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Together, Brexit and the pandemic have created a perfect storm—the costs of getting materials from various parts of the world have increased, shipping costs have increased, the costs of raw materials have increased and labour costs have increased. If we put all that together, we can see the impact on goods and services across the board—the construction sector is no different.

A number of projects are still coming in under the agreed benchmarks. There is a bit of geographical variation, and we need to be mindful that costs get higher the further north we go, because of a lack of economies of scale, the reduced number of contractors and so on.

The minister Ivan McKee has been in regular dialogue with the construction sector to consider what we can do, but the issues are global, and it is difficult for the Scottish Government to change things dramatically. We are working with councils and registered social landlords to support them in keeping the momentum going.

Good morning. I am grateful to the committee for inviting me and the minister to give evidence. The Covid pandemic has had a clear impact on the wellbeing of children and young people. The true extent of that will not yet be evident. That is why the committee’s inquiry is important and why the Government remains committed to getting it right for every child.

We know that there are strong links between experience of poverty in childhood and poorer health outcomes across a range of measures. Not only that, but there are impacts on wider life chances, including on educational attainment. We want better for Scotland’s children. We have set in statute ambitious income-based targets to significantly reduce levels of child poverty in Scotland by 2030 and we have declared tackling child poverty to be a national mission. We are working to mobilise all of Scotland to drive the progress that is needed.

Across the life of our first tackling child poverty delivery plan, we have strengthened the financial support that is available for low-income families across the early years. That includes support through our package of five family benefits, including the best start grant, best start foods and the Scottish child payment. That package will be further strengthened from April with the doubling of the Scottish child payment to £20 per week per child.

We now offer the equivalent of 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare to all three and four-year-olds and about a quarter of two-year-olds. That is a critical investment in children and parents. We have also delivered new employment support that is built on the values of dignity and respect, and is providing the help that parents need to access employment without fear of sanctions.

We recognise that holistic whole-family support is essential to wellbeing in tackling poverty. To that end, we have committed to investing £500 million in whole-family wellbeing funding during this session of Parliament.

We also recognise the additional challenges that our care experienced children and young people face. By the end of this Parliamentary year at the latest, we will publish a single implementation plan setting out the actions and commitments that we will deliver to ensure that we keep the Promise by 2030.

We will also publish our next tackling child poverty delivery plan by the end of March. That will set out the transformational actions that we will take with partners across Scotland to tackle child poverty and drive progress towards the ambitious targets that are set by this Parliament.

In 2020-21, our investment targeted at low-income households reached almost £2.5 billion, including nearly £1 billion that focused on low-income families with children. Delivering on our ambitions on child poverty and child wellbeing will require changes not only in ways of working, but in investment. That is why our on-going resource spending review has outlined child poverty as a key priority.

I welcome the committee’s inquiry and the opportunity that you have given me and the Minister for Children and Young People to answer your questions relevant to our portfolios.

First of all, we have made considerable progress in implementing the first delivery plan, which includes the key supports that I mentioned earlier such as the Scottish child payment for children under six, the bridging payments for older children and the parental employability support fund. We are not starting from nothing; building blocks are in place.

However, we recognised the need to give the next delivery plan far greater cross-Government focus. We cannot tackle child poverty through social security alone. Although that can do some of the heavy lifting, we must also try to reduce costs, as well as increase opportunities for employment, because we know that work is a key way out of poverty, including child poverty in families.

Making that happen requires the whole of Government’s focus; it also requires partnerships across the rest of Scotland with local government, the third sector and the private sector. The focus is very much around those three pillars and what we can bring across the whole of Government in pulling that together. I have spent a lot of time in bilateral meetings with colleagues, and we have spent a lot of time in Cabinet discussing the issues. Basically, we are looking at every possible way in which we can make the interim targets achievable.

That is against a challenging backdrop in which cost-of-living pressures are building and in which the £20 a week cut to universal credit—the uplift had been given during the pandemic—is causing problems. We are doing absolutely everything that we can, but I cannot overestimate how difficult the backdrop is. However, we need to get it right, because we absolutely must give our children the best chance of having the life chances that they deserve. We are working hard to do that.

Tenants have rights and responsibilities—that is the first thing that we would all acknowledge. Strengthening tenants’ rights on the affordability side is a matter of considering appropriate controls on rent levels. There is an important consultation out about how that is done.

Rent levels vary across Scotland. We recognise that the housing market in the Edinburgh area, where we are sitting, is very different from the housing market for rent and purchase in other areas of Scotland. When we consider rent controls, different local circumstances must be recognised.

Affordability is important, and we must ensure that people can afford rents. The private rented sector will continue to have an important role to play.

“Housing to 2040” sets out the ambition for where we want to get to and shows that, if we get this right, there should be no visible difference between tenures. If we get the quality of property standards to the same level, get the rights and responsibilities correct and ensure that rents are affordable across all sectors, we can drive up the quality of standards. Good landlords have nothing to fear from the changes, because many of them already provide a good-quality service to their tenants. There is a package of measures.

That is, without a doubt, an important area. I will set out a few things that I hope are relevant. We continue to invest in the young persons guarantee to ensure that young people have opportunities. There is a guarantee to provide a job, a place in education or training or a formal volunteering opportunity for every young person. In 2022-23, an additional £45 million will be provided for that work.

Since the end of January, nearly 1 million five to 21-year-olds who live in Scotland have been eligible to benefit from free bus travel, which helps young people to connect with employment and training. It helps socially, too.

We are delivering our job start payment for young people to help with the cost of starting a job. The payment is worth just over £252 for a single young person and more than £400 for someone who is the main carer of children. Through that payment, we have helped about 1,800 young people with the cost of starting a new job.

Young mothers—one of the priority family types that we talked about earlier—are a particular focus. They will benefit from support and targeted interventions such as family nurse partnerships, which are about getting alongside young single parents and supporting them in their journey.

We need to look at what more we can do. If there is more that we can do to support young adults, we will consider that. Does Clare Haughey want to add anything?

I am happy to keep the committee informed about that, if it would be helpful.

I think that there are. A lot of third sector wraparound support is focused on lone parents, and there are specific supports—again, particularly through third sector organisations—for black and minority ethnic families. However, I think that we could do better at understanding the barriers, particularly to employability. There is also evidence that some families are still not aware of the available supports that they are entitled to. We need to understand why that is and to overcome the barriers to their accessing that financial support.

There are other issues, too, such as whether, through the affordable housing supply programme, we are building enough homes that are large enough for families that require, for example, four or five bedrooms. We could be better at that. There is also the need to keep the cost of a home in the social rented sector substantially lower than the cost in the private rented sector, so we need to think about how to reduce costs, as well.

The employability area, which is underdeveloped, is a very strong focus for us in the delivery plan. We recognise that, if we are going to help families to move into the world of work, we need to understand the barriers for all those families and that they will be different from one another. We are trying to tailor that support to meet families’ particular needs. If we can do that more effectively, we could really begin to help families. We are looking at using test sites to work with families and see what works. A lot of work is going on around that, and I will be happy to furnish the committee with more information once it is ready to go live.

That might be a question for Clare Haughey.

You raise an important point. As I said earlier, we have placed a sharp focus on six priority family types, but those families are, of course, all different in the challenges that they face. How do we ensure that we understand all those challenges? We have published a series of evidence reviews alongside our first three annual child poverty progress reports. One of those is on lone parents, one is on black, Asian and minority ethnic families and one is on disability. We should not take a one-size-fits-all approach. I mentioned having more bespoke solutions for families. Each family is different, and those with different protected characteristics clearly face further challenges.

On the data, I note that it will always be difficult to pick up small populations in sample surveys, so it is important to support those surveys with the development of other evidence. Qualitative and what I guess will be called participatory research with the priority families is key to understanding the barriers and what works for those families in tackling poverty. The additional reports will help us with that, and we are actively looking to develop data linkage to allow better analysis of those small populations. The data and intelligence network has an on-going project to link the school pupil census and health records. If that can be done, it will provide a more granular level of information.

Having said all that, I add that one of the most important things that we can do is to listen to what families tell us about what the barriers are. I mentioned the three pillars earlier. When it comes to employability, for example, if one parent has a disability, or if parents are from the BAME community, they are going to face additional barriers to employment compared with other families, for all the reasons that we understand. Likewise, lone-parent families will have to overcome childcare barriers, as well as the other barriers that they face.

We need to understand that, and our solutions in the delivery plan need to recognise that one size does not fit all. We need to work alongside families and with trusted folk who know them, instead of pitching up with an agency. Those trusted folk, who are often from third sector organisations, can help us to have a conversation about what will make the difference for a family and help them to overcome some of the issues that people face in moving on to the world of work.

Our council tax reduction scheme currently protects more than 470,000 low-income households in Scotland from council tax bills, according to need and ability to pay. There is no equivalent approach in England, where, from 2013, council tax support was localised to individual local authorities. Our council tax reduction scheme has maintained support since the abolition of council tax benefit in 2013, and funding for it has exceeded local authority costs by more than £97 million in the past three years. I would say that we are doing what we can with those costs.

The Government is looking at how we support families with some of the consequential money that has come from the United Kingdom Government’s response to the cost of living. We will always look at what more we can do. In the budget, we have tried to strike a balance and focus on how we support low-income families at a time of rising costs. We cannot do everything, and we cannot mitigate every aspect of decisions that are made elsewhere, but we can try to focus that support as best we can.

Clare Haughey might want to talk about childcare.