Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you very much for that. I will start with some questions and then we will go round the table.

“Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation” was published on 1 March and includes what have been described as

“five bold new policy programmes of action”.

Those include creating an entrepreneurial nation, developing new markets and industries, enhancing productivity and innovation, skills growth, and delivering high rates of employment and wage growth. In the three months since that was published, what changes, if any, has Skills Development Scotland made to its approach in order to take on board those priorities?

There were two parts to the question. It was quite an extensive question, so I apologise for that. The other part was about part-time working. What is the situation with the proportion of people who are working part time? What is happening with regard to the geographic balance? I represent a constituency in North Ayrshire where the market is not particularly hot, relative to, for example, Edinburgh. I and other colleagues from the west of Scotland have concerns that there is an east-west divide in Scotland. There might be a north-south divide in England, but it is more of an east-west divide in Scotland. How do we address those specific challenges? We can talk about percentages for Scotland, but there are marked differences between different parts of the country, as I am sure you are aware.

The point that you make is important. The phrase “golden thread” ran through a number of submissions and was raised in oral evidence. At the workshop that we held in Dundee and from talking to Government officials and witnesses across the board, I found that there is strong backing for the national performance framework and what it is trying to achieve but there is an issue with how patchy the Government’s response can be to the way that it sets its own outcomes.

That failure to align budgets to outcomes has caused an element of frustration, which came out last week. Organisations that take the NPF seriously feel that, although they are following it, there is no real reward for aligning themselves closely with it. There is also no backlash for other organisations that are more loosely aligned with the NPF. The Government does not take that into account either. It is almost as though the Government has set the outcomes and then allowed people more or less to get on with it without any real focus on what we can do from a financial perspective to encourage more people into pursuing them. That is why we have a patchy situation across Scotland, which none of us wants. People want best practice to be followed everywhere.

How can we tighten that up a wee bit? A number of witnesses have given evidence to suggest that Government departments do not always mention the national performance framework in their own documents when they set out objectives. That makes some organisations feel that the Government is not as focused on the NPF as it says that it is or as it should be. How will the Government address those issues?

Indeed.

This is quite a serious matter because the Government has outcomes that it wants to be delivered and there will clearly be an element in Government if they are not delivered. Therefore, we should surely focus on anything that helps to achieve them.

There is also an issue with who owns the NPF. It seems to be a whole-society approach. There does not seem to be a focused driver for it. Again, people feel that it is not being prioritised as much as it was initially. It has been around now for 14 or 15 years and there is a feeling that it should be re-energised a wee bit with a focus on who is driving it so that people are aware of exactly who that is.

It is important that the national performance framework is seen to underpin such documents. It is not always easy for people who read them to second guess the Government. That might be what the Government has in mind but, if it is not there in black and white, people will wonder whether the Government is really prioritising the NPF in the way that it should. That is what I am saying about the strategy, not that it diverges in any way from the NPF.

I recall that the Improvement Service was very messianic about best practice when the sadly departed Colin Mair was at the helm.

What about best practice?

I will open out the meeting to questions from colleagues.

To be fair, I did not really think that the career advisers were saying that about going to university, but that is the message that a lot of young people are picking up. I have raised the issue in a number of fora, because I think that it is certainly something that schools need to address more directly. I know that, when I have held employment fairs, some schools have been very snotty about sending kids along—even kids who are not even going forward for exams, never mind those who are likely to go to university. Therefore, I think that graduate apprenticeships are hugely positive.

I want to stay with the issue of demography for a wee bit longer. The figures are quite stark. They show that, by 2045, the number of people of a pensionable age in Scotland is expected to increase by 21 per cent, while the number of people in the workforce is expected to decline by 2 per cent and the number of children is expected to decline by 22 per cent. That shows 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 if we are to cope with the people of pensionable age at that point—I include pretty much everyone in this room in that number, of course.

I want to ask about the migration figures specifically, because they are slightly ambiguous. Your submission says:

“Almost twice as many people left Scotland and moved overseas (31,300 out migration in 2019/2020 compared to 19,700 in 2018/2019)”.

When you say “overseas”, are you including England and that, or are you talking about countries beyond the United Kingdom? Last year, the birth rate in Scotland was 48,000. If we are losing 31,000 people in one year, that is pretty disconcerting at a time when the workforce is shrinking.

Do you know anything about the age, skills and educational profiles of the people who are leaving Scotland? As I have said in this committee before, many people come to Scotland to retire, but we are losing a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who are moving to the rest of the UK or beyond.

What are we doing to attract more people from the rest of the United Kingdom to live and work in Scotland?

I am sorry that there is a lot in there—there is so much to ask about, and I am trying not to ask everything.