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The work to enable that to happen is an early priority. As I said to Tess White, a lot of stuff has been interrupted as a consequence of Covid. Although the Government has a lot of data, the data sets to enable us to have a complete picture are not all available, so we have to construct new data sets. Obviously, that takes time. Some of the work has been interrupted by Covid, but I am happy to write to the committee about particular points of achievement in relation to data collection.

That is due to many of the reasons that I have just given. We have had the interruption of Covid.

That is a fascinating and significant question. There are different factors at play. The national performance framework is one example of accountability in our country, but not the only one—there are loads of others. I mentioned audit and parliamentary accountability, but there is also statutory reporting and a whole variety of ways that we can see directly the consequences of an intervention or an item of expenditure on a particular outcome. That will be demonstrable in some aspects of the national performance framework and various other settings in which the issue is tested.

There must be an acknowledgement and acceptance that the national performance framework will tell us a certain amount about the development of policy in Scotland, but there will be a variety of other areas in which to consider that. For example, we could look at the Audit Scotland annual review of the national health service. That is a sharp piece of accountability in relation to several policy areas.

In contrast, the national performance framework tries to structure the way in which we take forward what will inevitably be a long-term journey. We are tackling poverty, but we will not do that in a year—it will take a longer period to tackle poverty. We are trying to encourage a focus on long-term coherent areas of policy, without losing the sharpness of our day-to-day interventions that may or may not contribute to that journey.

I go back to the example of care-experienced young people that I gave to Michelle Thomson. We have research that tells us that the current method of expenditure is not supporting good outcomes for those young people. Given that we want to support better outcomes for care-experienced young people, the Government has arrived at the conclusion that we had better change how we spend the money. That is a concrete example of how we change course if we are not delivering a satisfactory outcome. That is an example of effective accountability.

The example that Tess White cites is vivid. We have a continuous data set on exam results up to 2019 and then we have two data sets for 2020 and 2021 that are constructed in a fundamentally different fashion. It is a challenge to reconcile one methodology that was used for umpteen years with a different methodology that is used for two years. There will need to be open dialogue on the analysis of the information to ensure that we have a proper understanding of whether we are making progress towards the long-term objectives or whether there has been a setback as a consequence of Covid.

One data set will not achieve that. It will take a rounded piece of work. The education recovery group looks at what all the information in the round tells us about where young people are and their achievements, given that the data sets that we would normally rely on have been interrupted by Covid. There is no easy answer, but some considered research that we can discuss and debate and that the Parliament’s committees can analyse and air would be an effective way to do that.

The short answer is yes. This is one attempt to show how we assess performance. If we were to look at that in rather a glib way, I could see how we could arrive at the challenge that Mr Greer poses. I remember that back in 2007, as an alternative, we had a variety of coloured arrows that were designed to help, but probably fell victim to exactly the same challenge that Ross Greer has put to me.

The key point is that a whole range of different actions have to be taken to try to improve performance in a particular area. It would be wrong to conclude that an “improving” performance on active travel journeys should determine our next steps on active travel overall. We have to take a whole range of other interventions to improve that performance.

That is correct.

That takes us into issues of local discretion and decision making; there certainly is not a check, because that would be an inappropriate level of interference by central Government in the legitimate scope for decision making by local authorities and community planning partnerships. Undoubtedly, there will be dialogue, but a check would be inappropriate, given our current statutory framework.

Given his local authority background, Mr Lumsden will be familiar with the fact that public authorities have a duty to have regard to the way that statute is constructed and to properly and fully consider and reflect that. I could not say that there is a 32-piece jigsaw puzzle that fits together to make a neat picture of each of those indicators of what will happen in each local authority or community planning partnership area, but there is an expectation that those partnerships will have due regard to and follow that direction. The leadership of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and, in particular, its president, is very resolute in its support of that direction of policy, and the Government appreciates that.

There is a likelihood that they will overlap, but we will have to make sure that there is a clear line of sight between the two. Given the timescale, the preparatory work on the wellbeing bill is likely to be undertaken at the same time as the review of the national outcomes, but I will confirm that to the committee in writing.

It is a fair observation that transport perhaps does not have the profile and focus that it should have. The description of the transport indicators as partly influencing a range of other factors is a fair assessment. To go back to what I said in response to Tess White, the review in 2023 might reasonably come to the conclusion that, to put it colloquially, the NPF needs to be an awful lot more net zero than it is now. Given the significance of the transport indicators, they might well reflect that change in emphasis. However, I assure Mr Greer that the impact and effect of transport on performance will be reflected in a number of areas. Obviously, there are ways in which we can revise and revisit that material.

A process of reflection goes on in the Cabinet. We look at the issues that the national performance framework identifies in relation to our policy agenda and consider taking different decisions to improve performance.

As the Deputy First Minister, part of my responsibility relates to delivering the Government’s agenda. Since the election, I have been looking at the delivery of our commitments that were made in the 100 days programme. I am now focusing my attention on delivering the programme for government and the partnership agreement, to ensure that arrangements are in place that will give us confidence that the programme can be delivered and will help us to achieve the ambitions that are set out in the NPF.