���˿���

Of course, Mr Dickie, in a Parliament of minorities, there is a balance to be struck in respect of how we split the direct cash in families’ pockets to tackle child poverty and all those other measures that you outlined. That budget process will go forward.

Mr Birt, do you want to comment briefly?

Professor Sinclair’s comments mean that I will have to ask about United Kingdom levers of power—in particular, universal credit—to tackle the issue for that group of people, about which Mr Balfour rightly raises concerns.

I want to ask more about the quality of the information that we have. When we were talking about keeping 100,000 children out of poverty or lifting 40,000 to 60,000 children out of poverty, I was conscious that, in previous evidence sessions, the committee has heard about the significant improvement that the Scottish child payment of £26.70 a week has made for young people who were in deep and entrenched poverty who have not reached that arbitrary line. It is not enough, but it has made a dramatic improvement to their lives that has not been captured in the data.

My colleague Liz Smith wants to ask a lot more about data. However—before we move on from the quality of data—are we masking some of the challenges when we talk about 40,000 to 60,000 children being lifted out of poverty, and are we also selling some successes short when we do not say more about those who remain in poverty but who have also been helped a heck of a lot by that payment, Professor Sinclair?

Could I ask a question?

I will break the habit of a lifetime to do that.

My question goes back to the Scottish child payment and is about something that came up during our work on getting people back into employment and on family and parental employment support. There is a cliff edge with the Scottish child payment because, once someone loses their entitlement to universal credit—which is a tapered in-work benefit—they lose all their Scottish child payment. Liz Smith spoke about data. Is there any data about the impact of that loss? The committee has looked at that before and I think that we will have to return to it. Mr Dickie or Mr Birt, do you have any brief reflections on that?

I will follow up on some of the matters that Mark Ruskell was pursuing, including the narrow list of individual bodies that could make a complaint in relation to a breach under a land management plan. A possible expanded role for the land and communities commissioner, which is to be quite limited at present, was mentioned.

I will split my question into two parts. I want to think about a proactive role that the land and communities commissioner could have in an area of prevention. Would work to encourage best practice in the development of land management plans be something that the commissioner would be well placed to support, perhaps by identifying and sharing best practice where it becomes evident, and by identifying thematic areas of weaknesses in plans? As the bill stands, I am not sure that the land and communities commissioner would be empowered to do that. Would that be a positive thing?

It is worth putting on the record that I think that all committee members want to see a commissioner who works in partnership with landowners across the country and whose first approach will be not to identify breaches and look at sanctions but to build up the relationship. However, it may be beneficial for them to have that explicit power.

My final question is about whether the obligation on landowners is simply to produce a land management plan, irrespective of its quality or whether it is complied with in a meaningful way. We have heard reference to that already. For clarity, proposed new section 44B(3)(c) of the 2016 act requires the land management plan to set out how

“the owner is complying or intends to comply with ... the obligations set out in the regulations”,

and proposed new section 44E allows specific persons to allege that there has been a

“breach of an obligation imposed by regulations under section 44A”.

The fact that I am asking this question might lead to the conclusion. Is the drafting adequately clear to ensure that there are obligations to produce and to comply with a land management plan? If not, what suggestions do you have about how we can improve that section of the bill?

The reason for asking that is that we want all of you to turn Ferguson Marine around. We want you to win more orders and we want you to diversify. I am trying to get you to put on the record where Ferguson Marine is now, so that we can give confidence to people—not to the parliamentary committee that is scrutinising the matter, but to future investors and future partners, because we want you to win those contracts. Could the troubles that you have been through make you better prepared, and fitter and leaner in order to win contracts? How can you assure us that you are now getting it right?

As well as the structural need to modernise the yard, reputation and confidence have come up time and again as the biggest barriers. Clearly, the best way to rebuild reputation and confidence is to meet the new deadlines that have been set, within the cost envelopes that are forecast. Bluntly, that has been the challenge for years. On the basis that, given a fair wind, you nail this, what can others do—not Ferguson Marine—to help to rebuild reputation and confidence and to be a good friend to Ferguson Marine? We want the yard to be a success. The question is not about all the things that we know you need to do internally and that you have to be accountable for as an organisation. What can others do to assist?

Thank you.

I have listened to all of this with great interest. Potential partners of Ferguson Marine will be listening to your evidence, as will competitors. Therefore, these evidence sessions, which the convener has been so diligent in scheduling, are important to the future wellbeing and prosperity of Ferguson Marine.

I will pick up on something that was said in answer to an earlier question right at the start. There was a senior manager in charge of completion of the entire vessel, but the vessel had not been broken down into sections. That meant that there seemed to be a lack of accountability on the shop floor—for want of a better description—to ensure that individual sections of the ship were nailed, and that, if a section was not, you could identify who was responsible for the slippage. Is that quite unusual in the shipbuilding industry? It seems to be crazy that one person would be directly responsible for the completion of an entire vessel. I am pleased to hear that the management and accountability structure has been changed. Mr Petticrew, was it a surprise to you when you found that was not already in place?