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Colleagues are clearly keen to come in, so I will ask my final question, which is about the social justice, housing and local government portfolio. I noticed that, in that area, 96 per cent of the increase in spend over the next four years will be on social security. Half of that increase is related to further devolved welfare benefits and half is related to choices that are made by the Scottish Government. Given the paucity of resources and the fact that, for example, the police will face a zero budget increase at a time of rising cybercrime, and that various other areas will have to deal with fixed budgets, is it the best use of public money to spend an extra £1.2 billion on benefits? What will be the impact to the wider economy of that spend and of removing people from poverty, which is clearly what that spend is about?

Yes, but when you talk about private funding, you are not talking about businesses; you are talking about home owners having to invest significantly in transforming their houses.

Thank you for that. I think that we all realise how incredibly complex that is. It is a tribute to you that you are able to produce forecasts as accurately as you do, given those issues.

As inflation goes up, even with increased pay rises, we could end up with significant fiscal drag, which is concerning many people. In figure 4 of your report, you talk about the implied income tax net position. What do you believe the impact of fiscal drag will be on disposable income?

Thanks—I appreciate that. We have many more questions that we could ask, but time is against us and, as Ross Greer has pointed out, the cabinet secretary is waiting to come in. We have another evidence session to begin.

I will wind up the session by formally thanking Dame Susan Rice for all her phenomenal work over the years and her leadership, wisdom and insight, which have proved invaluable to the committee. Like John Mason, I was here at the very birth of the SFC, and it is great to see how it has developed and flourished over the years. I am sure that it will continue to do so.

I will see you tomorrow, Dame Susan, at the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing, which starts at 8 am—with bacon rolls, just for those who are not already sold on the idea of attending. The committee will take a break until 11.25.

Thank you very much for that opening statement.

It is significant that you have very little room to manoeuvre. I think that the committee appreciates that fact, but we will ask questions about the Scottish Government’s choices and the reasons for making them.

First, some outside organisations have expressed an element of frustration about the detail that has been provided. I know that you will want to make it clear up front that this is not a budget but a resource spending review. However, the concern is that we have received only level 1 and level 2 funding figures, and organisations are obviously wondering where they fit into some of the decision making that is taking place.

Thank you.

I asked that very question of the Scottish Fiscal Commission representatives—not today but the last time they were here. Their view was that that would have no impact on spending in fact. However, I would say that the child poverty budget line, as distinct from social security assistance, is projected to increase from £34 million to £97 million, so that is a significant increase, but it is only a fraction of the £2.4 billion increase in social security spend.

I thank my colleagues around the table. I will touch on one area that committee members have not covered. You talked about delivery of priorities, and one of the focal points of the national performance framework is continuous improvement. Of course, it used to be more target driven. In response to Douglas Lumsden, you talked about the need to move at pace to eliminate child poverty.

You have said that you want the outcomes to be delivered in a less patchy form. However, if we have continuous improvement, what does that mean? Does that mean that the Government is satisfied with an improvement rate of 1 per cent a year, 5 per cent, 10 per cent or something else? If we are not going to return to having targets, would milestones be a more effective way of assessing where we are in reaching each outcome? Would that enable you to incentivise and encourage organisations that might not be doing as well as they could be?

I asked about part-time work not only because many people prefer it but because a lot of people do not feel that there is a full-time job in the area for which they are qualified or in which they are skilled. With regard to skills, I visited one of the major employers in my constituency during national apprentice week, and a number of apprentices to whom I talked all said the same thing to me. When they were thinking about a career post-school, they were told by their careers advisers, “If you don’t go to university, you’re a failure.” If one person says that to you, you take it as anecdotal, but if a whole wheen of people say the same thing, you have to think, “There’s an issue there.”

In your opening statement, you said that you have 800 careers advisers in Scottish schools. What kind of message is being given to younger people? We are trying to build more houses in Scotland, for example, but we need more roofers, plasterers, electricians, plumbers—you name it—as well as engineering skills blah blah blah. If everyone goes to university, there will be a shortage of people to go into apprenticeships, particularly as we do not have the same number of migrants coming into the country and the birth rate is at an historic low. Are we not facing a perfect storm in the years ahead?

Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Our first agenda item is the final evidence session as part of our inquiry into the national performance framework: ambitions into action. I welcome the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, John Swinney. Mr Swinney is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Barry Stalker, head of the national performance framework unit, and Caroline Dodds, team leader in the national performance framework unit. I welcome you all to the meeting.

I invite Mr Swinney to make a short opening statement.