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We absolutely would have been in a better place if learner and teacher charters had been in place in 2020. My concern is that it would inevitably have been the case, given the assumptions that I am making about what will probably end up being in the charters, that it would not have been possible to comply with everything in those circumstances—in some cases, for legitimate reasons.

If amendments 261 and 271 were agreed to, it would leave the organisation in a position in which it would be breaking the law by not complying with the charters, which would be a bit disproportionate. In instances where the organisation has not been able to, or has chosen not to, comply with the charters, there are ways that we can bake in processes to hold it to account that fall short of creating a situation whereby it has broken the law. That is why I like the monitoring compliance aspects, and I hope that they are brought back at stage 3.

I agree with amendment 285, which would provide transparency through an annual report, but I cannot support amendments 261 and 271 as they are, particularly given that we do not yet know what absolutely will be in the charters. At this point, setting such a high threshold and saying that the organisation would be breaking the law by not complying with the charters, even though we do not know what they say yet, goes too far. As I said, I like aspects of the amendments and I hope that they come back at stage 3.

I cannot support amendments 266, 274 and 279, because they undermine the principle of the charters being produced in conjunction with learners, teachers and practitioners. The charters must have their buy-in, regardless of whether we go with co-design or consultation. As much as I want the strategic advisory council to play a powerful role in the organisation, giving the council an effective veto over the charters, which is what those amendments would do, would undermine learners’ and teachers’ voices.

Similarly, I cannot support amendment 273, because the teacher and practitioner charter should be about teachers’ and practitioners’ interests, and there are other ways to bring other voices in. For example, I have proposed that it is appropriate to require qualifications Scotland to consult employers before producing a corporate plan. I do not think that it is appropriate for employers to be involved in the drafting of a charter for teachers and practitioners, which I hope will be produced by teachers and practitioners.

I am happy to move past Katy Clark’s amendments. It sounds as though she is not pressing them, given the discussions that we have had already.

I am sympathetic to the intent of Martin Whitfield’s amendment 258, which goes back to my co-design amendments, Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendment 255 and the cabinet secretary’s amendment 69. My issue with amendment 258 is that it would preclude co-design, because it would put the charter’s production and drafting entirely in the hands of an individual who was separate from the organisation.

In a broad way, we are all trying to achieve roughly similar goals. If none of us are moving our amendments—I will not press amendments 68 and 70 if I get reassurance from the cabinet secretary around co-design—then I ask Mr Whitfield not to press amendment 258, because, as it stands, it would make it impossible to do co-design. There is probably a way that we can accommodate both of our objectives at stage 3.

I acknowledge the point and I am grateful for the intervention. I argue that, in general, as much as it is not perfect and we all have frustrations about a variety of public bodies, the vast majority of public bodies are more responsive to the Parliament than the SQA has been. It has been a pretty extreme example of disregarding recommendations and the views expressed by the Parliament over a long period. Indeed, if the report that our predecessor committee produced in 2017 or 2018—Liz Smith, the cabinet secretary and I were on the committee at the time—had been fully taken on board by the SQA, the bill might not have been necessary in the first place. It was given multiple opportunities.

I take on board John Mason’s point, but I do not think that it necessarily follows that other public bodies would simply cease having regard to the instructions that are issued by Parliament, because, in practice, they generally do have regard to them. The point that I am trying to address is about this specific body.

Thank you.

I accept all of that. My question arises out of a frustration about some issues—to be fair, they are more about ADS than about LBTT. Some are related to catching people who are in the process of family separation or divorce. I have also written to you about disabled people and someone else purchasing a home on their behalf, and we have talked about that. Those issues have been around for a while. The review was a good few years ago—maybe four years ago. It feels as though we are dealing with the issues in a fragmented manner, rather than taking a holistic approach in which we look at all the anomalies across the system, collectively agree that nobody ever intended those to be the case, and then set out how we will address them.

I have had correspondence from people who have been caught by various anomalies and who find it hard to get an understanding of the Government’s approach to dealing with those. I have heard from people who feel that the anomaly they were caught by is something that the Government indicated a few years ago that it was going to address but that that has still not happened. They find it hard—as do I—even to get an understanding of a timeline from the Government about how it is addressing all those issues.

Good afternoon, minister. My question is not on the specific issue; it is about the wider approach to dealing with anomalies in the additional dwelling supplement and LBTT. Is the way that we have been going about that not a bit fragmented? I recognise what you say about amendments being out of scope for bills. However, we have had the ADS review work by your predecessor, Tom Arthur, which dealt with some anomalies, and there is wider LBTT review work under way, so it feels as though we are dealing with this piecemeal. We could have recognised a few years ago that there are a variety of anomalies that everybody agrees need to be resolved, and we could have taken a more holistic approach to addressing all of those across LBTT and ADS.

Thank you.

It is particularly relevant at the moment, given that the UK Government has framed the changes and cuts to the personal independence payment as being about getting people back into work, when that payment is not premised on people being out of work. Indeed, a lot of people who have PIP are already in work; it cannot get people into work if they are already there. If they are not there, it is not necessarily for reasons related to that payment. That UK Government decision has an effect on Scotland’s public finance decisions on social security, as you say.

My final question is about the extent to which you looked into the urban-rural divide, because I did not see that issue coming out in the report as much as I expected it to come out. We have talked about depopulation, which is a much sharper issue in rural parts of Scotland. It is also more of a west coast issue, so it affects some urban communities on the west coast—Inverclyde is probably the area that is worst affected—but, in general, depopulation is a much sharper issue in rural areas than it is in urban areas.

The provision of health and social care in rural areas is already more expensive. Depopulation makes the situation harder, because it is generally working-age people who are leaving, so it becomes harder to provide social care packages and so on. However, we are probably heading towards a tipping point at which depopulation in rural areas will also start to involve older people, because they will simply have to move to get the care that they need. We should not be getting to that point—it is not a good thing. How much does that issue factor into your thinking?

At the moment, depopulation is pushing up the cost of health and social care provision in rural areas, because working-age people are leaving. However, if we reach the tipping point at which older people, who are more in need of those services, are forced to leave—I am not saying that that will be a good thing, because it will not—that will bring down the cost of provision, because people will have to move to urban areas where provision exists.

Yes—some of them.

I have a few questions that have not been covered, although the first one is on disability prevalence, which goes back to our earlier discussion. I understand entirely the difficulty with making presumptions about changes. However, as the convener pointed out, we have already seen a significant increase in disability in the past two decades or so. To what extent have you looked into what is underlying that? Have more people been disabled?

Covid would be the obvious reason. As a result of the pandemic, more people are now disabled because of long Covid. The other story, which we have touched on, is mental health. A lot of people were disabled but had not been diagnosed or recognised. Depending on which of those it is, that has a significant economic effect, particularly on productivity. A lot of people in the workforce were disabled but were not diagnosed or recognised and therefore were not receiving support, so they were probably less productive than they otherwise would have been.

There are two potentials there. If the rate continues to increase because we are diagnosing existing disabilities, we could increase productivity by providing people with the support that they need. Alternatively, if people are becoming more disabled than they were previously, productivity could go in the opposite direction. Have you looked into what the underlying data suggests about the past 20 years?