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I strongly agree with Janet Brown’s point about the importance of rhetoric and Gordon Stobart’s point about wider communication skills. However, I would be interested in your thoughts on whether those are the kind of skills that need to sit inside a subject silo such as English.

A lot of employers tell us that they do not need to know that somebody was able to get a B grade in higher English; they need to know that that person can communicate with their team, work colleagues and customers. Are those not exactly the kind of skills that Professor Hayward’s recommendations around the diploma could recognise? You can be recognised for your communication skills and your ability to persuade without having done three 50-minute periods of English a week leading up to that exam. Actually, we need to recognise those kinds of skills in a more holistic sense rather than get trapped in the subject silos that lead us to all the issues that were talked about, such as BGE just becoming a diluted version of senior phase.

Thank you for that. Is it the Government’s position that the money that has not yet been distributed through either the recycling improvement fund or other capital investment in local authorities will be sufficient for implementation of the code of practice plus that you are talking about and that the money that has been invested so far should be sufficient for them to comply with the existing voluntary code of practice—obviously, most local authorities are not complying with it, and we will talk about why in a moment—and the money that is still to be distributed will be sufficient to meet the additional infrastructure requirements on local authorities?

Thank you very much. That is useful.

My final point in that area is about fixed-penalty notices for littering and the point that local authorities make around cost recovery there, which was pointed out a few moments ago. The FM assumes that 100 per cent of fines will be paid whereas some local authorities say that it is only 10 to 15 per cent. Again, I am interested in whether you could speak to that a little more and specifically to what conversations you have had with local authorities about why the payment rate for the existing fixed-penalty notice system is so low. Nobody would expect 100 per cent—I am interested in why 100 per cent is in the FM—but 10 per cent to 15 per cent seems to be remarkably low. Presumably, there are specific barriers in place that Government wants to help local authorities to remove.

Thanks very much. What is the timescale for the research that you mentioned, and how will that feed into the strategy? I completely understand why the Government would not want to concede that fines are not being paid, but fines are not being paid. The financial memorandum works on the assumption that they are, so we need to take into account whether the additional measures that you are developing, which the research will, we hope, inform, and which the strategy will deliver on to help local authorities increase the payment rate, will be in place in time for the additional fixed-penalty notice powers coming into place. If they are not, clearly, we will not get close to the 100 per cent payment. It would be good if we understood the timescale for that a little bit more.

Thanks very much. I want to move from local authorities to ask about the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and its enforcement around preventing the destruction of unsold goods. The cost of enforcement for SEPA ranges from £30,000 to £200,000. What scope does SEPA have for cost recovery? Given the discussion around proportionality of enforcement, I imagine that that will be primarily aimed at very large businesses that produce or sell huge amounts of goods and that, potentially, destroy large amounts of the goods that they do not sell. Is there scope for SEPA to recover some of the costs from those businesses through financial penalties in that area?

I want to return to the issues that the convener brought up about the recycling improvement fund and what will be expected of local authorities under the code of practice. Some local authorities made the point that about two thirds of the improvement fund has already been distributed, but they obviously do not yet know what requirements will be placed on them by the code of practice. Can you say a little about what conditions the Government has attached to the improvement fund and how you expect the eventual code of practice to reflect the priorities that have already been set through the distribution of a not insignificant amount of money?

I want to look specifically at the estimates of the cost for local authorities of the household waste provision. There is a bit of a dispute about that. The financial memorandum estimates that they will need two full-time equivalent members of staff per 150,000 people for enforcement. Some local authorities that have fed back take issue with the financial cost associated with the two FTE positions and with the two positions per 150,000 ratio.

Usually, with the financial memorandums that we look at, the Government has an interest in seeking to minimise costs whereas, if we were to be cynical about it, we would say that local government often has an interest in overestimating costs because it wants to get its hands on as much money as possible, for perfectly legitimate reasons. It is the job of the committee to figure out who is right or where the point in the middle is. Could you explain in a little more detail the thinking behind the cash estimate for two FTEs—local authorities believe that it would require more than that—and the two per 150,000 ratio and how that balances out across local authorities that range from high-density urban areas to remote, rural and island communities?

Just to confirm, those costs are based on actual existing costs for other forms of enforcement that local authorities already carry out. It is an average—some local authorities will spend less; some will spend more—but that is based on existing costs in similar areas of enforcement.

Excellent. Thanks very much. That is all from me.

To go back briefly to the Verity house agreement, I am still not completely clear about what we should expect the impact of that to be on the coming budget and how it will impact on our ability to scrutinise the budget. If you can say anything to expand on that, that would be useful.

My main line of questioning is about the deficit of £1 billion, rising to £2 billion, that we are looking at in the immediate future. We need to close that deficit just to meet existing commitments while growing demand. We have to factor in our statutory targets, such as reducing child poverty and tackling the climate emergency, both of which require significant levels of additional spending. Has the Government done any work—I recognise that this will be a broad range and that there is a significant margin of error here—to quantify how much spending will be required on top of the difficult decisions that we will need to make to close the gap and to meet existing commitments and rising demand? Has any work been done to quantify just how much more we will need to meet targets in law? I recognise that other targets are set in policy but not in legislation, but we have some significant targets in legislation, and I am concerned that there are no figures attached to how we meet them.