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The Scottish Fiscal Commission has laid out when it was told about the decision. I would be happy to give you further information and talk more about that when I appear before the committee to discuss the budget.

Again, that has assisted with drive and accountability. The interim targets are an important aspect that was driven through as the bill progressed. In essence, as we would hope with all legislation, the stage 2 and stage 3 amendments—how the bill developed—strengthened the bill. Interim targets are an obvious example, but there are others. The focus on the targets, on local and national and on the six priority family types has assisted all levels of government as they look to implement and meet those targets.

Another important aspect has been to base what happens on evidence—looking at the impact of policies and at how we can share best practice. The development of the bill has helped us to develop that type of implementation.

I wish that there was a magic wand, Mr Balfour. The choices that we take to mitigate certain aspects of UK Government policy, including the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and, after the announcements that were made yesterday, the two-child benefit cap, amount to £134 million a year. We could have been spending that money elsewhere, either on anti-poverty measures or elsewhere in the budget, such as education or the national health service—we can all pick areas in which we wish that investment could be made.

The easiest way for the Scottish Government to have money that it can use in a different way is for the UK Government to take decisions at UK level that would not require us to mitigate them, and for it to deal with the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the two-child limit at source. That money could then be freed up and we could get into a debate about how to spend it. I might still disagree with Mr Balfour about what to spend it on, but it would be a discussion that we could get into at that point.

I will be happy to provide that in writing, convener, when we discuss the budget. I hope that I can easily reassure Liz Smith that we work closely with the Scottish Fiscal Commission on those issues. I would be happy to discuss that when we are here to discuss the budget.

I mentioned in my opening remarks the Cabinet sub-committee that we now have. The First Minister chaired the first meeting of that a few months ago, which laid important groundwork for how he wants to deal with the matter. Even before we had the Cabinet sub-committee, we worked and had meetings across portfolios at ministerial level on the matter. We also have the programme board that looks at the work that is going on under the “Best Start, Bright Futures” plan.

Those are important governance areas that allow everyone to come together—whether officials or ministers and officials—to consider the issue. That ensures that every cabinet secretary has their mind focused on the fact that tackling child poverty is not just my job as the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice but is, for example, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport’s job or is a priority within the education portfolio—it is right across Government. That allows us to have cross-cutting discussions about a change in policy in one portfolio perhaps having an impact on another portfolio. That is exceptionally important.

The other area where it is more challenging, because we need to ensure that we are working in different ways, is cross-government work. How does national Government work with local government? How do local and national Government work with health boards and third sector organisations? The challenge is for us all, at different levels of government, to work together. That requires local authorities to have a great deal of discretion about what they wish to do and should do in their own local areas. The question is how we assist one another in that process.

You have seen some of that work developing with the First Minister’s drive to have whole family support, or with the extension of the fairer futures partnerships, for example, which was announced in the programme for government. We are continuing to bring in all those aspects, which are different ways of making sure that tackling child poverty is a priority across not only the Scottish Government but all levels of government.

I touched on that a little in my answers to Katy Clark. I know that the committee has heard evidence about how the local reporting duty has strengthened the focus on child poverty across local areas. That has led to new, innovative action. It is clear that local authorities have always done a great deal that assists in tackling child poverty, but we are seeing a renewed focus on that.

It is exceptionally important that local authorities have a great deal of flexibility in what they do. It is about how we can assist, for example through the non-statutory guidance, which was recently refreshed, and through working with national partners to support local authorities.

I touched on the exceptionally important work that is going on in Clackmannanshire, Dundee and Glasgow. I hasten to add that that is by no means the only good practice or good work that is happening out there. We are keen to assist councils to take that learning forward. The work of the Improvement Service is key to being able to share that good practice. The Poverty Alliance is also giving on-going support to the Scottish Government to assist with that type of work.

We see the local child poverty action reports developing over time, in that local authorities are now taking an increasingly strategic and preventative approach to what is going on, which is to be welcomed. Again, I stress that we are keen to ensure that the reports are what the councils think should be being delivered and are set out in a way that is right for them. The focus on the reporting duties and what is in the local plans, which are supported by the act, will make a difference to policy changes at a local level, just as it inevitably has done at a national level.

It is helpful sometimes if Mr O’Kane keeps talking.

Clearly, there can be more than one outcome that we wish a policy to achieve. To give an example of some of the work in the child poverty plans, we are keen to look at how many children can be lifted out of poverty by a particular measure, and that is where the modelling comes in. That is not an exact science, because you can model what the impact of a policy is, but when you get to the data sets about poverty levels, you can see that a myriad of other things have also impacted on a given family.

Therefore, it is hard to track direct correlations when measuring policies, but we can use the analysis that we have, by modelling and then looking at the data, to see how many children could be lifted out of poverty through a particular measure.

The other wee caveat that I give—if Liz Smith will forgive me—is that some of that process takes longer than other parts. The Scottish child payment has an immediate impact because it immediately goes into someone’s pocket, whereas the impact of spending on employability or early learning and childcare, for example, undoubtedly assists in tackling child poverty but does not have an immediate impact that you can trace.

On that basis, we look at the evidence that has been built up, not just here but internationally, about the best ways to tackle child poverty. That is why we recently reviewed the measures in the “Best Start, Bright Futures” plan to sense check whether they were still the right measures to drive child poverty down. I hope that those points explain that—

Forgive me, convener, but I have not come to the meeting prepared with details of the budget. I am happy to assist in writing, or perhaps I might presume that I will be invited back to the committee to discuss the budget in detail.

We need to look at the level at which the Scottish Government’s expenditure on social security goes up each year and then look at how much is covered by a block grant adjustment. Social security spend might go up, and some of that might be covered by in-year block grant adjustments, because there might also be an increase in the Department for Work and Pension’s expenditure. It would be easier if we could deal with that in detail, with those different types of expenditure laid out. Those two things are sometimes conflated—I am not saying that Liz Smith is doing that at the moment—and it is important that we look at it in the round.

Great advantage can come from data sharing—government at all levels holds an exceptional amount of data—but, clearly, it needs to be done in a legal and robust fashion. That is exceptionally important.

A lot of good work already goes on, between the UK Government and local authorities, and between the Scottish Government, including our public agencies, and local authorities, but we need to look at how we can go further. We can all ask ourselves how data can best be used to assist people. I remember the conversations that I had for many years with Pauline McNeill, when she was on a previous version of this committee. She was a very strong advocate of data-sharing automation and using data to make life easier for people to get what they are entitled to.

There has been continuous improvement in that area, but more work can still be done. Again, I stress that data sharing needs to done at robustly and within a firm legal setting. I appreciate that, often, it is exceptionally frustrating and that, sometimes, it takes too long to happen. However, the legal basis has to be absolutely core at any level of government—whether the UK Government, the Scottish Government or local authorities with third sector partners—as we take data sharing forward.