 The next item of business is a statement by Angus Robertson on Scotland's census. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Angus Robertson, cabinet secretary, up to 10 minutes please. Good afternoon. On 28 April, I announced to Parliament that the census collection would be extended to the end of May to give additional time for those who needed it to complete their return and fulfil their personal legal responsibilities. We've now reached the end of Scotland's census 2022 collect period, and I'm pleased to announce that nearly 2.3 million households provided a response, achieving a national response rate of 87.9%. Progress has also been made across the country with 10 local authorities achieving return rates of more than 90%, with 28 exceeding the 85% mark and all above 80%. Scotland's census 2022 was designed to be a digital first census, recognising that this is the most convenient, most accessible and simplest channel for the majority. Even with this innovation, this never was an online only census, with paper available throughout to all who prefer this option. This is reflected in the 89% digital 11% paper split of returns received. I would like to extend my thanks to all those households who have done their part and provided a response. Their participation in this once-in-a-decade exercise is hugely important. Their response will enable better decisions about things that matter, helping local authorities, businesses and the Government to plan a wide range of vital public services to improve their lives as those living and working in Scotland. The purpose of the extension period was to further drive up national response rates, but also to ensure a high level of returns from each local authority, and in this context as much as possible, even out variability of returns. In context, this means that since 1 May, the original date to close the census, the national response rate has increased by 8.7 percentage points from 79.2%, with over an additional 200,000 households being enumerated during May. The second published target was to achieve 85% or more for each local authority area. There has been significant progress achieved in this respect since the beginning of the extension period. On 1 May, that had only been achieved in one local authority. It has now been achieved by 28. I announced to Parliament that up to a further £9.76 million of investment may be required to deliver the extension to the census collection period during May. This additional funding will be considered during the budget revision process and will be based on the actual additional costs incurred. However, the process is currently forecast to be around £6 million. That equates to 4.3% of the lifetime costs of the census 2022. During the extended collect phase, national records of Scotland and the Scottish Government implemented a wide range of interventions to further increase return rates. A significant multi-channel awareness campaign was continued, including social media, radio and TV advertisements, reminding people of the importance of completing their census and their legal responsibility. Key milestones were announced periodically by both social and print media to increase awareness. There was also continued help and support to complete the census, available via the census website or the free helpline. During the census collect extension period, over 30,700 calls were handled by staff at the contact centre, with over 214 language interpretations offered and 5,314 telephone data captures. In addition to the over 8.8 million letters and postcards issued to households, 556,828 paper questionnaires were also issued. The census field staff also undertook over 1.68 million household visits across Scotland, providing in-person support, including doorstep capture to those who may have needed it. 78% of non-responding households received at least one visit, a huge feat, realised only through the hard work, dedication and enthusiastic individuals something that I was able to witness first-hand during my own field visit in Easterhouse. During the extension period, a number of field events took place to encourage census completion, where possible or generate calls back from the contact centre until the end of live collection. Those events focused on lower-response parts of the country and on engaging with young people and students, as well as minority ethnic communities. Locations including faith centres, supermarkets and universities, with field staff available to assist with census completion at each site. I would like to personally thank the hundreds of field staff, contact centre agents and census officials who have worked tirelessly over the last few months, providing invaluable support to the people of Scotland to help ensure that their voices were heard. Householders also received a range of additional information through the post, including a third reminder letter, a postcard, a further reminder letter for those who had started but not finished their census online. National Records of Scotland also continued to work closely with a wide range of public, private sector, third sector organisations and faith leaders and representatives. I would like to once again thank those organisations sincerely for their hard work and support in continually promoting the census. Finally, I would like to again thank members for their support in promoting the census both at a national level and locally with their constituents. I know that many recently took time out of your busy schedules to visit census staff during field visits. It is clear that the need for the extension and the fact that, unfortunately, there remains a portion of Scotland's households who have not completed the census is despite a large-scale public awareness campaign, millions of letters and more than 1.68 million field visits. It is important that we understand why this happened so that lessons can be learned for the future of the census. To this end, in the last week of census collection period, a data collection exercise was undertaken by field staff to understand the reasons for non-completion by householders. While many reasons were offered by householders, by far the most common at 35 per cent was that they were too busy. That suggests that changes in society's attitudes to the census and completing it have had a significant part to play. Once evaluated this, combined with market research and global experiences, will provide valuable insight into reasons for non-completion across Scotland. However, the professional body responsible for running the census, the national records of Scotland, regards this extension to the collection period to have been a success. It has enabled more than 200,000 additional households to complete their census and for the majority of local authorities to achieve return rates greater than 85 per cent, with no authority below 80 per cent. The improved national return rate and the very important coverage across the country provides NRS with the confidence to conclude that they are in a good position to move on to the next element of the census, namely the vitally important census coverage survey, and then the statistical estimation and processing work required to deliver high-quality census outputs. Based on the significant improvement achieved, NRS was satisfied that it was appropriate to conclude the public awareness campaign and field force enumeration on the 31st, as announced. As happened in the censuses carried out in the rest of the UK and in previous censuses, NRS will accept late postal and digital returns delayed for legitimate reasons over the coming weeks. Filling in the census is a personal legal responsibility, and allowing people who have previously refused to respond a window to do so is standard procedure. In line with previous censuses, anyone who has directly refused to fill in the census has now been written to and given a final opportunity to do so before NRS began the process of referring them for potential prosecution. However, decisions regarding prosecutions remain a matter for the Crown Office and procurate a fiscal service. Scotland's census, in common with other modern censuses, combines a number of elements. Following this collection phase, NRS is now focused on planned post-collection quality control and assurance work, which includes the census coverage survey, the second-largest social research exercise in Scotland after the census itself. The census coverage survey, which launches on 13 June, was used previously in 2001 and 2011 in Scotland. It is a separate survey from the census, and although it covers a much smaller number of Scottish households at about 1.5 per cent or 53,000 households, it is still the second-largest social research exercise in Scotland after the census itself. It is conducted door-to-door by staff carrying identification and ensures a comprehensive and accurate picture of return rates across the country has been recorded. The census coverage survey provides important information, which, along with other administrative data, enables statisticians to estimate for the nature and volume of missing census returns and deliver the statistical database used to deliver outputs. Over the coming months, statisticians within our NRS will also make use of administrative data sources to improve the quality of the estimation work, delivering high-quality population and characteristics data. An international steering group of global census experts has also been established by the Registrar General to help to steer the work of NRS as we move forward from the collect element of the census. The steering group chaired by Professor James Brown has acknowledged that we are in a strong position to move forward, and I welcome the contributions that they will be making to steering NRS's statistical and methodological work over the next few months. That will support NRS to deliver both the census coverage survey and its work to identify the appropriate administrative data that can support quality assurance work. I am aware that in recent weeks much has been made of the response rate, particularly in light of pre-census targets. I would like to take this opportunity to reassure the people of Scotland that a return rate of 87.9 per cent is a good level of national census returns and puts us in a strong position on which to build. In conclusion, through a combination of census returns, individual administrative data, the census coverage survey and adjustments using aggregate administrative data, NRS will be able to proceed effectively with the next phase of census to produce the high-quality outputs that are required by data users. Finally, one of the aims of Scotland's census 2022 programme is to make recommendations for future censuses. There have been many important lessons learned over the last few months, and there is much work to do to understand what has worked well and what could have been better. I am clear that the evaluation of Scotland's census 2022 will reflect on that to make informed recommendations for the future. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised at his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if those members who wish to ask a question were to press the request-to-speak button now, and I call on Donald Cameron. I thank the cabinet secretary for prior sight of his statement. However, nowhere in the statement was there mention of the key target figure, the 94 per cent response rate minimum set by the NRS itself. The actual national results are way off that number. Let's lay out some other facts. The Scottish return rate is almost 10 per cent behind the rates in the rest of the UK. Glasgow, our most densely populated city, is a write-off at 81 per cent, not even near what is required. We have had delay after delay after delay at an ever-increasing bill for taxpayers. We were told a few weeks ago that Scotland's census had solid foundations. Scotland's census lies in ruins. It is a disgrace. The SNP could have run the census in sync with the rest of the UK last year, but, as always, it had to be different, and the cost of that decision is now clear for all to see. Does the cabinet secretary accept that it is highly probable that the census could now be worthless? Does he agree with Mark Roodhouse, fellow of the Economic History Society, who has said that it is likely that there will have to be an interim census or similar statistical exercise between now and 2031 to deal with what has happened here? Can I begin by saying that it is an important thing to state on the record that it is not Government that completes individual census returns? This is a matter of personal responsibility, and I find it passing strange that the party that believes in personal responsibility has drawn absolutely no attention to the fact that it was the decision of people for a variety of different reasons not to return their census rates, which is key in understanding the issues that we have faced in this census. While 2.3 million households did complete the census, sadly, 316,000 households did not. That is despite 8.8 million letters and reminders, and I am not even counting the PR campaigns that are built on top of that. May I update Parliament, because I think that those figures are quite enlightening to better understand the challenge amongst those parts of the community who did not take part in the census. Towards the end of May, the census field force asked us to over 1,200 people who had not returned a census what their main reasons were for not completing. There were a wide range of reasons. The headline responses were as follows. 35 per cent of those asked stated that they were too busy as the reason or one of the reasons. 17 per cent of those asked stated that they were not aware of the census as the reason or one of the reasons. 14 per cent of those asked stated that they did not realise that they had to complete it. Concerns about privacy, trust in government, nature of questions, access to paper, et cetera, all came out at 5 per cent or less, so yes, there are lessons to be learned. To Donald Cameron's point, I totally and utterly repudiate assertions of writing off anything in the census. They are false, they are ill-informed and they are misleading and they are frankly beneath them because he should know that when talking to actually census experts they say that it is a solid foundation to build. I hope that in time the Conservative party and sadly only one of their MSPs could be bothered to turn out on an MRS visit to see how the census was actually being conducted, that they learn from what happened during the census. We all have lessons to learn, but the slightly pathetic party politics that we have heard from the front-bencher of the Conservative party adds little to the understanding of what has worked well and what has needed to be learned in this census. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance notice of his statement. Cabinet secretary, in 2020 the then cabinet secretary said that the decision to move the census to 2022 was the only option in which there is confidence of producing high-quality outputs and deliver the benefits that are required by the people of Scotland. MRS was clear then that our response rate of at least 90 per cent was critical to achieve the delivery of high-quality census returns. The cabinet secretary now says not to worry as the delayed and underperforming census will be sorted through sampling 53,000 members of the public. This is a subset, so how will it reflect the different challenges in different local communities, want to be less reliable and less accurate and how will the diversity of Scotland's population be represented? I agree with the cabinet secretary that we need to understand what went wrong, but how can we have any confidence in this Government's promise of learning lessons from this census, given that the challenges and lessons from the 2011 census were the issues such as programme management, data collection, field operation, output content production and dissemination needed to be addressed? So what did go wrong this time? How will the needs of the residents of the tower block be met that I visited with the hardworking staff, given that there was a 57 per cent return rate just two weeks ago? How many people in low incomes across Scotland should now be worried about being fined £1,000? Given the cost of living crisis, many of whom thought they had returned the census through the digital means, we need to know the answers to those questions. Can I thank Sarah Boyack for her questions? I thank her both for her intervention in this statement and the many positive points that were made. I also thank her personally for being the only Labour member who went out with the NRS to see how the census was being conducted. In terms of having confidence, if she is not prepared to listen to what the NRS has to say can I point her in the direction of the international steering group that has been set up? Those are actual experts in the census. For those who are unaware who is on it, it is chaired by Professor James Brown, the ABS Professor of Official Statistics at the University of Technology. He is joined by Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the UK national statistician, by Professor David Martin, the professor of geography at the University of Southampton and the Deputy Director of the UK Data Service. I could go on. There are further colleagues eminent in their field of conducting censuses. I am confident that the exercise starting on the 13th of this month is going to add tremendous value to that which has taken place in the census collect period. I know that Sarah Boyack and others in the chamber who are members of the committee that oversees my portfolio area will be speaking to the national records of Scotland. I am sure that they will be speaking to some of those experts. I hope that she gets the reassurance that I believe I have had from the NRS and other experts. Yes, there are questions that need to be learned. Yes, we need to make sure that all of Scotland's communities are reflected in the census data at the end of the process. That is absolutely mission critical. Yes, we did not reach the 94 per cent target that the national records for Scotland wished us to reach. We have got to be within six points of that target. That does not call into question the returns of the census. For those who wish to amplify those messages from certain corners of the media, who sadly do not understand how censuses are conducted in the 21st century, yes, there are lessons that need to be learned, but please over exaggeration is not something that will help us to reach the conclusions that we need to at the end of every census. Before I call the next members, I would just ask for perhaps greater brevity both in the questions and the answers. I have allowed some latitude with the front bench, but if we continue like that, we will not get everybody in who has sought to ask a question. I call Clare Adamson to be followed by Sharon Dowie. Can I ask the cabinet secretary any statement that he outlined that the census is not completed and that there is a lot of work, administrative work and validation work still to be done. Can I ask him if he can give us any indicative timescales by which national records of Scotland will be able to answer some of the questions around this year's census with a view to informing the learning points that have been identified? Clare Adamson, for that question, the NRS plans to start publishing results from the census approximately a year after collection in 2023. Results will be laid before Parliament and made available in a clear and usable form for all users. Age Scotland chief Brian Sloan has said that the Scottish Government should shine a light on elderly people who risk missing the census deadline. Within three days, elderly pensioners face criminal records and hefty fines if they are unaware of the census or are unable to complete the form. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what work is the Scottish Government doing specifically to identify older people who may miss the deadline and will the June 12 date be the final one, even if it means handing out fines and criminal records to vulnerable pensioners? Can I say very gently that the member does not clearly understand the process by which the national records for Scotland moves on to the next stage of working out who has not returned a census. Those who face prosecution, the involvement of the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service, impact on those who have expressly refused to take part in the census, not those who were unaware of the census—a very important distinction between the two things. It is important that everybody understands this in the chamber. I can assure the member that the lengths that have been gone to by the national registers for Scotland—we do not have time, Presiding Officer, for me to go through the amount of correspondence that has been issued to people, specifically targeting certain parts of the community, including the aged, because the point that she makes is correct. Mission critical is to get those results from that part of Scotland's community. The NRS has been extremely focused on that, as have the enumerators, and I am clear that the returns that they have been getting will be adequately capturing that important part of Scottish society. Thank you. I met enumerators in my constituency and heard about some of the challenges that they face, not least with the translation. One enumerator spent several hours with one household because of language issues. Will that kind of experience feed into the work between the NRS and the international steering group going forward? I have updated the chamber on how many translation services were offered in the extension period. That is in addition to the earlier period of the census across a wide range of languages. If there is any evidence that there was still work to be done in communities for whom English, especially as a second language, we absolutely need to learn that. I look forward to the work that is going to be undertaken by the steering group and if there is absolutely anything that can be done to make sure that people fully understand the process in future censuses, there is absolutely less than that needs to be learned. Martin Whitfield, to be followed by Christine Grahame. The cabinet secretary has talked about the personal responsibility for completing the census, which is, of course, correct, but on the figures that he gave us, 35% said that they were too busy. 17% not aware of it, 14% didn't realise the requirement to do it. Who is responsible for that 31% of didn't know or didn't realise they were responsible? Can I say one of the most searching questions that we have had this afternoon, this goes to the heart of trying to understand why it is that there has been a particular group of particularly hard-to-reach households and individuals during the census. I am asking myself this question. What is it that, in a household, when one has received a multitude of correspondence in a variety of formats that once house has been visited, not once, but in many cases twice, three times, four times, five times, that still a significant percentage of people were saying, I didn't know what was happening, and so on and so on. This, to my mind, is absolutely the lesson that needs to be learned, because my fear is that this is a phenomenon that is not a one-off. For those of us who knock on doors, as we do at election time, I think that we will understand some of the phenomenon that have been trying to describe, but I think that it's something that both the international steering group and the Scottish Parliament Committee will want to look at very closely, because if we can get an answer to that challenge, then I think that we will be able to see the same kind of percentage returns as in previous census returns having said that. I do think that there is a particular challenge in a part of Scottish society. Incidentally, I don't think that just Scottish society is a phenomenon that we're going to be seeing elsewhere, and all of us are going to have to try and work out our traditional means of meeting the needs of people who don't understand, realise or perhaps want to realise that they need to take part in the census. Christine Grahame, to be followed by Willie Rennie. In my drop-in Tesco surgeries, I often find elderly people who do not use or have access to the internet nor indeed have a mobile phone. Many live alone with no one to assist perhaps in completing a paper form. Was this identified as a factor in non-completion when those norm returning households were visited, and if so, what recommendations will flow from this? One of the things that happened during the extended period of the census is that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of copies, paper copies, of the census were sent to hard-to-reach households that had not returned a census online. That is in addition to those who had rung up and used the service to order paper copies. To answer Christine Grahame's point, there were a variety of ways of trying to make sure that gaps could be plugged if one was wanting to assume that the issue of digital access was prohibiting people taking part. Measures were undertaken to try to make sure that people had alternatives, including paper copies and enumerators turning up on people's doors and offering to help fill out paper forms online and so on. Great efforts were undertaken, particularly in the last extended period of the census, especially in parts of local authority areas and parts of the country where there were much lower returns. Great efforts were made to try to make sure that people could take part in the way that was most appropriate for them. Given the level of interest and the challenges of time, would you be willing to accept a motion without notice, understanding order 8.14.3, to extend the time for the settlement of business? I remind the member that, in fact, Parliament has already had an opportunity to consider the matter, and it did so on Tuesday when it chose in its vote not to extend the time for the business. I now call Willie Rennie to be followed by Willie Coffey. I am not sure that the minister should be making a virtue of only spending an additional £6 million on the survey and census extension. It is still a huge sum of money that he should not be wasting. The minister has talked about his answers about the reasons why we are in that position more than he did in his statement, but he talked about the data collection exercise that has been conducted. Would he be prepared to publish that data collection exercise so that we can see at an earlier stage what went wrong so that we can learn the lessons for the future now? Can I appeal for Willie Rennie, perhaps—I do not know whether he will agree with that—to wait for the international steering group to do their work for parliamentary colleagues on the portfolio committee that he will be looking at? If he has further questions, I am quite happy to entertain any request for further information that he does not think is in the public realm at the appropriate point. I am sure that the national register for Scotland is going to be publishing all relevant documentation and data. Can I go back to the initial point that Willie Rennie was making? Forgive me, I cannot remember whether the Liberal Democrats supported or opposed the extension. The Liberal Democrats did not support the extension, which is disappointing because it took 4.3 per cent additional cost to secure a result, which will mean that the census is built on the solid foundations to quote the census experts. I would have thought that we would all have welcomed that. I now call Willie Coffey, who is joining us remotely to be followed by Ross Greer. Thank you. While the cabinet secretary has made it clear that paper copies of the census forms could be requested, I believe that the field force staff continued to recommend online submission during those doorstep reminder visits. Could the cabinet secretary explain why there was still the emphasis on online submission during the collection period and why no paper forms were issued directly as part of those reminder visits? Cabinet secretary, I hope that you have the general answer. I did. Just to correct the record, it is not the case—maybe that is some reassurance to Willie Coffey—that people were only being directed to online returns. Paper copies were made available by enumerators throughout the country. If that is indeed what people wanted to use to make their return, that is what was made available to them, as was the ability to, together with enumerators at the doorstep, make a data capture of their return, if that is something that they wanted to undertake. Either with the help of an enumerator or a paper copy is what was available to people in the doorsteps of Scotland during the extension period. I understand that further detailed analysis will be undertaken, but can I ask if there are any initial indications of any demographic trends within the 12 per cent of households who have not completed the census? For example, is there a risk that we have disproportionately undercounted particular faith groups, ethnicities or social economic groups? Those are exactly the questions that are going to be looked at by the international expert panel. Those are the questions that we will all want to know the answers to and not least the national register of Scotland. Given that we are still at a phase where we have just finished the census collect period, although participation is not being publicised, people are still sending in returns, and then we move on to the next stage of the process. We are going to have to wait a short while, hopefully not too long, until we can get the stage to be able to understand the questions that Ross Greer is asking, because they are, frankly, exactly the right questions. I call Stephen Kerr to be followed by Rona Mackay. I fear, Presiding Officer, that Angus Roberts is doing something that I would not normally associate with him, in his statement today that he is insulting the intelligence of many of us here and the people of Scotland. He has actually blamed the people of Scotland for what is a catastrophic failure of this census. In what universe is 87.9 per cent a result to be pleased about? This is genuinely a disaster for all of us. It is another fine mess that the SNP has gotten us into. The target was 94 per cent, not 85 per cent, and the rest of the United Kingdom in 2020 got 97 per cent. The root cause of this is the SNP obsession with divergence. That is the root cause, and it is cost to people of Scotland in excess of £150 million. Does the minister recognise that the Scottish Government has got a communications problem, that despite an army of 174 communications managers or spin doctors in the Scottish Government, this Government has a problem with communicating with the public, and what is it going to do about it? It is interesting that we got to a question at the end of that speech. Excuse me, could we have less chat across the benches? If the member wishes to stand up and make a point of order, he knows that he can do that. Otherwise, let's move on to get the answer to Mr Kerr's question. Cabinet Secretary. Do I believe that the census was adequately communicated in Scotland? Yes, I do. Why do I think that? Well, I did not have time earlier, Presiding Officer, so maybe I will take the opportunity to go through this. These are all the core publications that were sent to households across Scotland in the multiples of millions. Is the member suggesting that people did not receive the letters? Is the member suggesting that they were not visited by enumerators? Is the member suggesting that people did not call and encourage participation? Is he suggesting that the national networks for Scotland did not participate in events that lengthen breadth of Scotland to try to encourage people to take part? If that is the case, the member is not understanding the heart of the challenge about the difference between the return rate at the end of the extension period and the 94 per cent target that the NRS wishes to achieve. If he is going to continue down this vein, he is not going to learn the lessons of why there was a disjunction between people who did receive, because they did receive, letters and postcards and encouragement to take part. Why they then did not is that the heart of the challenge that we need to make sure in future censuses. Given that the member represents a party that thinks that personal responsibility is an important party equation, again, he has failed to address that. I wish to get in the last MSP who wishes to ask a question, Rona Mackay. It is clear that the census fuel force staff made a huge effort to maximise census returns and lead up to the deadline. Does the cabinet secretary hold any data at this stage on the effectiveness of this door-to-door method and increasing understanding of the census and boosting the return rate? I fear that we do not have time for me to go into the list of local authorities to be able to share with colleagues the difference during the census extension period, which was most marked in areas where previously there had been the lowest return rate. It was an extremely effective intervention to get the return rates up. Having said that, in many parts of the country, notwithstanding multiple visits to households by enumerators, still a significant number of those householders did not take part in the census. That is at the heart of the challenge that we need to learn out of this census to build on the solid foundations of the results that we know we have had because independent census experts have told us so. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business, to allow front bench teams to change positions should they so wish.