Seòmar agus comataidhean

I realise that I asked quite a lot of questions, but there are a couple of points that you have not responded to. Can you say something about the age profile of people leaving Scotland and whether you are including other parts of the UK when you talk about people going overseas? I do not know what the word, “overseas” means in the submission—does it mean people leaving Scotland or does it mean people going beyond the United Kingdom?

Attracting people to Scotland when a lot of people are leaving Scotland is like trying to fill a sink with the plug out. Surely, retaining people in Scotland is half the battle, and it is particularly important because, I believe, a disproportionate number of educated and highly skilled people are leaving. I know a number of people who have got, for example, a son who is an oncologist in Scotland or an information technology consultant in Boston—I do not mean Boston in Lincolnshire; I mean Boston in the States. Scotland continues to export an incredible number of talented people. We need to think about retention as well as attraction.

I want to talk about loads of things, but I will not, because colleagues want to come in. I will ask one final thing before I open the discussion out to colleagues, because there is so much to get our teeth into.

In your submission, you mentioned that

“The number of inactive people ‘discouraged’ has risen sharply during the pandemic but is starting to fall.”

I wondered what “discouraged” meant, so I looked at footnote 22, which says that it means,

“Those who are not looking for work because they believe no jobs are available.”

I find that point astonishing given that we have record levels of vacancies in the economy and that every aspect of the economy seems to have a chronic shortage. For example, the airports—not so much in Scotland but south of the border—have been clogged up, not just because of shortages of air crew but also of people in security and baggage handling posts. One would think that those vacancies would require all levels of skill. Where are we on that discouragement? Is the situation continuing or subsiding?

I have one final question about productivity. Reports differ on whether working from home increases productivity or decreases it and on whether a hybrid model is actually the best of both worlds. What is Skills Development Scotland’s view on that point?

I have forgotten as well, now that I think about it. It was just about discouragement and so on—I was asking about what is being done. No—you have answered that one.

The second one—that is the thing when you think on your feet and do not write things down—[Interruption.] It was about working from home. Has Skills Development Scotland carried out research on which model is more productive—working from home, working in the office or a hybrid model of the two?

The focus of my question was whether a higher proportion of people with disabilities are moving into employment; it was not so much about what you are doing to move them into employment. Is the strategy actually working?

Of course.

We will finish on that point. I thank the Deputy First Minister for his frank and detailed responses to our questions, and I also thank him and his officials for attending. That concludes the evidence-gathering part of our national performance framework inquiry, and we will consider a draft report after the summer recess.

We will take a short break before we move to our next item of business.

From your response, it seems that you are saying that the strategy is based on a lot of the work that Skills Development Scotland is doing in the area—would that be right? That was not really what I was asking about; I was asking what you were going to change or do differently as a result of the strategy. You talked about what is being done around, for example, the green jobs programme from last August. Has the strategy been built on some of your work as opposed to the other way round?

The unemployment rate is about 3.7 per cent in the UK, and in Scotland it is a record low of 3.2 per cent. However, is that a realistic figure? For example, we understand that the percentage of people who are economically active in Scotland is more or less the same as the percentage for the UK—it is 75.6 per cent, which is 1.1 per cent lower than the UK—but is that a realistic figure for full-time involvement in the economy? What percentage of those people are less than fully economically active and are working part time? Is there hidden unemployment? I understand that Sheffield Hallam University produced a study that showed that there are more than 1 million people who should be included in the unemployment figures but are not. What is the real picture? I think that, on paper, the picture looks rosier than is really the case. A lot of that is possibly because it is a time of huge vacancies in certain skills and there is a geographical mismatch of jobs and skilled people.

That is a fair point, but a number of organisations and people, including me, are goal and task driven, and one person or organisation might have a completely different idea of what continuous improvement means from another person or organisation. That comes back to delivery of the NPF being patchy, which is why I mentioned milestones. Is there a way in which we can, as it were, square the circle of the two philosophies so that we optimise the response that we receive for delivery of the NPF?

The next item is to take evidence from Skills Development Scotland on the trends behind the income tax forecasts. The session follows on from issues raised during our 2022-23 budget scrutiny. It also sets the scene for our pre-budget scrutiny this year, which will be informed by the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s next forecasts, which are 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. I understand that Mr Brodie would like to make a short opening statement.