Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for that opening statement. We will probably have a wide-ranging discussion today. As you will know, we have taken a lot of evidence in recent weeks about what other people believe the approach should be as we move forward. Of course, to discuss that, we have to look at where we are at the moment and you have pointed out the challenges that we face.

Last week, we took evidence from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. One of its concerns is that the Scottish Government’s understandable approach to eradicating child poverty is perhaps a bit two-dimensional. For example, it focuses on benefits. COSLA has said that the Scottish Government having increased benefits by £984 million over what the UK would have provided in the current year has not necessarily helped all the people in poverty that it should. COSLA says:

“The opportunity cost of these decisions needs to be considered.”

It goes on to say that

“economic development and employability services which help to create jobs and support people facing barriers to the labour market … and sustain work in fairly paid jobs”

have taken a knock because less money is available for employability funding. It has also said that such funding would help with

“reducing dependence on the welfare system”

and with providing more

“affordable housing supporting people out of poverty, reducing homelessness and improving health and education outcomes.”

It has also suggested that putting that £984 million in local government, for example, could have provided 15,000 to 20,000 additional jobs.

On the same issue, Professor Heald said that it is not progressive to invest in benefits if doing so impacts on the services that go to the poorest people.

Yesterday, I went with Tom Arthur to a project in my constituency that looks at providing employability services for parents. Over the past seven years, It has provided some 300 part-time jobs of around 20 hours a week and has got people into the labour market who had never been in it before or who might have had to take years out, due to having had children. Such projects underpin the Government’s anti-poverty strategy, yet the project says that it is threatened by the fact that the Government says that it will just increase benefits, meaning that money will no longer be available to provide the services.

Even in schools, for example, educational psychologists and campus cops cannot be afforded by local government because the money is going to another area of spending. We realise that the budget is fairly limited and fixed, and that there is not great room for manoeuvre, but it is about choices.

That is a long-winded way of saying what I asked at the beginning, which is, what studies has the Government made of the opportunity cost of spending money on straightforward benefits, for example, rather than on supporting local government services?

I agree that multiyear funding would definitely make a significant improvement.

Local government also asks for flexibility. For example, the Government has a fairly rigid policy on teacher numbers, although one or two local authorities are railing against it. The local authority in my area has 12.7 pupils per teacher, compared with the Scottish average of 13.2, but the average is 18 in England. The issue is that outcomes have not really improved relative to the amount of money that has gone into that service. Having to maintain high levels of teacher numbers means that other services that support a child’s psychology, such as classroom assistants, are having to be reduced. I know that the teaching unions might not be too happy about this, because they are looking for even more teachers despite the falling pupil numbers, but would it not be better to give local authorities more flexibility in how they spend the resources that they have, which would produce better outcomes? That is what COSLA has said—you will know that, because you have spoken to it yourself.

The next item on our agenda is the Scottish Government’s proposed national outcomes, which will form part of the national performance framework. I welcome to the meeting Kate Forbes, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic, who is joining us remotely from Shetland. The cabinet secretary is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Keith McDonald, who is unit head in the strategy division, and Katie Allison, who is analytical unit head in the central analysis division. I welcome you all to the meeting and invite the Deputy First Minister to make a short opening statement.

I thank the Deputy First Minister for attending from Shetland, and I also thank the officials. Shetland is not as beautiful as Arran, which is in my constituency, but it certainly seems a lot easier to get to. That concludes our scrutiny of the national outcomes. We will report on our views and recommendations to the Scottish Government in November.

I ask committee members who are able to do so to stay behind for an informal discussion with University of Dundee students and staff about our work and to answer any questions about the session that they observed today with the cabinet secretary.

You are looking at capital, but the £984 million is resource. It is not going into house construction or anything like that. Of course, the £984 million will, to an extent, have gone towards being spent in local shops. People are not likely to have spent it on cars or overseas holidays. That is why I am looking at whether specific work has been done on the opportunity cost. Maybe Jamie Robertson has some information on that from CIPFA.

We are looking to make recommendations to the Government on where we get the best bang for our buck in tune with the Government’s own priorities, one of which is eradicating child poverty. We look at local government, and you are saying that that money could be better spent on providing local services to support campaigns against poverty and delivering on all the areas that you have talked about—for example, enabling people to get back into work as, ultimately, the best way of reducing poverty is for someone to have a well-paid job, although not everyone in work has a well-paid job.

I am just asking whether you have anything hard and fast on the opportunity cost. It seems to me that you are advocating that, instead of putting additional funding into welfare in the next year—over and above what is currently going into it—that money should be redirected to local government.

Incidentally, being here is like being at an auction—if you twitch, you will get called to speak.

In your submission, you made the quite stark point that, in the years since the pandemic, the number of young people who volunteer has fallen from 52 per cent to 37 per cent, which is quite a significant reduction. How would an indicator help to increase the number of people who volunteer?

Not quite.

I come to Adam Boey. Sarah Latto touched on consultation. You were not very enamoured with the consultation, were you?

Incidentally, on local government employment, Malcolm Burr mentioned the fact that the number of people that his authority employs has reduced from 1,900 to 1,600. However, the figures that I have show that, between the second quarter of 2018 and the second quarter of 2024, the local authority workforce in Scotland grew from 242,000 to 262,000, although I realise that about half of those jobs are probably in early learning and childcare. Across Scotland, the trend is upwards, not downwards, according to official Scottish Government figures.

Time is against us, so I will give our witnesses an opportunity to say one final thing to the committee about anything that they feel we have not covered and which they think we should incorporate in our report to the Scottish Government on our budget deliberations.

Katie, you went first, so you will have the last word. Which of the three gentlemen would like to go first? If you have nothing to add, you do not have to say anything, but if there is something that you feel we should include in our report, now is your opportunity to mention it. Malcolm, you seem to be keen to comment.

The next item is a round-table discussion on the Scottish Government’s proposed national outcomes, which form part of the national performance framework. I welcome to the meeting Allan Faulds, who is a senior policy officer with the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland; Dr Shoba John, who is head of Obesity Action Scotland; Carmen Martinez, who is policy and engagement lead at the Scottish Women’s Budget Group; Adam Boey, who is the business planning and performance manager at Stirling Council; and Sarah Latto, who is a senior policy officer at Volunteer Scotland.

I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this evidence session. As with the previous panel, if witnesses want to be brought into the discussion at any point, please indicate that to the clerks and I will call you.

I move straight to questions. The first is for Dr Shoba John and it regards the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. You said in your submission that Obesity Action Scotland is

“concerned that there is no mention of making any amendments to the Act as it reads currently. The current wording of the Act states that public authorities are required to have regard to the National Outcomes. However, we feel this is weak and needs to be strengthened to ensure the legislation is effective”.

Will you expand on that?