 That is to say, I have time to come to the meeting of the convener's group. I start by welcoming Edward Mountain to his first meeting of the group as the new convener of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee, and I also put on record my thanks to his predecessor, Dean Lockhart. We have received apologies from Stuart McMillan, convener of the DPLR committee. This meeting will be taking place in public and your microphones will be operated automatically. It's the second of our meetings with the First Minister in this session. I welcome the First Minister to the meeting. It will last between an hour and a half, an hour and three quarters. We've agreed to focus today's meeting on cost of living framed around the programme for government, but inevitably there will be other issues that conveners want to raise and I hope and expect we'll be able to do that through the course of the meeting. That will require questions to be fairly brief and, similarly, responses. I will do my best to call everybody for the questions that they've indicated in advance, but I'm sure there will be issues that arise and people will want to respond to that, so we'll hopefully allow a bit of flexibility for that. We're going to kick off, as I say, in the broad realm of cost of living. I'm going to invite Elena Whitham to start with the first question to Elena. Thank you very much, convener, and good afternoon, First Minister. Last week the UK Government introduced its mini-budget. Has the Scottish Government carried out any assessment of the impact that this will have on the measures introduced here in Scotland to tackle poverty and the cost crisis? Can the First Minister outline how the Scottish Government is working with local authorities in the third sector to support people and what additional fiscal flexibilities do you think are required to ensure that the Scottish Government is able to continue to deliver for those most in need? I'll try to, as briefly as I can, take the three parts of that question. First, in terms of our analysis of the budget on Friday, as you can imagine, given events since Friday, that is very much an ongoing exercise. I think that it is quite hard to overstate the impact that Friday's budget will have on poverty, inequality and the financial stress that millions of people are going to be living under. Obviously, much of the immediate attention after the Chancellor spoke on Friday was on the distributional impact of some of those policies themselves. My view is well-known. It was very difficult to defend the policies on those terms. The statistics are well known. By now, the vast bulk of the added borrowing that is funding tax cuts is going to the very richest in society. I think that 45 per cent or thereabouts of the value of those tax cuts will go to the top 5 per cent of income earners in the country. As the IFS set out, only those over £155,000 will benefit at all everybody else. Below that income threshold will lose. That, in terms of our analysis, will obviously make those at the very top of the income wealth spectrum even richer and wealthier. However, because that raises the relative poverty line, it puts more people into relative poverty, so that is a matter of concern. Since Friday, we are very starkly realising now that the wider impacts of the budget are likely to be much greater than those immediate impacts. Obviously, since Friday, we have seen the collapse in the pound that will fuel inflation, which will make the cost of living crisis worse. We are already seeing the increasing cost of government borrowing increasing, but there is now the inevitability of a sharp rise in interest rates, which is going to have a very profound impact on those with mortgages, credit card debt, and that will push more people into very serious financial stress. We have had warnings in the past 24 hours from the IMF. We have just had the quite extraordinary, as a word that is overused in political discourse, I think that it is appropriate this morning, intervention of the Bank of England concerned about serious financial instability, speculation this morning of pension funds about to fall over. We have the Bank of England staging an emergency intervention not to respond to some external shock or global event but to try to reduce the damage of the UK Government's own policies. It is really extraordinary and unprecedented. I think that there needs to be very urgent and immediate action taken. I do not think that we should see the policies announced on Friday as inevitable. I think that there is an immediate symbol of some kind of good sense being restored. The decision to abolish the top rate of tax should be reversed, and clearly that would have an impact on some of what I spoke about earlier on. I do not think that it is possible to overstate the damage of this budget to what we are trying to do in terms of poverty and tackle inequality, but in the wider sense, the UK, as we speak right now, is in the midst of an unfolding and rapidly deteriorating economic and financial crisis. It is going to be ordinary people that pay the price of that. I do not think that we have had a more serious economic situation, possibly even including 2008, which was a global financial crash, but in the UK probably not a more serious situation in our memories. That has a big impact and, therefore, to come back to your question, our analysis has to continue as this situation unfolds. Second part of your question briefly, we continue to discuss with local government partners and with the third sector. Obviously, we have already taken some decisions that were set out in the programme for government to increase support for advice agencies, giving help to people on the front line. We have set out work around rent levels and we will continue to do everything that we can to support local government. We have most recently had discussions with COSLA to try to give decent pay rises to those working in local government. Lastly, in terms of flexibilities, I think that everything that we are seeing right now tells us that we need far greater economic and financial levers at our disposal so that we are not at the mercy of decisions that are taken elsewhere and we can have the full suite of powers and levers that other governments have to try not just to stabilise the kind of crisis that has been created right now but to build the kind of economy and an economy based on equality and wellbeing. I think that there is a majority in this Parliament that wants to see. The committee produced a report on its inquiry into energy prices in July for which we still await a response. Are there any new packages that the Scottish Government is able to provide to help households with their energy bills? We will continue to take whatever action we can. I set out in the programme for government some of the action that we were taking to help with the wider cost of living. Energy prices, as all conveners are aware, are the factors that drive the increase in energy prices and also the access to the levers and resources, energy market regulation, access to the kind of borrowing that we have seen, the UK Government not for the tax cuts but for the energy costs help access. Those are not levers that the Scottish Government holds. However, we do have some levers that we can use to reduce the wider cost of living pressures, which is why the emergency legislation will be published shortly and will outline the plans for the rent freeze and the moratorium on evictions. We have, through Social Security Scotland, the winter heating help fund that we will bring to bear, and we are looking at everything that we can do to try to help people with the costs that they are incurring. However, we need to continue to see all Governments at every level exercise the responsibilities that we have and our energy costs, as we have seen. We need to see action from the UK Government. The action that was announced a week or so ago was very welcome, but, even with that, we are going to see in Scotland and across the UK significant and rising numbers of people living in fuel poverty, including extreme fuel poverty. Where you have the levers of power and drilling down into the report, 70 per cent of homes in Scotland are off-grid using oil for heating and sometimes cooking. They are not covered by off-gen, so if they do not pay for their oil, they will not get any more delivered. What help is the Scottish Government planning to offer those households? Those are levers that lie with the UK Government largely on regulation of these matters. Through financial assistance that we can provide, we will continue to look at what we can do. I come back to a more general point here in terms of the finite nature of the budget that we have and the inability to access resources in the way that the UK Government, where most of those levers lie, is able to do. Obviously, what I know is an issue of huge interest to the committee that you are now convening. The work that we are doing around heat and energy efficiency more generally is important in this regard, not just responding to the short-term pressures, but making sure that we are dealing with the longer termages here that reduce energy costs while reducing the carbon impact of how we heat our homes as well. Do you agree with the committee that we should be calling on electricity companies to make sure that the prepayment charges on electric metres are reflective of the standard tariffs and not subjected to additional charges? Yes, in general, I do. I convened a summit a few weeks back with some of the key energy companies. Issues around prepayment metres were one of the issues that we spoke about. As you know, there are complexities around that, but there is serious inequity in terms of those who are on prepayment metres. The kinds of action that energy companies are able to take, including some of the potential actions that you have spoken about there, were discussed at that summit. I would continue to encourage the energy companies to take that kind of action to reduce that inequity that exists. I would like to ask the First Minister about the impact of fuel costs and the cost of living crisis on two aspects of health. One is the impact that it is going to have on the provision of NHS services with regard to the increased costs that they face, and the other is on the health of our citizens and those presenting to our NHS and what the Government's assessment of that is. In terms of those two aspects, firstly, the increase in the cost of energy clearly affects health boards because they have to pay the energy bills of hospitals and health centres. As more of our health budget is taken up with paying rising costs of energy, then clearly that means that there is less of that budget that can be spent on front-line patient care, so it has a very direct impact. One of the issues that we are still seeking clarity—well, I think that we have some basic clarity, at least I hope that we do—is the extent to which the UK Government's announcement on help for businesses with energy costs covers hospitals and schools and other public buildings. We have had, I think, clarity that it will cover. I know that the Chancellor said that the Government will provide a price guarantee equivalent to the one provided for households for all businesses, and it has given us the indication that that includes schools and hospitals, but we have not yet seen any of the detail of that. If that follows through into what we hope it will, then some of that impact is going to be mitigated. However, as with businesses and individuals, even with those welcome schemes that have been announced, they are still going to be facing increases in the cost of energy, so that is a matter of concern. Secondly, which is also a significant concern, but I think that that is going to be something that we need to monitor on an on-going basis and will be multifaceted, is the impact. A bit like Covid, in many respects, the impact of the pressure and the anxiety that will be felt by people will exacerbate mental health conditions. Given that every time I say something like that, I still have to remind myself that we are sitting here, and suppose that one of the richest countries in the world is talking about this, but growing numbers of people unable to afford to heat their homes is potentially going to feed through into physical illness too. Those are going to be added pressures for the national health service, for social care services that we need to work with the NHS and social care to both understand and to monitor and to ensure that, as far as we can, we are supporting and equipping the NHS to deal with them. I know that you have other issues that you want to raise. I have a follow-up question on that specifically. Last night, Sky News reported that the former Bank of England deputy governor, Sir Charlie Bean, said that spending cuts of the UK Government announced last week that could finish the NHS. Obviously, he is talking about the NHS in England. I just want your response to that, because you read that, and the spending cuts are affecting the Scottish budget as well as the Scottish situation as well. What is your response to that, as a leader of the Scottish Government? I am profoundly concerned by all of those things. We are working within a spending envelope right now that is effectively determined at the last UK Government spending review. The UK Government appeared to have indicated that it is not intending to open that. That was set at the time that inflation was, I think, three or four per cent. It is now almost in double figures. Not to open that is eroding the budgets that we have right now. I set that out in the week that we published the programme for government. The budget that we passed as a Parliament at the start of this financial year is already worth £1.7 billion less than it was because of the effects of inflation. However, there is an added effect here. Going back to the unfolding economic crisis, in order to restore market confidence and to undo the damage that has been done, I think that everybody looks at the situation and thinks that deep spending cuts on the part of the UK Government are going to be inevitable and inescapable. That is profoundly concerning given the situation that we are in. That affects all public services, but given the importance of the national health service and the share of the budget that the national health service relies on, it is particularly worrying for it. I and it is rightly and properly regularly the topic of questioning and debate in this Parliament. The Government I lead is absolutely rightly responsible for the performance of NHS Scotland, and I do not shy away from that. However, the issues that we are grappling with in the NHS in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are not just about how we manage the system. They are fundamentally about the need for a massive injection of both money and people to deal with the rising demand, to deal with the effects of Covid. We have a fixed budget within which it is very difficult to respond to that in the way that we would want to, which is why we are relying on the UK Government not going down the austerity spending cuts route, but looking at the prospects over the next period, I do not think that anybody can be anything other than very deeply and very profoundly concerned at what might lie ahead. Can I ask First Minister, in developing the latest programme for government, to what extent has the Scottish Government maintained its commitment to the priority set out in the Covid recovery strategy and has its priorities or focus on Covid recovery changed in light of the current cost crisis? In terms of the aims and objectives of the Covid recovery strategy, those have not changed. All of us saw very starkly the disproportionate impact that Covid had on different sections of the population. Obviously, there were issues there in terms of ethnic minority communities, but those, at least well off, suffered disproportionately as a result. As we build Covid recovery, it is important that we have a focus on those inequalities. Those objectives have not changed. Clearly, the context in which we are pursuing the Covid recovery strategy has changed and is rapidly changing for all the reasons that we have been talking about. I do not need to go into detail again. As any quality is likely to widen as a result of the economic situation that we are facing right now, as more people are pushed into poverty, despite our best efforts to lift people, particularly children, out of poverty, we are going to see some of those effects being even more pronounced. We will need to continue to consider that strategy in light of that. We will continue to do that. I will ask Richard Leonard. First Minister, the public audit committee is arranging for a full evidence session with you in connection with the vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides routes. At this stage, have you ruled out that there has been any criminality? I have many responsibilities as First Minister. I take each and every one of them very seriously, but I do not think that anybody would say that I should be the arbiter on this or any issue, whether there has been criminality. I have certainly seen no evidence of that, but it is not my job. We have independent authorities that are there to determine the issues on whatever topic it is that we are speaking about. More generally, I know that I will be appearing at your committee over the next period to go into those issues in detail. I am not sure that it is true to say that I am looking forward to that opportunity, but I am certainly very willing. It is my duty, but I am happy to go into all those issues in detail with your committee. I turn now to evidence that we took at the committee last week on the state of Scotland's colleges. The Auditor General told us that, as many as 1 in 3 students from the most deprived areas of Scotland did not complete their course at college last year, and the same is true of students with a disability. 1 in 3 failed to complete and care experienced students, the figure was as high as 40 per cent. What action is the Government taking to avoid repetition of that inequality bias in this academic year? Without trying to avoid the substance of the question that you have asked, we have, over the past two years, had the significant impact, not just in colleges and schools as well, of the pandemic and the disruption to education there, which the education system is now in recovery from. In terms of our college sector, the longer-term trend in tackling inequality completion of courses, the performance and attainment in our colleges is going in the right direction. That is not intended to be complacent. We need to make sure that we continue to support our colleges to achieve that. In higher education, we are also seeing a very strong and very encouraging trend in closing the attainment gap with increasing numbers of young people from our more deprived communities getting access to universities, which was one of the key targets that we set earlier in our tackling attainment work. What is your assessment of the impact of the cost of living crisis, specifically on rural and island communities, and what specifically is the Scottish Government doing to address it? As with all aspects of poverty and inequality, there is a disproportionate and, at times, quite unique impact on rural and remote communities. We talk about poverty with the indicators and the metrics that we use about poverty, which often misses the pockets of rural poverty. Edward Mountain talked about people off gas grid, for example, using heating oil. That is just one example of many ways that already higher delivery charges, for example, the premium that will be on food prices. Those are all things that will affect everybody across Scotland right now, but will affect people in rural communities more generally. We seek in all of our policies to be mindful of that and to try to take account of that in our policies. For example, that is a longer term in terms of immediate, but I referred to earlier on the work that we are doing around de-carbonising heating. I was speaking about this in Parliament just last week at FMQs. We recognise the additional costs of that in rural communities and seek to recognise that in the funding schemes that we have. Across all of our policies, we will seek to take account of that. If there is a specific one that you want me to go into in more detail, I am happy to seek to do that. The rural affairs community is obviously very concerned about de-population, and there are many factors that contribute to that. We have already heard and you have touched on it from Edward Mountain about the issues that are facing rural properties that are off the mains gas grid. The rural community is also concerned about the reduction in investment potentially from private and social landlords given the potential rent freeze. Can I ask you what your assessment is of the unintended consequences of the policy on future investment in the rural housing stock? We have to, and often it is what leads to frustrations on both sides of any particular argument, to do very careful assessments of the intended effect of a policy, what you have described as unintended consequences. We also have to assess policies in terms of ECHR compliance. That process we have gone through and are going through ahead of the introduction of the emergency legislation. Some of the balances that we have to strike, I am sure—forgive me, I am not trying to be political here—but from the point that the perspective that you have asked me that question will be seen as not going far enough, but from the other perspective on this issue will be seen as going too far in the wrong direction. Those are just the balances that we have to strike. We announced the rent freeze before the current or the mayhem of the last few days in the markets and the extent of the expected increase in interest rates. That is also going to have an impact both on homeowners, those who let property and those who rent property. We will need to continue to take all of that into account. Rising rents, not uniform across Scotland, but rising rents in particular parts of Scotland is one of the serious contributors to a cost of living crisis. Going back to Edward Mountain's point, it is one of the levers that we have at our disposal. I, you will no doubt say too often, talk about the levers that another Government has and should use more in my view. It is incumbent on me to use the levers that we have at our disposal. The last point that I would make about housing provision in particular in rural communities. Our affordable housing programme is extremely strong and is continuing to progress. The costs of construction inflation clearly have impacts on that, but we continue to ensure that through that wider programme we are also mindful of the different housing needs in rural parts of the country. A rent freeze will reduce the investment from private and social landlords in the much-needed improvement to insulation and upgrading heating systems in rural homes that are facing fuel poverty. Will it increase or decrease as a result of the policy? I do not think that that is the case. We obviously consider all of those issues and all decisions in this have to be a balance. Right now, people are struggling to pay rents. They will increasingly be struggling to pay mortgages, they are struggling to heat their homes and it is incumbent on us to do what we can to keep those costs down. It is important to emphasise that, although we will no doubt have considerations and debate in Parliament when it comes to March next year about whether there should be a longer period for a rent freeze, this is a temporary measure to deal with the cost-of-living crisis. We will continue to discuss the concerns that landlords have here, but we judge, and I think that we rightly judge right now in the cost-of-living crisis, that action to keep down the costs of rents is really important for people when all the other costs that they are facing are rising so steeply. Thank you, convener, and thank you, First Minister. Continuing that theme of housing, ensuring that we have sufficient affordable housing will be a key element in the response to the cost-of-living crisis. How confident are you that we will be able to deliver the 110,000 affordable homes by 2030, particularly in the context of increasing costs for construction and shortage of key skills? Do you think that building 110,000 new homes continues to be the best way to meet Scotland's housing needs? First, I believe that that is one of the most important parts of what we are doing to meet Scotland's housing needs. We have a mixed-tenure housing system in Scotland, and that will continue to be the case, but access to affordable and social rented housing is fundamental as part of that overall mix. We have now started the delivery against the 110,000 target. As a reminder, the target is that 70 per cent of those will be for social rent and, going back to Finlay Carson's point earlier on, 10 per cent will be in remote rural and island communities. We see, and you will be very familiar with this, progress with the affordable housing supply programme varies quarter to quarter. There are a whole host of factors that influence that, but the progress so far is good and gives us confidence in our ability to meet this target. I think that the next statistics will be published at the end of October. There are, as there is in almost every area of Government responsibility right now, very serious headwinds. Construction inflation is an issue that will be concerning those who are building social and affordable housing right now. I know that I have had discussions with housing associations in my constituency about some of those pressures, but, nevertheless, we continue to see a strong programme and strong delivery there, and we will continue to take the action that we need to take to ensure that that continues to be the case. You touched on your own discussions with housing associations and, in evidence that the committee has heard on this issue, the affordable housing issue, witnesses have questioned the financial capacity of social landlords to invest in decarbonising their existing stock in addition to developing new homes and also keeping the affordability of tenants rents. How do you think that we can manage those three aims together? Obviously, the housing regulator has got a key part to play here in assessing and monitoring the financial robustness of registered social landlords. It published a report earlier this year that showed that the financial performance of RSLs remained robust, but it also recognised the significant challenges that lie ahead. Recovering from the impact of Covid is obviously a challenge, but disruption in global supply chains that have been partly caused by Covid continuing situation in China, the war in Ukraine and the current situation right now are all exacerbating that. The housing regulator has made clear that social landlords should be continuing to challenge every aspect of their expenditure as necessary and to keep rents as affordable as possible. That is relevant in the context of the rent freeze that I was speaking about earlier on. It is important that we continue to work with the sector through the regulator, but more generally to help it to manage the challenges that it faces and to deliver on those three aims, which remain as important as ever. The committee has been looking at a range of ways to tackle the affordable housing issue, not just building, but at the empty homes, the short-term lets and so on. I am also interested in the Scottish Government's response to the issue of second homes. Does the First Minister think that more needs to be done to manage demand for second homes in a way that does not encroach on people accessing housing? If so, what are our options? In short, we have to consider how we achieve and retain the best balance in terms of the housing provision. I do not know in another context the discussion about how we are trying to embed human rights in our approach to government. One of the most fundamental human social rights is the right to a roof over your head and the right to a home. We need to make sure that, while we want to encourage people to come and live in Scotland and encourage people to spend time in Scotland, we have a housing system that meets the primary needs of the population. There are different ways. Obviously, there is the approach to council tax on second homes, and there are issues about planning, for example, that we need to keep under review. I think that new build is a key part of growing the overall supply. However, as we do that, we are also looking at changing use or bringing accommodation that has been in the private rented sector into the social rented sector. When I visited Shelter the day after the programme for government, that was one of the points that they were making. I, to go back to my constituency experience, my constituency includes the wonderful part of the south side of Glasgow that is Government Hill, which has had a massive, for the scale of that part of the city, acquisition programme in recent years. We need to deal with some particular challenges there, but nevertheless, one that I think has wider applicability. There are lots of different things that we need to do to make sure that we are providing the right number of houses in Scotland, but also the right mix and in the right places. I am going to move on to the broad theme of employability and skills. I am going to invite Kenneth Gibson to start the question. Thank you, Presiding Officer, on your afternoon, First Minister. David Heald, Emeritus Professor of Adam Smith Business School, has said that tackling endemic problems of inequality and poverty should be addressed not by higher benefits than the rest of the UK but by enhanced economic performance. With productivity growth per person currently lagging behind the UK as a whole, will the Scottish Government reconsider portfolio funding allocations to prioritise growth and boost economic performance, thereby reducing inequality and poverty? We will obviously continue to keep portfolio allocations under review in terms of our budget process every year. We set out a resource spending review earlier this year. That is not a budget, so those issues will have further consideration ahead of the budget. We have also got the emergency budget review underway right now looking at some of the difficult decisions that we need to continue to take to balance our budget, given the erosion of it by inflation that I spoke about earlier on, but I will try to free up some resource to help people with the very real challenges that are being faced right now. Obviously, the national strategy for economic transformation is focused on some of the issues that you have identified there, making sure that we are promoting sustainable economic growth, that we are doing that with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation, that it is sustainable economic growth, that it has skills underpinning it, so that we deal with some of the productivity challenges that we have faced. On the upside, Scotland has largely closed the productivity gap that it had with the rest of the UK. It needs to go further in terms of meeting that objective with other countries. We continue to be a very attractive destination for inward investment. We are seeing strong performance, notwithstanding the headwinds around some of our exports. There are lots of very encouraging trends within the Scottish economy, but this is a difficult period in which we need to continue to focus on and tackle some of those fundamentals. The funds for employability are being reduced by £57 million due to the inflationary squeeze on our budget. Is this not a false economy, given that, to reduce poverty, we need to enable people who are economically inactive to gain the skills necessary to obtain employment, particularly those that are furthest from the labour market? I think that the Deputy First Minister set out our thinking around this when he set out his savings a couple of weeks ago. The first point that I would want to reiterate is that those are not decisions that we relish having to take. They are inescapable decisions. I think that it is important for me to just keep repeating some of the key facts here. A budget that is worth £1.7 billion less than it was when we passed the budget because of inflation. We cannot vary income tax in year. We cannot borrow for day-to-day resource spending. We have a legal obligation to balance our books, so we have to do something. We are also seeing rising costs of pay deals, for example. We are looking very carefully at how we can make difficult decisions, but the decisions that have the least impact on people. Employability is important. We still invest a lot in employability, but the savings that were announced was a careful judgment that, right now, at a time when unemployment is very low—I do not think that we should be complacent about any of those indicators at the moment, given what is happening—but, right now, unemployment is very low, probably as close to full employment as we will get. We have a situation of labour shortages in many parts of our economy. What we need to try to do is to focus money on, as far as we can, pay deals to attract people into areas of shortage. That is why we chose to shift resource from those employability schemes into the areas that I have spoken about. None of those are easy decisions. None of those are decisions that we want to take, and we have to take them as carefully as possible and be clear in the rationale that we are following when we do take them. Thank you. It is a full-on from the questions from Kenneth Gibson. The £53 million saving on employability—we heard evidence this morning from Close the Gap—has concerns around lack of transparency in the budget. They are not exactly sure where that cut will come in. They expressed some concerns that it would come from the money that is there to support the parental employability support fund activity. We are looking for clarity on whether it impacts on that. We have a letter from Richard Lochhead that sets out the rationale for why this bit of the budget has been moved. It is a part of the budget that is focused on employability of playing its part in reducing child poverty figures. Would you anticipate that, in the full-on years budget of 2023-24, we would see this type of investment being prioritised to compensate for the saving that has been made this year? Obviously, the savings that were set out by the Deputy First Minister had information published on that. Obviously, all of that will be reflected in budget revisions in the normal way. I am happy to make sure that your committee gets a further communication setting out exactly the impact of those changes in terms of where they are coming from so that there is no jubiety. I have not heard the evidence that you have heard this morning. Of course, there is continued investment in employability, I think, loan parents and the employability services that are most directly connected to dealing with child poverty, for example. That is important. If there is a lack of clarity about that, I will undertake to make sure that we resolve that. I wish that we were not having to make any of those choices. I am not going to sit here and say that there is absolutely no impact and nothing to worry about. Those are choices that we would rather not be making, but they are choices that we are forced to make and that we are seeking to make the choices that have the strongest rationale and the least impact in terms of a negative impact. In terms of restoring some of those budgets in future years, I cannot give an absolute commitment to that, but we need to keep those kinds of things under review, not least because, as I have said to Kenny Gibson, the rationale for shifting some employability resource into dealing with pay pressures, for example, rests partly on the current situation with the labour market. If, in six months, a year's time, which is not impossible, given what we are living through right now, we have a very different set of challenges in the labour market, some of those judgments will potentially be different. That is part of the volatility that we are experiencing right now, and we need to try to manage that in the decisions that we are taking as carefully as we can. I can also ask about the national strategy for economic transformation that Mr Gibson raised. The delivery plans—I think that there are six delivery plans, they were due within six months, which was at the start of September. Are you able to give an update on when the delivery plans will be published? I think that they are all due to be published imminently, but again, I will get specific days. I do not have the specific dates in front of me right now, but I am happy to provide that information to you. I have outlined the significant economic challenges that we are facing at the moment. Has that had an impact on what is in the delivery plan? I know that it is a 10-year long-term strategy, but has it taken into account the current situation where we are facing it? Any economic strategy for economic transformation and growth is clearly going to be impacted in the short term by economic changes and trends and volatility such as we are experiencing, but it is a 10-year strategy. Much of what it is seeking to do is about the fundamentals of the economy that matter, notwithstanding some of the short-term headwinds that we are facing right now. The focus on entrepreneurship, for example, is about the kind of economy that we are seeking to build in the longer term. However, in terms of the sequencing of things that we do and the different impacts, any economic strategy does not exist in a parallel universe to the real economy that we are living through right now. One of the areas that the Public Audit Committee has concerned itself with over the past few months is the whole planning for skills agenda and what appeared to be a breakdown in the relationship between the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland. An announcement was made to Parliament last week of James Withers heading up a review of the architecture, at least of that whole area, but somebody said to me yesterday another review, another year, when nothing changes. Are they right? No, I do not think that they are right. I just say this with a bit of a wry smile. I think that it is one of the features of the response to Government. Often you get people calling for reviews of things when they feel that that is not being done and then when there is a review, it is the wrong thing to do. That is just a feature of things. A lot of the issues that were raised in the Audit Scotland report about the skills landscape have already been addressed and will be addressed on an ongoing basis. The work that James Withers, who has massive respect for the work that he has done with food and drink and a lot of which would have featured on the skills that are needed in that sector, has been tasked with doing. That is really important. It is important in any review that we give it time and space to do its work, but we learn as we go and make sure that those issues are being addressed on an ongoing basis. I welcome to Sue Webber. Carrying on with the theme on the reform agenda, when the Education, Children and Young People Committee heard from the chief executive of the SQA recently, we learned that many of the existing SQA staff were going to be represented on the various programme and delivery boards created to drive forward much-needed educational reform. How can we expect meaningful transformation change to actually take place when it is the same people charged with designing the replacement bodies for the SQA and Education Scotland who are so heavily invested in perhaps some could say defending current ways of working? I think again there is always a really tricky balance to strike here between trying to reform and do things better, which is the purpose of the programme of reform that you are asking me about right now, but also making sure that we do not lose the expertise and the skills and the learning and the knowledge that often has built up over a long period of time. I think that it is right and proper that we harness that as we take forward this reform agenda, but of course there will be not least from your committee and the Parliament as a whole, there will be a lot of scrutiny on that, that will be legislation and require legislation, and there will be a lot of scrutiny on that and the wider policy to make sure, I hope, that we are getting the balance of that right. In part of that reform to the education, the Scottish Government has also launched its national discussion on education, designed to seek the views from children and young people between the ages of 3 and 18. However, bodies such as the SQA have been heavily criticised in the past as their attempts to include young people in the decision-making process have led to disappointing experiences for our young people and those that were involved. What reassurance can you provide that the children and young people's views will actually contribute to the educational reform in a meaningful way? How will you ensure that it is a positive experience for children and young people and that they receive clear feedback as to what they have fed in and how it is contributing to that reform agenda? The national discussion, I know that I am telling you things you know here because your committee is very intimately interested in this. The national discussion is co-kin being by the Scottish Government and COSLA. I think that the cabinet secretary has already met with education spokespeople from all different parties inviting on that cross-party basis input and contribution and is intending to encourage all MSPs to take part in that. The voice of children and young people is designed to be and will be at the heart of that. When Ken Muir made the recommendation for a national discussion, that was one of the key factors that young people had to be at the heart of that. In any process like that, there will always be individuals or particular interests who understandably feel that their views are not properly being taken into account because they perhaps disagree with the direction of travel. However, that will be an effort to ensure that those who are essential to building the vision for the future of Scottish education have the opportunity to make a full contribution. There will be a lot of high-profile public engagement activity trying to ensure as wide-ranging participation as possible. I am going to come to clear Adamson, who is going to lead off some questions around the constitution of issues. Thank you very much. First Minister, last week our committee published a report on an inquiry into the impact of Brexit on devolution. The committee's findings demonstrate that there are fundamental concerns that need to be addressed in relation to how devolution works outside of the EU. One of the key areas was about regulatory divergence and, with the recent introduction to the commons of the genetic technology precision reading bill, this is an example of where divergence might occur. Given our concerns, can I ask the First Minister just to reflect on the published report and this key area of divergence? I welcome the report. I thought it was a good report with lots of important things to say. I do not think that I am going to grab any headlines today by saying that I do not believe that the powers of this Parliament are strong or extensive enough, and while I suspect that I will have your agreement on that, other people will disagree. I think that what should concern us all, regardless of party or actually regardless of our perspective on the constitution, is the erosion and undermining of the current existing powers of this Parliament. We see that, and it is particularly relevant to your point about undercutting of regulatory standards. The internal market act is a very serious and very real concern in that regard. The EU retained law provisions are also worrying, not least because they are going to tie up this Parliament's time and energy and legislative time unnecessarily as we try to protect and replicate standards that already exist and should not be under any question at all. As we do that, we have the internal market act potentially preventing us from doing that. Those are real concerns. They sound often very abstract about powers and standards and regulation, but you talked about genetically modified products and things. They are real for people. They are about the cleanliness of beaches, the sewage, the quality and the standard of the food that we eat. They really matter to people. If we are not very careful and unite against it, the Parliament will find our ability to protect those standards, increasingly undermined and eroded. One of the features of our report is the work that we have undertaken through the Interparliamentary Forum, but we are also taking evidence from Wales. Those are concerns that are not being voiced by committees of this Parliament, the same as the Welsh Parliament, and when Stormont was working they had similar concerns. As you said, it is a very abstract thing. I tell people to get a hook on to something that is going to affect them and it is difficult to get that. What work have you done with the other nations to devolve legislatures and to talk about how we can resolve some of those fundamental concerns? Professor Nicola McEwen said that the silk convention was fine until it was tested and now we are being tested. The silk convention has just been broken on how many times it has been completely disregarded. The strength or otherwise of those conventions is never tested when there is disagreement and that is when you see whether there is respect and we have seen that there is not any respect. In terms of your question about work with other devolved administrations, I may be exaggerating slightly to say that it is on a daily basis, but it will not be much less than that. We co-ordinate, given the issues around Stormont just now more regularly with the Senneth and the Welsh Government. In fact, I was discussing the EU retained law bill with the First Minister Wales and Butehouse just yesterday. It was one of the key issues that we were discussing, the impact on our respective administrations, how we work together to try to mitigate against that impact, how we work together to try to find ways of protecting those standards and protecting our parliaments against what will otherwise be a very serious erosion of our ability to insist on the highest standards. I am conscious of time pressing on the number of issues that we need to cover. I am now going to move on to budget questions and I am going to invite Audrey Nicol to kick off the session. Thank you very much, convener, and my apologies for arriving late to just come out of committee. First Minister, in May of this year, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy set out our proposals for spending over the next five financial years. Broadly speaking, within the criminal justice sector, it will receive a flat cash settlement, which, given our high level of inflation at the moment, will place significant pressures on the budget for our prisons, courts and police and fire services. I wonder whether you recognise the pressure. Do you have any proposals to ameliorate the effect on the sector, given that, for example, prisons have no option but to receive convicted persons from courts and police officers and fire service personnel cannot just stop turning up at calls? First of all, I absolutely recognise the pressure on the justice sector and the different organisations and agencies in our justice sector, but that pressure is felt right across our public services right now. It is very real and we seek to respond as far as we can within the budgetary constraints that we have. It makes it all the more important, and budgetary pressures are not the only reason for that, but budgetary pressures reinforce the need for sensible reform in the delivery of public services. In justice, it reinforces the need for a greater focus on prevention on community outcomes and community disposals, on some of the reforms that we have seen around access to digital online justice, for example. Some of the work that we are doing, whether it is on community justice, reform of bail and remand or digital solutions to some of that is important for other reasons, but it is even more important, given the budgetary constraints that are faced. If I may just pick up on that point around reform, I wonder if you would agree that at this most challenging time it also represents an opportunity for a radical rethink of the criminal justice system to tackle some of the long-standing problems such as the numbers of people held in prisons, for example, particularly on remand, our backlog of court cases, and the expectations that we place on emergency services personnel from developing trends such as policing, mental health incidents in communities where there is a role for other sectors playing a part in that as well. There are lots in that question, and I think that there is lots being done and planned to be done around some of that. If I look back over the last decade and a half since we have been in government, we have seen a lot of reform that has had a positive impact, whether that is on prevention, rehabilitation, some of the lowest crime rates that we have seen in decades. We see lower rates of re-offending, which suggests that that work is having an impact. We have also been trying to support as much as I will describe as multi-agency working around some of those things. There are lots of examples of that, such as mental health councillors in police stations, which is something that we are trying to continue to do more of, or the fire service with defibrillators and particularly in rural areas. All of that is really important. There is more to be done, and the vision for justice sets out a lot of the steps that we want to take in future. Some of what I have already talked about in terms of community justice disposals are often controversial because there are people who will paint that as being weak on crime when it is not. Scotland still has the highest prison population proportionately of any country in the western world. We are not weak on crime. What we need to get better at is even better at is preventing crime and rehabilitating offenders and reducing re-offending. That comes to some of the current proposals that are being looked at around how we use bail with more electronic monitoring of bail, for example. There is a huge reform agenda in this space. It focuses on justice, but it brings in other agencies if we are to make that work overall. The central scenario in the Scottish Government's medium 10 financial strategy published in May this year, which seems to have let a lifetime ago now, factors in a 2 per cent annual pay award for public sector workers, where the Bank of England expects inflation to reach 13 per cent by the end of this year. How will the Scottish Government find the money, given the chaos imposed by the chancellor last Friday, to ensure that public sector workers receive pay increases that are necessary to meet rising living costs? That is in large part what the emergency budget review is seeking to deal with. I have mentioned the inflation erosion of our budget, which is £1.7 billion, which is really significant. However, pay deals to date—some significant pay negotiations are still under way, but pay deals to date are costing in the region of £700 million more than was budgeted for when we passed the budget. We do not have to spend too long thinking about the impact of that to realise that it is substantial. To be very clear, it is right and proper at a time of thawing inflation that we do everything that we can to give public sector workers a decent pay rise. I do not think that public sector pay is something that we should be trying to bear down on for the sake of it. I want to give public sector workers a decent pay rise, but we have to be able to pay for it. That is why some of the difficult decisions that we have already been talking about are inescapable for us. The emergency budget review is seeking to make sure that we can free up the resources in our budget to fund exactly that and other ways of supporting people. Scotland's income tax receipts continue to grow more slowly than the rest of the UK, which is due to fiscal frame. What arrangements for block grant adjustments has significant implications for future Scottish budgets. What action is the Scottish Government taking to grow the tax base and fully utilise other devolved tax powers to ensure the sustainability of Scotland's public finances? The latest outturn for Scottish income tax indicated that revenue exceeded the block grant adjustment in 2021, which has the effect of meaning more money for us to invest in public services, but there are challenging projections in future years. That question relates back to your last question to me in large part, the work that we are doing principally through the strategy for economic transformation to sustainably grow our economy, to create and support high-skilled jobs, to widen and deepen Scotland's tax base, and all of that work is critical to making sure that our revenues for investment in public services stay strong. There is also the review of the fiscal framework under way. There are some inherent aspects of the fiscal framework that are particularly challenging for devolved administrations and work against us. Therefore, in the context of that review, even putting aside some of the argument that we would make for greater fiscal flexibilities, I hope that we will be able to address some of those particular problems. One of the first pieces of work that the newly formed Qualities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee undertook was consideration of a petition to end conversion therapy. The committee's unanimous view was that conversion practices are abhorrent and are not acceptable in Scotland, and we concluded that they should be banned. I was very pleased to see the commitment in the programme for Government to bring forward a bill to end conversion practices. Can the First Minister provide an update on the Scottish Government's work in this area and can the First Minister also confirm that this legislation will cover conversion practices that seek to change people's gender identity as well as their sexual orientation, given the U-turn on this issue by the UK Government? First Minister, let me take the opportunity to say again that conversion practices are abhorrent. They should have no place in a civilised society. Instead, we should be supporting people to be happy as who they are and celebrating people for who they are, not seeking to deploy abhorrent practices to change who they are at often deep, deep damage to them in terms of mental health. Given the confirmation in the programme for government that we will introduce a bill to end conversion practices, we intend to introduce that bill by the end of 2023. The commitment that we have given will cover both sexual orientation and gender identity, and our very clear intention is that the bill will be as comprehensive as it can be within the devolved competence of this Parliament. Obviously, we will work very closely with the committee as we take that commitment forward. I know that the committee has already, as you have indicated, done some work on that, so that work will continue to inform the detail of the approach that we take. Another key aspect of our committee's longer-term work programme that relates to the programme for government is the proposed human rights bill. The programme for government sets out the Scottish Government's intention to continue work developing the bill and to consult on proposals for the bill. That would be a significant piece of work for our committee, so it would be good to get an update on how that works going forward. Perhaps I could comment on how the recent developments regarding the scrapping of the proposed UK Bill of Rights will impact on the Scottish Government's approach. I welcome the shelving of the UK Government's Bill of Rights. That would have dismantled fundamental human rights protections throughout the UK, so I welcome the fact that, for now, it appears to be off the table, although I do not take the view that it is necessarily off the table forever and we need to wait and see what replaces it. I think that it is still a very real risk that it is replaced by something even worse if that is possible. Again, I think that this is an issue where there would be very much, if not unanimous views across this Parliament, then quite a considerable degree of consensus that we are on a different trajectory to that, that we want to embed and protect human rights within the law in Scotland and within our approaches across the whole spectrum of policymaking. We intend, just in terms of the update, to introduce the Scottish human rights bill later in this parliamentary session. That bill will incorporate different international human rights treaties, I think four human rights treaties. It is complex, it is far-reaching, it is really important that we do that work properly, that we get the detail of that work right. Obviously, our experience around the incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is still an on-going issue. We will inform the approach that we take there as well, but it is a piece of work that we are absolutely committed to. We are going to return to the issue of health, and I invite Gillian Martin to lead the question. Thank you, very grateful for a second chance to ask a really important issue, which is about recruitment and retention of health and social care personnel, particularly in rural areas. It comes up in our committee a lot. We have a number of petitions coming our way on it. It got mentioned in our winter planning session yesterday with three health boards. Yesterday, one of the chief executives from Dumfries and Galloway, he referenced the challenges around Brexit in particular and immigration, but within the powers of the Scottish Government, I would like to ask the First Minister what the medium and long-term strategy is. Given what you have just mentioned about a very tight labour market, a very almost full employment, what is the situation in which we need more people to come into health and social care, particularly in our rural areas? First, let us not forget the overall situation here. We have record numbers of people working in the health service. We have, across most key parts of the workforce, proportionately more people working in our NHS than other parts of the UK. That will partly be because of the particular challenges of delivering healthcare in remote, rural and island communities, but nevertheless that is the pretty strong backdrop. That is a workforce under significant pressure because of Covid, because of rising demand and the pressures that we are very familiar with in the national health service. Therefore, we need to continue to grow that workforce. We are seeking to support it and grow it in a number of ways, just very briefly. A big focus on trying to support the wellbeing of the existing workforce, because retention is important as well as recruitment. Secondly, to recruit. We have the investment in international recruitment, which has been successful in recent times. We want to recruit more people internationally to augment the workforce that we have. Clearly Brexit has been a big problem for us in that regard. I will not labour at that point right now, but that has constrained the pool of talent available to the NHS. Nevertheless, we continue to focus on broader international recruitment. Pay is an important factor here and goes to retention and recruitment. That is key. I have, as well as my First Minister, responsibility and experience spent a number of years as health secretary. If I look at the health service right now, the health service would always benefit from more money if we had more money to give it. However, the bigger challenge right now for the delivery of health and care services is people. Therefore, we need to be absolutely focused on that. In terms of rural and remote in particular, we have, as you will know, we have some incentive schemes, Golden Hello for some rural healthcare workers. We have got, this is looking particularly at general practice, the ScotGem graduate entry scheme, so seeking within our broader recruitment initiatives to, as I said later on, recognise those particular challenges that exist in remote and rural areas. Covid-19 recovery committee has been really interested in the public health communication, particularly the roll-out that it will play in supporting the autumn booster programme, which is going to be very important as we approach another winter and Covid is still with us. Can I ask First Minister what level of uptake the Scottish Government is aiming for with the autumn booster and whether the figures so far suggest that it is on track to reach its target? We had very high uptake of the previous rounds of Covid vaccination on some measures, the highest uptake rates in the UK, so we are seeking to achieve the same level of vaccination. Inevitably, as we go further through the pandemic and as perhaps people's perception of the risk changes, we need to work even harder to make sure that there is a very broad-based understanding of the vital importance of Covid vaccination. Anybody who is eligible for a booster this autumn should absolutely get it and of course also get the flu vaccine if you are eligible for that as well, because flu is a risk over this winter season as well. In terms of the performance to date, in fact Public Health Scotland is publishing the first data today. I am hoping that I am not about to get myself into horrible trouble. I think that it was being published at midday in terms of the winter vaccination campaign. Remember that those are very early statistics, but as of the start of this week, just short of 600,000 autumn winter vaccines had been administered. That breaks down as 288,000, just over 288,000 Covid vaccines, and just over 300,000 adult flu vaccines, and 69.5 per cent of older adult care home residents have received their Covid booster already, which is important because that is the most clinically vulnerable getting protected first. Appointments for those aged over 65 started at the start of last week, and so far, according to the figures that are being published today, 17.4 per cent of those have received the Covid winter booster. I am going to blame you, convener, if I have just given those statistics ahead of publication, but I am doing it in the interests of transparency. I will add it to my rap sheet, First Minister. We will move on appropriately to justice questions again. Just earlier this month, the Lord Justice Clarke spoke at an event with Rape Crisis Scotland on the progress that has been made to improve the prosecution of sexual offences and violence against women and girls. She said that, although progress was being made in some areas, wholesale reform was recommended to address the scale of the problem, so would the First Minister support that view, and would she encourage all involved in taking forward a suite of major reforms to make this a priority? Yes. First, I think that the work that Lady Dorian did in this regard is really important. Lots of the recommendations that she made are basically common sense that we need to take forward. Some of her recommendations are clearly much more controversial, and some would require legislation. I think that she is right to say that we have made some progress, but I think that she is probably even more right to say that there is still a significant journey to travel here. To introduce reforms in the justice sector—I mean that in the widest sense—that improve the experience of those who have experienced sexual violence or sexual abuse in the criminal justice sector, and to consider and pursue some of the wider societal changes that are needed to reduce that kind of crime, but to improve the experience of those who find themselves in the criminal justice system as victims of that kind of crime. There is lots of work to be done here. As I say, some of it is legislative work that will be controversial. We announced that we will move to abolish the not proven verdict. That will come with a package of different reforms to ensure that we continue to have the required safeguards within our criminal justice system. I am a convert on the not proven. For a long time, as a former law student being told that the not proven verdict was one of the key unique aspects of the criminal justice system, I took a lot of convincing on that. I am now a convert to that being an important thing to do to improve access to justice for victims of sexual crime in particular. It is not the only reason for doing it. Obviously Lady Dorian also made some recommendations around certain types of trial, not having juries, for example, all much more controversial. However, we are taking forward a number of potential changes in a consultation, and we will consider all of those things carefully. I am going to ask Clare Adamson to read some questions on Ukraine. First Minister, a super-sponsor scheme is now supporting, I believe, over 18,000 Ukrainians in Scotland—a far bigger number than was originally committed to. Can I ask what progress has been made in some of the capital programmes that aimed at bringing buildings into use for homes for temporary-deplaced Ukrainians? Is there any view on when the super-sponsor scheme might be able to reopen? Let me try to break that question down briefly. Firstly, the figures every week on the numbers of displaced Ukrainian people here come out on a Thursday morning, so the general approximate figures that I am about to give will be updated tomorrow. There are around 18,000 displaced Ukrainians in Scotland. Of those, about 15,000 are here under the Scottish Government super-sponsor scheme now for context. That compares to an initial commitment that we gave to 3,000, so significantly ahead of that, which I think is absolutely right and proper. Of all the total number of displaced Ukrainians in the UK, that accounts for—or Scotland currently accounts for, I think, 19.5 per cent, so getting close to a fifth of all of the Ukrainians in the UK are in Scotland. I think that that is important, and it is a credit to our public agencies and the population as a whole, and it underlines the determination that there is in Scotland for us to do everything that we can to help Ukraine at its hour of need. There are lots of challenges involved in this, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Wales had paused the scheme there, which is equivalent a bit before us. We have paused the scheme. We are still considering carefully when that can be restarted, and Neil Gray will update Parliament when decisions are taken around that. Part of the challenge is to enable that to happen. One thing that is important to understand, which I am sure you do, is that although 18,000 people are here, there are more than that who have visas who could still travel even though the scheme is paused because they got visas before the scheme was paused. We may have many more yet to come, so we need to understand the flow of that and be sure of our ability to accommodate them temporarily as we then try to move people on into sustainable accommodation. Finally, on that longer-term part of your question, it is important to stress that not everybody who comes here under any of these schemes needs help with accommodation. Some of them will access their own accommodation. Those who do, we have extensive temporary accommodation, but clearly we are very focused on trying to move people out of temporary accommodation into longer-term. There are different elements of that. There is the private sponsorship and the matching process. The matching process has taken longer and been more cumbersome than I think anybody wanted it to be, but there is a lot of work being done by local authorities and Neil Gray and Government officials to speed that up. Lastly, there is the work that we are doing to support the bringing into use accommodation. We have supported the initiative to bring flats into accommodation, the fund that I announced in Parliament last week, a capital fund of £50 million to support more of that. That is hugely challenging, but it is one of the main ways that we can support Ukraine. I think that we have an absolute obligation to do it and we will continue to do our best to meet the challenges so that we can continue to support as many Ukrainians as possible and crucially support them for as long as possible. We hope that that is not for much longer because they will be able to go back to their own country sooner rather than later, but the focus on permanent accommodation is to ensure that we can give that support for as long as necessary. I am now going to move us on to our final area of questioning. It is around deliberative democracy and the workings of this Parliament. I am going to invite Jackson Carlaw to lead off. First Minister, I think that this is slightly more abstract from all the specific stuff that we have been discussing this afternoon. However, the Citizen, Participation and Public Petitions Committee is taking forward a substantial inquiry into participative and deliberative democracy at present. That builds on the recommendations in the commission for parliamentary reform in the last session of Parliament. Commitments in your own party's manifesto and in the programme for government. There is a very encouraging response. There are two significant residential events taking place here in October and November, and there has been a very encouraging response from public wishing to participate in them. I have two questions, one specific and the other discursive, and I hope that you want to answer one at the expense of the other. It would be helpful to know what the Scottish Government's response is to its own working group on institutionalising participation and deliberative democracy. The business manager promised us in June that there would be an early publication of your response, and it would be helpful to have a clearer definition of what an early response means now that we are about to go into October, because it would help inform obviously the work that we are doing. Secondly, the discursive bit. Do you have in your own mind an idea of where the balance of all this should finally rest? Clearly, the inquiry raises expectations, and there is a sense that in order for this to have the profound change to the kind of political architecture of Scotland that it could very well have would require some of the current institutions that hold power to be prepared to trade that power or decision making process along the way. That is the bit that I am, or we are slightly concerned, may end up being an obstacle to actually trying to make the kind of progress that I think everybody initially was enthusiastic about achieving. First minister, can I remind you, some of us need to be in the chamber at 2 o'clock? It is a brave man or person who asked me to answer a discursive question with a clock ticking, so well done for that. You might live to regret it. I will come back to the discursive bit just to rise to the challenge of dealing with the detail point before I go into the long-winded rambling discursive bit of my answer. The IPDD working report, we have welcomed it and we have given a commitment to coming back with a detailed response as soon as possible. There is a process underway right now of us considering the IPDD recommendations at the extent to which we think they are appropriate for the general ambitions that we set out in this area and how we can best use them to build on the work that has already been done around participatory and deliberative democracy. That is the bit of the answer that I am going to try to make, sounds specific, but it is perhaps not as specific as you want it to be. We are hoping and intending to publish that detailed response before the end of this year, but the specific date is not available yet. It is getting close to a detailed answer, but I suspect that you will think that I have still got work to do on that. Now the discursive answer, Presiding Officer. First, as an aside on participative and deliberative democracy, I think that referendums have an important role to play in that whole landscape, so that is perhaps an issue that we should not allow to go by the wayside. Do I have a fixed view in my own mind of where the right balance is? I do not think that I do, and I am not sure that it would be right for anybody to have a fixed view, because I do think that some of the issues on this are quite profound for the reasons that you set out, because if you increase general participation in democracy in a way, I think that we would all like to do, and we have already, as a Government, made some use of citizens assemblies, for example. Then, if you go beyond that to the deliberative part of it, which at least implies decision making or decision influencing, that has immediate impact on this institution. Where does that come up against the role of a parliamentary committee or the decision making role of a Government or a Parliament? I think that those are exciting and invigorating questions to consider, but I think that it is important that politicians, particularly governing politicians, do not try to become too prescriptive too early on where the right balance should be struck. Secondly—this will be my last point, I promise you, convener—I am not sure we will ever get to an abs—if we are genuine about deepening participative and deliberative democracy, do you ever get to a point where you think, well, that's it, there's no further development and progress that can be done? I don't know, maybe you don't, maybe it is something that is always in a sense evolving. There you go, that was me at my discursive best or worst whatever your perspective. That was the only thing that I would really encourage, obviously given that there is a substantial inquiry under way, is if, well, obviously early, it wasn't quite what the business manager meant in June, but if we could avoid being what might be defined as late, then that would be very helpful in terms of the Government's response. You went to too much of a diversion about the expanding nature of seasons sometimes when you're talking about Government responses to things. I will feed that back and see if we can turn the end of this year into something that is closer to the autumn than the start of winter. And really following on, certainly in the light of the previous question, I very much welcome your comments about no further development, because obviously I'm going to turn to the institution of the Parliament itself. I think it's very important that during the questions that you've answered today you've talked about the importance of debate, you've talked about the importance of questioning in front of Parliament and indeed you've also talked about the protection of Parliament. I know you will have, and I emphasise that carefully, know you will have had an opportunity to look at the recent report which builds on the hybrid nature that was forced upon this Parliament and to which those that work within this Parliament and those in the previous sessions stepped up to make sure that Parliamentarians in Scotland could participate during the Covid pandemic in more ways than I think any other Parliament around the world, which I think is much to its credit, but we need to look forward over towards the next 10 years. So really in the light of allowing you a discursive answer, how do you view the changes that are being proposed for the Parliament and in particular are you content that with observation and oversight the hybrid nature of the Parliament should continue to allow those, not just here, but those away from this place to feel that they can participate in it? And to that end about the question of voting and in particularly proxy voting, I was going to say, can I invite you, you're welcome to that, but let me just say what are your thoughts on proxy voting and the importance of allowing all members of the chamber at some stage when it's necessary just to put aside the responsibilities of being an MSP for both themselves, their family and for very good reason, but for those that have sent them here by election still to see their vote count in this Parliament? I suppose I'll preface my answer here and I will try to keep it as succinct as I can by saying, and this will sound like me dodging the question, as you will see, I'm not going to try to dodge the question, but I actually do think it's really important that Parliament and not Government decide how a Parliament operates because you know, Parliaments are there, not exclusively, but a significant part of Parliament's job is to hold Government to account and the way it chooses to do that and the format that it uses for that really should be up to Parliament. So I will hold back from being too definitive in what I think should happen. Generally, I think that the experience of hybrid working has been a positive and a good one and I think it should continue in some form. It's my view, I'm expressing here, it's not for me to decide. Whether it continues in exactly the form that we used during Covid, I think, is another question altogether and I think that we've already seen changes in developments. So for example, if I was, I am a minister obviously, but if I was somebody trying to hold a minister to account, I wouldn't want that only to be with a minister on a screen where I couldn't interact or try to intervene and I know there's been changes to try to facilitate a more interactive form of debate even when somebody is participating remotely. So I think that we've got to make sure that we don't erode what I think, and often I experience it uncomfortably, is the quite intense scrutiny of a minister being physically in a parliamentary chamber being held to account. So that's one point in terms of the hybrid nature of debates or question time sessions. In terms of online voting, I think I'm more strongly of the view that we should continue to allow online voting to some extent, whether it is completely unrestricted or whether there are certain conditions around it, I think is for more detailed discussion. And yes, I do believe there should be provision for proxy voting where people have particular circumstances where they cannot physically be there for family illness or childcare or something like that. We live in a modern world and I think that Parliament has to operate in a way that reflects that. So that's my views in general. Where the detail of all of that is drawn, where the lines are drawn around that, I do think that it's important definitely for Parliament rather than Government to be the decision maker. I'm going to invite Kenneth Gibson with a more specific question on the working in the Parliament definition. Thank you very much. First Minister, will the public administration hat on the committee explored with the permanent secretary recent criticism about the Scottish Government's approach to the recording of decisions responding to FOI requests and ministerial correspondence and written questions and providing information to parliamentary committees in transparency overspending? How will you ensure that the Scottish Government enhances transparency, particularly if key policy decisions, to enable full and proper parliamentary scrutiny? I'll seek to preside over a Government that is in what it does as transparent as possible. In terms of recording decisions and storing information, does that to the standards that would be expected and you have heard from the permanent secretary his determination to ensure that those standards are met? I'm also realistic enough to know that in the heat of political debate, no matter how transparent I think the Government is being, there will be people who think that we're not being transparent enough and on occasion they will be right and we will need to reflect on that and learn from it. Without going into the detail, although it goes to, I'm sure, some of what I will be talking to Richard and his committee about in the not too distant future, it is as frustrating for me, believe it or not, as it is for others in Parliament, if, for example, we are not able to locate a particular piece of paper that evidence is a decision and then later locate it. That's not in my interests that makes the life of ministers seeking to navigate issues and defend policies harder. This is the bit that perhaps Opposition members will have arrived in a raising of an eyebrow too, but it is true. It is actually for a sensible Government, and my Government is sensible, for a sensible Government these things, transparency, good record keeping, being able to demonstrate at the basis on which decisions are taken. It's as much in the interests of the Government as it is in the interests of those holding the Government to account. Are we ever going to get to a stage where we don't get some things wrong sometimes or that we're not subject to legitimate criticism? No, because nobody is perfect, but are we absolutely determined to make sure that we are meeting the standards that are expected then without a shadow of a doubt? Thank you very much, First Minister. I can't believe I allowed a couple of discursive questions at the end of the session. We'll be reviewing that in the post-match analysis. I thank you, First Minister, for your attendance and participation. Hopefully, we can repeat this exercise in around six months' time, but that concludes the meeting. The next meeting will be Wednesday 26 October, and I thank you all for your attendance. With that, I close the meeting.