 Fy oes. Welcome to the convener's group's meeting. I have received no apologies for today's meeting, although a couple of colleagues might join slightly later as committees come to a conclusion. The meeting is in public, so unlike other convener's group meetings, the microphones will be activated automatically. The first item of business, the only item of business, is a discussion with session Felly, mae'n fizzio am y frontfyniadau, ac mae'n rheswm yn ei ffrindio fel yn 1000 yma yn amser y gwael y dypa. Y prifysgol pofysgol yn datblyg am 2 hrs. Rydym i'w ddweud bryd gyda'r prifysgol yw intelligence a'r prifysgol yn cael ei ffrindio fath o'r cwydynigol a'r rei arwag unrhyw yn urgyrchилоis ond, mae'n rhaid i ni'r ffordd yr oesaf syniadau i wc. Cygonddi, mae'n rhaid i amser gwybod bryd ddweud yr oesaf i'r bwysigol, a Estrannu I will start with questions around Covid-19 before moving on to net zero and then more general questions. Some conveners understandably have indicated their wish to ask more than one question. I will try to accommodate that. As best I can, I have the priorities. For each convener, we will certainly get to your first priority. Hopefully to your second priority with that leads me very neatly on to a plea, as ever, for questions and answers to be as succinct as possible. Before turning to part 1, I perhaps invite Clare Adamson in her role as convener of the Constitution European External Affairs Committee to ask an initial question based on current events at the moment. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. My apologies, I can't be with you today. First Minister, can you provide an update on the Scottish Government's priorities in responding to the situation in Ukraine? Many thanks for beginning with the issue that I know is uppermost in all of our minds right now. The people of Ukraine are clearly fighting a battle for the freedom and independence of their own country, but we should always remember that they are fighting a battle that matters to all of us. They are upholding the principles of democracy, freedom and respect for the rule of law. Therefore, we must all not just say that we stand with Ukraine, although I know that that is the sentiment that everyone has right now, but we must do everything that we can to support the people of Ukraine in a practical sense. Clearly, the UK Government holds most of those responsibilities, and I want to give a very strong message of support to the actions that the UK Government has taken, particularly in the imposition of very tough sanctions. I know that there is a strong willingness there to go even further on sanctions, and I think that that is important. The Scottish Government stands ready to do everything that we can. Firstly, it is really important for countries across the world, large and small, to provide as much humanitarian assistance as possible. The UN this morning just days into this war is estimating that around 650,000 people have already fled Ukraine, so clearly there is an spiralling humanitarian crisis. We have already confirmed initial financial aid, £4 million. We will seek to do more as this situation, unfortunately, deteriorates as it is likely to do. There is a consignment of medical supplies leaving Scotland today, bound for Ukraine. I have just come from the National Services Scotland distribution hub to see and to thank those who have worked hard to do that. The second priority in which the Scottish Government has got a big part to play, although responsibility first and foremost does lie with the UK Government, is in welcoming refugees, those fleeing Ukraine and seeking sanctuary. We are already in discussions with COSLA, making sure that we are prepared in a practical sense to welcome refugees from Ukraine. We have recent experience through the Syrian Resettlement Scheme, more recent experience through the Afghan Resettlement Efforts, but I do not think that any of us are yet properly grasping the magnitude of what the war in Ukraine may result in in terms of population displacement, and it is really important that we all play our part. I am on record, I am far from alone in this, in encouraging the UK Government to go much further than it has done so far in enabling people to come to the UK from Ukraine. I think that it has made some positive steps in the last 24-40 hours, but still lags way behind the European Union. Within that, of course, countries like Ireland who days ago waived visa requirements, so I would appeal again to the UK Government to effectively have a situation where anybody fleeing Ukraine can come to the UK and we deal with the bureaucracy and the paperwork later. That is the humanitarian response that is required, but it is also what is practically necessary, because no single country or small group of countries is going to be able to deal with this alone. I hope that we will see further movement from the UK Government for my part, and this is my responsibility. We will continue to work with COSLA to make sure that we are ready to provide the assistance that refugees need. I know that all of us are thinking of those in Ukraine from the president down, showing unbelievable bravery and courage, and our thoughts are with them, but it is much more important that our practical assistance and solidarity is with them, too. Thank you very much indeed. First Minister, I am conscious that we could spend the entire session on this issue, and I am sure that we will have opportunities in the chamber over the days and weeks ahead to return to it. I would invite Siobhan Brown to begin the questioning under the Covid recovery aspect. Can I ask the First Minister, as we move on to Covid recovery, the strategic framework signals support for a level of home working to be embedded into society as we move to the new normal. This represents quite a significant shift, both for our society and our economy. How does the Scottish Government propose to analyse the impact on, say, mental health, public transport use and also our town centres and city centres of the policy decision, and will you share this analysis with our committee? Many thanks. It is a very central question and consideration at this time. Obviously, of course, we were seeing pre-Covid a change, albeit quite a slow change in the pattern of work and a growth in home working, but the experience of Covid, what was necessary in—throughout much of the past two years—has rapidly accelerated that shift. I do not think that any of us really fully understand yet exactly where the new normal will settle and what the balance will turn out to be, but I think that it is reasonable to predict—and indeed, perhaps—I will come on to this in a second—to encourage a greater degree of home working and hybrid working between people's homes and workplaces, as well as encouraging in office or workplace working more locally, so hubs in more local communities. I think that there are many potential advantages to that. In the most immediate term, as has been the case over the past two years, it helps our resilience against the spread of infection, is the most immediate advantage, but longer term and more fundamentally, I do think that it has advantages for work-life balance. It has obvious advantages in terms of reducing our carbon footprint and reducing commutes to and from work, and it has advantages. There is some evidence already emerging of this around increased productivity, but on the other side of that, there are concerns that I know many businesses and many individuals will express the danger of isolation and negative impacts on mental health. Definitely a serious consideration around impact on town centres and businesses that are located in town centres, and we need to think about all of those things very carefully as we find that new normal in the period ahead. We are currently scoping some work at pace with stakeholders and with business organisations and across Government to look at the evidence that is available already, but to consider what more evidence we need to gather to properly understand and assess the experience of hybrid working and to do that from a range of different policy perspectives. Of course, we will be very happy to share that with your committee as that work develops. I thank the First Minister for that answer. I think that we all agree that life is not going to be going back to the way it was, and I think that it is finding the balance between what is right for employers and employers. I will move on to the economic impact. The strategic framework notes that the economic output of consumer-facing service sectors, such as hospitality, remain notably below pre-pandemic levels still. The framework therefore recognises that business resilience for these sectors will be really important going forward, as they are most likely to be affected if we have further restrictions. What does greater business resilience look like to you and how is the Government working with those sectors, particularly hospitality, to ensure that they can be more resilient in the future? There is no doubt at all that what you have rightly described as consumer-facing businesses have suffered, in an economic sense, the greatest impact of the pandemic for obvious reasons, because they are the settings where, because people go and gather together, pose through no fault of these businesses, I hasten to add, pose the greatest risk of transmission of infection. We have sought, as far as we possibly can, to provide financial support and compensation to businesses that have either been closed for periods or have had their trading curtailed and restricted, and that has been important. Obviously, we want to come out of this phase of the pandemic and, as far as we possibly can, face up to any future risk, because I think that we all understand that the risk that the virus poses to us has not gone away. New variants in particular may well challenge us in the future, but if we build resilience now, the hope is, together with vaccines and treatments, that we will be able to deal with any future risk much less restrictively than was the case in the past. A key part of that and the strategic framework goes into some of this is working, and there is no one-size-fits-all, what will be important in a shop and in a pub or restaurant will be different, but to get, to provide guidance to businesses as to the measures that they can introduce now or retain, because they might have had them in place earlier in the pandemic, to reduce infection risks. Also, we have provided some funding for particular priorities, the funding for ventilation improvements in private businesses, focusing on smaller businesses in the sectors most affected. We will continue to do that and work with stakeholders to look at what more we can do. My final point is a bigger point or a more general point. If we all continue to get back to normal, which is what we do, but continue to take basic steps to try to reduce the risk of infection, we all collectively help to ensure that businesses can function without some of the things that they have had to deal with in the past two years. Lastly, in that context, if we do that, it is possible, as we are already doing, to encourage people to feel confident about going back to shops, pubs and restaurants, theatre or cinema. That is what we need to do. We need to have that confidence that people can go about their daily lives, which is what those businesses need more than anything right now. I know that Clare Baker was wishing to ask questions broadly in this area, and I wonder whether I can invite Clare to ask her questions at this stage and then come to Richard. Yes, I am happy to do that. First Minister, the National Strategy for Economic Transformation was published yesterday. I do have to say at disappointing that the Economy and Fair Work Committee has not had formal notification of the publication, but we intend to engage with the cabinet secretary as soon as possible. When it was published yesterday, there has also been some mixed reviews of it. I know that you can bring forward positive comments from chamber of commerce and others, but Tom Hunter did express concerns that it was a long wish list with no magic wand to deliver it. That is linked to the issue of the delivery plans. Can I ask about the delivery plans? Why are they not included in the strategy? Will the actions be developed by sector? How will the progress on the delivery plans be measured? How will progress be charted through the delivery plans? What kind of oversight and engagement will the Government have with the delivery of them? First, I know that the economy secretary is very keen, and indeed it is part of our responsibility to engage closely with the committee as it develops. It is the Government's responsibility to design and develop in partnership with stakeholders strategies like the one that was published yesterday, and then, of course, to engage with Parliament as we develop that and take that forward, and, in particular, to engage with Parliament around the scrutiny and the delivery. Inevitably, with any strategy of that nature, you are going to get mixed opinions in the context of world affairs right now. We should welcome the healthy aspect of that in a vibrant democracy. It is important that we listen to those who have expressed comments that say that they wanted to go further or to do different things, just as I could. I could sit here and listen. I am not going to get lots of comments from individuals and organisations that are very positive about what was set out yesterday. I am sure that I will not be the first to break it to Sir Tom Hunter that there is no such thing in politics or governance or life in general as a magic wand. You need to set out your ambitions and work really hard and focus on them. We will set out more detail of the delivery plans, the governance of that. Kate Forbes has set out plans for the operational oversight of that, a leadership board that I will chair to track progress on that. We will regularly report to Parliament on the key deliverables there and progress against any strategy, no matter how good a strategy is. That strategy is very solid and very good. It delivers all of the detail. It is about setting the vision. It is about setting the ambition and ensuring that we have the focus on delivery to turn that into reality. Maybe change subject, which is closer to Siobhan Brown's question, which is around the Covid-19 tourism recovery programme. There is a phase two where the sector asked for funding to be in the budget. Kate Forbes appeared in front of the committee and gave her commitment to phase two, but it could not deliver the resources for it within the budget. She has indicated that there would be the opportunity for in-year budget transfers. Does the First Minister recognise the importance of this sector and the need for them to receive further support? Does she give any assurances that they will be prioritised when it comes to any redistribution of funds? Yes, I recognise the importance of it. Tourism is one of Scotland's most important economic sectors. Obviously, in terms of the jobs that provide the revenue that it raises but also in terms of projecting Scotland's brand and reputation overseas, it is vital. Our tourism sector is one of the jewels in the crowns of Scotland and we should support it and do everything we can to help it to recover and regain the huge success that it had going into the Covid pandemic. Clearly, we work with the budget that we have and we have difficult choices that we had to make in the budget and will continue to have to make. As Kate Forbes has indicated, in terms of in-year decisions, we absolutely recognise the importance of supporting tourism. I made a point in response to Siobhan about confidence. That is also true in terms of the tourism sector and not just in a domestic sense, but internationally. We need to be individually here in Scotland but collectively and globally taking the actions that keep the virus under control so that we can build the confidence that people have to go and visit other countries and hopefully come here and visit Scotland and support the tourist sector. I absolutely recognise the importance of financial support for the actions that the tourism sector is taking to try to get back to the position of success that we know that they are capable of doing. I call on Richard Leonard and I should be introducing colleagues by their title. We know that in 2020-21 Scottish Government total net expenditure rose by 27 per cent compared to 2019-20, an additional £10.7 billion. So when will you clearly demonstrate where that money has gone and so what difference it has made and to who? In 2020-21, which I think if I heard you correctly was the year you cited to me there, a lot of the growth in the money that was at our disposal was Covid response money. I should say that we report in terms of budget out-turn and reporting in the normal way, and your committee is part of the scrutiny process of that. I think that people who have the length and breadth of the country know that there will be different views. Of course, as there always is on how we allocate that money, but the use of that money, whether that has been providing vital PPE for our nurses and doctors in the front line of our health service or providing the compensation and financial support—I spoke about a moment ago—for businesses and providing support to local government to allow them to employ significant numbers of extra teachers to help with the challenge in our school. I think that people can see not just through the more technical out-turn reporting that we do with our budgets every year, but I think that people with their own eyes can see what that money has been supporting over the course of the past couple of years. Again, in normal years, not just in the course of the pandemic, we seek to guide us. I will make this sound much simpler than it is, and much easier than it is because it is not. The national planning performance framework seeks to guide all of our spending decisions so that they are contributing towards the outcomes and indicators that are set out transparently and clearly for people to see. You are right. That is not just a technical matter and transparency is at the heart of it. The Public Audit Committee in recent weeks has taken evidence from the Auditor General who said that his report into the Scottish Government consolidated accounts highlights the need for the Scottish Government to be proactive in publishing comprehensive Covid-19 financial reporting information that clearly links budgets, funding announcements and spending levels. That will help to increase transparency in areas of significant parliamentary and public interest. We had the new permanent secretary before the committee just last week. I think that it is so reasonably that his speech is new. I will call him new then. The permanent secretary before us last week seemed to concur and he said that he wanted to speak to Audit Scotland about that. He said that he wanted to maximise transparency. Do you recognise that there is more work to be done in transparency and identifying where that additional funding has gone to? Yes, I do. I do not have any difficulty doing that. Everybody around this table knows that I spend significant chunks of my life looking at technical explanations and reports of how money is spent and what the performance of it is. Of course, there is a collective interest in making that as comprehensive, transparent and readable and understandable to the layperson. I am sure that we all appreciate it as well. I absolutely concur with that. I know that the new permanent secretary is keen to talk to Audit Scotland and the Auditor General about how we do that generally, as well as the additional funding for Covid. In the past two years—I can say this obviously from a position of considerable experience in making those decisions—so many of our decisions over the past two years have had to be made at pace. I am talking about hours and days of making a difference in terms of whether we spent that money quickly enough to make a difference on the front line. When we were, if I cast my mind back, almost two years right now in March, April, May 2020, frankly every single day, our priority—I am going to say this pretty unashamedly—was how quickly we get PPE to the front line for doctors and nurses and social care workers, rather than sitting and thinking, well, what is this of reporting on the transparency of this? I absolutely agree that we need to go back and make sure that we set out clearly how that money was spent. However, in the moment, our priority was to get the money where it was needed. In that context, what I am about to say is not hyperbole, lice actually were depending on it. I will now invite Stephen Kerr, convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, to pose a question. First Minister, on the same theme, I would like to ask you about closing the poverty-related attainment gap and the people equity fund. Audit Scotland report that they cannot trace how this money has been spent. Do you know how it has been spent? We, yes, work with local authorities, with schools within that to consider how that money has been allocated. It will be over a longer period when we can properly track the impact in terms of the delivery of objectives. As members will recall—I appreciate that this was in previous parliaments when you weren't a member—part of the objective of the people equity fund was to put money directly into the hands of head teachers and allow flexibility and autonomy as to how that was used, rather than being overly prescriptive at the outset. We will work with Parliament, we will work with Audit Scotland, we will work internally to ensure that we are tracking, because it really matters to the overall achievement of our aims in terms of reducing the attainment gap. Tracking what has worked, what hasn't worked, because there will be things that head teachers or schools or local authorities have tried that haven't worked and we've got to be open to that. We do all that, but the most important thing is recognising that our responsibility is to put resources into the hands of those at the front line of this and allow them to innovate to make sure that they are delivering on that objective. I wasn't really clear from that answer whether you do know specifically how it's being spent. If you do know how it's being spent, could you publish what you know? Audit Scotland have struggled to find what this money is being used for and there are other concerns as well. I mean, this is after all the defining mission of the Government that you lead, First Minister, to close the attainment gap, but there seems to be some ambiguity about how this money is being spent. There's a concern, for example, among some that these funds are just replacing what was already being done, so not every extra penny is necessarily going to be used to provide extra support. How do you know what is happening or what is not happening? You've got to distinguish between allocation of money, how that money is then being used on the front line and then how we monitor and track the impact and the outcomes of that. These are all related, but they are actually separate, so we know exactly how the money has been allocated. We have given autonomy around the use of that money. I've over pre-Covid visited schools that have used that money in very different ways. I remember being in a school that had used it for weekend away sessions for parents to try to engage parents more with schools to improve attendance. I've seen other schools use it in very different ways, so there is deliberately a degree of autonomy and flexibility. Yes, we will know the different ways in which that has been spent, but we were not deliberately not prescriptive in trying to ensure that innovation because that was what was needed. This will take more time because of the nature of it. We have a duty—I think that this is the most important aspect of this—to track the progress in terms of outcomes. Inevitably, in an initiative like the pupil equity fund, there will be things that schools have tried that have not been as successful as other things, and that will be seen in the outcomes. In all three of those areas, yes, we know what is happening, but some of that takes longer to properly assess and judge against. I've given you a couple of questions. We'll come back to you if there's time, but I'm conscious that we need to get through all the questions and give every convener an opportunity. I'll call Gillian Martin, convener of health, social care and sport. First Minister, I want to concentrate my questions around the care workforce and the challenge that every country is facing and attracting people into that sector. Scottish Government's got its ambitious manifesto commitment to establish a national care service, but it's against the backdrop of an already very tight labour market in social care. Could you share your thinking on tackling this challenge and how the Government's working with partners to attract people into social care? This across health and social care is perhaps the biggest challenge that we face as we seek to recover health and social care and ensure that they deliver on the objectives that we set for them. We, certainly in the NHS, obviously social care employers are largely local government or private or voluntary organisations. We've got a reasonably good foundation in terms of, in the NHS in particular, record levels of staffing higher per head than other countries in the UK, but a very challenging recruitment position. You rightly say that we are operating within a very tight labour market. Within Scotland there is intense competition for labour, but between Scotland and other countries, particularly for health workers, there is very intense competition as well. We need to do a number of things. First, we need to ensure that we've got very good, robust workforce planning so that we know what we need to achieve in the years to come, and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport is very focused on that. Secondly, we need to focus very strongly on the wellbeing of the current workforce, because obviously our risk is that we lose people in that very competitive labour market. We are investing a lot in wellbeing initiatives in the health service. We are working with local authorities in particular to try to raise the pay of those in our social care workforce, which for generations has been an undervalued part of the workforce, largely female workforce, which is part of the reason for that. We are also working with the health service and with other partners on very targeted recruitment campaigns. Within Scotland and anybody who lives in the west of Scotland, for example, we'll have seen the integrated partnership in Glasgow advertising on television for social care workers, so we are helping with those targeted recruitment campaigns to make sure that, in that competitive workplace, we are seeking to market careers in social care as good opportunities for people to take. None of this is easy, it is really difficult and all countries are trying to do the same, but it is an area of real and very determined focus. Just this morning, I have been chairing a stakeholders meeting about the national care service. I thought that I would just relay a thread that went through all the conversations and panels that I chaired. That was that the voices of people receiving care need to be at the centre of the design of the new service that we have, and a human rights approach is fundamental. How will your Government ensure that that happens? We are trying to build that in from the outset. Derek Feeley's review and report that laid the foundations for our plans on the national care service very much took that human rights approach with service users at the heart, and we are seeking to continue that, and that will be Cabinet discussed this just last week. I have personally been involved in very detailed discussions about how we are taking forward the plans following the consultation. Service users, because if you go back to the Feeley report, it is all about reducing postcode lottery, raising the quality of care, making sure that we see care as an investment, being as preventative as possible, rather than seeing people who could be better cared for in their communities and their homes in institutional care. That is the objective of it, and therefore we have to keep that absolutely centrally in mind. Second to that, I think that the voices of those who work in the care service and deliver those services has to be central to it, because another objective in the tour are linked, because if you have a highly skilled, motivated and rewarded workforce, you are going to deliver good care. The opportunity here to deliver a nationally agreed pay scale, collective bargaining, national terms and conditions is all really important for that first objective. Everything that we do here—I think that we are going to in Parliament as well as in the wider stakeholder community here—is going to be some very, very intense debates about the detail of this, rightly so. However, I think that we should all come at it from the perspective of remembering what it is all about, which is improving the quality of care for those who need it. First Minister, we know that there was a disproportionate impact on some sections of society through the pandemic, including older people, disabled people, carers and women, and just yesterday our committee heard about the intersectional challenges faced by BME women. The Scottish Government has said, and you mentioned it in the last question, that a human rights approach was at the heart of decision making throughout the pandemic. So what lessons can be learned from that approach in terms of policy making? It became obvious, probably always obvious, but it came much more obvious very quickly in the handling of the pandemic, that it was having a disproportionate impact. It was having an awful impact on everybody, but some groups, ethnic minorities—absolutely women, young people, those already living in poverty—were being particularly impacted. We sought to take account of that in our decision making. I will go back to the point that I made to Richard earlier to be absolutely candid, particularly in the very early days. Then at key points afterwards, speed of decision making was what was most important to us, but we sought to take account of that. We sought to learn more about that. The expert reference group on Covid and ethnicity, for example, we established quite early on and then used its findings to try to inform and shape future decision making. We sought to learn, as we went along, to take account of that disproportionate impact in the decisions that we were making. If I take an example of the delivery of the vaccine programme, for example, real emphasis on the part of health boards in an effort that was massive and had to be delivered very quickly, and trade-offs made between local access and mass vaccination centres, but a really strong focus on making sure that under represented groups that there was particular efforts to get vaccine to them. Did we get every decision right in that? I absolutely would say that we won't have and there is therefore a need to learn in retrospect so that we build that into future decision making. Of course, the public inquiry, which we will be getting under way shortly, will have a human rights focus as well, and I think that learning from that will be extremely important. Thank you. We have talked about some of the inequalities and a lot of those inequalities in relation to people and communities where they are before Covid and a lot of them are societal, but there is no doubt that the pandemic placed those inequalities into stark focus. I am keen to hear from the First Minister a little about how we make sure that we don't lose that focus and make sure that we challenge those inequalities. As I said, some of them are societal and not just for government, but make sure that we do challenge that going forward. That is down to all of us. I have a particularly heavy responsibility as First Minister in making sure that we don't, but that will be a collective challenge and responsibility for Parliament. The pandemic has absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, shone a very, very bright and really unforgiving light on some of the pre-existing inequalities that many groups in our society were facing. As we come out of the pandemic, we need to redouble our efforts to address those. Whether that is people living in poverty, that can be immediately linked to the work that we are determined to accelerate and increase the impact of on our social security responsibilities, the doubling of the Scottish child payment. That is not uniquely to do with the pandemic, but the experience of the pandemic is definitely a factor in the decision that we took to double that payment to recognise that we had so much more that we needed to do there. Going back to Gillian's questions about the social care workforce, we have all known that the social care workforce has always been predominantly female, undervalued, under rewarded. There is a collective responsibility for that going back decades, generations, but there is no longer any excuse for any of us to say that we do not understand that now and that we do not have a responsibility to tackle it. That is why it is so clearly at the heart of the work that we are doing in the short term, but the longer-term work around the national care service, the inequalities women face. The work that we were doing before the pandemic led to some extent, but my national advisory group on women and girls all just become so much more important because there is no hiding place anymore. None of us have any excuse for saying that we do not know and understand exactly where those inequalities are. Fixing them is not easy. I will go back to the comment about magic wands earlier on. There are no such things, but we need to tackle those and that is for Government, but it is also for Parliament to make sure that there is a real iron focus on holding our feet to the fire on it. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. First Minister, you will be very much aware of the report that the committee published just a couple of weeks ago regarding the made affirmative, and you will also be aware that the committee is considering the coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland bill. The bill has got five powers, which may be exercised subject to the made affirmative procedure. One of the questions that the committee always asks when considering any primary legislation is whether it is right to delegate powers to the Government of the day rather than being on the face of the bill. Why do you consider it helpful to give future Governments emergency powers such as the new public health protection regulations that are authoring school term dates, rather than bringing forward emergency legislation when needed, such as the two Scottish coronavirus acts? Obviously, the bill is for Parliament to scrutinise. It is not an emergency piece of legislation, so there will be full parliamentary scrutiny, and the Government will respond to that in the normal course. However, in some way, I think that it is better to have properly considered legislation on the statute book that provides a framework for these decisions rather than have an emergency legislation, is that emergency legislation is always suboptimal. You do not want to operate through emergency legislation if you do not have to, so there is an opportunity for us here to get the legislative framework for this in a better state now than it was as we went into this pandemic. We always have to be very, very mindful of the appropriate balance between Government decision and parliamentary scrutiny. The latter is absolutely vital, even in emergency situations. However, we also have to recognise that in emergency situations Governments have to act quickly, so made affirmative procedure, for example, should always be used really, really sparingly. However, I think that the more fit for purpose your existing legislative framework is, the less need there will be in reality to act on an emergency basis. On the back of that, First Minister, I mentioned about the report that the committee has published. Certainly, some witnesses made the point regarding the use of the made affirmative procedure as part of the broader narrative, certainly going back generations of the constant need to ensure that there is an appropriate balance of power between the Government of Day and the Legislature. Looking back over the pandemic, how did you weigh up that balance when making decisions that would sometimes bring substantial changes into force almost immediately and often appreciate with very little time to make such difficult choices? I am sure that some members will be more sceptical than others about what I am about to say here, but I can genuinely say that that need for a balance between speed of Government decision making and appropriate and full parliamentary scrutiny was always there as one of the considerations. However, where that balance was struck at any given time, it could not be a fixed thing throughout the pandemic, because at times, certainly early on in the pandemic, we were operating literally on a basis where every minute of our day mattered in terms of the speed of the decisions that we were taking. Parliament was obviously not sitting normally at that point, so we had to have different procedures in place for informing Parliament for having parliamentary scrutiny. There were then periods of time when we could act on a relatively slower basis. Parliament was sitting more normally and that balance then changed. John Swinney might have used this example with the committee before, but it is one that sticks very firmly in my mind. In November last year—just at the tail end of last year—I chaired a Cabinet meeting. Moody the Cabinet that day, my report to Cabinet that day was that things were very stable. I think I said that to Parliament that afternoon in my Tuesday afternoon statement. Literally within 48 hours, we were back on an emergency footing facing Omicron and facing the prospect of having to take really quick decisions to curtail something that was spreading very fast. That was the speed at which things were changing, and we have to be able to respond to that. Made affirmative procedure should only be used in exceptional circumstances. It just so happens that much of the last two years have been exceptional circumstances. It is not really for me—it is for committees and Parliament as a whole. The normal affirmative procedure is very lengthy. It is 40 days and then a plenary vote. In the face of a virus, that is clearly not fit for purpose. Maybe there are debates about making our normal procedures more flexible so that the use of emergency procedures is not as necessary. I go back to the point that we have an opportunity now to get our statute book and parliamentary procedures perhaps into a state where, if we ever, which hopefully we will not, face the same circumstances again, use of genuinely emergency procedures are not as necessary as they were in what we faced over the past couple of years. I now call on Audrey Nicholl, Cymru Cymru Cymru, to join us online. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. First Minister, the Cymru Cymru Cymru has heard from the court service that the trial backlog might continue because of the pandemic. We have also heard testimony from drivers of rape and sexual offences, and they told us of the harrowing impact that trial delays were having on them and how, each time a trial is adjourned, it can potentially re-traumatise them. One person told us that their trial had been rescheduled around 13 times. How will the Scottish Government's new vision for justice place victims at the heart of the justice system and assist in reducing the backlog of criminal cases? Thanks for that question. First, I am going to obviously tailor to the criminal justice question here, but it is a comment that could apply more generally. We have got to be frank and honest about the scale of the challenge of recovery. The pandemic and the impacts of dealing with the pandemic have brought whole swathes of our normal way of life to a shuddering halt for long periods of time. It is not going to be easy or quick in all senses to recover from that, and that is the case in the criminal justice system. Justice agencies have been clear all along that the recovery programme is likely to take a number of years to address that backlog, but they have also been clear that just how long it takes will depend on the actions that we take and the investments that we make. That is not a fixed thing, and I will come back to those actions and investments in a moment. It is also really important to stress that when we are talking about a period of years—whether that is four or five years that has been talked about—to tackle backlogs, we are talking about bringing the overall caseload back into the normal timescales. That does not mean that individual cases will be delayed for that period of time. It is important to understand that from the perspective of victims for whom that is so hugely important. We are seeking to work with justice agencies and make the investments principally in the court service but also in the Crown Office with the police to get the recovery programme moving as quickly as possible. As you will know from the committee's perspective, we have established the justice recovery fund, which is upwards of £50 million for the next financial year. That will support recovery and renewal. Around half of that goes to the court service, but there is also funding to other parts of the criminal justice system. We have also increased the normal court service resource budget in the budget. There is that investment there to try to accelerate that progress. We will continue to work with justice agencies as we go to make sure that we are doing everything that we can. You mentioned victims of rape and sexual assault. There are bigger, wider issues there that predate Covid about how the criminal justice system deals with those. Obviously, Lady Dorian has produced a report for us that we are considering carefully in terms of, for example, the greater use of specialist courts in future. We are also going to hear over the next couple of weeks from Helena Kennedy in terms of the work that she has been doing for us around tackling misogyny. There are deeper issues there that as we recover the criminal justice system, we have also got to do more to address. Audrey, do you want to come back with a follow-up question at this stage? Yes. If I may, and if there is time, thank you First Minister for that. If I may come in with a follow-up question around the issue of problem drug use and tackling drugs deaths, First Minister, many of the issues affecting our communities and in particular in this context, are cross-cutting. One urgent issue to be addressed is how we tackle drug deaths and problem drug use. Solutions to this problem do not always fall easily into one committee's remit. Members of the criminal justice, the health and social justice committees, met recently to take evidence and consider how we can work collaboratively to find solutions. Can you provide an assurance that ministers will similarly work collectively across portfolios and keep the relevant committees updated on the actions that are being taken to try to address that issue? I will give that assurance. The efforts to tackle drug misuse and to cut the completely unacceptable toll of deaths from drugs in Scotland is truly cross-cutting. It will not be tackled effectively if it is seen as sitting only in one part of Government responsibilities. The reason that Angela Constance, who is the drugs minister, sits effectively in a situation in Government where she reports directly to me, is to give her that cross-government approach. That is about ensuring good community services, preventative services to try to stop people falling into drug misuse in the first place. It is about making sure that there is treatment availability much more rapid and effective than it has been in the past. It is about making sure that we have a sensitive criminal justice approach, because I am a firm believer that there is consensus in Parliament and that it should be seen not fundamentally as a criminal justice issue but as a public health issue. If we look at the efforts that have been underway recently just to get the use of naloxone rolled out, that has been genuinely cross-cutting as well. That has to be seen in that way or it won't succeed. Yes, I give that assurance from the Government and I am also happy to work with committees to see how we can ensure that that approach is mirrored in Parliament as well. Thank you very much First Minister. The final question is in this section. I call Eleanor Whittam, the convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Good afternoon, First Minister. Whilst the Scottish child payment and indeed its doubling is a very big step forward in tackling child poverty, the current cost of living crisis and our continued recovery from the pandemic means that budgets and households and governments are being very much stretched. If tackling child poverty is a national mission, what more can all spheres of government, businesses and indeed wider society do and how will Covid consequentials from the UK be spent in Scotland to support people with low incomes? You framed the question absolutely correctly. In any country, in my view, a social security system is a mark of how civilised that country is. It is an essential way of providing a safety net for people so that they do not fall into poverty and destitution, properly designed and implemented. It should help lift people out of poverty. It should, where people are able to work, provide a good bridge into well-paying work, but when it becomes a sticking plaster for failures elsewhere, that is where we have problems and it does not work as effectively as it could. Our limited devolved social security system is, to some extent, operating as a sticking plaster to cover up the impact, as far as we can, of decisions that are being taken by the UK Government. Much of it is about £100 million a year or something that we are spending to mitigate decisions taken elsewhere, whether that is the bedroom tax or you are trying to find ways of mitigating the removal of the universal credit uplift. That makes no sense and it is not the most effective way to use money properly to lift people out of poverty. Similarly, if you end up subsidising companies that are not paying a decent wage, that is not the best approach either. That is why we put so much emphasis on the real living wage and businesses across the country. It is a tough time for businesses, as it is for individuals just now, but paying people good wages helps productivity, helps business success, but it helps to ensure that we are lifting people out of poverty through work. One of the most shameful things of the poverty statistics for Scotland and the rest of the UK is that so many people in poverty are also working. That tells us that there is a real issue there in terms of the reward that people get for doing a day's work. We have to see it across all of those different spheres and I think that it is vital that we do so. Thank you very much for your answer. How are we going to measure the impacts of the decisions that we have taken with regard to that and our actions? Will current reporting mechanisms be adequate going forward? I would be interested in the committee's views to see if we should augment or change any of those. However, if you take child poverty, for example, there are very, very hard measures that will judge our success or not. They are statutory targets that we are working to meet and it will be very clear and transparent about whether we meet those or not and the extent to which we do not meet the minutes. As we do the spending review, which we are engaged in right now, it is one of the most serious preoccupations of me and my ministers is how we ensure that that spending review is concluded in a way that gives us the best possible chance of meeting the child poverty targets because not meeting them, they are statutory targets and they are also morally important targets in terms of lifting kids out of poverty. That is the approach that we are taking and will be judged very clearly on that. I will say again, people who want to will hear me when I say this making a constitutional point and I have been known to make those. I confess so I am not going to plead total innocence on that but it is also just a practical point I am making about effective governance. When we have a situation right now where we are doubling the Scottish child payment to try to help us meet the child poverty targets but a Government in London is taking away with the other hand money from the very families that we are trying to help then that makes no sense and it makes it more difficult to do the right thing and to achieve the right thing which is why whatever anybody thinks about the wider constitutional questions joining up these powers and these decisions in a much more holistic and comprehensive social security set of powers for this Parliament seems to me to be absolutely the sensible and actually necessary thing to do. I am now going to move on to the second broad theme which is net zero and I invite Dean Lockhart, the convener of the net zero energy and transport committee to kick them. Thank you very much Deputy Presiding Officer. First Minister, the Scottish Government has estimated that the retrofitting and decarbonisation of buildings by 2030 will cost more than £33 billion. How will that be funded? Local authorities have told the net zero committee that they do not have the funds. They are facing a budget cut of more than £250 million this year alone. I will resist the temptation to go off in a tangent about how local authorities are not facing a cut this year. Local authority budgets are increasing and the total local government settlement has increased but we will put that to one side. We have been very candid about this. This is a massive obligation. It is central to meeting our overall net zero targets, the decarbonisation of how we heat our homes and our buildings. Public money will be a key part of how we fund that and we have already made commitments to funding for the duration of this Parliament. Again, it is one of the key issues in our spending review considerations right now and it will be issues for future Parliaments as we go towards that 2030 milestone. However, we will also have to work to lever in private sector investment and that is also a key focus of what we are doing. Of course, our efforts have to be to minimise the financial burden on individuals but that will be a collective, as will so many different aspects of the obligation that we have to meet net zero. That is very much not just for the Scottish Government but for Governments across the world issues that we are grappling with right now. I understand that there are various initiatives looking at raising finance but the target is not so much 2030. The sheer physical work required to retrofit and decarbonise more than a million buildings across Scotland by 2030 means that the physical work will have to start now effectively. It will take more than five years for that physical work to take place. In effect, that means that the Scottish Government will have to raise the necessary financing over the next two or three years. I am not convinced that there is enough work being done on that in terms of leveraging in the necessary private investment. If you are not convinced on behalf of your committee, our job is to engage with you so that we can give you greater confidence and you can properly scrutinise those plans. Those plans are well under way within the Scottish Government. We have made significant commitments to public funding as a contribution to this over this Parliament. We are working to ensure that we are able to start to lever in the financing. There would be a very interesting and technical debate that we could have about and we would probably need others to contribute to the phasing of this that will be needed between now and 2030, although I concede your point that much of that will be front-loaded in terms of the infrastructure that is needed. I am not telling anybody anything that they do not know, but this is one of the most significant and difficult challenges that we face. However, meeting it is not an option because we need to meet the net zero target. We will continue to engage with your committee about the fine detail of those plans, but we are very focused on making sure not just that we have that 2030 target in mind but that we are taking decisions with the appropriate phasing, because if we do not do that, as you are saying, meeting that target will not be possible. I now invite Jackson Carlaw, convener of the Citizen, Participation and Public Petitions Committee. The Parliament is going to welcome its youngest ever petitioner to the Parliament. Callum is seven years old. He is from Livingston. I do not think that he will find it very daunting. He is already a veteran of the COP26, but he is coming. His petition is to provide every primary school children in Scotland with a reusable water bottle. He has worked out that we are providing 250 millimetre disposable plastic bottles to children all over Scotland. He has been very active in his own school. He is fund raised for this. He is now looking in his petition to find a means by which this can be rolled out to school children across all of Scotland. I am sure that he would be delighted to hear you commend him on his initiative, but there is a broader point, too, because this is exceptional, not just to hear from young people but to hear from many other groups in Scotland actively participating in a deliberative way with our politics. That is part of the responsibility of the Parliament. It is part of the reason why my committee has been given the citizens engagement aspect to it. However, I wonder how the Scottish Government sees its role in all of this, touching partly on the point that Gillian Martin made. At what stage can we put in place mechanisms to allow groups who might be affected by evolving legislation to participate in the construction of that legislation rather than simply being able to respond ultimately to a proposal that has been largely fully formed? I commend Calum, seven years old, the youngest petitioner ever. I wonder whether you will be the oldest person who has ever met in his young life. Possibly not, we will see. Calum, well done to him. I will see whether it is possible for me to hear physically to present his petition next week. I am sure that he would be delighted if that was possible. I will maybe see if I can catch a word with him and see if I can learn more about his efforts to get a reusable water bottle to every young person, which I think is a really laudable aim and ambition, and one that I wish him well with. In terms of young people's involvement, it is quite a timely question, because we have done, for the past six years, once a year. The cabinet has a joint cabinet meeting with the cabinet and representatives from the Scottish Youth Parliament and representatives from the Scottish Children's Parliament. This year's session took place yesterday, so we heard directly. I think that we may be one of the only countries in the world that actually does that. Yesterday, we heard a range of presentations on climate, on mental health, on education more generally, on gender inequality, on assisted dying, on the gender recognition reform proposals and a whole range of other things. I think that we are already doing a lot of good stuff to try to make sure that the voices of young people in particular are heard at a time and in a way that allows them to influence policy in advance rather than try to do it after decisions have been taken. We have been pioneering citizens assemblies to try to do that as well, and the citizens assembly on climate, for example, will be really instrumental in how we take forward many of the decisions around the journey to net zero. I think that your committee is an important part of that, of getting people's voices heard in a way that can influence policy. I think that in Scotland, Parliament and Government, we probably do that in a way that is better than many other countries, but I do not think that we should close our minds to ways in which we can do it even better. The last point that I would make, particularly about young people, is that institutions such as the Scottish Youth Parliament are hugely powerful in that context. The Scottish Youth Parliament, over the years, can point to pieces of legislation that have been passed in this Parliament that started with their campaign, Eco-marriage, being an example of that. I hope that Hannah is watching. The Scottish Government has also established a group that is institutionalising participation and deliberative democracy. You have been bringing together various parties in relation to that, and there is an expectation that there will be a report published with recommendations at some point. I just wonder if you are able to give some indication as to when you hope and think that that might be. I do not think that I can give you the date right now, but I hope that that will be soon. We will be putting forward proposals on how, on the infrastructure, the resources, support for things such as assembly that will be needed to take that forward. I am happy to, if we have a rough timescale for that, get that information to your committee after this session. I hope that Calum is at school, but he may be tuning in through his lunch break. Much as I hope he is watching, I was standing to feel a bit sorry for him if he was. Let us move swiftly on. Arianne Burgess, convener of the local government housing and planning committee. Thank you. First Minister, you will be aware that the committee is taking a great deal of diverse evidence on the national planning framework, and that framework is a framework that underpins the great deal of our ambitions to net zero. How will you close the gap between the policy priorities set out in the NPF for such as compact growth, local living and biodiversity enhancement and the reality that planning authorities are still, for example, granting planning permission for out-of-town commercial developments and low-density housing on greenfield sites? NPF for any national planning framework is in itself designed to try to close that gap by setting the overall framework in which planning authorities take their decisions. As you would expect me to say, it would be wrong for me to try to comment on or issue what would be described as dictates individual planning authorities on those decisions, but the draft NPF for advocates a fundamental change in direction in how we plan places, so it puts climate and nature along with the whole concept of a wellbeing economy at the heart of the planning system, and therefore it is intended to drive the decisions that are taken locally. It also has specific new planning policy support for community wealth building, so using how communities are planned in a way that delivers and cushionally retains as much of the wealth from those in local communities. You are right. Giving that life is down to the decisions of individual planning authorities, but that will not happen unless we are providing the right framework. NPF 4 is all about providing the right framework with the right priorities, with the right objectives and the right guidance for those local decisions to be framed within. In the committee, we have been working to get the word out that this framework exists, that the Government is consulting on it. I wonder what your thoughts are on the fact that in Ireland the T-Shock is really moving alongside their planning and their vision for net zero. I wonder what kind of platform we could put the NPF 4 on to make sure that local authorities and other people that will have to pay attention to this framework will become aware that it exists. I would be very happy to give serious consideration to the ways in which we can do that and raise the profile, awareness, understanding and sense of engagement with it, because that is really important. I am not familiar with exactly what the T-Shock is doing around that, but I am happy to look at it. I know from my own experience, if I think back to COP26, for example, I spoke about NPF 4 in many of the discussions and conversations that I had at COP. It is there, in this context, I speak about it regularly. However, if we can do it again by its nature—I am giving you to your questions right now—by its nature, it sounds very abstract and technical, but it is not. It is actually about the quality of the environment and communities that people live in now and will live in in future and how they then contribute to people's wellbeing and our environment. It is really, really important. It is probably some of the most important stuff that communities can talk about, so you are right to say that we should be doing more, and I will certainly give some thought to how we do more to bring that to life for people. I now call on Clare Adamson again to ask her for the question in relation to net zero. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. First Minister, in our recent report on the UK internal market, the committee found that the UK internal market act places more emphasis on open trade than regulatory autonomy compared with the EU single market. To what extent are you concerned that the market access principles in the act may constrain the Scottish Government in delivering in its policy priorities and commitments, including in relation to net zero? It is fair to say that I have a very significant and profound concern in that respect. The internal market act places really quite significant constraints on the devolution settlement. To be blunt, it can automatically disapply legislation passed by this Parliament should it deem that that legislation conflicts with the principles and the detail of the internal market act. That is democratically unacceptable, but it could impede our progress to net zero and could have all sorts of other implications as well. To give just one example of a live issue around this is our ban on single-use plastics in Scotland. Whether that ban can have the planned effect will ultimately come down to the decision of a UK minister because potentially the internal market act could make it impossible to apply that ban to products that are produced elsewhere in the UK and come into Scotland. That is just one example. For example, if we wanted to have a particular regulatory standard, it is arguable to whether we could impose that on food products coming into Scotland from elsewhere in the UK. Those are powers of this Parliament and how it chooses to exercise those powers in this context as part of our journey to net zero could be completely overridden by decisions of the UK Government. That is not acceptable. It is a power grab and I think that party politics is a side. I think that it is something every member of this Parliament should be absolutely up in arms about. First Minister, if you answer, it is something that we do. The committee certainly shares a concern around. I commend our committee to debate this afternoon to the chamber for anyone with an interest in this. It is a spontaneous advertising break in the midst of the proceeding. It is not necessarily a bad thing. I call on Finlay Carson. I think that he has questions in a similar vein in his convener of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee. I carry on that line that there is no doubt and no question that the smooth operation of the internal market within the UK is hugely important to Scotland. I am putting constitutional concerns aside. What do you think in practice the main impact of the internal market act 2022 will have specifically in agricultural businesses, rural and coastal and island communities? I do not think that you can put constitutional arguments aside on this, to be honest. Maybe we should not describe it in that way because that immediately divides us. This is about fundamental issues of, is this Parliament capable, within its own powers, of taking decisions that it should be ours to take or are we happy to allow an act passed somewhere else against the wishes of this Parliament to basically override these decisions? I think that that is pretty fundamental whatever your views on the constitutional future of Scotland might be. There are many examples in which we may see the powers of this Parliament impeded and overridden. That has profound questions for all of us. Potentially, agriculture is one of those. Agriculture, as we know, is fully devolved, but we face challenges that we do not see elsewhere in the UK in agriculture. However, if you look at the principle set out in the subsidy control bill, that risks constraining our ability to develop policies that are tailored to meet those needs. For example, income and coupled support payments pay a really important role for many businesses operating in our most remote and constrained areas, but they would seem to be incompatible with the principles of the UK's approach to what they call the internal market. There are really profound issues here that are about whether this Parliament, with all the proper debate and scrutiny and coming to decisions about these things, is able to do it, or are we going to find ourselves ridden roughshod over by a Government that is not accountable to this Parliament? It is a different question, but I think that it is really important to rural areas. In the rural affairs islands national variant committee, we find that there are lots of cross cutting issues, and it is sometimes difficult to appreciate what our remit is and scrutinise policies that are coming forward. An example is MPF4, where we did take some evidence, but it was very short given time constraints, on how rural areas would deliver Scotland's ambitions towards climate change and biodiversity, and there was a lack of priorities. What do you believe that the biggest challenges are to rural communities when the burden of delivering climate change is on their shoulders? First Minister, it is not obviously for me to determine the remit or where committees decide to go. What I can assure you of is that the Government will always try to respond to requests for information or answers or discussion on these issues. What is the biggest challenge? If you are asking in the context of climate management, there are massive challenges facing agriculture right now, and I do not need to tell you what they are. Brexit, some of the global issues impacting on food supply, some of the issues that we are talking about, the potential constraints and our ability to ensure the quality of our food through decisions taken on food standards here. Those are all big challenges that we need to be alongside our agriculture sector as we face up to. In climate change, agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to our carbon emissions, and it is going to take really difficult fundamental change to address that and do that in a way that still protects the ability of our farmers and those in the agriculture sector to make a living and contribute to quality food. That is the biggest challenge, and we have a duty to work with them to try to make those changes, because they are critical to our ability to meet the net zero target overall. Thank you for moving us seamlessly into the general questions area. Members, we have a little bit of time in hand. I have Kenneth Gibson, Stephen Kerr and Audrey Nicholl down in this section, but if there are other colleagues who want to ask if they want to catch my eye or Irene's eye, we will try to get through as many as we can. I invite Kenneth Gibson, convener of Finance and Public Administration. Thank you and good afternoon, First Minister. In evidence taken on the Scottish budget, witnesses expressed great concern at the demographic challenges facing Scotland as a size of our workforce declines relative to our overall population. That is likely to result in falling income tax receipts, while welfare spend increases impacting on fiscal sustainability. Yesterday, the University of Scotland said that the priority must be to make our economy more competitive to attract people of working age from beyond our borders and encourage more Scots to spend their working lives here. While we lack powers over immigration, we can still attract workers from elsewhere in the UK. How will the Scottish Government address those demographic challenges? Demographic challenges are facing all countries, but they are particularly acute in a Scottish context. They have clearly a big impact on the future sustainability of our public finances. There are short technical things that we need to do—technical but very important things—in terms of the spending review, the review of the fiscal framework, which will determine to some extent the flexibilities year on year that a Scottish Government has to manage some of that. Fundamentally, in longer term, it is about ensuring that we have a population that is fit for the modern economy that we are seeking to create. We seek to encourage people to come here. We do that in a number of ways. We do that through the international marketing campaigns to encourage people here. We encourage students to come and study here and then try to encourage them to stay. We work with businesses to recruit internationally, and we will continue to do all that happily for Scotland. I think that we have an absolutely fantastic prospectus to put to people in terms of everything that we have got to offer from the sectors that are at the cutting edge of the developments that we are seeing globally right now through to the beautiful environment that we have in Scotland for people to live in and the quality public services that we have in Scotland. We are deemed to have the best educated workforce in the whole of Europe, I think, so there is a lot to commend us, but I cannot, in answering this question, put to one side the fact that we do not have control of immigration, which would always be a constraint, but less of a constraint if you had a neutral immigration policy that was not working against your attempt to grow the population. We face an immigration policy that is in absolute conflict with what we are seeking to do in terms of the growth of our population, which is making it much harder. Obviously, the end of freedom of movement with Brexit has done that, and then a wider immigration policy that is about constraining people coming into the country makes it much more difficult. Again, a bit like social security, you do not have to support Scottish independence, like you and I do, to understand surely the advantages of having key powers to the future sustainability of our economy, sitting here able to be exercised in a way that aligns with the objectives that we have. I think that it is fundamental, but when you look at some constituencies in Edinburgh, there are seven, eight thousand sometimes of EU citizens who live in some of these constituencies. I have only got two or three hundred in mind, and that is because the economy of North Ayrture has not grown at the same pace as other areas of Scotland. Surely, if we have strong economic growth, it will, at least initially before we have powers of immigration, if assuming we get them with independence, attract people from elsewhere in the United Kingdom, because that itself is critical. Of course, many people from my area, as you will know, having left North Ayrture, have moved from there to other parts of Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom. How do we ensure that we deal with the situation as we are at this time? We can and are and should do all that. A key objective of city and region deals, for example, is to support better, faster and more sustainable growth in parts of the country, where that could be said to have lagged behind. We are working very constructively with the UK Government on that, and Ayrture has benefited from that. We want to encourage people and we make a very open offer to people in all other parts of the UK to come and live and work in Scotland. However, there is still a fundamental issue here. We can spread the existing cake more thinly, and we can encourage people who are European citizens living here in Edinburgh to go and live in Ayrture and have grown up there. That is always a really good thing to encourage people to do, but what Scotland needs is to grow our overall population. We can perhaps do some of that. We should try to maximise what we can do within the UK, but we are always going to run up against serious limitations if we do not have an immigration policy that is supporting that wider objective. There will only be so long that we can go down the track of this conversation without running full-square into that fundamental problem. Just one more brief question, which is of fundamental importance to the committee and colleagues of all parties who have addressed it, which is the issue of preventative spend. The Scottish Government has had a number of successes over the years in that area because it is considered crucial to addressing many of our social and economic problems. What new areas of preventative spend are being considered by the Scottish Government at this time? Right now, again, I have referenced the spend and review a couple of times already, and I think that both of the mentions of it could fall into this category, but that is a key consideration. If I take one example, which we have made the first commitment to in this year's budget for the financial year that is about to start, but is a bigger commitment over the time of the Parliament, it is the family wellbeing fund to ensure that we are spending money more effectively and more preventatively to try to stop young people having to go into care, for example. That is a new example of a well-established preventative principle. The funding commitment around tackling drugs and reducing drugs deaths is also a relatively new approach and is also preventative. We have done a number of very important things in terms of preventative spend. Going back to my answer earlier on in the attainment challenge, it often takes a long time to properly understand and track and judge the outcome of that, because of the nature of what you are trying to do, which is what makes it also difficult for Governments to actually take the money from the immediate things that are being supported and very visibly seen and allocate more to preventative spend, the benefits of which might take longer to feed through and become visible. In the election campaign, John Swinney said that the SNP will roll out a new programme to deliver into the hands of every school child in Scotland, a laptop, a Chromebook or tablet to use in school and at home. How many have been issued and why is it that we find that families, including low-income families, still do not have access to a free digital device? I do not have the precise number right now. I will get that for you and will give your committee more detail if you do not already have it of the phasing of that. It is a parliamentary term commitment and it is one that we are extremely committed to. We are working with COSLA in the region of 75,000 devices and internet connections over the course of the pandemic. There was an assessment done of the numbers living in conditions of deprivation whereby they would not have that and therefore were at risk of being digitally excluded and that was the 75,000 and we have done that. We continue to take forward this commitment, which is one of the key commitments that we made and stand by and will continue to deliver. I am very grateful for that reply and we are very grateful to receive the detail that you have just suggested. The Cabinet Secretary for Education has suggested that this is not a promise that will be fulfilled in the short term, but it can take up to five years. That does mean that many thousands of children will have left school before the promise is delivered. John Swinney said at the same time that he made this commitment about every school child in Scotland having a laptop, a Chromebook or a tablet to use, that a child access to the internet will struggle. Does that mean that, given that it seems that you may be sticking with what the cabinet secretary has said previously, that many children will be left to struggle for years to come? While I am asking questions about data points, which are important in terms of outcomes to policy objectives and promises, you mentioned, First Minister, free internet connections. Will you also provide the committee with details of how many children currently have a free internet connection courtesy of the Scottish Government? I am sure that we can do that. Many, many will have that due to the work that we did in the pandemic. I am not sure what is difficult to understand about the commitment. We made a manifesto commitment to deliver something over the lifetime of this Parliament. That is standard. He did not say that at the time. There was no qualification to the manifesto promise. I have to go back and check the terms of the manifesto, but I can assure you that the commitment was to deliver this over the terms of the Parliament. If it is such an important commitment, it is perhaps for others to answer why it was not in other parties' manifestos. We are committed to it and we are going to deliver it there. We will continue, as we do, to tackle digital exclusion. The 75,000 that I spoke about will already be providing, have provided families who did not have connections with those connections in order that, as we roll out and complete the commitments around the delivery of next-generation broadband—of course, a reserved responsibility that the Scottish Government is having to step in and largely fund because the UK Government is failing in its commitments there—we will also make sure that people have the wherewithal to use that. Whether it is baby boxes, whether it is the doubling of early education and childcare, whether it is the child payment doubled to lift children out of poverty, but it also mitigates the brutal attacks on incomes of a Westminster Tory Government, or whether it is laptops or tablets, we will continue to make sure that Scotland is the best place in the world for children to grow up, despite the best efforts of those elsewhere in the UK that try to drag us backwards. I will bring you back in if we have time at the end, and I call Audrey Nicholton, followed by Dean Lockhart. I would like to ask the final question around another key issue that we know. Your audio is not working. I ask you to start that question again, please. I just like to ask a final question around another key issue that the criminal justice committee has been looking at, and that is the prison estate. We all know that Covid has put a massive strain on staff and prisoners in prisons, and I am sure that the First Minister would join me in commending how well the service has responded. One means by which we can ease the situation is having enough resources in place and investing in what is often considered to be an antiquated estate dating from the Victorian era. In our budget report, the criminal justice committee called for a sustained above-inflation injection of funds into the prison budget. We welcome the 4.2 per cent increase in operating costs, but no increase has been made in the capital budget for infrastructure improvements. I would like to ask the First Minister what scope is there for even a modest increase in capital costs, for example, to fund small-scale schemes, drug recovery cafes and to provide items of technology to allow prisoners to stay in touch with their families, which we know can make a really big difference to regimes in prison under very much seen as a preventative spend. In terms of what scope there is for more, I do not want to unduly raise expectations. We have put forward Parliament and has approved the budget for the next financial year. I think it was in response to Clare Baker. I did talk about in-year adjustments and priorities that we might set for that. We will keep in mind all the legitimate calls for funding, but this is a tight budget in resource terms and in capital terms. We have invested significantly in the prison estate in past years. There are further investment plans. The existing capital budget will be supporting investment in the infrastructure of the estate. I absolutely agree with Audrey Nicholle about some of the examples cited there that can help to keep people out of prison, which is really important. Some of them sound as if they may be partly at least revenue-fundable as opposed to capital. However, there are strong plans in the overall justice budget to support community services, to support rehabilitation and to focus as much as we can on keeping people who are better facing a punishment, as well as being helped to be rehabilitated out of prison, so that our justice system is overall as effective as it can be. However, we will continue to support the prison service and the very difficult work that it does all of the time, but particularly during Covid, as much as we can in a financial sense. First Minister, I would like to come back to net zero, because, as you probably know, the UK climate change committee has expressed concerns that the credibility of the Scottish climate framework is in jeopardy. That is a direct quote. An example given was the publicly owned energy company announced in 2017, but it never actually saw the light of day. Instead of a publicly owned energy company, the Scottish Government has announced plans for a public energy agency to deliver on the decarbonisation of heat in Scotland, but this will be a virtual agency with no additional staff, no additional budget and no additional resource, and will only be operational by 2025. Given the sheer scale of the challenge in this area of which you acknowledged in a previous question, how can this virtual agency, with no additional budget or resource, be a credible answer? If I can say candidly, I think that we face, like all countries do, many, many challenges in meeting our very ambitious and our climate change ambitions are more stretching than most other countries in the world, so we face many challenges. I am not saying for a second what you have just described there is not one of them. I am not sure what I would describe it as the biggest one in terms of what we face, and we pay very close attention to the committee on climate change. It published its most recent report around the climate compatibility checkpoint for new oil and gas exploration just last week. It has got lots of very important things to say that help us scrutinise our plans and, no doubt, help Parliament to scrutinise them as well. We changed our plans in terms of a publicly-owned energy company. That, of course, was meant to be a retail-based company, not an asset-owning company, but the changing situation around energy. The pandemic led us to change our plans in favour of what we are now pursuing, which is the agency that you describe. As we develop that, there has been consultation on that. We will be very clear about the contribution that we think that can make to our overall plans to achieve our climate change targets. I think that it will be important, but, as I say, I think that there are many other—in fact, the subject matter of your last question—is a much bigger challenge in terms of how we meet our climate change targets. Julia, just to follow up, but this agency is tasked to deliver on the decarbonisation of heat in Scotland with no additional resource, no additional staff. It is a virtual agency, and it will not become operational until 2025. Isn't that an example of a policy that lacks credibility? It does. Obviously, all of our policies, we need to subject to scrutiny and challenge so that we can get them right, but that is about introducing an agency that can, as we go further through this decade, better co-ordinate and lead the efforts that we are making there. It is not the case that our work around this—and we talked about this earlier on—weights until 2025, until this agency is operational. It will become an important part of how we guide and co-ordinate this work, but that work, as I said, we reflected on earlier, is already well under way. Thank you. First Minister, could I return to where we began, which is the outrage in Ukraine? Many community groups, I think, are finding the public response in Scotland immediate, overwhelming and stunning, in fact. It is clear this morning that there is a logistical challenge emerging. Such has been the response that I think has outstripped the initial provision of the logistical transport that will be needed to deliver community groups' support to the Ukraine or to Poland or to wherever people may currently be and are going to require it. I wonder whether you made reference to the hub that you visited this morning. I wonder whether there is something more that the Scottish Government could do to give public information in a forceful way, which will facilitate that huge response by the Scottish public, not finding itself stuck where it cannot serve any purpose. The response has been outstanding. Understandably, people right across the country want to do whatever it is that they can to help and support. I think that there is more that we can do to try to not get in the way of that or supplant that in any way, but to co-ordinate and facilitate it. Yesterday, the cabinet secretary had a discussion about that. It featured in a resilience committee that I chaired yesterday. We are going to, as quickly as we can, look to see what advice we could use fully. In fact, Helena Wittam raised that with me in another forum just yesterday. What advice can we usefully give to people about how they can best contribute, where physical goods are being contributed, donated or gathered, and how logistically we can support them getting to where they need to be. Obviously, agencies and charities have a big part to play in that. We are doing some work right now to try to put some structure around that. I have asked my officials to prepare, as quickly as possible, a letter to all MSPs in the first instance, to set out some of the detail that can be used to communicate with constituents, but we will also seek to raise public awareness around it. I do not sit here right now and have all of the answers to exactly what that will look like, but I recognise that it is important that we help to ensure that the ground swell outpouring of support finds its way to people in Ukraine who need it. I thank my colleague Jackson Carlaw for bringing that really important issue up today, because it is really important that we respond to the absolutely stunning display of solidarity that we have seen from our communities. My question relates to social security, so I have seen from my time on the Social Justice and Social Security Committee how low-income benefits delivered by the Scottish Government, by their very nature, must rely on the underlying entitlement of reserved benefits and therefore require close collaboration with the United Kingdom Government. Do you believe that that collaboration is working to deliver for the people of Scotland and what more could be done to make that efficient and effective? A practical official level, the engagement between the Scottish Government and the DWP as we have designed and introduced those new benefits on, in some cases, transferred responsibility for the benefits that has worked well. Officials in the DWP work with us to try to ensure that whether it is transfer of information or the detail that we need to design our systems here, is operating effectively. Obviously, there are political disagreements and these are inescapable sometimes, but they have not by and large gotten the way of that very important and effective work to allow us to achieve what has been done so far. How can that be done better? I will go back to what I said earlier on. I think that it would make more sense on a practical basis if we had more of the social security powers joined up under the aegis of the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament. Sometimes one of the limiting factors in a benefit that we are trying to deliver is the underlying entitlement set by UK benefits, so it is difficult for us to change that, so what we can achieve is limited from the outset. I think that if we have a more holistic arrangement, we will be able to deliver more, and hopefully in the future that is what we will have. I will be followed by Kenneth Gibson, unless anybody else catches my eye. Kenneth will be the final questioner in this session. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. First Minister, I had a constituency visit to neighbourhood networks on Monday and met with some of the representatives from Short Spellshill, Motherwall and Wishaw, who were telling me about their activities, including drumming lessons, guitar lessons and dancing. We were reading poetry that has been developed and hearing about creative writing classes. To me, it epitomises what the committee has been looking at in terms of what wellbeing means in a community setting and how culture has such an important part to play in that. We covered that in our budget scrutiny. I wonder if you could just tell us how your Government will ensure that wellbeing is delivered throughout all portfolio areas of the Government? We seek to do that as a matter, of course, because we will not always succeed. Let me be candid about that in the first instance, and there will be many areas where we need to do better to ensure that that is embedded. However, any aspect of Government policy that is not contributing to the wellbeing of people across the country is not doing what it should be doing. Fundamentally, that is the most important thing. There are many different aspects of that in many different ways in which we measure overall wellbeing or which we consider overall wellbeing, but that is what Governments are there to do to improve the wellbeing of the people that they serve. Culture has got such a massive role to play in that. You have cited a constituency example there just in the past couple of weeks. I have seen first-hand examples of this at Scottish Opera in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago listening to details about a project that they lead, working with people with long Covid and people with dementia using the power of song to help in both breathing difficulties of people with long Covid and also the mental health difficulties of people with long Covid or people who have struggled in other ways during the pandemic. There is a very real example. I was at the Paisley Book Festival on Saturday talking about poetry with Catherine Jamie the macker and somebody from the audience there talked about a poetry project that was doing exactly the same. Culture is such a strong and important sector of our economy. It contributes massively financially to Scotland, but it is much, much, much more than that. It is about our wellbeing, our happiness, how we engage with each other, how we understand and empathise with each other, how we learn about different parts of Scotland and different parts of the world. It is so vitally important that we see it in that deeper and more fundamental sense. Thank you. I now call on Kenneth Gibson, who will be followed by Finlay Carson, who took us into the general questions, so it is probably fitting that he takes us out of the general questions at the end. Kenneth. Thank you. First Minister, Secretary of State Michael Gove advised our committee last Thursday that UK ministers will involve themselves in devolved areas ranging from local government to ferry provision in the Western Isles to literacy and numeracy programs, all without consulting with Scottish ministers in any of those decisions. How concerned are you about the rolling back of devolution? That is the express objective of the current UK Government, is to undermine, roll back and get in the way of this Parliament doing its job. People do not have to agree with us politically to see what is obvious to anybody who is paying any attention to Scottish politics. It is not acceptable democratically. The Parliament was constituted with certain powers. Those powers have grown over the years, and this Government and Parliament are elected democratically by the people of Scotland to exercise those powers and to hold the Government responsible for them. It should matter to all of us that that is not attacked in the way that it is being attacked with the power grabs that we are speaking about. Whether the UK Government will have any success in doing any of that is another matter. Some may look at their performance in their own areas of responsibility and think that they probably will not be successful, but that is another matter. The very fact that they are trying shows the utter contempt with which they view the Scottish Parliament and Scottish democracy. For those of a different political persuasion to me in this Parliament who might roll their eyes at that, you will only have to listen to Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, or politicians in the Northern Ireland Executive to know that those concerns are not exclusive to the SNP Scottish Government. They are shared by devolved administrations elsewhere. Rural depopulation is a significant concern to our committee, but post Covid there is an opportunity for more people to work from home. That is put at risk by the lack of broadband. We know that regulation of telecommunications is reserved to Westminster. However, I am sure that you would not wish to mislead the public in suggesting that the physical roll-out and the roll-out of R100 is absolutely the responsibility of the Scottish Government. The former cabinet secretary said that he would resign if all of Scotland did not have superfast broadband by the end of 2021. However, we now know that it is going to be 2025, before people in the Highlands and the south of Scotland will get broadband. Where did it go wrong? We are rolling out broadband faster than any other part of the UK. We are certainly taking responsibility for it, because UK Governments have not stepped up and fulfilled their responsibility. If you look at the funding, the absolute lion's share of about 90 per cent of the funding for it is coming from the Scottish Government. We will be providing vouchers along the way, either for areas that cannot physically access it or where they are later in the programme, but we are fixed on doing that because it is so important. The premise of your question is right. We need to make sure that access to broadband—this is the journey that we are on—is as easy and as fundamental as access to electricity is. That helps to continue to transform the ability of people to live in, work in and build lives in the rural parts of the country. That said, Derek Mackay committed £600 million five years ago with a commitment and a promise to deliver by the end of 2021. That is not going to happen, so that is a failure. I am asking you where did it go wrong. We deal with some of the most challenging topography anywhere in Europe. We have made massive strides in the delivery of broadband. We are continuing to make sure that money—the £600 million—is your right to say that it came from the Scottish Government. Despite the reserved aspects of the responsibility here, I think that at one point it was £20 million contributed to something by the UK Government. If you want to trade the responsibilities here, I am happy to sit here for a long time and do that. That programme is under way. One of the fastest parts—if not the fastest part—in terms of the progress now around broadband. We will continue to focus on completing that and providing the voucher support for people who need it along the way. I am going to squeeze in one final question, because colleagues have been so helpful in being concise with their questions. The First Minister is concise with her answers, so Dean Lockhart on the basis that it is equally concise with the last word. Thank you very much. Yes, very briefly. The committee I convened is the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee. Mr Gibson mentioned ferries. A further delay, First Minister, has been announced in the delivery of the two ferries being built at Ferguson Marine. Are you personally involved in trying to fix those on-going shambles? Of course, as I am with everything that the Scottish Government is responsible for, I am involved in making sure that the right things are being done by my cabinet secretaries, ministers and officials. Having oversight of that, that is my responsibility. Kate Forbes is the lead minister on this, and I know that she has been keeping Parliament up to date, and we will continue to do that. The latest issue around cabling and the ferries, which has only just come to light but happened before the Scottish Government, of course, took ownership of Ferguson's shipyard, is something that the management there now is very focused on fixing as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible. Do you acknowledge that this has been one of the worst procurement exercises in devolution? I am not going to allow you to put words in my mouth. There have been a number of very, very difficult challenges along the way that we are still working through, and I would not have wanted it to transpire like this. You can take that as red, but we are very focused on getting it on track, getting it fixed and making sure that ferguson is important, because we have ensured that ferguson continues supporting the employment that is supported by that shipyard and making sure that it has a sustainable future. Before that descends, I thank all colleagues for their questions to the First Minister for giving up our time to respond to those questions. Briefly, before we conclude, First Minister, could I raise an issue that has been raised in earlier meetings of the convener's group? If you are aware, there have been some concerns around some of the LCMs. There have been a number of occasions where the timescales involved have left committees with little time to carry out their scrutiny of an LCM, as was raised in previous meetings of the convener's group. We appreciate that the committees have significant work programmes with very busy agendas, so they need adequate time to consider the LCMs. We recognise that those need time to allow for discussions and negotiations with the UK Government, how it would be helpful if LCMs could be lodged at the same time as those discussions are taking place. They can always be updated at a later date, however, this would allow the process to begin and committees to get moving with their scrutiny. I am not necessarily expecting a response now, but if you were able to come back to the convener's group on that point, I will ask the Minister for Parliamentary Business to look specifically at whether there is a different process that we can put in place, at least in principle, to try to resolve the issue that you are raising. Thank you very much indeed. Just to confirm, the next meeting is on Wednesday, 30 March. We will consider issues relating to strategic priorities, in particular progress on scrutiny of post-EU devolution issues. Thank you very much indeed colleagues for your attendance, and I close this meeting.