 I welcome everyone to the seventh meeting of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee in 2022. I've received apologies for today's meeting from Sue Weber and no substitute member is attending in her place. Our first item is to decide whether to take items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private, are members agreed? Thank you colleagues, we're agreed. And our second item is a further evidence session with Scottish Government ministers as part of our inquiry into the health and wellbeing of children and young people. I welcome to the committee for the first time in this session, Shona Robertson. Shona Robertson, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. Clare Hawke also attended in this committee for the first time in this session, Minister for Children and Young People. They're supported by Fiona Clements improving lives for people with care, experienced units, the Children's and Families Directorate, Gavin Henderson, the Deputy Director of Keeping the Promise, Shirley-Anne Lang, the Director for Housing and Social Justice, Tom McNamara, the Head of Youth Justice and Children's Hearings and Laura Meichel, the Head of Support and Wellbeing Unit for the Scottish Government, joining us online. Welcome to you both. Cabinet Secretary, you've got an opening statement to make. Yes, thanks convener, if that's okay. Good morning everyone and I'm very grateful to the committee for inviting myself and the minister to give evidence today. The Covid pandemic has obviously had a clear impact on the wellbeing of children and young people and the true extent of that will not yet be evident and that's why this committee's inquiry is so important and why this Government remains committed to getting it right for every child. We know that there are strong links between experience of poverty and childhood and poorer health outcomes across a range of measures, and not only that, there are impacts on wider life chances, including on educational attainment. We want better for Scotland's children and have set in statue ambitious income-based targets to significantly reduce levels of child poverty in Scotland by 2030 and have declared tackling child poverty as a national mission, working to mobilise all of Scotland to drive the progress that is needed. Across the life of our first tackling child poverty delivery plan, we have strengthened the financial support available for low-income families across the early years. That includes through our package of five family benefits, including our best start grant, best start foods and the Scottish child payment, a package that will further strengthen from April with a doubling of the Scottish child payment to £20 per week per child. We now offer the equivalent of 1,140 early learning and childcare hours to all three and four-year-olds and around a quarter of two-year-olds, a critical investment in both children and parents. We have delivered new employment support built on the values of dignity and respect, providing the help that parents need to access employment without fear of sanctions. We recognise that holistic whole family support is essential to wellbeing and tackling poverty. To this end, we have committed to investing £500 million of the whole family wellbeing funding over the course of this Parliament. We also recognise the additional challenges faced by our care-experienced children and young people. By the end of this parliamentary year, at the latest, we will publish a single implementation plan that will set out the actions and commitments that we will deliver to ensure that we keep the promise by 2030. We will also publish our next tackling child poverty delivery plan by the end of March. This will set out the transformational actions that will take with partners across Scotland to tackle child poverty and drive progress toward the ambitious targets set by this Parliament. In 2021, our investment targeted at low-income households reached almost £2.5 billion, including nearly £1 billion, focused on low-income families with children. Delivering on our ambitions on child poverty and child wellbeing will require not only changes in the ways of working, but also in investment, and that is why our on-going resource spending review has outlined child poverty as a key priority. I welcome the committee's inquiry and the opportunity for the Minister for Children, Young People and Myself to answer the committee's questions relevant to our portfolios. It is important to say that we have asked ministers and cabinet secretaries from across different portfolios because what they are doing feeds into children's health. The amount of stakeholders and witnesses that we have had who flagged up poverty as being the driver of poor mental and physical health outcomes for children and young people was overwhelming. That prompted us to bring both of you in, so thank you for coming and giving us that perspective on the work that you are doing. I want to ask the cabinet secretary about child poverty targets and where you are on that, but what the challenges are in the constitutional landscape and the powers landscape of tackling poverty from the Scottish Government perspective? First of all, we have made considerable progress in implementing the first delivery plan that includes key supports that I mentioned earlier on, including the Scottish child payment for children under six and the bridging payments for older children and the parental employability support. We are not starting from nothing. There are building blocks there, but we recognise that we needed to make the next delivery plan far more cross-government. We cannot tackle child poverty through social security alone. It can do some of the heavy lifting, but you also have to try to reduce costs and you have to try and increase opportunities for employment, because we know that work is a key way out of poverty and child poverty for families. To do that requires the whole of government to be focused on this. It also requires partnerships across the rest of Scotland with local government, with the third sector, with the private sector as well, to make that happen. The focus is very much around those three pillars and what we can bring across the whole of government in pulling that together. I have spent a lot of time in bilateral meetings with colleagues. We have spent a lot of time at Cabinet discussing this, and we are basically looking at every possible way that we can make those interim targets achievable. That is against quite a challenging backdrop. It is against a challenging backdrop of the cost of living pressures that are building. It is against a challenging backdrop of the cut to universal credit of the £20 pandemic uplift that has been given, and that has caused problems. We are doing absolutely everything that we can, but I do not think that I can underestimate that that is against a very difficult backdrop. However, we need to get this right, and we absolutely need to give our children the best chance of having the life chances that they absolutely deserve. We are working hard. Can I ask about the approach that you are taking to the forthcoming delivery plan, and the work that you have done with the stakeholders to inform that plan? I know that is a huge question, but it is just to give us a grounding, because a lot of my colleagues are going to come in on the specific aspects of it later on. We started from the point of view that we do not have all the answers. We have some ideas, but we do not have all the answers, and that is why we have been consulting with a wide range of stakeholders seeking to build on the robust evidence base established during the life of the first delivery plan. Clearly, we have also sought views directly from the Social Justice and Social Security Committee as the principal committee with the remit expertise and oversight of this work, but we are very much welcome to the views of other committees, and indeed the third sector organisations and local government. Those were lived experience as well, so we have been working with the Poverty Commission, who have also in turn been working with those with lived experience, to try and co-develop and test some policy proposals in advance of publishing the plan next month. Those really have looked at how we support the six priority families. We know that the six priority families account for around 90 per cent of all children in poverty in Scotland, so we know that if we can do better by them and come up with solutions that are going to work for those families, we can really dig deep into child poverty. On the employability side, for example, we have been really thinking about how do we create more bespoke solutions for families, because if they had already found it easy to navigate and get into employment from the position they are in, they would have already done so. We need to understand the barriers. Some of those barriers are financial, but some of them are about childcare, some of them are about transport and costs. We need to understand that and try to wrap around solutions that are going to make the difference in open doors that have previously been closed. We also need to look at the costs that families face and how we can reduce those in the current climate of increasing living costs and, importantly, making sure that people are getting the support that they are entitled to through Social Security Scotland. That is the approach that we are taking. I am very hopeful that it will give us the best chance possible of meeting those interim targets. Before I bring my colleague, Sandeshine, on what that is, I just wanted to bring in the minister, because a lot of the approach in tackling the wellbeing of children and young mothers has been very early interventions and significant interventions, both universal and bespoke. Can you give us an overview of that from your portfolio perspective? Of course. I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to the committee. If you look at overall the work that the Scottish Government does with our partner agencies in health, we are looking right through from pre-conceptual care, antenatal care, perinatal care, the baby box and the best start grants that are available to families. We are looking at giving our children and families the absolute best start in life, giving them the tools and the opportunities to have healthy babies and to be supported when they become a family when someone gives birth to a child. One of the most obvious examples is the baby box, which the Scottish Government introduced in the programme for government in 2016. If you look at that as a universal measure, as of January this year, there were over 200,000 baby boxes delivered across Scotland, having an impact on 98 per cent of expectant parents who took up that offer of support, of clothing, of information. That demonstrates how valued that particular intervention, that particular offering is. Moving on, we are looking at the expansion of early learning childcare. In August last year, all local authorities were offering 1140 hours of free early learning in childcare across Scotland. As the cabinet secretary alluded to, that offer is also to eligible two-year-olds. We are looking, as a Government, to expanding some of that offer, which we hope will impact on some of the effects on families of poverty that the cabinet secretary alluded to about being able to access work and training and education through the use of some of that free childcare provision. In addition to that, in the manifesto for government, we are also looking at expanding that childcare offer, looking at wraparound childcare, out-of-school childcare and holiday childcare. Providing families with some of the support that, as the cabinet secretary said, we think is needed in enabling some of those families to access some of the services, education and work opportunities to alleviate poverty that they find themselves in. I am glad that you mentioned work as an exit route from poverty. My question is, why do low-income parents lose their council tax reduction when they enter work rather than a gradual tapered withdrawal to incentivise work? Cabinet secretary and minister, you both mentioned childcare, but the Joseph Brownery Foundation said in 2020 that less than 30 per cent of local authorities had enough childcare on a background of huge council tax funding decreases. What work will the Scottish Government do to improve that? Our council tax reduction scheme currently protects over 470,000 low-income households in Scotland from council tax bills according to need and ability to pay. There is no equivalent in England where council tax support was localised individual local authorities from 2013. Our council tax reduction scheme has maintained support since the abolition of council tax benefit in 2013. Funding for it has exceeded local authority costs by more than £97 million over the past three years. I would say that we are doing what we can around those costs clearly. The Government at the moment is looking at how we support families with some of the consequential monies that have come from UK Government's response to the cost of living. Cabinet is considering that at the moment. We will always look at what more we can do and the budget that we have tried to balance and focus in on how we support low-income households at a time of rising costs. We cannot do everything and we cannot mitigate every single aspect of decisions that are made elsewhere, but what we can do is to try and focus that support as best we can. I do not know clearly if you want to answer on childcare. Thank you, cabinet secretary. We have made significant progress in delivering a major expansion of funded early learning and childcare over recent years. We have worked closely with COSLA with our local authority colleagues and with the PVI sector in expanding that offer of free childcare. There has been significant investment in infrastructure, expansion of nurseries, some new builds of nurseries to be able to afford that offer to local communities. We have proven that when we set targets, we can meet those in terms of providing early learning and childcare. We have other provider neutrality in funding, so outside of actual nursery buildings, the child-minding industry offers a huge offer to children and to young people both preschool, early years and wraparound school care. Obviously, there is always work to do in supporting that infrastructure, supporting that industry and ensuring that there will be places for the children that will be expanding that childcare offer. Bring in Emma Harper, who joins us remotely. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, cabinet secretary and minister. I am interested in issues around child poverty and public health. To what extent is child poverty viewed as a public health issue? There are absolutely clear links between the experience of child poverty and put our health outcomes across a range of measures over the course of a child's life, including healthy life expectancy. As I said earlier, our approach has been to make sure that we are working right across Government, and that includes those working within the health portfolio area and what they can bring to the table. Claire Hawke talked earlier on about that early intervention and some of the work to get that right in terms of making sure that the interventions are the right ones. I think that the target set through the Child Poverty Act allows us to look holistically across a wide range of action to tackle child poverty. I think that when you look at some of the work that Harry Burns has done, for example, he has very much set child poverty in the public health context. Basically, the challenge to us all is not to see child poverty as inevitable but as a product of society and the structures in society. Therefore, we need to understand that in order to help to move barriers and structural issues that set children on a path towards poverty as soon as they are born. We have some of the levers to address that. One of the frustrations is that we do not have them all, and sometimes the work that we do and the decisions that we make feel sometimes that there is a push back from decisions made elsewhere. I mentioned the universal credit £20 cut earlier on. That can be a difficulty, but we have to use every lever that we have as a Government to try and make progress on child poverty. Viewing it as a public health issue is the right thing to do. Thank you. Just to pick up on the baby boxes that Minister Clare Hawke mentioned as well, I think that you mentioned 200,000 baby boxes that have been given so far. I know that, on Fries and Galloway, we had 1,241 and NHS Borders had 1,033. Are you able to tell us a wee bit about the impact of the introduction of baby boxes? How has that helped support to protect or to do some of the challenges against some of the poverty that we are seeing? Thank you to Emma Harper for that question. The independent evaluation of Scotland's baby box was published last year, on 13 August. That highlighted the positive impact of the scheme on families, particularly for first-time, younger and low-income parents, with a 97 per cent satisfaction with the box in its contents and 91 per cent of families reported financial savings, which is obviously very relevant to the committee's inquiry just now. The evaluation also highlighted key impacts, including saving money on essential items that are needed for the baby, as well as learning about positive parenting behaviours, such as learning to bond with the baby through playing, talking and reading. Over half of the families reported reading to their baby earlier as a result of receiving the baby box, which is obviously good for promoting that attachment, that positive parenting and also for child development, particularly in speech and language, as we know that reading to younger children can help them to develop those skills, which is really important. We have demonstrated through that research and through the parental uptake of the baby box, how valued that is. If I could pick up a little bit on what the cabinet secretary had said there about having to mitigate some of the impacts of decisions made elsewhere with reserved benefits, the benefit cap that was introduced by the Westminster Government a few years ago, we saw statistics in the last couple of weeks about the number of children that have been affected by that benefit cap. Essentially, their families are not receiving benefits from more than two children. In my constituency, at least 215 children have been affected by that, so the impact of that on family incomes is huge. That is in one constituency in Scotland, so we really have to look at the effects of child poverty and what the Scottish Government can do. We are not powerless, we can do things to alleviate child poverty, but at a time that we are, it feels like fighting with one hand tied behind our back. Emma, have you got any more questions, or will I move on? I'm quite happy for you to move on, convener. Thank you very much. Can I come to questions on protection of vulnerable children from Gillian Mackay? Thank you, convener, and good morning both. Given the difficulties that the pandemic has caused around keeping in contact with children and their families, as well as the decreased visibility of children during lockdown, is there a risk that a greater number of children will have fallen through the cracks and not been identified by public services as vulnerable or at risk, and what action has been taken to identify those children? I can certainly start on that. Obviously, we are acutely aware of the impact that the pandemic has had on all of us, particularly on children and families. The Covid-19 Children and Families Collective Leadership group, which was jointly chaired by the Scottish Government and SOLIS, was established in May 2020 to bring together national and local government and other partners across children and families services, including health, education, justice, third sector, to review concerns for children, young people and families with vulnerabilities during the pandemic and the longer-term support for recovery and renewal. As part of its work during the pandemic, the CLG developed an action plan focused on 10 priorities, including access to services, child protection, drug and alcohol, care leavers, respite care and workforce resilience. Using near real-time data rather than historic data, the CLG was able to get a better sense of the early impact on vulnerable children, including commissioning deep dives through Celsus, who I believe the committee has had some contact with and received some information from and some evidence, as well as other partners to understand the collective impact on any emerging trends, particularly around service response to need. We have learned to work over the course of the pandemic in a more agile way between national and local government organisations and agencies. They need to continue to be inclusive of our third sector partners. That has been largely driven by better access to timely routine data and the use of local intelligence, which was not previously available in that way. We have seen some really good examples of how services have adapted to the pandemic to ensure that they are able to deliver to particularly vulnerable children and families. I have heard some examples of social workers donning PPE to go in and do home visits, meeting up with children and families outside, going for a walk at times when that was the most appropriate and the most safe, given the mitigations that were in place for Covid-19. Of course, health services remained operational during the most restrictive restrictions and lockdown in terms of maternity services were prioritised. Health visitors and school nurses remained working too. There are lessons to be learned, and we will learn from them. If services need to respond to tighter restrictions that need to be put in place in the future, we can learn from the work that has already been done and the research. The promise has commented on the impact of the national care service proposals on reform of the care system. How do we ensure that reform and change is happening now, while long-term work on the national care service is on-going? I am sure that the committee heard some evidence last week on the national care service from my colleague Kevin Stewart, who is leading on that. I believe that this week the responses to the call for evidence and consultation will be published. I do not want to pre-empt any of that. Obviously, children's services were included in that consultation, and I know that a wide variety of views will have been submitted just through my conversations with stakeholders and others. As a Government, we are absolutely committed to keeping the promise and ensuring that children in Scotland grow up feeling loved, safe and respected, and that the care services that they receive are appropriate to them and that they are wrapped around services. I have no doubt that there will be challenges ahead with the introduction of the national care service. There will inevitably be changes to social work, even if it is only adult services that are within the national care service. We are very mindful of that. The commitment to the promise is, like the challenges of child poverty, is a cross-government commitment. We would be very mindful of how unintended impacts and working through how the national care service would be developed so that we do not see unintended consequences to other parts of systems or services. Last week, Louise Hunter, the chief executive of Who Care Scotland, referred to progress on the promise as an, I quote, implementation purgatory. Given what the minister has just said about the length of time that it is going to take in terms of the process for a national care service and what is perceived in the sector as delay to implementation of the promise, does the minister think that that is a fair assessment? I can understand why care experience people feel frustrated that progress is not as visible as it should be. The past two years have been very difficult and challenging for all of us. Many people's situations have changed as a result of that. As we recover from the impact of Covid-19, our commitment to keep the promise remains central to our actions as a Government as I have released my answer to Gillian Mackay. Our ambition is to create the conditions that enable well-being to flourish are set out in our Covid recovery strategy, and that includes driving forward the change that we need to keep the promise. We heard from quite a few care-experienced young adults. Some have actually become impanised themselves and talked about the situation that they were in in the pandemic. It has been very, very isolated. Out of that came a very astute comment from young women. I mentioned this to Kevin Stewart last week, where she said that local authorities all know who is leaving care, who they are and when that happens, yet the outcomes for young people leaving care and getting into their adult life in terms of their health and mental wellbeing are known to be quite bad. She made the point that the local authorities almost seem to leave them, and there is nothing in place for them in terms of their mental health. I wonder what your response would be to that, because it seems to be a very astute comment. Obviously, not every local authority act independently of one another and they act differently. What are we doing to make sure that young people leaving care or having care experience have better outcomes in terms of their health and wellbeing? It sounds like the voice of that young woman has obviously resonated with yourself, convener, and I am sure with the rest of the committee. It is vitally important that we listen to those voices and that we have those voices and that experience at the heart of the work that we do. Obviously, that is vitally important as we develop policy and as we work to fulfil the promise that the voice of lived experience is there. We absolutely recognise the vital role of positive and well-planned transitions, and that that planning can improve the outcomes for young people in care and leaving care. We are committed to supporting care experience to young people who are in care and leaving care. That is enshrined in the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014. In the measures that we are taking to keep the promise, we are working with partners to explore how we link existing data collections together to provide a clearer picture of health and wellbeing outcomes for care experienced young people to enable us to make targeted interventions. As an example of that being over the course of the next six to twelve months, we are working with four local authorities on a pilot programme to link care numbers with existing looked-after children data to provide a better understanding of outcomes and give us the information for next steps for a national roll-out so that ultimately we are able to get a better understanding of long-term outcomes and also to measure improvements in the care system as we work together to keep the promise and improve the lives of children and young people. There certainly is work on going there, but through that work has to be that golden thread of lived experience and of people's experience, good and bad, of being in looked-after situations and in the care system and what we can take from that that they felt was good and what we need to improve on, but we are absolutely determined to do that. Paul, you want to talk about child poverty priority groups, Paul? Thank you, convener. I suppose that having read the information on that, I just wanted to maybe start with how the data can perhaps be improved to really look at intersectionality. For example, how do we know how many families who are from an ethnic minority background also have children who have a disability? How do we drill down and get to the detail of what are very complex and different lives? You raised an important point. As I said earlier, we have placed a sharp focus on six priority families, but those families are all different in their challenges. How do we make sure that we understand all those challenges? We have published a series of evidence reviews alongside our first three annual child poverty progress reports, one on lone parents, one on families and one on disability. We need to not take a one-size-fits-all approach, so I mentioned earlier on about more bespoke solutions for families. Each family is different from each family, but those with different protective characteristics clearly have further challenges. It is always going to be difficult to pick up small populations within sample surveys, so it is important to support sample surveys with the development of other evidence and qualitative and participatory research with the priority families. It is really key to understanding barriers and what works in tackling poverty for them. Those additional reports will help us to do that. We are actively looking to develop data linkage to allow better analysis of those small populations. The data intelligence network has an on-going project to link the census, the school pupil census and health records. If that is able to be done, it would provide a granular level of information. Having said all that, one of the most important things that we can do is to listen to what families are telling us are the barriers. If you think about the three pillars that I mentioned earlier on when it comes to employability, for example those who are perhaps one of the parents as a disability or the parents from the BAME community, they will face additional barriers to employment for all the reasons that we understand than perhaps other families' lone-parent families likewise, if they are overcoming those childcare barriers and the other barriers that they will face. We need to understand that. Our solutions in the delivery plan need to recognise that one size does not fit all and getting alongside families and working with them with trusted folk who know the families rather than pitching in with an agency to say that we want to speak to them. I think that that kind of trusted third sector organisations can help to have a conversation about what would make the difference to your family in helping you to move on to the world of work to overcome some of the issues that you have. Thank you, convener. A comprehensive answer from the cabinet secretary began to explore some of the further themes that I am keen to get a wee bit more clarity on. Quite rightly, the cabinet secretary says that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work. The Government's intention is to target measures specifically at the groups that we have just discussed. Are there examples at the moment of initiatives where that targeting is happening? On the last question, I think that there are and that there is a lot of third sector support that is wrapped around focusing on lone parents, for example. There are specific supports that, through third sector organisations for Black and minority ethnic families, but we could do better at understanding the barriers, particularly on employability. There is evidence that there are still families who are not as aware of the supports that are available that they are entitled to, so we need to understand why that is and overcome those barriers to accessing financial support that is there that they are entitled to. There are other issues, for example, about whether or not we are, through the affordable housing supply programme, building enough large homes for families that require four or five-bedroom homes. I think that we could be better at that. Obviously, keeping the cost of a home through the social rented sector is substantially less than the private rented sector, so we need to think about how we reduce costs as well. The employability area is one that is underdeveloped and has a really strong focus for us in this delivery plan because we recognise that if we are actually going to help families to move into the world of work, we need to understand the barriers for all of those families. They will be different from one family to another, so we are trying to tailor that support to families to meet their particular needs. If we can do that in a more effective way, I think that we could really begin to help families. We are looking at some test sites at the moment and how we can test that out and working with families to look at what works. A lot of work is going on around that at the moment, and I am happy to furnish the committee with more information about that once it is live to go. Of course, as an example, I targeted support from my portfolio interests. The eligibility of two-year-olds to access the 1140 years was expanded to children of care-experienced parents to provide them with the opportunities of being able to work, train, continue or restart education, but also a recognition that they might not have the family support around them, that other people might have in terms of childcare, in terms of getting some time away or being able to have their children in a safe place so that they can access other services. That is another example of where we have targeted some of that support, which is quite tangible. We are talking about the 1140 hours in the expanded care to vulnerable two-year-olds. In particular, given that we have had the lockdowns and issues with not being able to access some of that care ordinarily, what has been done to improve the uptake of the places that people with two-year-olds that are entitled to additional childcare can take them up? There might be families out there, parents out there who do not want to put their child, their two-year-old, into nurseways. Is there a flexibility of provision that you are seeing that is maybe encouraging the take-up? There is a principle of provider neutrality, so a parent who has an eligible child would be able to use an early learning setting that could be childminding, it could be a nursery placement, it could be an outdoor nursery. There is a variety of settings that parents can choose. I think that it is important to remember that even during the school closures for most pupils and ELC closures, those facilities were there for our key workers, to maintain services, but also for vulnerable families who were identified, so that local authorities identified families that they know best. They were still able to access that funded ELC and school-aged care. Although we have made significant progress in delivering a major expansion and part of that during a pandemic, it is testament to the work that has been done by many people to ensure that we could deliver 1140 in August last year. We have seen an uptake in the number of eligible twos in terms of year-on-year, which is encouraging. Obviously, there is still more to do, and we want to ensure that everyone who is eligible for that provision is able to access it if they choose, except that there will be some parents of two-year-olds who do not want to use that childcare. Some of the work that we have done is to ensure that people's services who are in contact with those families are aware of the offer and that they are able to inform families of the offer of childcare. We are working with the UK Government to look at the UK-level data sharing. There is a consultation currently out from the UK Government calling for views about data sharing with the Scottish Government, the families who are recipients of those eligible benefits, so that local authorities are better able to communicate directly with those families. There have been issues with GDPR and systems not being able to speak with each other, so my understanding is that that will require some legislation from Westminster, but that consultation is currently there. We also need to, as the cabinet secretary said, get alongside those families and understand what are some of the barriers there to eligible families accessing that childcare offer that is currently there. Sandesh, you were saying that you wanted to come in on that, but you are able to go into your theme as well, which is on the development of children during the Covid. Thank you, convener. Just before I come into theme 5, minister, you talked about the uptake, but between 2019 and 2020, registrations fell from 11 per cent to 2 per cent. The Scottish Child Mining Association has said that added bureaucracy and paperwork for child minders has stopped them from delivering the funded 1140 hours and had many to leave the profession or prevented new people from joining. What is your response to that? My figures are slightly different to yours in that there was a drop between 2019 to 2020, but it was a drop from 11 per cent to 9 per cent, rather than 2 per cent, and it increased to, in 2021, to 13 per cent. Given the impact of Covid, there could be some understanding for why perhaps parents did not register their children for that eligible childcare or perhaps were reluctant to do so given the circumstances that they were living in. The child minders and child minders association are absolutely key partners with the Scottish Government and local authorities in delivering 1140 hours and looking at developing the wraparound care that we have committed to doing. We have been working closely with the child minders and child minders association to understand why child minders are giving up their profession to try to help to recruit and retain some of those. They are an absolute key part of the ELC workforce. We are committed to doing that and working alongside the national association to understand what attracts people to becoming child minders and ensuring that it is seen as an attractive career option to expanding that workforce but also to retaining the workforce and understanding why people choose to leave. Mary Glasgow told the committee that there are babies and toddlers who are reluctant to go to nursery or begin to move through important social stages. We will see the impact of Covid for some time to come. The University of Glasgow found 10 to 13 per cent of children had a concern about one area of development, including gross motor, speech and language and emotional and behavioural development. Cabinet secretary, what impact assessment did the Scottish Government make regarding later restrictions to the development of children? I might be one for Claire's. I'm happy to answer as a minister. I spoke earlier on about some of the cross-sectoral work that we have done on the children and families collective leadership group, looking at the impact of the pandemic on children and young people and looking at the real-time data and how services were responding to children and young people and families. It is important to remember—I'm sure that you will be aware—that the early years workforce, including ELC and health visiting and allied health professionals, continued to support parents and carers over the course of the pandemic. They might have been working in different ways, but we know that social and emotional development have been impacted over the course of the pandemic. We will continue to look at the controls and measures in place to contain the pandemic and how they might need further adjustments so that they minimise any developmental harm to our young people. We know that many children in Scotland have had a significant part of their nursery experience, cut short due to Covid. A key part of early learning is about children beginning to learn to socialise with others and learn group dynamics. It is fair to say that lots of our women have missed out on that, and the evidence is beginning to show the impact of the pandemic on a range of children's outcomes, as he alluded to, including speech and language development, which was one of the reasons why I highlighted it in terms of the baby box and the books in the baby box and encouraging parents to read to their children something that they can do at home that is so vital in terms of stimulating children's imagination but also encouraging their speech and language development. For all those reasons, that is why we have prioritised keeping ELC and other vital services open with appropriate safety measures and why we prioritised the delivery of 1140, as I said, even though a lot of that planning was going on during the pandemic and a lot of that development work was going there. We will continue to work with partners to support nurseries, to support primary schools and other services, to help our young people and our young children to recover from the impacts of Covid. I know that the committee has heard evidence about the importance of play and how key that is to children's health and their wellbeing in terms of the on-going recovery from Covid and pre-Covid times. Of course, it is vitally important, too. We have made a number of commitments in terms of the area of play, including the £60 million investment in renewing play parks. We invested heavily in outdoor play, which was obviously a safer environment for children to play in when they were outside. We know that it helps to maintain their physical health and stimulates their imaginations. They get lots of physical and mental benefits from being outside. We supplied funding for clothing for nurseries last year to provide outdoor clothing for children who may not have that equipment. To enable them to get outside, too, we have invested in training for our ELC staff in terms of developing skills for playing outside. We have seen a huge expansion in outdoor nursery provision, including in local authority in outdoor nursery provision, and we have been to see some of those facilities and see the impact that that has on children in terms of stimulating their imagination, helping them to develop and helping them to develop those skills and social interaction that they may not have had the opportunity to do during the Covid pandemic. I was really happy to hear that you are looking at doing more. The start of your answer, you said that. Would you look to create a programme of social and emotional recovery focused activity as suggested by Mary Glasgow to this committee? Obviously, we would look at all the suggestions made by our third sector stakeholders and we would look to embed social and emotional recovery right through all of our Covid recovery plans. I am certainly happy to look at the evidence that Mary Glasgow gave. Children first are obviously a key stakeholder for the Scottish Government and they give us lots of advice and help in terms of developing policies. We would certainly look at all the evidence that the committee receives and the recommendations that the committee puts in its reports in terms of responding to your inquiry. We move on to talking about the cost of living, the cost of living crisis as it is becoming. I imagine that your inbox is as full as a constituency MSP, as mine is, with people very worried about heating their homes, about being able to feed their families. Can I ask what the Scottish Government is doing to try and help families to get through this? I imagine that you are having conversations across Government about what can possibly be done to get families through this period of increased cost of living. Yes, we absolutely are. It features a backdrop to all the discussions that we are having around the child poverty delivery plan and what we can do to support families. Let me outline some of the areas that could make the difference. It might also be worth repeating that during the previous period of time, which was tough due to the pandemic, we have focused a lot of support on low-income families. In 2020-21, we invested around £2.5 billion to support low-income households and nearly £1 billion of that directly supporting children. We are committing more than £3.9 billion for benefit expenditure in 2022-23. That will provide support to over a million people. To note that that is over £360 million above the level of funding that we receive from the UK Government through block grant adjustments. That is money outwith that we have put into supporting benefit expenditure. We have had to make those difficult choices, but trying to put as much money into people's pockets at the moment is important. Through that period of time, we have provided direct financial support to over half a million households through the £130 pandemic support payment paid by the end of October last year. I mentioned the Scottish child payment, obviously doubling from April this year, which will benefit around £111,000 eligible under-60s. We are continuing investment in discretionary housing payments of £80 million, which includes around £68 million to fully mitigate the bedroom tax, which protects over 70,000 Scottish households, £41 million for the Scottish welfare fund. I announced a package over the winter in addition to all that of £41 million for a winter support fund to help people heat their homes and to meet rising food costs. Some of that has gone out through local governments, some have gone out through third sector organisations. We are continuing to deliver the £520 bridging payments to over 143,000 children eligible for free school meals. In addition to that, of course, we are looking at, as the First Minister said last Thursday, how we spend every penny of the additional consequentials reported to be around £290 million to support people with escalating costs. We want to do that in a way that helps the most vulnerable. Obviously, the finance secretary will confirm plans for further investment during the final stages of the budget bill, but we have looked at every way of trying to support people during these difficult times. If there is more that we can do, we will try to do it. We are doing it within a fixed budget. The areas of energy price regulation sit with the UK Government, so what we are able to do is to focus our attention on household costs and financial support to people. That is what we are trying to do, and I hope that I have given a bit of a flavour of the— As I am listening to you, I am thinking of the response that came from Rishisunak about giving loans. What do you think, when you heard that, knowing what you do about vulnerable families on low incomes in Scotland? Is that a realistic or helpful suggestion? I do not think that it is targeted enough. Essentially, people will have to pay that back over a period of time. This is going to impact on a far wider range of people who are currently officially within the poverty statistics. More people who have just about been keeping their head above water are suddenly not going to be able to and are going to be caught within the cost of living crisis. Our response has to be as targeted as it can to help those who are most impacted. I fear for the ability of people to keep their heating on and put food on the table. The support that we have already been focusing on, but we will look to do more, has been to try to make sure that we help those who need it most. Discussions are on going about what more we can do in that space, and to say that there will be further information about that through the budget. Will we be able to mitigate every part of the cost of living impact? I do not think that we can on a fixed budget, but what we can do is make sure that our support is targeted at those who are most in need. I am going to bring in Gillian Mackay's got some questions on this. Ms Mackay, I will get to your question. Of course, Ms Hawking. For the committee's attention, as a precursor to the whole family wellbeing fund, which we will come on to later in this session, at the weekend, the Deputy First Minister announced £3 million to local authorities and £255,000 to a small number of third sector organisations to provide cash support to families who are currently in need. Is there an on-going commitment from the Government to do what we can when we can? To have that delivered locally, as you said, targeting people who are most in need? Absolutely. I am really looking at targeting what families need at that point in time, whether that be help with utilities, help with clothing, help with food, those sort of things. Thank you, that is helpful. Gillian Mackay, the writer of Jack Monroe's painstakingly documented not only rising prices in supermarkets but shrinking product sizes and the reducing of value ranges. What conversations is the Scottish Government having with the retail sector about the impact of the reduction of value ranges, in particular on the cost of living for lower-income families? I will come back to Gillian Mackay and the committee specifically on the discussions with retailers, but we have been engaging with the business sector generally about what they can do around costs that we have engaged with the energy sector. For example, I was in a meeting with Michael Matheson with the big energy companies to ask them what they are going to do around support to consumers. Obviously, we have been calling on the UK Government for urgent tangible action against increasing energy bills. In terms of food costs, we have been supporting a number of initiatives around food poverty and working without trying to take a cash first approach in supporting people. Although food banks have done an amazing job, I think that the food banks themselves and those who run the food banks have been supporting our strategy towards a cash first approach, which becomes very important in the current climate. You are right that retailers also have a responsibility. In supermarkets, their profits increase substantially during the pandemic, where perhaps other sectors were not the case. Therefore, I would certainly call upon them to do what they can to recognise that people are going to struggle to afford the increased prices of their food products. They have an important role to play as well, and I am happy to follow up on the detail of that with the committee. Paul, you wanted to ask a question on this. Thank you. I suppose that there is just quite a technical question around Barnett Councils, so essentially the Barnett Councils from the UK Council tax rebate in terms of cost living, which is the most effective use of that. What is the Government's view on how that will be used and are there plans in place? I referred earlier on to discussions that are still on-going about the best way of utilising. Obviously, we already have a council tax reduction scheme in place and we have had for a number of years, which ensures that no one has to pay a council tax liability that they cannot be expected to afford. That is not the case down south, so we have got something in place that is essentially there looking to do an element of. Our discussions are on-going around how we can make sure that money has the biggest impact on those who need it most. Those plans will be set out in short order in terms of how we will support families. Various options are being looked at, but the starting point is how can this have the biggest impact on those who are most in need for that discussion. We have also called, for example, for things that we think would have the biggest impact, so we have said a cut in VAT on energy bills would be one of the most simple means of helping energy consumers in the short term. I think that there are other levers that could be used more effectively, but we will look at the options and those will be announced in due course. It is very welcome that both the minister and the cabinet secretary are indicating in what is a crisis that we should be dealing with things that we can now. I am interested to know the opinion on the low-income winter heating assistance scheme that is out for a consultation, but it is not penciled in to start till next winter. I wonder if they would agree with me that that is far too late. I would be interested to know what the discussions are around that in terms of what extent we are taking it in to account the energy suppliers' views over those who actually need the assistance. As we are all agreed, they need the assistance now. First of all, there was a good chunk of the £41 million of the winter support package that I announced before Christmas has an element to help with fuel poverty through third sector organisations. There is money going out the door to help people in the here and now. The new low-income winter heating assistance, as Karen Wilkins said, will replace cold weather payments with a guaranteed annual winter payment of £50 to around 400,000 low-income households, which will be an investment of £21 million in 2022-23. The UK Government could make a payment to all those eligible for the cold weather payment right now. Clearly, we are moving to that new benefit as quickly as possible, but Covid had an impact on our ability and the DWP's ability to expedite some of the new benefits in a way that we would have wanted. That, unfortunately, was the impact of the pandemic when a lot of that work was paused on both sides to focus on life and limb support to people. We think that the UK Government can go further. I have already mentioned a cut on VAT on energy bills. We have urged the UK Government to review the obligation costs on energy bills to reduce the premium paid by households, to rely on electric heating and to help to unlock the deployment of low and zero emissions heating. We do not have the powers for setting or changing energy tariff levels, but we are continuing to engage with off-gem and to discuss and urge the UK Government and energy suppliers to go further in the support that they can provide in a way that actually helps the most vulnerable. On the medium to longer term, I am sure that the committee is aware of the significant investment of more than £1 billion through energy efficiency programmes to make homes warmer and cheaper to heat. That is quite important at the moment, as people face those rising energy costs. We will continue to do what we can on energy and on food and on all the other costs. It is also worth mentioning the Scottish Welfare Fund, which, again, had that additional money put in through the winter support package, is a flexible fund that local authorities administer. People can access that for payments and for things that they are struggling with. We have tried to put out information through support structures, welfare advice and the national helpline to try to make sure that people can get access to the information that they need in order to find the right source of support that is out there. We have already heard the cabinet secretary this morning talking about getting alongside families and working with the people that families already work with. That is often the third sector. The minister has spoken as well about the Deputy First Minister's announcements over the weekend. I think that cash support for families is going to be incredibly welcome there. We have heard evidence of how crucial and critical it is that we are listening to families and that we are providing that hands-on and practical support that that individual family needs and that cash support and financial support are a part of that, too. It can really help stop families from going off a cliff edge. My question is what guarantees can the Scottish Government give that funding for existing whole-family support services will be maintained? Maybe just to say a little bit first about the commitment to the £500 million whole family well-being fund. That is obviously a new fund and that has been prioritised within what is a tough budgetary envelope, but the impetus—we have talked about it a lot already in this session around the need for early intervention and prevention, rather than crisis intervention. That fund is really to help what needs to be a sort of transformational shift towards those types of services. The £50 million will be deployed in 2022-23 with really a focus on building the capacity for more significant investment from 2023-24 onwards. It is a cross-portfolio budget. It is looking at how we provide that early support. The six priority families are obviously key here, and it really is not about supporting businesses as usual and doing the same things. It is about enabling that shift in the way that we deliver family support services, and it relates very much to keeping the promise and other key strategies. If we get that right, that will have a huge impact on how we can do things differently. As I said earlier on, we are looking at how we support families through all of the budgets that I have outlined earlier on in order to help families through what is going to be a really, really tough time. If the committee would find it helpful, I can provide a more detailed breakdown of all the elements of the budget across portfolios that I think will help to impact on money in people's pockets. I have given a flavour of some of that this morning, but I am happy to give a more comprehensive list, if that is helpful. That is great. It is really reassuring to know that we are talking about moving forward and investing more in family support. How would we measure the impact of the whole family wellbeing fund to be able to drill down and make sure that it is supporting families? We are working closely with the Promise Scotland and partners across local government, social justice, health and third sector to design and deliver the funding. We are expanding our engagement to test ideas about where the funding will have the most sustained impact throughout all of that. As we spoke earlier about having the voice of lived experience at the absolute heart of that, we need to understand and reflect the opinions of families. That is absolutely crucial. The experiences of those who help us to deliver family support to ensure that we have the impact that we want to have. We want that to be an on-going process of learning and development over the course of the funding. It is not the intention that we set in stone how the profile of the spending for the next four years will be. Rather, we want a lesson, we want to learn from what can best support transformation and have the greatest impact for families and allocate that funding accordingly. It might be helpful to ask one of the officials who are here with us to give a bit more policy detail about how we anticipate measuring the impact of the funding. I ask Gavin Henderson, who is the deputy director of keeping the promise, if he would like to expand on the answers that are given by myself and the cabinet secretary. As the minister said and that the cabinet secretary has already said, we are planning to spend £50 million in 2022-23. I should also mention that, in working with the Promise Scotland and as we set out in our programme for government, we are working towards an ambition of spending 5 per cent of community health and social care spend by 2030 on preventative whole-family support, and that is a significant increase in the funding even from that transformational spend. As we work through the drafting of the implementation plan that the minister announced a couple of weeks ago in Parliament, we will be setting out how we plan to go about monitoring and evaluation of that while working with the Promise Scotland and other organisations on exactly the right monitoring and evaluation methods that we will require to make sure that we track and measure how we are properly keeping the promise. That is the method that we are proposing to take. I wonder if there is some scope to expand the early intervention support for care experience, children specifically, and their families, that goes beyond the whole-family wellbeing fund? We are working with stakeholders to shape and design the whole-family wellbeing fund for 2022-23, as I said in the previous answer. We recognise that early intervention is essential to ensure that children can safely remain in the care of their families when a child is at risk of becoming or is looked after at home. To fulfil our commitments to the promise, we have to understand the impact of trauma upon family relationships and how we can drive a reduction in that. We will continue to engage with stakeholders and listen to those with care experience to understand how we can support that critical work. Through the Children and Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund, which is more commonly known as CYPFEI, funding is provided to over 100 organisations, some of whom I am sure the committee has received evidence from, to promote wellbeing, prevention and early intervention activities and improve parenting and family support. We have committed to funding those organisations until 2023. In April 2023, as committed to in this year's programme for government, we will launch a £16 million third sector fund to replace the CYPFEI fund and the Alex funds. As I said, there are on-going commitments to continue to work with the sector. We now want to talk about housing policy. We have got Evelyn Tweed, who is joining us online. Thank you, convener, and good morning to you both. Thank you for your answers so far. They have been really helpful. As a housing professional, I know that the Scottish Government has had a massive house building programme for a number of years, but why is it so important at present in terms of child poverty? What are you doing to increase the supply of housing at the present time? That is a very pertinent question. We have committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, of which at least 70 per cent will be available for social rent. We have also committed to 10 per cent being in more remote rural and island communities. We have increased the total available for delivery of social and affordable homes in this parliamentary term. We have increased it to £3.6 billion. That continued investment in social housing will ensure that even more people can access an affordable home, which will further drive down child poverty. The links between affordable housing and child poverty are clear. Progress with the affordable housing delivery is reported through quarterly official stats publications, along with more detailed annual outturn reports. An estimated 2,100 households with children have been helped into affordable housing in the year to March 2021, and keeping social rents lower than market rents benefits approximately 110,000 children in poverty each year. For many years, we have had the affordable housing supply programme, but it has become probably even more important as an investment that can also be seen as part of one of the levers to tackling child poverty. Good progress so far, more to be done. Obviously, there has been a Covid impact with construction having been paused for a period of time during the pandemic, and construction costs and labour costs are very high at the moment, and that has impacted on the price of some projects coming through. Housing associations and councils are working really hard to keep the pipeline of projects coming through so that we can keep the momentum going here. Also, there are other things that are quite innovative ways that local authorities and housing associations are operating off market purchases, purchase from private sector developers, purchase on the open markets to try and meet the particular needs of families. So, there is a flexibility there to try to make sure that we can meet needs. I mentioned earlier on the need for more larger homes, and I think that it would be fair to say that we need to get better at making sure that homes can meet the needs of people with disabilities and with complex needs. I think that there is more that we can do in that space. I am keen to support housing associations and local authorities to get that right for folk. Housing to 2040 laid out the vision of, over the longer term, making sure that the standards are continually improving towards making sure that more and more homes are barrier-free and are more flexible as people's mobility changes over the years. I think that there is more that we can do in that space to support people with particular complex needs, and we are looking at that at the moment. Cabinet Secretary, in terms of the house building programme, do you think that Brexit has had an influence and has dented the Scottish Government's programme, given what you have said about a lack of supply of materials and a labour shortage? Together, Brexit and the pandemic have created a perfect storm of increased material costs and materials from various parts of the world. The costs of that have increased, the shipping costs have increased, the raw materials have increased, the labour costs have increased and you put all that together and you can see the impact on goods and services across the board. The construction sector is no different from that. A number of projects are still coming in, under the agreed benchmarks. There is a bit of geographical variation, so we need to be very mindful of the fact that costs get higher, the further north you go as well, because of economies of scale and a reduced number of contractors and so on. We need to be mindful of that as well. We have been through Minister Ivan McKee. He has been in regular dialogue with the construction sector to look at what we can do, but those are global issues that are very difficult for the Scottish Government to change dramatically. However, we are working with councils and and RSLs to try and make sure that we support them in keeping them momentum going. Evelyn, are you happy for me to move on? Or have you got any more questions? Thank you very much. Should I have one more? Yes, go on. Sorry, thank you for your patience. How will a new deal for tenants target action on child poverty? Obviously, tenants have rights and responsibilities, so that is the first thing that we would all acknowledge. Strengthening tenants' rights around being able to, for example, on the affordability side, looking at appropriate controls on rent levels. There is a consultation out of the moment, which is important around how that is done. There is a variation across Scotland in terms of rent levels. We are sitting in a city where we recognise that the housing market in the Edinburgh area is very different from the housing market for rent and purchase from other areas of Scotland. When we look at rent controls, there has to be a recognition of different local circumstances, but affordability is important. We need to make sure that people can afford rents. The private rented sector is going to continue to have an important role to play, but we need to make sure that, where we want to get to in housing 2040, we can set out the ambition that, if we get this right, there should not really be any difference or visible difference between tenures. If we can get the quality of standards and properties to the same level, if we can get the rights and responsibilities correct, if we can make sure that rents are affordable across all sectors, we can drive up the quality of standards. Good landlords have nothing to fear from those changes because many of them are already providing a good quality service to their tenants. It is a package of measures. We have a final theme on young adults. I know that we have dipped into it throughout the session, but David Torrance is going to ask some questions on young adults. Good morning, cabinet secretary and minister. How is the Scottish Government going to address poverty or how are we focused on among young adults, especially young adults who cannot live with appearance and are often affected mostly by poverty? Do you want me to kick off? This is an important area without a doubt. We have set out a few things that are hopefully relevant in this area. We continue to invest in young persons guarantee in making sure that young people have opportunities. The guarantee is to provide a job, a place, an education or training, a formal volunteering opportunity for every young person. There is an additional £45 million for that in 2022-23. From the end of January, nearly a million five to 21-year-olds living in Scotland will be eligible to benefit from free bus travel, which helps young people to get connected to employment training and, obviously, socially as well. We are also delivering our job start payment for young people to help with the cost of starting a job. That is worth just over £252 for a single young person and over £400 if they are the main carer of any children. We have helped around 1,800 young people with the cost of starting a new job through that. Young mothers are a particular focus, as well as one of the priority families that we talked about earlier on. They will benefit from the supports and targeted interventions such as the family nurse partnerships, which are about getting alongside young single parents to support them in their journey. We also need to look at what more we can do. If there is more that we can do to support young adults that we are not doing at the moment, then clearly we would want to consider doing that. I think that you have covered that, cabinet secretary, with the exception, maybe, of the care experience grant. As an annual £200 a year grant that will benefit around 50,000 young people between the age of 16 and 26 who do not have the access to the same family support networks as perhaps some of their non-care-experienced peers. The minister mentioned earlier the planning process for care leavers and evidence from the committee from Helen Harper of Care Inspectorate. She said that the planning process was out of date for care leavers. I wonder if the minister could expand on her previous answer about how the Scottish Government is going to make improvements to it. Scottish Government, alongside COSLA and many others, our shared ambition is for trauma-informed and trauma-responsive workforces right across the country and for transitions and support planning to be in place for people with care experience. That is absolutely central to our commitment to keep the promise. As I said earlier in a response to Gillian Mackay, we are developing tailored trauma training that will be rolled out summer 2023 to the workforce that most closely works with care-experienced babies, children, young people and families as part of our national trauma training programme. Focusing on a trauma-informed workforce right across public services will help not only the general population but also to support care-experienced children and young people. I have heard from constituents about issues around lack of support for young adult carers who do not have access to support granted to young carers, such as the young carer grant, but are often facing many of the same pressures, such as juggling being in full-time education with their caring responsibilities. What action can the Government take to better support young adult carers and ensure that the transition from young carer to adult carer is a smooth one? The transition period is difficult for young people full-stop, but young carers and their transition into adulthood will be even more impacted. We obviously provide a number of supports to carers, but I do not know whether you could perhaps give a little bit more information? Certainly, cabinet secretary. We are investing over £350 million in 2023 in supporting eligible and paid carers through the carers allowance supplement in the young carer grant. Work is currently on going in the development of the Scottish carers assistance and we will consult the Scottish Government on the proposals there. I hope that you keep committee informed of that as well at the level. That would be great. It is a final call for the last questions, but I think that this might be our last question from Stephanie Callaghan. I wonder what consideration the Scottish Government has given to offering lifelong support for care-experienced people. We know that, very often, there is generational trauma, adverse childhood experiences run through the generations. Young children, especially, really reflect their parents' emotional and mental health, if you like to. With it being so important that young children have a strong anchor, is it worth considering that life-long support that lets care-experienced people know that we really have their back and feel confident that they can go on and become a strong parent and support their child? As I have already said, the Scottish Government is absolutely committed to keeping the promise to care-experienced children and young people. We are committed to supporting young people who are in care or leaving care. That is enshrined in the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014 and in the measures that we have outlined in previous answers. Collecting data, as we spoke about earlier on from my time in the Health and Sport Committee, that was certainly one of the things that we spoke about often, is collating accurate and relevant data and ensuring that we have the data that shows us the outcomes for children and young people who are leaving care so that we can target our interventions towards them. That is absolutely key in driving forward the improvements that we want to see within the care service. Some of the issues that we have raised earlier about the whole family wellbeing, funding, supporting and providing that wraparound service, that individual support that that person needs, will be absolutely key to ensuring that those transitions occur as seamlessly as we want them to be. We want that flow between services to be as easy for a child or a young person and their families as they can possibly be. Our ambition is to work towards keeping the promises that the Scottish Government has committed to. When you were talking about the cost of living crisis and I referred to supports, it was remiss of me not to plug the moneysupport.scot website with a myriad of supports for people that would really ask members to disseminate moneysupport.scot and the national helpline of 0800 1114000, where people can get access to find out how they can get help under the current circumstances. It's not cheeky at all, it's very helpful and I'm sure we'll all put that on our social media because that's the sort of thing that people need to know about. Thank you very much and thank you to both anti-officials for your time this morning and some very valuable information that will inform our reports, so thank you to both. We're going to suspend the meeting until the next part of our agenda. Our third item today is an evidence session on two supplementary legislative consent memorandums related to the UK health and care bill. Those are supplementary legislative consent memorandums 6-5A, lodged on 9 December 2021 and the supplementary legislative consent memorandum 6-5B, lodged on 27 January 2021. To give us some feedback on them, we are joined by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf, and he's joined by his officials online as well. Robert Henderson, the team leader for intergovernmental and international relations unit. Jane Hamilton, the head of directorate support in intergovernmental relations. John Patterson, the deputy director of food health and social care from the Scottish Government legal directorate. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. I believe that you've got an opening statement that you'd like to make. Well, thanks very much for the opportunity, convener. First of all, I hope that you and all committee colleagues are keeping safe and keeping well. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to take questions. You'll know that the Scottish Government lodged a legislative consent memorandum on 31 August for the provisions that extend to Scotland at the time of lodging, and in my appearance at this committee on 5 October, I advised that the Scottish Government was not in a position to recommend consent to any of the provisions, despite—and I said this a number of times in front of your committee—despite being broadly supportive of the policy intentions. The bill is a skeleton bill that has nine Henry VIII powers that amend primary legislation through secondary legislation, and the UK Government's reluctance to include appropriate consent requirements was to me a direct threat to devolution. As you may recall from that previous evidence session held in October, I stressed just how important it was to secure the consent of Scottish ministers on devolved matters. It's an integral pillar of the devolution settlement, and our respective officials are currently discussing how parliamentary scrutiny of a decision to consent to any such SIs can be achieved. I was pleased to inform committee that I have successfully negotiated consent requirements for key provisions within the bill. I am now in a position to recommend that the Scottish Parliament grants consent to the following clauses—the medicine information systems, information about payments, etc., to people in healthcare, and the healthcare sector, known as mandatory reporting, food labelling, reciprocal healthcare, professional regulations, the Secretary of State's power to transfer or delegate functions in terms of arms length bodies, and virginity testing and high menoplasty offences. Those provisions touch upon several different policy areas. I am always supportive of measures that seek to enhance and improve the health of the people of Scotland. It is, however, exceptionally important to note that the delivery of healthcare in Scotland is devolved, and I will always continue to challenge the UK Government in any perceived overreach into NHS Scotland. I must also notify the committee that I was unable to resolve the competence dispute on the advertising of less healthy food and drinks provision. I remain supportive of any measure, any measures that are designed to tackle obesity, but it is with regret that the UK Government maintains that the issue is entirely reserved. I am happy to take any questions that you may have on that. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. You have largely answered my questions, and it is good to hear that a lot of your previous concerns have been resolved. Of course, you have mentioned that the one in particular is still outstanding. I believe that Sandesh Gauhan is going to ask you questions on the advertising aspect of things in a moment. My question is a parliamentary process question to you about where the kind of notice that you were able to give Parliament of any regulations that are made in devolved areas, which consent is not required, and also where consent is required, but an S.I protocol 2 does not apply. Where does Parliament sit in actually being able to scrutinise those decisions? Thanks, convener. That is an exceptionally important question from my point of view. We will start at the basis of my answer. Wherever we can include some level of parliamentary scrutiny, we will do that. I mentioned in my opening remarks that I am keen that my officials continue conversations with the committee and the committee clerks and, of course, elected members would be appropriate to discuss what that scrutiny will look like. We can only be to our advantage to have that scrutiny. In terms of the specific questions, regulations made in devolved areas where there is no consent requirement. The food labelling provision and reciprocal healthcare provision confer concurrent powers on Scottish ministers. The concurrent powers in reciprocal healthcare in relation to regulations made by the UK Government are subject to the terms of the S.I protocol 2, which you mentioned. Therefore, account for parliamentary scrutiny, where Scottish ministers make regulations, Scottish Parliament will be notified by way of an S.I. The medicine information systems provision includes a consultation requirement that will be underpinned by a robust MOU that outlines the principles of engagement. The MOU has not been finalised yet, but my officials are collaborating with the UK Government to ensure that, prior to the drafting of regulations, consultation takes place in a meaningful and timely fashion. I stress those words. It has to be meaningful and it cannot be last minute. I will, of course, write to the committee to provide an update upon the conclusion of the consultation process. The competence dispute on advertising provision was not resolved and the UK Government maintained it entirely reserved. Therefore, there is no specific requirement for the UK Government to consult with Scottish ministers before making any secondary legislation in relation to online advertising of less healthy food and drink. There is however a requirement placed on the Secretary of State to help persons that they consider appropriate. Since I consider that the online advertising provisions are at least in part devolved, I will write to inform the committee of any UK Government consultation that takes place. How do you scrutinise the SG position in respect to the UK Government regulations that are in devolved areas where there is a consent requirement but the SI protocol does not apply? I do not think that there are any current protocols in place of UK Government regulations and devolved areas with concerns that are required, but an SI protocol does not apply. However, I know that my officials are in discussions with the Scottish Parliament about how parliamentary scrutiny of a decision to consent to any such SI could be achieved, but I think that it would be right in saying that it does not apply, we think, in any protocols currently. Thank you very much. I am going to hand over to Sandesh Gohani. Cabinet Secretary, do you not feel that a unified UK approach to unhealthy food and drink advertising would be better than individual? As I said to you in October, I have just referenced in my opening statement the policy principle is one that I have no objection to. I think that there is a lot of good that can be done on a four-nations basis around tackling the advertising of less healthy food, but it is, of course, incumbent in my position in government, and I suspect that it is important for all MSPs that we protect the devolution settlement. I suppose that what we are worried about is that there are some overreach. It should be noted also that there are certain stakeholders, such as, importantly, the Food Standards Scotland and Obesity Scotland, who have criticised the UK Government's definition of quote-unquote less healthy. There can be understandable differences, but I stress the point. The substance of the policy is not one that I am particularly opposed to. It is just the overreach into public health, which I think that we could all agree is a devolved matter. Are there discussions on going with the UK Government about this? Do you feel that we might reach a resolution to get a unified approach? I do not think that the UK Government will necessarily accede to this one. Discussions will always continue. I should have said at the beginning of my remarks that I am grateful for the pertinent intervention of the Secretary of State for Health. Frankly speaking, in my previous meetings and correspondence, we were not getting very far, and he and I were able to sit down and thrash it out. I am pleased that he compromised in relation to the concern provisions that we were reasonably asking for. I will keep the discussions going, but I do not, frankly, Dr Gohanny, think that the UK Government will change its position. Emma Harper is online. Thank you, convener. I am just waiting for my camera to come on. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Just to pick up on what you said about working with the Secretary of State for Health, there has obviously been a lot of work that has taken place between the civil servants and both Governments. In your opening statement, cabinet secretary, you outlined what originally seemed to be that the bill was encroaching on areas that were devolved to the Government in Scotland. Are you able to tell us a little about the work that has taken place between the two Governments to achieve legislative consent so that continued working will take place in the future to ensure that Scotland's devolution settlement is always part of any of the legislative consent motions as we go forward? I can be relatively brief, and it actually gives me an opportunity to thank my officials who are on the line. They and their teams have worked incredibly hard behind the scenes, trying to ensure that the UK Government officials and counterparts can see that we are not being obstructive or trying to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. We had a genuine concern which, when I came to committee in October, I think was not just well understood by committee, but I think that there was a lot of agreement around the table that where the substance of the policy was not necessarily the issue, the lack of consent in areas that were clearly within devolved competency was of great anxiety. In terms of the discussions that took place, there was quite a fair bit of correspondence to and fro and meetings and discussions, telephone calls and so on that took place. As I said to Dr Gohania, I am grateful to the Secretary of State, Sadiq Javid, for personally intervening. When he and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, that was when we began to see some movement. Conversations will have to continue. There is the unresolved issue, which Dr Gohania has just asked about a moment ago, and on the implementation of a number of the clauses, if the bill passes in the House of Commons, those discussions will have to continue, as will discussions on the MOU, which has yet to be finalised as well, and I would expect to come back to Parliament with a further update on that. Good to see you this morning, Cabinet Secretary. I note from her papers that the Scottish Government has done some significant stakeholder consultation around virginity testing, perhaps most importantly with third sector partners who have got expertise relating to honour-based violence or the wider violence against women's and girls agenda. I will maybe roll two questions into one so that you can just take it all on board there. Firstly, how will the virginity testing provision be enforced? Secondly, are there potential risks of criminalising this practice and, if so, how would these be mitigated against? Thanks to the member for the question. I think that the second question is a really good one, because the first one is also good. Let me take that away, but the second one is really important and vital for us to answer. The first question, which is perhaps a slightly easier one, is like any offence that is created, but it will work really closely with the Crown Procurator Fiscal Service, closely with Police Scotland in terms of implementation. How we do that, for example, will not be any different to when we create new offences, so we will take that away in the usual way. The second question is critical and important. We cannot find or are unable to find any evidence of virginity testing taking place in Scotland now. That is not the same as saying it does not happen, but we just have not been able to find the evidence of it. I suppose that the criminalisation of this practice, what it intends to do is to ensure a unified approach across all four nations, so although we could not find the evidence of it, I stress that that does not mean that it is not happening. What we would not want the situation to arise is that the other nations of the UK legislate that this is an offence. Of course, Scotland is seen as some kind of safe haven for virginity testing if it was to take place. We just would not want to be in that position, because we recognise that although we are unable to find the evidence of it taking place, it would be fair to say that all of us would agree, and I am certain that the committee also agrees with that, that virginity testing is a form of violence against women and girls and completely unacceptable if it is happening or where it is happening. In terms of the stakeholder engagement, there were positive stakeholders in terms of legislating for the offence, given everything that I have just said a moment ago. The only kind of note of caution that was struck—I would not overplay it, but the note of caution that was struck was, could we be in danger of over-criminalising offences that perhaps put focus on black Asian minority ethnic communities? The second point that the number of groups made was, yes, to find it to legislate, but you have got to accompany it with education, working with those communities, getting into those communities to, of course, eliminate that practice if it is going on in Scotland in any way, shape or form. The feedback in the stakeholder engagement was really good. The supplementary LCM notes that there is a lack of evidence showing that hymenoplastia is in fact being practised in Scotland. Are there any plans to collect more data on that and on attitudes towards virginity in Scotland more widely? I think that the short answer to that is that we should do that because of what I have just said to Stephanie Callaghan. We are unable to gather evidence around whether virginity testing or hymenoplastia is happening. That is not to say that it is not, because if it is happening in England, potentially happening in other parts of the UK, I do not doubt that it may well be happening here in Scotland. That is why I think that the second point that I was making to Stephanie Callaghan perhaps is quite important. It is really vital that we do that by involving ourselves within the communities where we think that that might or could be potentially happening, and working with them and empowering them to root out any of those practices that are clearly, I think that we have all accepted, a form of violence against women and girls. Given that those practices often happen in secret and given the difficulty gathering data on it, is there any plan for an awareness raising campaign around the fact that those are now offences to ensure that women and girls who may not be aware that they are are well informed and know their rights? Once the bill passes the House of Commons, then absolutely. We will do the work on that and perhaps a four nations basis would make sense if the legislation is across the four nations, though we will look at what the UK Government's plans are, perhaps for that marketing, for that awareness raising. If we agree with it, we will do it on a four nations basis, but sometimes, as is the case, if it does not match the messaging that we feel is appropriate, then we will take forward our own awareness raising. However, yes, there will be awareness raising. As I keep saying and emphasising, I think that it is really important. We really want to work with those communities, so they do not feel unnecessarily targeted. People in all ethnic minority communities would be the first to say that those practices are abhorrent and that they have no place in any society. I think that we have exhausted all our questions. I want to thank you for coming along with your officials to give us an update on that. At our next meeting on 22 February, the committee will receive an update from key stakeholders in the social care sector. We will also take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on three affirmative SSIs. That concludes the public part of our meeting today.