a careers advisor pushing that message I would like to meet them. That sounds very threatening but I do not think that it is a message that we would be looking to put out. Through SDS careers advisors, you hit on a really important point and a serial paradox when you look at some of the data that we are looking at. We have got significant skills shortages, labour shortages rather at the moment for all the reasons that you describe. Part of it is also around older workers leaving the labour market as a result of Covid. At the same time, we have got record numbers of people going into further education and higher education and that is not in any way to be a denigration of further education and higher education. I think that one of the really interesting innovations that we have introduced into the system of the SFC is the notion of graduate apprenticeships. You can get a higher level qualification while you are in the workplace and that also has the added benefit of equipping young people and letting employers see the quality. They can get young people working in the way of that business and it lets young people get an opportunity to earn what they learn. I would be in agreement with the points border that you have made. To be fair, I do not really think that your careers advisors were saying that but that is indeed the message that a lot of younger people are picking up. I have raised it at a number of other different fora because it is certainly something that schools perhaps need to address more directly. I know that when I have held employment fairs, some schools have been very snot about sending kids along, even the kids who are not even going forward for exams never mind who are likely to go to university. I think that graduate apprenticeships are hugely positive. I want to stick on demography for a wee bit longer. The figures are actually quite stark. By 2045, the people of pension of a late in Scotland expected increase by 21 per cent in the workforce declined by 2 per cent and the number of children by 22 per cent again showing what the long-term situation is going to be with 192,000 fewer people in the working age population. The economy is going to have to be a lot more productive just to keep all the people in this room well. We are all a lot older, 25 years from that factor, or anything else. We go on to look at the migration figures. I just want to ask you specifically about those migration figures because they are slightly ambiguous because you talk about almost twice as many people have left Scotland and moved overseas 31,300 out of migration in 2019-20 compared to 19,700 in 2018-19. Can you talk about overseas? Do you include England in that or are you just talking about beyond the United Kingdom? Last year, the birth rate in Scotland was 48,000. If we are losing 31,000 people, that is pretty disconcerting at a time when the workforce is shrinking already. What are the age skills and educational profile of the people who are leaving Scotland? My concerns are expressed in this committee before is that many people sometimes come to Scotland to retire here, but we are losing a lot of people in their 20s and 30s when moving to the rest of the UK or beyond. Lastly on that question is what are we doing to attract more people from the rest of the United Kingdom to live and work in Scotland? Sorry, that was a lot, but I am trying not to ask everything. I will pick up on a couple of elements of that first in relation to what is going on in demographics and what is going on in terms of migration and then thirdly on what we might do around that. You are right that Scotland's demographic profile has been challenging for a number of years and will continue to be challenging for the next 20 years. That is a consequence of, as you alluded to, the following birthrate. We are not uncommon across other OECD countries or developing countries. That sounds very blunt. There is very little what you can do about that now. We will deal with the consequences of low birthrates 20 years ago for another 20 years. The really interesting story is about migration in Scotland. Prior to 2018, the Scottish population overall grew by about 290,000 people, so 290,000 more people in Scotland than there were in 2008. 90 per cent of that was due to immigration. You could almost cut that perfectly in half. Half was from the rest of the UK, half was from the EU, so about 145,000 people moving north, 145,000 coming in from the EU. The consequences of Brexit and the pandemic have really turned that flow down to a trickle. They are related. First, in terms of Covid, we have lots of evidence that lots of EU nationals went back home to Europe to see out the pandemic and were perhaps unable to get back into the country because of changes in immigration rules. Secondly—this sounds an obvious point when I say it, but it is important to bear in mind—the entire global economy and people stopped moving for two years. It is too early to say whether the levels of migration that we are seeing in 2021 are typical of what we are seeing in future years. I can say with some confidence that the flow of immigration, which was typically of younger people, typically of working age, typically higher-skilled and more likely to be engaged in the labour market, has slowed down considerably in the past four years as a result of Covid and Brexit. The question of turning around the challenge of working-age population is a question that the Scottish Government is wrestling with. It has published a population strategy, I think, in the end of 2019 and early 2020 for obvious reasons in relation to the pandemic that has not progressed. It has picked up pay significantly over the past six months. It looks at measures that you can take to increase the birth rate through creating a good environment for people to have families. That is a long-term intervention. It is looking at an approach in terms of talent attraction, which is being clear about what sorts of skills we want to recruit and bring into Scotland. That could be from recognising that carers are an important part or that health workers might be an important part of the mix, or that we might be looking to go after, for example, digital technology skills and life sciences skills, so that linking to the end-of-investment strategy, linking to the national strategy for reformation priorities is a key part. The really important part for me is about how you action that. Just before the pandemic, I had the good fortune to visit Copenhagen to look at how they go about talent attraction. It is about selling the distinctive qualities of Scotland in terms of quality of life, employment opportunities and the place to bring up your kids. It is critical about having that focus on knowing who you are going after. It is also about not just marketing to individuals but following up and ensuring that you land that lead for one of a better term. Finally, the proposals around talent attraction service also envisage some kind of settlement support for people who are coming into the country, whether it is from Brom's Grover or Barcelona. That is the approach that is under way in Scotland at the moment. I realised that I asked quite a lot on that question. A couple of points you did not really touch on in your answer, which is the age profile of people leaving Scotland and whether overseas includes UK, because it does not really give it a clear picture. The word overseas, I do not really know what that means there. Is it people leaving Scotland or just leaving to go beyond the United Kingdom? It is about that. The other thing is that I think that attracting people to Scotland when you get so many people leaving Scotland is like trying to fill a sinkhole with a plug out. Entertainmenting people in Scotland is half the battle, surely, particularly given that I believe that there is a disproportionate number of educated and highly skilled people leaving, best people everywhere. To call them, a number of people I know who have got a son who is an oncologist in Sydney or an IT consultant in Boston or whatever it is, and I do not mean Boston links, I mean Boston over in the States. It is quite incredible that a number of people in Scotland continue to export very talented people. It is about those issues as well, such as retention and attraction. Those numbers that I was quoting were around net migration. You are right, migration is complex. There is flows out of the country and flows into the country. The figures that I was quoting in terms of 290,000 over 10 years, that is a net figure. That is the difference between those who left and those who came in. The other thing that I would say is that the data on migration is patchy and not great, so it is a bit of a treasure hunt to put a shape on it. I think that I would offer two very quick observations. Almost as important are the flows in Scotland. I have done a lot of work down in the south of Scotland with Sosie and the Highlands and Islands. The Highlands and Islands is fascinating. Population has grown by six or seven per cent over the past 20 years, but that has primarily been as a result of older people moving there to retire, as you described. The work that partners are undertaking there is about looking at UHI as an asset to retain people in the region. We have done some work with Western Isles Council where we sculpt the career ambitions of every person in school from S4 to S6. We designed a foundation apprenticeship offers around there, linked to provision at the college. You are right, we need to have a focus on retaining people in Scotland, but we also need to have a focus on retaining and anchoring skills in Scotland's regions. To come back to the pandemic again, the opportunities that digital connectivity offers, the breaking of the link between where you live and where you work presents some opportunities to do things differently going forward. There are loads of things that I want to talk about. I am not going to make as colleagues want to come in. I am just going to ask one final thing before I open out to colleagues around, because there is so much here to get a teeth into. One of the things here that you have talked about is a number of inactive people discouraged. Has risen shatler during the pandemic what is starting to fall without discourage? What does that mean? I looked to point 22, which says that those who are not looking for work because they believe that no jobs are available. I find that quite astonishing that that situation has given that we have got record levels of vacancies in the economy. From every aspect of the economy seems to have a chronic shortage. For example, airports are not so much in Scotland, but south of the border has been clogged up not just because of the shortage of aircrew, but even people with security in baggage handlers, etc. All levels of skill, one would think. Is the situation continuing? Is it subsiding? Where are we on that discouragement? Just one last thing in terms of productivity, working from home. There are different reports on whether working from home increases or decreases productivity or whether a hybrid model in actual fact is the best of both worlds. What skill development in Scotland is view on that? I will pick up on the economic activity and the discouraged workers and say a couple of very brief things about it. If you look at the economic activity numbers, the numbers of people who are discouraged are relatively small in comparison to other groups. Part of my response to that is to say that we need to look elsewhere at looking where the big challenges are around economic activity. The big growth has been in people who are inactive because they are long-term sick and people who have gone on to study. The other thing that I would say about that group, and you are right, is that I look at those numbers all the time and that is one that makes me scratch my head. When we have a position where we have a hot labour market, we have lots of jobs, we have lots of recruitment difficulties, why are people thinking that there are no jobs available? What my colleagues tell me, who crunched those numbers, is that that group is typically, the language that they use, is fluid and responsive to labour market conditions. To put it into lay person's terms, that group will get smaller as people recognise that the labour market is in a better position. I do not want to say a red herring, but for me it is probably not the most critical issue in relation to economic activity because that group does grow and expand over time quite quickly. There was a second part to the question, which, forgive me, I have forgotten. I have forgotten as well, I think about it. No, I think it was just about basically discouragement etc. I was asking about why there are so many people and what has been done, you have answered that on the same one I went on to, that is the thing when you think on your feet it is time, you do not write things down, is it not? Oh, yes, I did, but working from home, yes. Tell us a bit about Scotland, don't carry out any research on whether working from home is more productive, working in the office, so to speak, is more productive, or a hybrid model of it too? I think that the best way probably to respond to this is to talk about the approach that we are taking as an organisation. We flipped on March 16, like everyone else, from being an organisation that was fully in the office to fully at home within, I think, about 48 hours. We have had two years of pretty much working from home. Indeed, the last couple of committee appearances that I have done have been from the comfort of my spare room rather than in the committee. The approach that we are taking in SDS is actually about testing the benefits that we are going to get from hybrid working. I think that we have recognised that, for employees and for colleagues, there have been lots of benefits from hybrid working. I think that from a productivity view and an interest in Andrews and my team should we give you a different view, but when I look at the volume of work that we have got through as an organisation it has been significant because of the pandemic, because we have not been travelling to meetings, we have not been travelling, I have not been personally travelling all over the country. I think that there are some big efficiency gains for one of the better terms that home working brings.  I think that it is too early to say about whether it is going to improve productivity. My gut tells me that a hybrid model will, but it is maybe one for me to come back on in about two or three years' time and see how it has worked out. Given that a lot of my team are out in the regions, particularly those who are in Highlands and Islands or those who are in the south of Scotland, I think that they have found some significant benefits in a hybrid working model where they are not having to travel to huge distances for meetings all of the time. It has allowed more people to be focused by when there is a meeting that they need to be at, they can do it in a virtual sense and then they can take a judgment that if they absolutely need to be in the room for those benefits that Chris has mentioned around that social interaction or workshopping ideas or whatever that might be, they are able to be there. I do think that there are benefits as well in terms of the green agenda by not travelling so much. It enables organisations to be able to demonstrate their commitment to net zero, so that is something that is very important for us and also for our partners. I suppose that the one challenge that I see around it is the fact that you are expected to be there 24-7. There are perhaps some concerns if you are always undertaking work online. You do not have those breaks that perhaps you do some of the time in the office and that can be a little bit challenging. On balance, I think that the hybrid working model will work and it will give opportunities for balance. Okay, well let's open out the session. Ross to be followed by John. I would like to come back to the Sheffield Ham University study that the convener mentioned around hidden unemployment, I think, was how they phrased specifically the million people who are on incapacity benefits. I should preface that by saying that they made very clear in the report that there is no suggestion that there are large numbers of people on incapacity benefits who should not be. It is not about fraud. People who are on incapacity benefits do have legitimate incapacities and that is why. The basic thrust of that report is that there is a large number of people who are on incapacity benefits because they do not feel that they are able to get employment or they are searching for employment but, while they are searching for it, that is the most appropriate social security for them. The subset of that for Scotland is about 100,000 people. Do you have any data on how many of the 100 or so thousand people in Scotland who are on incapacity benefits would like to be in employment? I do somewhere if you give me a moment. Absolutely, thanks. Of course now that I'm looking for it, I can't find it. If I can maybe just try to pick up on that and we can follow up on that specific data and Andrea may find it as she is looking through the briefing papers. As I've said already, I think that there's a real imperative from a labour market perspective about looking at how we re-engage people who are described as economically inactive back into the workplace. I would also just be clear that in terms of what we deliver as an agency, that's not a service area where we have specific training or opportunities. We work with colleagues and local authorities and other partners in that respect. I also think that there's a kind of important driver for business here to recognise that this group of people are a potentially important source of skills and talent to fill labour shortages. I think that part of that business is recognised as a point that was made by the convener earlier. A job that needs to be filled may not need to be filled full-time. A job that needs to be filled employers may find that by offering reasonable adjustments that don't necessarily impact on the business but facilitate ease of access to jobs for people with an incapacity benefit is a good way of plugging gaps. I don't know if you've tracked down the figure. It was a very specific figure to ask for, so I have no worries about not having it immediately to hand. If you could follow up in writing that, I would be great. I will find it on the train, no doubt, on the way back to classical, but I can offer to provide that in writing to the committee again. Thanks very much. Just one follow-up in this area in terms of availability to that data. I acknowledge what you've just said, this is not one of SDS's primary or core responsibilities, but if you were to conduct further research into that group of around 100,000 people, do you have sufficient data available to you? Do you have the ability to contact those people directly, or is this something that you would have to go through the UK DWP for? Two parts to that question, and part of my frustration is that we spotted this issue in terms of economic connectivity at our board about six, seven months ago, and I have a detailed report, a deep dive on economic connectivity that we can summarise and share with the committee that was shared with our board. Coming back to economic connectivity, it's important to recognise that the economically inactive are made up of a range of different groups of people, so you're right to focus in on getting people back into work who might want to, and who have long-term limiting health. That number has gone up quite significantly during the pandemic, and the number of students in FE and HE has also gone up during the pandemic, and those are the two groups that account for most of that change. I've done it again, I've forgotten the second part of your question, I apologise. It was around the ability for you to conduct further research in this area, do you need to go through UK DWP, or do you have access to all the information that you already need? While I said that SDS does not have a direct service delivery, we do not run the employability fund anymore. One of the services that we run on behalf of partners is the 16 plus data hub, so working in collaboration with DWP, with local colleges, with schools, with universities, and using anonymised data, we can track where every young person aged 16 to 24 is in terms of their journey, either through the education system or through their engagement with employment. That information is shared with partners, so we identify young people in particular who are at risk and ensure that information is from partners. That dataset does not extend out to the economically inactive, but I suspect DWP will be aware of who those individuals are and will be working with those individuals, either on a one-to-one or on a group basis. Just one final question that is somewhat related to what you mentioned, just the economic and activity rates have gone up in part because of the high numbers of young people in Scotland around FE and HE. The net result of that is that we have on the whole a highly educated population, and yet one of the most perennial bits of feedback that we get from employers—and I remember it from 10 plus years ago when I was at the senior phase of high school, and it is still the case now—is that they cannot find people with the right skills. Taking aside specific skill shortages of not enough people who are qualified, plumbers, electricians or radiographers, the other element to that is general employability skills, the ability to work as part of a team, good communication skills etc. I realise that that is a very broad question to ask, but why would we have such a highly educated population at such high levels of participation in not just reaching the senior phase of high school but in FE and HE as well? Do we have this perennial issue of employers saying that the skills just aren't there? Again, I should preface that by saying that I acknowledge enthusiastic support with that idea that education is not just about employability, people are going to FE and HE for all sorts of other reasons, but it still seems odd that we've got this disconnect—huge participation in further and higher education and yet employers saying that the skills still aren't there. It's a great question. It's quite a challenging and emotive subject, so I'm going to preface that by saying that Scotland's colleges and universities are a huge asset to the country, particularly in terms of education and research. At the heart of that for me is that we often make the mistake of equating high levels of qualifications with high levels of skills, and I think that they are two quite different things. To pick on a couple of examples—this is going back to some of the sexual work that Andrew and my colleagues and my team did a number of years ago—we were looking at skills for the life sciences sector and Scotland's university assistant turns out high-quality graduates, but their capabilities in terms of lab skills were not there. Our approach to that was to run a 16-week retrofitting course for one of a better term about putting those lab skills into graduates. That was taken up as part of the curriculum by universities who were teaching graduates, so you see a problem and you resolve it. For me, the work that we're doing with colleges and with the Scottish Funding Council, particularly through some of the national strategy economic transformation projects, is about looking at the skill system of the round, recognising that we've got assets, but asking that question, how do we better align it behind the needs of industry so that the gap that you describe doesn't emerge? I think that it is about aligning behind where jobs are going to be rather than where they were. It is about more courses and areas around the green transition that is more courses and areas around digital where we know the economy is going to grow. We need to look at the quality—not the quality—that the depth of the curriculum and the example that I have given around life sciences is replicated across a range of other courses. You get industry engaged in designing curriculum, you get graduates who are more ready for industry. The final thing—I would say this, wouldn't I? I work for Skills Development Scotland, but look at the data. Our competitors, our comparators in the OECD, who don't have that gap between qualification skills, have much more workplace learning, where apprenticeships are not, as was described by yourself, perceived as the second choice but are fundamentally a part of the skill system. The final part is about upskilling and reskilling. The economy in the labour market has changed massively over the past two years. It is not going to slow down over the next time, so how do we keep working our skills up-to-date is a key question for us. It is probably worth remembering the importance of meta-skills—the higher-order, timeless skills that enable individuals right from school age and on into the labour market to become adaptive learners in whatever context the future brings. Those meta-skills are really important, and they need to be embedded in all sorts of provision and learning, because that is what enables individuals to be able to respond to the challenges that we will be facing in the future. I do not want to get into more detail on that, but I think that I would be at risk of wearing my other committee hat, which is the education and—what was the education and skills committee, so perhaps another time? Thank you. I take your point as you just answered that there is a difference between skills and education. However, are we sending too many people to university? That is a great question that has put me right on the spot. Surprisingly, the answer that I am going to give you is that I do not think that it is as simple as that. As I said earlier, Scotland's university is a huge asset for Scotland in terms of research capability and providing a pipeline of talented capable graduates. There is also a big draw for international students that could have entered the country. I think that there is a bit that we need to think about how we lock some of those international locks, not the right word, and how we keep some of those international students working in Scottish businesses. The issue that we have is around the nature of the journeys that young people take through the education system and, in some cases, the length of time that it takes them to go through. Part of the reason that we are sending so many people to university is that the college system has increasingly become a route through which you get entry to university. The college system, in part, is producing people who have skills to go straight into work, but it has increasingly become a route through which people get the qualifications to go on to university study. The other nuance to the conversation that I have alluded to is about recognising the skills that we need to be teaching in our colleges and universities that need to be aligned to the future. I would offer one observation without answering the question directly and getting me into some difficulty, but, if you look back 30 or 40 years ago, there are a number of professions where you now need to go through university, for example in accountancy, where traditionally the route of gaining those skills was in the workplace. That is why, with the Scottish Funding Council, we are looking almost to reintroduce the concept of an on-the-job learning through graduate friendships delivered by universities and getting people into the workplace. That is a fair point. It is not as simple as I was suggesting and being an accountant. The idea of a graduate apprentice is an extremely good one. You talked about aligning with the needs of the future or the words to that effect. I am not asking you to do that, but how easy is it for anyone to predict what we are going to need in the future? Presum that is why we are having the census, so I should plug in for people completing that today. In my lifetime, while I have been here, we have said that we have trained too many teachers and then another year we have trained not enough teachers and the same with nurses and probably the same with a few other things. Is that an incredibly difficult thing to predict? It is not easy. I will say that. Predicting the future is not what our forecasting work is about. The minute you write a forecast down, you are guaranteed to be wrong to some level of degree. I have this debate regularly with college principals and with colleges in the skills system. We commission a set of national forecasts every year and we cascade them out into the skills system. Is that because I believe that they are going to tell me that we need 12 plumbers in Lerwick next Thursday? No, it is not, but what it does show me is directionally where there are potentially going to be pressure points in the economy. That is an important thing for skills providers to understand. The depth of our work is about engagement with employers. It is one thing to know that there is pressure in the oil and gas sector or the engineering sector, but you need to understand what is driving that pressure and where the pinch points are in terms of skills. I have a team of sector leads working across 16, 17 different industries in Scotland. Underpinning the forecasts is a read-out that again we share with colleges and universities and with training providers that say that in the digital arena the issues are around cloud computing and whatever the specific skill needs are. It is not just about making a forecast, it is about putting some meat behind that and saying what employers tell us we are missing are the following things. The challenge is the speed at which the skills system can respond to that. Again, one of the things that is highlighted in the national strategy for economic transformation that we firmly believe in is that the old models of two or three-year courses are not going to work in a fast-changing labour market. Yes, there is absolutely a role for them, but we need our assets and our world-class assets to be focusing on upskilling and reskilling. There is already lots of evidence across the pandemic of universities and colleges moving their provision online, so I think that the ingredients are there in Scotland to recapture that challenge. Are we making any progress in getting more women into certain professions or just generally into across society? We have often heard figures that if women were setting up businesses at the same rate as men, the economy would be just so much better off, and I suspect that that applies to other sectors as well, if there were more women high up in engineering in all sorts of places. There is certainly a lot of challenge in that particular area, and I think that the reason for that is because what can be argued is that we are under-utilising the potential of the workforce if we do not have everybody in there being able to uptake the opportunities that are actually there. We know that inequalities are potential drag in terms of economic growth, and so we really need to be looking at how we can get more women engaged in the labour market. We have to be clear about opportunities. We have to work to break down barriers. Why is it? Do we understand the reasons that sit behind why women are not perhaps engaging or why start-ups' numbers are not so high? We have to make sure that we have the right support in place once individuals are actually in the workforce. Are we offering the right conditions in terms of flexible work practices, in terms of access to relevant training to allow women to take up those opportunities? In terms of the actual numbers themselves, that is not something that I have the detail on. Chris, I do not know if there is anything that you could add around that. What I would say—again, we can follow up with some specifics in the data. One of the challenges in terms of apprenticeships, particularly in trade apprenticeships, is that we have had significant gender imbalances. The obvious ones, such as hairdressing qualifications, are much more likely to be undertaken by women, and construction qualifications are more likely to be undertaken by men. We have had a significant body of work over the past five years to address that. We have appointed a senior adviser in terms of qualities to look at what we can do around our apprenticeship programme. I know that we have made some progress, not in eradicating those imbalances but in changing the dial in terms of closing that gap between male and female participation in some frameworks. One of the things that we have also learned about that is that those are issues that have a societal root rather than necessarily the design of our frameworks. I was going to ask that in a supplementary question, because you have people in schools, and I would hope that you can assure me that they are working on that. I get the impression of speaking to younger people if I visit a school that a lot of the girls have not thought about engineering. Partly that is peer pressure or families just feeling that they shouldn't go into those areas. If you can show us figures that we are making progress, that is encouraging, but I get a bit despondent at times. I do not have those figures right to my fingertips at the moment, because we will provide them. I am fairly confident, if not very confident, that a change has been made in the metrics around the original targets that were set. That point that you made about the messaging that we put out, our careers advisers working in schools are absolutely on that message that construction is a career that is open for all, hairdressing is a career for all. Any career is open to all. Our apprenticeship marketing reflects that as well on the diversity of different occupations and apprenticeship awards reflect that diversity as well. I sincerely think that that is an area from a Skills Development Scotland perspective that we recognise and take very seriously. It is also something that you have to start very early on, so careers advisers are working with children in primary school to make sure that those opportunities are identified, that they do not feel as any barriers to being able to engage in any sector. That work that starts early is very important, because that is what lays the foundations to be able to break down the stereotypes of different types of jobs across gender. It is very important to start young. I absolutely agree with that. The other area that I wanted to touch on was at the other end of people's lives, early retirement. It can be argued that, especially by highly skilled people retiring early, that that is having a negative effect on the productivity of the country as a whole. I have friends who are highly skilled who have already retired at the same age as myself. Maybe I should consider that as well. Is it a bad thing? On the other hand, that allows an opportunity for a younger person to come in and become into a highly skilled job. To bring in the national performance framework, we have other aims in society, such as the environment. Maybe people when they retire early can then voluntarily get involved in some of those things. How do we get that balance out? I think that it is certainly the case that we have a very tight labour market at the moment. On that basis, we really need to be making sure that we have the skills of everybody still engaged. Older workers are going to be important in terms of the contribution that they are making to the economy. I think that the evidence is a little bit mixed. I do not think that there is no clear evidence that older workers affect productivity when measured at the level of the firm or at the level of the team. However, some economy-wide studies have suggested that an ageing workforce might reduce productivity slightly due to the smaller numbers of workers in their 40s, which is their productivity prime. Maybe that is one for my employer as I turn 50 on Friday, so that will be beyond my productivity prime. It is likely to differ by job type. The contribution of older workers to productivity with those involved in more hard physical labour is a little bit more challenging than perhaps some of the more neutral occupations. However, we know that because of those demographic challenges, there is absolute value in engaging older workers and keeping them and retaining them in the labour market. However, what that is going to take is a whole variety of different supports, whether it is around eliminating age bias in recruitment practices, whether it is making sure that work remains attractive to older workers, through a good working environment, through a healthy working life, through flexible options and really to focus back in on skills, developing and maintaining skills throughout careers, so making sure that older people have access to the training that they need to be productive within the workforce. Come back in. This is drawn from the SFC's economic fiscal forecasts, but we know that the biggest increase in economic and activity of the age group has been among the over 55s. That has been about 2016 to 2020. Interestingly, two things I would offer. There was a lot of talk, and I mentioned myself in a previous committee appearance around the great retirement that emerged as a result of Covid. Some of the early data that we have got suggests that that is more a UK phenomenon than a Scottish phenomenon. The leakage out of the workforce has not been as great as Scotland, but we expect that to become clearer in future months. The other thing that I would highlight, although for the 55s to 65s we have seen a big increase in economic activity, we have not seen the same increase for over 65s. That is in spite of the increasing of the pensionable age to 66 and then 67. It remains to be seen whether, in that age group that has moved from being able to retire at 65 to retire at 67, what impact that will have on economic activity. I think that, at best, the picture is mixed at the moment. Okay, thanks, convener. I think that I'll carry on working a bit longer. Thank you. Michelle, to follow by Daniel. Well, I'm actually going to pick up on two areas that John already referenced. I'm not entirely sure if that's a good thing, convener. The first one was around the role of women, which is a personal interest of mine. I was reading through the climate emergency skills action plan or CSAP, and, like many other worthy documents, I find mention of women and green jobs, pay gap, representation and so on. However, in common with most agencies, women are added into the main strategic document rather than being worthy of a specific strategy document in of themselves. For me, it's in particular interest as we start to look at the transition around skills that we can be in at the beginning. My question to you is, will you have a specific bespoke strategy for women in your emerging strategy, and do you plan one as your climate emergency skills action plan evolves? The last question