 Well, good evening, everyone. I'm Gordon Minters, the convener of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, and with us tonight are Willie Coffey, who is the deputy convener, as well as Colin Beattie, MSP member of the committee. Now, we have some young people with us. And if I'll just name them and just in the order I have in the sheet in front of me, we have Callum Nimmo and also Brooke Barr, both members of the Scottish Youth Parliament, and they are convener and deputy convener of the Scottish Youth Parliament's Jobs, Economy and Fair Work Committee. Then we have Carl Galbraith, who is a young person supported, I understand, into employment by the Prince's Trust. And Katie Stewart, who is a health and social care project manager at Prince's Trust, Andy Tate from Orkney, currently being supported by employability Orkney. Ben Johnson, who is a 20 year old scaffolding apprentice, who has had his apprenticeship, I understand, paused during lockdown. Then we have Kerry Spence, Community Learning and Development Manager at Orkney Islands Council, and Raman Kaur and Lauren Mwale, who are involved or were involved in the Young Women Lead Project this year in Scotland. So I'll welcome all of you. And if we could then come to questions and perhaps I could start with a question by just asking the young people to come in and give us an indication of how Covid-19 has impacted on your own situation regarding employment or your your plans at present. So I don't know who we'd like to perhaps come in and give us some comment on that. I think I'll jump in first. Yes, Callum. Thanks, carry on. Hi there. So hi, Callum, Nemo, MSYP. I'm the convener of the Jobs, Economy and Fair Work Committee and that organisation. So in terms of the impact on my thing, I'm a university student. I studied at the University of the West of Scotland, currently going into fourth year, studying Computing Science. And I'm also working part time with a small business that sells musical instruments. Covid-19 probably impacted me quite severely. You know, university has been delayed by a month. We were meant to start back at early September. Now we're starting back in October. As far as I'm aware, the university has been sort of like a hybrid session where most sessions are taking place at home. And I think one day a week we're allowed in at the university for face to face lecturing, albeit with social distance measured in place. In terms of work, I was furloughed for a couple of months with only the no top up, so only 80 percent of my wages. As you can imagine, as a young person, I don't have a lot of, you know, savings in the account just because that's me starting to save. So that 20 percent reduction in wages certainly didn't help with that scenario. So I think I am a little bit lucky in a sense that the furlough scheme helped me because without that furlough scheme, I would probably be made redundant being a part time person, small business would just be not employed. And then I would have had nothing. So I'm very, very, I'm grateful for that. That's my personal experience. Thank you. Any of the other young people want to come in on this? And I should say that if you don't feel you've had a chance to say what you'd like to during the session, you're welcome to write into the committee afterwards, and the committee will then take that into account when we're considering what's being said. So don't feel you have to come in on every question or that you won't get a chance to follow it up if you feel there's something you might have missed. So do you have someone else who would like to come in at this point? And I could jump in. Can you hear me? Yes, please do. I used to work part time for my university. I studied at the University of Edinburgh in our alumni core center. And you can't have core centers in times of COVID. So that job has been scrapped for now. And because I recognize that would be a possibility. I've been looking for some other form of part time employment. But what's happening is also I'm being told by the people I applied to because I reached back out and say, oh, can I have feedback? Why wasn't like? Can you explain what would have made me more competitive? And the reality is that whereas a year ago, people are applying for like, you know, these part time jobs would majorly be students like me or, you know, fairly young people, it's now kind of everyone and anyone is applying to be a hostess in a restaurant or a waitress or work in a coffee shop because of the like more external economic factors. So even though like I'm a decent enough student, they're getting, I don't know, PhD students who are applying and I guess that's more appealing to them. They're getting like grown adults who possibly have families to support. And that is more appealing to them to kind of hire and support in that way. So that's kind of competitiveness for part time employment is my newest struggle of trying to navigate and still find a way to find a bright time job for the semester. All right, thank you for that. Anyone else want to come and make any comment at this point? I could jump in. Yes, Kyle and Kyle carry on, I think. So I currently work at Marks and Spencers, where the Princess Trust helped me to get into via one of their courses. And I've worked throughout the whole COVID pandemic, but most of our store was furloughed and only a skeleton staff has been running. But I was I was lucky in that because the way Marks and Spencers did it is if you continued working, we got paid an extra 15% on top of our normal wages for what we were working. So that helped us keep people who were in the work and were at risk happier, so then gave them something to as an additional bonus. But I know a couple of people have had to leave the workplace because they had to either find jobs at more hours because we had to cut back on all of our hours due to redundancies that are having to be made because the business is having to quickly deal with all the issues that covid's brought forward that would have been dealt with over like a couple of years. So like this year alone, I think we're making seven thousand redundancies. So my job's at risk currently because I'm one of the newer employees and I'm one of the less trained. So covid's not given me a lot of chances to be trained as a lot of our managers haven't been in because a lot of them have been often furloughed as well. And that's been my personal experience. Right. And I think it was Ben trying to get in there as well. Yeah, sorry, sorry. I was just going to say, obviously, a lot of that's been like negative experience. I found my experience with like the furlough scheme in that because I'm looking up to be staying at home. I've not got rent to look out for my experience of like the furlough period and covid and being furloughed from my job. As I've seen, especially my folks who haven't had a lot of time, you know, obviously they're busy at work, like they've worked their whole lives. And that that little bit of pressure off for them to get just even stuff done around the house, just the positive, like the positive in there. You know, almost a change in mindset. And I've seen as we've gone back into that. Like I think the break and the pressure off and obviously the without that furlough, without that furlough being given, it would have been a different story. But yeah, I just wanted to jump in and say, obviously, everyone else was a bit negative in that, but my experience was pretty good. I'm lucky to still have my apprenticeship. And I think one of the negative parts for me is that it's been pushed back till next April, so I was hoping to go away to university this year. But obviously, I have to finish my apprenticeship first. I'll be next year before I'm able to do that. All right, sorry. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm just wondering if I wanted to try and bring other committee members in who might want to ask further questions, also bring more of our participants in who haven't had a chance to speak yet. I don't know, Willie, have you got a question you wanted to ask? Sure, Gordon, thanks very much in whole every day. I'm Willie Coffey. I'm the member of the Parliament for Kilmarnock in the Irvine Valley, which is down in Ayrshire. I was pleased to hear Callum is open and remapsed that he's a computer science student. That's what I did myself at university a number of years ago, and I'm glad to hear you're sticking with it, Callum. So well done to you, but I really wanted to ask you, what's your impressions of employers and melt round and opportunities to to use the qualifications that you've worked so hard to get? Are you getting a clear impression that there's just nothing happening? Is it sinking to the bottom? What would you like us as parliamentarians to try to do to help employers to continue recruitment so that when you guys leave university and so on, you get a really good opportunity to start your career? Well, that's a good question. I think for a while, a lot of young people have been finding difficulties getting into that sort of world of work from university. And I have no doubt that Covid-19 is going to make that even more challenging with the more people unemployed, so more people are going to be applying for jobs. In terms of what I think maybe could happen as we actually passed a motion within the let me find it here, it was within the Scottish Youth Parliament and we wanted to see the apprenticeship wages increased because we as a committee felt that if we can maybe increase apprenticeship wages to start off, that might attract more people into that area. Therefore, cutting down the number of people going to universities and then maybe sort of balancing it out a little bit more. Because right now we feel that a lot of people are going to university because of the better pay aspects, the better job opportunities that brings. But if we can maybe sort of diversify things, we thought, OK, well, maybe that'll help out, then there's not as many people applying with degrees and more people are in different areas of work on maybe the same benefits. We felt as if that was something. But no, I think it is really, really a tricky situation. And I couldn't answer how that thing. I think that's up for the people in power to maybe make that decision. What about the rest of you guys? What do you think? Do you think do you get the sense that employers are just switching off opportunities that you might otherwise have expected to be there for you? Could we do more to work directly with employers to encourage them to continue their recruitment programmes? Can I just jump in and say that I'm employed through employability restart, aren't I? We are Scottish CGS Community Job Scotland funded. And I cannot fault them one single bit. I was meant to be job was meant to end in the middle of August. But I got a three month extension through a covid with us being shot. Not only that, but we got full pay right throughout lockdown. And it's obviously the difficult. Yes, you know, me. There's not that many jobs going at the moment. But it's just trying to keep your options open, trying to get more training in place at the local UHI or through modern apprenticeships or apprenticeships. It's just obviously difficult in these times to try and find find something that will work for everybody and trying to find the jobs in the local area, say, moving away down to San Bernés or Aberdeen or anything like that. And could I just come in? Yeah, please. Can you hear me? I've had problems with these earphones all day. So yeah, if I cut off, let me know. The I think personally for the industry, I'm in investment banking and it's always been quite a difficult industry for people to get into, especially from a kind of when you look at statistics wise for women and also from people from a black Asian minority community, it's always been an area that has been massively underrepresented. And I think that there is a lot of programs going on right now where employers are looking at themselves in that area and seeing what can we do to get people in and a big thing that they have highlighted, which was also part of our inquiry as young women leading also as part of another movement in Seek Women's Speak that I'm currently involved in and the employers really felt like they didn't have much support in actually getting in touch with schools and getting in touch with kind of colleges and things like that to get people more interested in that industry and then through making that initial contact, they felt that that brings people into as a point of interest. Then through their kind of looking at work experience and internships and I know personally in my school did a work experience program and it's in Armadale and West Lothian and they on their work experience list of people that were providing it was, you know, the Royal Bank of Scotland there, which is where I went and that's actually got into this industry. But they were the only bank or kind of professional organisation that looked at that kind of program. So maybe there's something there that the government can do in trying to link employers to schools and other areas. OK, thank you very much for that. Any other comments from our other guests or will we hand over back to Gordon and Colin to come in? Hi, sorry, I just wanted to add a little something in there. So I guess my experience of this is I suppose kind of maybe slightly from the other side. So I work for the Prince's Trust and try and link up young people with employers for some of those training programs. And it feels at the moment that there's just real hesitancy around being able to make that commitment and it feels like a lot of employers at the moment just don't know what the next six months are going to bring and it is really difficult, I think, for them to be able to then forecast and, you know, like we've heard from Kyla and redundancies with Marks and Spencer's and what is the kind of the greater workforce going to shape up for them anyway, before they then start to consider taking on new recruits. And even things like kind of the sort of the I guess sort of festive workforce, if you like, kind of for Christmas recruitment and stuff in retail, you know, is that going to be at the same scale as it has been previously? Everything just feels really kind of uncertain, I think, with a lot of employers. And I think for those reasons, that's why we're not getting so much engagement. And I think things like the the kickstart and youth guarantee will help significantly towards that and giving employers a bit of reason and some rationale to be able to recruit new young people into their businesses. But on the same token, I'm not sure that it's going to be right for all young people because it's kind of capped at 25 hours. And, you know, there's lots of kind of things within it that might mean it's not going to be the right opportunity for a lot of people. So it's potentially for me, I think, you know, if there's kind of something to do about it, it's maybe looking beyond the kickstart and youth guarantee. I think those will be massively helpful, but I think it's looking beyond that and looking at what else could we do in that space and helping even more young people. I think as well, you can probably looking at broader sectors, like financial services is probably, I don't know, is that one that will opt into youth guarantee scheme or is it going to be more around retail hospitalities? It probably needs to kind of be a bit of a cross-cutting examination on some of those things, I would say. OK, thanks for that. Kerry, your name is obscured by the panel I've got on my screen. Oh, sorry, Kerry. Is that right? Thanks. Thanks very much for that, Gordon. Just hand it back to you. And I find that that's very interesting, the different points you make. And I'm wondering whether or not, although, I mean, I think there was a comment about experience being perhaps valued more than people who are younger with less experience qualifications. I'm just wondering how all of you find this sort of internet experience the way because of COVID, a lot of things have to be done like this on Zoom. Does that give you an advantage as younger people over people perhaps my age who are not as good at the technology? If I can put it that way, or do you find it quite difficult in terms of looking for jobs or placements or your next step in life because of the sort of screen interaction the same way that others may do who are perhaps not as young as yourselves? Anyone, any comment on that? I don't mind coming in again. Raman, yes, thanks. I think person has made it a lot easier for me because it means that, like, specifically for jobs. So I feel my friends have actually, but also in the finance industry, have been looking for jobs. It's been an area that's actually been recruiting quite normally. It's picked up again and they found that they can actually go and get access to jobs that they normally wouldn't have because now they'll be working from home. So it's actually meant that it's worked out quite good for them in the sense they don't need to do this, you know, think about commuting and moving homes and things, they can actually just go for a job based on where it's going to take them in their career. Good. Anyone else want to come in on that at all? Or I think Kerry Spence wanted to come in. Kerry. Hi, yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm pushing it, not really a young person anymore. But just in regard to the kind of use of technology and stuff, I think we maybe need to have to catch up a little bit in regard to things like we've been talking earlier about work experience. You know, a lot of people that are doing like employability fund courses have to do work experience as a key element of their course. And if they haven't done the work experience part, they don't pass. And that's obviously not been an option during covid. But actually, I'm sitting day after day now in meetings like this, you know, doing my work through technology. So really, we have to be a little bit more innovative on ensuring that young people or whoever we're giving work experience to, that they're also, you know, that we're looking innovatively about work experience, about opportunities and how, you know, we can do virtual work experience and pulling them into different things. So it was just a kind of linked in element on technology. All right. Thank you. And Lauren. Speaking of maybe like trying to get internships and things like that, myself and a lot of my friends applied for our internships and hopefully secure positions for this summer and like covid happened and some companies made them virtual and still paid people. Other companies gave virtual experiences without paying. So I think an interesting experience for people who are doing these like pre-employment, pre-graduate position, looking for that kind of experience is that lots of companies are because it is a lot of efforts to have an online internship, I'm assuming. So they're kind of doing this other thing where you can have like three days of panel discussions and maybe you get like a like a dummy activity to do and be like, oh, everyone's going to make slides to pitch a stalk or whatever that might be. If you think of like a finance example, because that's where I was applying, my friends were applying and they don't actually add up to like an experience can put on your CV and say, oh, I've done this. And more and more companies are kind of going this route of here, let's do like a virtual series of events in a virtual conference and not necessarily kind of go that the infrastructure to have virtual placements because I guess they're waiting covid out, which means that we might have like a skills gap or qualification gap in relation to having like pre-employment experience, which will be detrimental in a year or two. And I like graduate instead of applying for jobs. Good. Thanks for that. Maybe we'll move on to Colin. Colin, do you have some questions or questions you want to put out? Yes, thank you. I'm quite interested in sources of information. You know, we've been through a very peculiar period of a few months. And during that time, there's been a massive amount of information that's made available to a plethora of sources. And I'm just wondering which sources did you go to and find the most effective, the most useful consistently? Well, I thought that you got done really well with producing information. It was more useful to raise more people than anything. There was a lot of people given and they were always to be, you know, so I thought that was quite useful. Mm hmm. Was there any other sources that you kept tapping into? Not that I can recall. No. What about the others? You must have been gathering information in from somewhere. So which ones were the best, Ben? My employer actually is going to find job at most, update, send out an email to us. But it's not really answering the question, but I've found obviously been on social media the sort of the amount of different, not reliable sources, the amount of stuff where it's just people's opinions are. And I think if you didn't have that, I was able, I was shown by my employer what actually was fact and what wasn't. But I think it'd be quite easy to find to the trap of not knowing what was going on just due to that unreliable information. I don't know what could be done about that. But I decide. Were there any government sources that you went to that you found useful? Or did you rely on your employer all the time? I relied mostly on my employer and also I live with my mum. She's working in the council now, so she was pretty up to date on that as well. But as for me, partially seeking out government sources, I didn't know. Thanks, Ben. Good man. Hi, I actually used government sources and I found it to be very confusing, especially when looking at this particularly as it was very good to give you an overall view of what was happening on and it was mainly the daily briefings because I didn't find the the material on this government website wasn't very accessible. I could see in the phase plan, but it just seemed quite like it. I mean, if I felt like I was reading something as a report, it was quite kind of and I didn't feel like it was something I could just pick up and read. And then it's particularly with social information around the reopening of religious places because I often go to the Gordwara in Glasgow and I felt like the information on actually how that was going to open and what places of worship were allowed to and what weren't because there was some kind of disparity between churches and mosques and then Gordwara's were still open. It was all very confusing. So I think maybe if there was something more kind of categorized, you can go to that particular area and find out exactly what's happening because I know then there was some despite between some areas that are just people confusing themselves and going off and doing their own thing. But I found it to be quite difficult. Was there any government website that you found useful or reliable that you made use of or whether websites outside or sources outside the government that you found useful? I did use of the face plan that was on the government website. So I looked at that and tried to kind of figure out exactly what was opening when. And I used sources from mostly from the BBC. BBC News has been my main kind of place to go to see what's happening in Scotland and then the figures as well of like death rates and new cases. All of that I use new sources and I didn't really use the government website. Did anyone else use any of the the government sources and find them useful? What about educational establishments? Were they useful in putting information out? My university was that. I think they'd done like a weekly update. My university constantly kept us in the loop because it was shut down just at the near end of term where exams were. So they kept us in the loop on what's going to happen with exams. I've not sat when this will be if there's going to be a delay. What do we do if we like need a reset or whatever? They were very, very good at that. The only criticism I would give them as time developed, that sort of slowed down. That pace of the slowed down. Came from like weekly to maybe monthly. And then I think I don't know if it's maybe went in my junkie meal. But this is personally, I think one month I just never sent an update out. But that was I think during the reset. So maybe it wasn't applying to me. But my university was quite good at the very start with that sort of weekly update here's what we're doing. Is it possible? Is it possible that towards the end? I said the end of the lockdown, that there was less information required to be put out because there was maybe less change that affected you, or was there change going on all the time? And they just didn't communicate it? I couldn't answer that fully because I'm only going for my personal experience. It might be different for other people that might have had things on. But my personal experience was never communicated with me after a certain period of time. So I couldn't possibly answer that as, yes, and I've communicated at all because they might as well communicated well with people that needed it. Brooke, you heard something that say. Yeah, so I am currently in my last year of school. So before lockdown, I was set to be sitting in my higher exams. And for the most part, my school was, to be honest, awful at giving support or letting us know what was happening. And I mean, obviously with the work aspect, constantly handing out assignments, which was great. So that was really like into doing their work. And they were concentrating on everything. But I think for like myself, the school wasn't useful. It could give me any kind of information as to what was happening. Like exams, what was going on, and all just in a way. So given your experience with the government information coming out, did any of you actually, one or two of you have mentioned this, but I want to gather it all together, what government services did you actually make use of? Leaving aside the information sources, did anybody use any of the government services? No? OK, let me hand it back to you, Gordon. That's an interesting question. And I mean, Raman did comment about certain issues and in places of worship, slight confusion for people about when what would be open. And I think that also carried over potentially for some people into issues which related to work because how social distancing rules applied in individual job situations and that. But I'm just wondering how many of you, I mean, I suppose to a certain extent, everyone involved in this situation with with covid. There can be guidelines or information provided on a government website or by the BBC or whoever. But to a certain extent, everyone has to try and think for themselves as well, how it is to be applied in their own personal circumstances. So I'm just wondering, I see Callum nodding, perhaps Callum, if you have any comment on that or others as to how easy or otherwise you found to fit what you were doing into the guidelines that you that you did have or how much work you had to put into that to try and work it into your own situation. Yeah, I think the sort of information that I saw was, you know, very suited to my sort of situation. But that, again, is just personally me. Some people might have really, really hard time with all that information. Some people might have, like myself, have a better time. Obviously, I was in university and part time work, my work was great. They kept me in the loop with sort of the situation with furlough, all that kind of stuff. So I didn't need to worry about work. I knew I was getting some sort of wages in from that furlough scheme. So that made me kind of, you know, relaxed and feeling a wee bit better. University, as I said, they kept me in. I was still doing exams. They mentioned about here's what we're going to do for this year's exams and any other information, you know, maybe guideline changes. I'm regularly on Twitter and I think that's a really, really good place for that, regardless of who it is. I think sometimes any government, be it the Westminster government or the Scottish government, they'll put up reports they're not as useful. I find the sort of animations that they maybe do, the wee short snappy. Here's what's happening. Things that even some local authorities have done. They're a lot more useful. All right, so short and snappy is perhaps the answer. And I think Kyle wanted to come in. Yes. So at Marcia Spencer's, we they constantly are in contact with the government. So we are always very up to date guidelines. But it was very, very confusing experience for the first couple of months, because we basically had to completely change how we run the store. So we had to implement the only systems. There's the face masks with the count. It's that counting how many people are out. It limited a lot of what we could do. So it was quite a big change and it was relatively difficult to adapt to. But even now, we're always changing one or two small things to try and always stay in accordance with government guidelines or guidelines that the company have agreed with the Scottish government. Right, Roman, I think you wanted to come back in as well. I just have to back what Kyle was saying. I think that's quite interesting how much kind of obviously communication was going on between Marcia Spencer's also being a big corporation in the government. And my parents run a small convenience store. They found it very we found it really difficult in trying to incorporate the guidelines, especially when looking at where to put masks, gloves, everything as well as screens around the tills. Like for a small business, that's quite a big thing to have to organise. And I think there could have been more support from the government. And actually they did give the grant, the government grant, which we took advantage of, which was really good. But there was no hands on actual help around even giving people names of places where they could go to get these kind of things like screens and PPE, things like that. So when there was a shortage, that meant that we were also having quite a big shortage. So I think there needs to be more consideration for the small businesses. And we also seen a huge influx of people actually using small businesses at this time because they didn't really want to go to the supermarkets. So we were coming into contact with a lot more customers too. Let's see. I think Ben wanted to come in. Did I miss you out there, Ben, at some point? No. Could I just jump in, guys? The with, well, what a furniture shop up in Orkney that I work for. There was what I've attained to put a one-way system in the shop to meet our guests and see what we're sticking to. But it's the main problem we found to start off with. We reopened just to start off to start with to get used to working with a minimum number. We then opened up middle of July to the public. We'll mark some of what is it for in the shop at the moment at once. It was a nightmare trying to figure out what we can do because obviously it's what we do should deliver and collect bits of furniture. The main problem with that was the fact to start off with we couldn't run the van due to social distance and restrictions because we wanted two people on the van the whole time to left the furniture. The other issues and still are that we have to wait three days before we obviously we get a donation in say on a Monday morning, we can only put that into the shop on the Thursday or Friday due to the 72 hour restrictions in place. The screens are fantastic for government guidelines have been clear, but there are just a few things that I feel like haven't been as clear environmental health, we're trying to keep on top, keep up to date with them on what's happening. But no, overall, I think it's all right. It's just obviously there are a few points I feel like could get be made a bit clearer for the likes of what we can do in the way of taking furniture donations into the shop sooner or whether we have to wait that 72 hours and all that sort of things. All right, thank you. And I think Willie Coffey, you wanted to come back in again. Thanks very much again, Gordon. I was just want to ask everybody to see the time that we're in just now. Is there an opportunity to to think about using that time to to learn new skills to give you a new opportunity for employment when the economy does begin to pick up? And what would that be? What would that look like? No, man, you were talking more about could we see some more internships? And Callum, you said, can you put the apprentice wages up? What would be your asks, your wishes of employers or government to to give you a better chance to get into employment when things pick up a little bit? Is it new skills? Is it more as an experience in doing internships? As Raman was saying, just what is it you think you need that would help you most? Do you think to get into employment once this picks up a bit? I think personally, for my situation, obviously, I'm studying computer science, so I'm only going to go into that sort of those areas. But I think a lot of employers are looking for that sort of double barrel of we want you to have a degree, but we also want you to have like some sort of experience. So I think what would really be helpful to me is what my university has been doing is they've been given a sort of chances of going into like employment for like some terms and giving us like credits towards there. The only downside with that is it's sort of like a lot of areas. We'll do things to sort of unpaid sort of things. So you're doing like a full time hour basically and you're not getting paid for it. OK, it's going towards your university. So you are achieving something. But I think if you were maybe to sort of incentivize that a little bit more, maybe more people would sign up for it. So then therefore, when they leave university, they've got something. They've got something related to the area that they're in. If they want to go into sort of retail or whatever, then their part time job might be helping with that. But I think it's very, very difficult for some areas of university to get like a part time job to build up your experience while you're getting your education for that area. Yeah, yeah, good, good. Well, Andy, what about you? What kind of help do you need to bridge the gap and get into employment? What can I extra skill say? Do you think you need? I don't know, to be honest with you, it's just I'm trying to get into admin office work, basically. The main issues I feel like at the moment, as most employers are potentially looking for a HNC, I only hold an NC and I've spoken to the college in a few occasions about doing a HNC and they were reckoning that I wouldn't or not they wouldn't. They think they would struggle to do the HNC with a jump in the levels between them. Other thing is there's not that many big major companies up here, up in Orkney. There's obviously the council and the NHS, but that's mainly your big, you're too big an employer. I'm waiting for, there's obviously developing the unworked force as well. Let's run, I'm waiting for an interview back from them. Chubby applied for back in March, just her last week that the interviews should be taking place shortly. Obviously, I would just mainly say that it's where we're at remotely. I would say it's about when I show. But with others, what kind of things do you think would give you the best chance to bridge this gap into employment? What do you think you need that you maybe don't have access to at the moment that would make the difference for you? Is RFA coming? I think then she'd like to come in. So Ben, first and then Roman. It was just it was just about obviously I'm doing my apprenticeship. And I got grades at school and I got my hires and stuff. And since I've been doing this apprenticeship, I've been down and I've noticed with the coursework. It's been a lot of rain. I'll say I've run more for my apprenticeship on my scaffolding than I did through my whole probably not five and higher English portfolios and probably exams combined. So I work with a lot of folks. Obviously the older boys, I didn't have to go through the same apprenticeship. That wasn't so much like coursework for them. And there's folk that are more practically like practically minded, I would say, who would struggle to get through the written work that like I struggled with some bits of my coursework with my scaffolding apprenticeship and I got quite good grades in my English. So for folk who maybe aren't so academically minded, I think it's a shame because there's a lot of there's a lot of young folk that I think won't be able to afford the opportunity to get their apprenticeship based on their academic learning to fulfill that side of the course. So maybe just making like apprenticeships more accessible or different routes through it. So yeah, yeah. Roman, do you want to come in, Roman? Yes, so I think my best friend might be able to tell me something. I was just going to say like there is programs that I think that would would really work, especially in the industry that like for finance, it's only basically talk from there is a big focus on having a two one and such and such to get in, but there's I think there's programs that could be done where you do start off as an apprentice and then there's assisted kind of education so you can do a part time university course. So I think there needs to be more like work between, I think particularly JP Morgan does a program for apprentices. So they take kids, well, young adults, 17 years old and from straight from the final year in unit in school and then they can come and work in JP Morgan as a full time employee, they get full wage and so that helps as well when you're looking at kind of costings and things and then alongside that they can do a qualification and investments. So that kind of thing works quite well because you're doing the practical stuff and you're also getting education and you're getting paid while you're doing it and it's something you can do in your own pace. So maybe just having a conversations with companies on that level would be quite good to see. Encouraging that. Kerry, is that your hand up there as well? Sorry, yeah, just two really quick points. One is in Orkney, we notoriously lose a lot of our young folk. So they go off to uni and everything, which is great, but we very rarely get them back. So doing stuff that we can to attract young people back into good jobs would be really good, graduate apprenticeships, things like that would be really valuable. But also we have to be really careful that we're not losing those that aren't going off to do degrees or anything, those that are staying home. We've got a lot of people who really rely on the tourist industry here as a seasonal job, young people who are going on to do it and maybe a different job or want to go away and get a career somewhere else or want to go off to university. Now, this year, they haven't had a summer job. They can't afford that. They're not going to university, their whole, potentially their whole life future has been changed. And whether we get that back, they've had to defer going to uni because they didn't get enough money this summer to afford it. So things like that. So we have to be really astute and make sure that we don't widen that gap even more. Sorry. Yeah, thanks for that. Any other contributions on that subject from your guests? I just add to my point as well, I forgot to say, obviously, I think well, since we're still in the furlough period, we've got a lot of apprentices or young folk who are still on furlough. And I think like I'm not sure what's going to happen with the redundancies in that later on. But I think there's going to be a lot of skilled tradesmen who have already passed their time, who have made redundant. I think employers are going to be looking more so to employ these people who already have the skills that they can rely on. And I'm not sure maybe not, but it seems like the opportunities for younger folk to get into an apprenticeship will maybe be, you know, lessened by the fact that there's already these skilled people already with the skills ready to go into work. OK, thanks very much for that. Back to you, Gordon. Right, thank you. There's someone who's typed R in the chat box that it's not only the name. So if you wanted to come in, you haven't yet on that, then please just say so now. I think it was Ben typing it twice, wasn't it? I was it right. No, that's fair enough then. I just didn't figure out who it was. So I think we've we have a few more minutes. I'm just wondering, does everyone had an opportunity to say what they wanted to? There's other aspects of some of these issues about how covid's affected you, your employment or your future education or training that you want to make to the committee. Then please, please do take the opportunity now to do so. And is there anything we haven't covered that anyone would like to make comment on or give input to the committee? Christ, jump back in again, guys. I would say the one thing that would be useful or government could look into or continue to do, I would say, as the community jobs, Scotland, the funding that you guys provide for jobs is absolutely fantastic. I would. Fair enough, I've only got I was meant to be 12 month contract at the moment through you, but it's been extended for 15 months. I would say it's mainly just a struggle, the worrying concern about what's going to happen after my employment at the moment due to obviously redundancies in the furlough scheme ending comes October or getting wound down comes October. But no, I would mainly say to try and get it or at least try and keep the funding there for the opportunities that you guys have given me this past year. And other youngsters work alongside me, we work colleagues that have been funded through Community Jobs, Scotland. All right, thank you. Anyone else? Any final comments from any of our guests? OK, and I don't know if my fellow committee members wish to come back with any final points they wanted to ask about, Lily. Just a final question to Andy up in the morning is Brinkie's Braestill there. And some of that, it's there, I think. Good. Well, it's encouraging to hear that some things that are good don't change in spite of current circumstances and the difficulties we all have to face. But I think in that case, we'll probably end the session now. The committee will continue to look at the COVID issues. And in fact, we've got a panel of young people as well tomorrow morning speaking to the to the committee. So we're continuing to listen to a variety of people from business industry and the different agencies that are trying to assist in current circumstances and also wanting to hear from young people. So you can write in if there's anything that you think of after this event, as it were, because it's always difficult when you're put on the spot to to think of things sometimes it comes later. So feel free to write in. I see that Rahman would like to come in with last points. I think I think we have time for that, Rahman. Can I ask the committee actually, do you feel it's easier to do these kind of things virtually than it was previously when pre COVID? I'm not sure who wants to answer that. I personally, I mean, it can be helpful to people are very far away that they don't have to travel in particularly in current circumstances. So there can be benefits to it. Personally, I find it less good because I think the sort of interaction between people is more difficult on a screen. And I think some people are better at doing that and being able to interact and get the full benefit of, for example, speaking to people yourselves online and others are perhaps less good at that. But personally, I find it's I think better in person, although it's obviously better this because we can see each other, see each other's expressions than if it were just on a telephone line, for example. Right, Kerry, I think wants to say something. Sorry, I know I know you're wanting to go just to say, well, I live right beside Brinkysbury. I'm not putting it every day. It was just a kind of shout out, obviously things like this are really, really helpful for people like up in Orkney, obviously, because we wouldn't be able to attend some committee meetings, but they don't tend to work in a blended approach. So if you were all sitting in Edinburgh and we were coming in three of us from Orkney, that doesn't work. So it's all or nothing for me, I feel. But just one kind of plea is all these government and employment schemes that are coming out. It's really important that you remember the Highlands and Islands. So the co kickstart, for instance, and the 30 placements, that's huge. 30 placements is absolutely huge for Orkney. So even consortium bids, so I sometimes think that the Highlands and Islands are maybe forgotten about in the bigger picture of things. So it was just one thing I'd like to to leave on before I finish. Thank you. I mean, that is a very important point, because although the committee sits in Edinburgh, we do try to make sure that we as much as possible bring in the different areas, regions and parts of Scotland as much as we can. And that's that's one of the reasons we've got quite a wide spread of of you tonight, and we put it that way. So rest assured, the committee will try to continue to bring in people from the different parts of Scotland and try and take into account those factors, which is very important. All right, I think that is then our session for tonight. So thank you to all of our guests for joining us and also to my fellow committee members. So thank you very much and all the best at this time. OK, thank you and goodbye. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Cheers.