 The next item of business is a debate on motion 12468, in the name of Collette Stevenson, on behalf of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee on addressing child poverty through parental employment. I would invite those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons and I call on Bob Dorris to speak to and to move the motion on behalf of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. The more I shoot among some of them, the notice that I am not Collette Stevenson. Collette sends her apologies, she wishes she could lead this debate but you'll just have to up with me instead, I'm afraid. I am delighted to speak on behalf of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee in today's debate on its inquiry into addressing child poverty through parental employment. In its best act for a future delivery plan, the Scottish Government had a central aim to support up to 12,000 parents to access and sustain employment and up to 3,000 inward parents to increase their earnings by 2026. The overall objective of our inquiry is to ensure delivery of this ambition within that timescale. The committee does not, however, underestimate the task in hand as we will hear today. Increasing parental employment or securing better paid employment is a multifaceted issue. It intersects with many policy areas across different portfolios and requires a partnership approach to delivery. Those complexities can be illustrated through the myriad of employability programmes, skills, training, education qualifications, all being delivered to deliver to better equip the workforce for a variety of employment sectors. Our inquiry sought to bring all those strands together with the fundamental support that is needed to help parents, particularly low-income parents transition into and sustain employment. For example, by highlighting the need for changes to social security rules to support parents undertaking education, who can be financially penalised by a system when trying to improve their work opportunities, or setting out that parents who want to work are being prevented from accessing work because of inaccessible and unaffordable childcare or transport. We wanted parents to help to shape our inquiry, and we took our inquiry to Rillegline. We heard loud and clear that parents wanted good quality, flexible work as a route out of poverty. To further inform our understanding of those issues of most concern, we also travelled to the western Isles and North Ayrshire picking up on particular rural aspects and entrenched unemployment. In US parents told the committee that there are jobs available but nobody needs to be unemployed, but there are barriers to help those jobs in the first place, particularly in relation to childcare, transport and housing. In Irvine, a mother of seven, supported by an employability service to develop skills and go back into work said, doing this is frightening, but with support it is manageable. We heard no single piece of the puzzle can be prioritised over another. That's a challenge, but that all needs to be given sufficient focus to deliver for parents. Delfrees and Galloway Council described the complexities of this puzzle. They said, Improved access to transport without access to childcare will not work. Similarly, increasing higher paid roles without support for upskilling and reskilling will still exclude some people from opportunities. The approach must be considered as a whole system approach, not separate policies or interventions. I want to put on record the committee's thanks to those individuals who shared their experiences with us and the organisations that provided their knowledge of supporting parents to navigate the barriers to employment. Given the enormity of the task and the short time available to accomplish it, the committee welcomes the creation of the tackling child poverty programme board and the cross-cutting portfolio child poverty ministerial oversight group. That will be crucial. We expect that oversight to provide a valuable accountability mechanism. The committee will monitor whether that will ensure the effectiveness of cross-portfolio co-operation at a national level and, crucially, whether it will drive forward partnership delivery also at a local level to achieve increased parental employment. The Scottish Government has already made substantial progress in its fight against child poverty and put money in the pockets of families that it is desperately trying to provide for its children. Nonetheless, the clock is still ticking. Progress needs to be made and further progress needs to be made on the delivery plan by the end of this session. More needs to be done and at pace, so those parents who want to work on access fare and family-friendly employment and give their children the best possible life chances, I do not doubt the scale of that challenge. That includes affordable transport on both rural and urban areas to support the types of trips regularly made by parents. It also includes appropriate education provision to widen access to parents. However, the overarching infrastructure barrier raised with us is childcare. Parents attending Corom, a community organisation in South East, painted a bleak picture of the situation in rural areas. There is only one child minder in East. The council provision is over capacity and only offers set hours. One parent told members that she was offered a three-hour nursery care placement, one-hour drive away, of no use to them. Another struggled with no after-school care available at all in Benbecula. The poverty alliance reinforced to the committee that childcare is critical to enabling parents to enter and progress within paid employment. That is particularly true for mothers and single parents, over 90 per cent whom are women. The provision of affordable and flexible childcare often determines whether women have a job, what hours they can actually work and what their earnings will be. The high cost of childcare means that paid work is simply unviable for many parents, particularly single mothers. Child care provision should be affordable. That should happen in funded places such as nurseries, breakfast clubs and after-school clubs whether they are in full or subsidised. Child care provision should be flexible to support parents who work irregular work patterns. It should be available in the evenings and at weekends, as well as crucially during school holidays. Child care provision should be accessible. The lack of specialised childcare for children with additional support needs was of great concern to the committee. Carer Scotland explained that nearly a third of parents of disabled children are not working and 40 per cent have been at work for more than five years. The committee welcomes the Government's recent commitments to increase availability of funded childcare hours and the investment in early learning childcare. We also acknowledge the promising current initiatives and the pilot schemes, such as the development of school-age childcare and increasing the child mining workforce with a target of another 1,000 child-mining workers. However, many gaps in service will remain and will need to be filled if all families in Scotland are to benefit from a genuinely accessible, affordable and equitable provision. That is why the committee has recommended that the Scottish Government undertake a detailed assessment of the current childcare workforce availability across the sector. That should include workforce skills for children with additional support needs and the levels of provision that are required to allow children from different cultural backgrounds to access service, as well as in remote and rural areas to facilitate employment for parents experiencing multiple inequalities. Prompt action is needed to support the development of a sustainable workforce to provide affordable, flexible and accessible childcare across ages settings and regions. In conclusion, the committee acknowledges the immensely challenging economic and governance circumstances that are faced in tackling child poverty through increasing parental employment. There have been positive policy choices made by Government, such as the Scottish child payment. Nevertheless, for the commitment set out in the best start bright futures to have a meaningful and collective impact, policies must offer a seamless package of support to families and be executed at an increased pace with clear delivery and spending plans set against them. Decisive actions to deliver outcomes are imperative. The Scottish Government must, without delay—we chose that word, Presiding Officer—supercharge its efforts across policy areas. It is easier said than done, and I appreciate Cabinet Secretary, but that is the challenge. Only then can the cycle of child poverty be broken and parents provide a truly bright future for their families. Thank you, Mr Doris. Could you please move the motion? If I haven't done so, I formally move the motion. Thank you very much. I would advise members that we do have some time in hand for intervention, should members wish. I now call on Julian Martin on behalf of the Scottish Government Minister. I thank the committee members for leading this inquiry and all those who participated, particularly those that Bob Doris has mentioned around Scotland near and far. I welcome today's debate on this important issue. Tackling child poverty is a central mission for this Government and we are committed to doing everything within the scope of our limited powers and resources to meet our statutory child poverty targets. Modelling published last month makes clear the continuous substantial impact that Scottish Government policies are having on child poverty levels in Scotland. It is estimated that 100,000 children will be kept out of relative poverty in 2024-25 by these Government policies, with relative poverty levels 10 per cent lower than they would otherwise have been. That includes keeping a necessary to 60,000 children out of relative poverty through investment in our game changing, and those are not words that the Scottish Government has said that has been independently mentioned by others as game changing the Scottish child payment. While we are focused on tackling child poverty, we cannot escape that Scotland has been badly let down by the UK Government with the spring budget, marking another failure to deliver the funding that Scotland needs following more than a decade of UK Government under investment. Despite the significant challenge, the Scottish budget of this year or next year unapologetically directs our resources to those in greatest need and commits investment in the key measures to tackle child poverty down in the future. We should also be said that a significant amount of our budget is deployed into mitigating the effects of UK welfare policy, policies that without our interventions would increase poverty and put up more barriers to work for parents. Although unemployment can offer a sustainable route out of poverty for many people, we know that too many families are trapped in in-work poverty, and many more are still effectively locked out of the labour market. That is why we are taking action right across Government. Does the minister not agree that the cost of childcare is also contributing to that? Will the minister be able to give an update on where the Government is with its expansion of childcare, free childcare? I am going to come on to speak about childcare in particular later on my speech, but I think that Scotland has got the best offer of childcare. It is about how that childcare is also deployed as well at local authority level, because it has a different picture depending on where you actually go in Scotland. I point to Aberdeenshire Council. My constituency is in Aberdeenshire, and we have recently had an announcement by the Tory-led Administration that we are taking away wraparound care at school level. We can say what our high-level policies are and give the funding in order to commit to that, but if decisions are made by local councils that maybe put more barriers up for parents—I am not just talking about my response to that as a constituency MSP, I am talking about the response by organisations such as pregnant then screwed, and I suggest that Megan Gallacher have a look at what she says about the Conservative-led Aberdeenshire council in regard to the issues that she has just raised. We are taking action right across Government with the powers that we have to ensure that where work is the right choice for parents that they are supported to get into work and we take an end into work that is well-paid, and we take every step that we can to improve the quality of jobs available. Our employment stats are quite encouraging at the moment. We have 79,000 more people who are in payroll employment compared to January 2020, and 3,400 living wage accredited employers in Scotland, with 64,000 workers having had a pay rise as a result of that particular intervention. Of course, access to the right education and trends has been mentioned by the deputy convener, and tailored and holistic employment support services are essential in helping parents to enter, progress in and sustain work. In contrast to the UK Government's conditionality regime, our employability services are voluntary. That means that people are not mandated to access support, they are not penalised if they do not take up an offer of support and they are not pushed into poor quality work as quickly as possible just to meet short-term job-start targets. That is the sort of thing that can increase in-work poverty. In the coming year, we will be investing up to £90 million in devolved employability services, with a continued focus on ensuring that specific support is aimed at increasing parental income from employment is in place up and down the country. To ensure that services continue to develop and strengthen, the Scottish budget sets out our commitment to future multi-year funding to provide much-needed certainty to the sector and for people who are accessing our services. That is something that has been asked for, and the Deputy First Minister has committed to doing that. To better support students, the higher education student support package will increase by £2,400 in 24-25, building on our continued commitment to free tuition. A programme for government also sets out our commitment to outline plans for implementing reformer education and skills bodies, putting the voices of children, young people and adult learners at their core. We will continue to focus on improving help and support to unlock the labour market for more parents and increase the earnings of those who are already in work. I would also like to point to a couple of reports that have been out recently. Most recently this morning, the IPPR report Working Wonders, which has recommended very strongly that employment law and everything associated with employability is devolved to the Scottish Parliament so that we can make even more key interventions in that area. That follows on a Jimmy Reid Foundation report in February, which said exactly the same. We can do an awful lot more, particularly around fair work, if we have those levers. We know too that fair, flexible employment can make a real difference. Despite those powers over employment remaining reserved to the UK Government, we will continue to drive meaningful change through our fair work policy and engagement with businesses. Scores to Scottish Government was the first Government in the UK to become an accredited living wage employer in 2015. Our fair work principles have been applied to more than £4 billion of public funds since 2019. We have made it a requirement on recipients of public sector grants awarded on or after 1 July 2023 to pay at least the real living wage and provide appropriate channels for the effective workers' voices. That comes back to the idea that it is not just a case of getting people into work, it is a case of getting people into well-paid and living wage employment. The new deal for business group is developing a high-quality functioning relationship between Government and business in recognition that it is key to building an economy that is fair, green and growing. The impact of our actions is clear. We remain the best performing of all four UK countries, with the highest proportion of employees being paid the real living wage or more. The gender pay gap for all employees is lower than in Scotland and the rest of the UK as a whole. Whilst it is positive, we are not complacent. I am determined to work with partners to see how we can get real movement on closing the disability employment gap in particular, because everyone should have a right to fair work. Importantly, we know that access to high-quality affordable and accessible childcare and transport will remain out of reach for many parents without that employment. Scotland remains the only part of the UK. The minister has just made reference to the importance of childcare and of transport issues being addressed in other questions. Is it the Government's position that there needs to be integrated and cohesive support available to individuals to enable them to access employment? It is not just the solving of one issue like childcare or another issue like transport. It is the need to put together combined solutions that address the circumstances of individuals and enable them to gain access to employment. I absolutely agree with Mr Swinney on that point. As a rural MSP, I say that that is particularly an issue in a challenge in rural settings. Bob Doris mentioned an offer that was made of childcare for someone in the US that would require them to travel for an hour. All those things have to be integrated. Just solving one problem without the other means that we are not going to solve any of the barriers that are there for parents. We are the only part of the UK that offers 1,140 hours a year of early learning and childcare to all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, regardless of their parents' working status. Our offer would cost families around £5,000 per eligible child if they were to pay for it themselves. I certainly remember what that was like with my two children. In 24-25, we will continue to invest around £1 billion in high-quality, funded early learning and childcare and we will continue to expand access to funded school-age childcare for families who need it. We cannot underestimate how crucial childcare expansion is as a lever to tackle barriers to employment, economic activity rates and as a consequence for reducing child poverty. However, as I said in response to Meghan Gallagher's intervention on me, it is crucial that this is done at a local level and that it is done in the way that Mr Swinney suggests. It is deployed by councils in the way that works for parents. It should not be a size that is put out there and everyone is expected to sort of like… I will just get to the end of my point. It should not be a situation that is a one-size-fits-all and if you cannot access it, you cannot access it, you just have to go and pay for childcare yourself. It has to be working with parents about their particular circumstances. I thank the minister for giving way, but the Government with its childcare expansion programme has created a system where councils are the banker and the competitor when it comes to setting the rates. PVI nurseries are closing their doors. How on earth can you talk about expansion of childcare and the importance of childcare when you do not have the right policy for it? Minister, when responding, please start to bring your answers. I will have to wind up, but I would like to ask Meghan Gallagher to look at how the childcare offer that is down in England is working in comparison to the Scottish Government, which has actually been very successful. In terms of travel, I want to mention the investment of £370 million to provide free bus travel for over 2 million people tackling that. Of course, it is about the transport services as well. Our fair fairs review will ensure that a public transport system is accessible, available and affordable for people across Scotland and help to connect parents to those opportunities that essential services need. I welcome today's debate and the reflections on members and how we can further strengthen our approach within the limits of our powers and resources, and maybe it would be nice to get closer to a consensus on the devolution of additional powers that would allow us to unlock the capacity to do so much more. I now call on Miles Briggs on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the organisations that have provided very helpful briefings ahead of today's debate and also to our committee clerks for the amount of work that they did on what has been quite a long committee inquiry. I was very keen for the Social Justice and Social Security Committee to undertake this inquiry and very much welcome the evidence that has been given on what needs to improve to help to make sure that parents can get back into employment and that we can work collectively to tackle child poverty on that. The two visits, which I undertook both in Glasgow and on the Western Isles, I think really did provide at the heart that lived experience evidence, which I think the committee report really has managed to capture. The report does make a number of key asks for the Scottish Government, and we on these benches welcome them. The committee has called on the Scottish Government to share the annual and quarterly progress reports produced by the Tackling Child Poverty programme board. I believe that this, as well as better outcome data, is needed to understand how policies are impacting and what is needed to address child poverty across Scotland. The committee has also called, as we have heard from the Deputy Convener, for a greater scrutiny of the effectiveness of cross-portfolio co-operation in tackling child poverty in Scotland. Perhaps the biggest challenge that we will be hearing today remains something that all MSPs will know acutely, and that is the issue of childcare not being available. Bob Doris outlined the seamless package of support that parents are looking for, and I am sure that, as a former education secretary, the cabinet secretary will be acutely aware of that. I am not going to rehearse the problems that have been widely reported and documented by American Gallagher in relation to the limited flexibility that the 1140 childcare policy currently offers to parents seeking work or study opportunities. However, as the poverty alliance briefing states, there is a real need now for greater flexibility at the heart of the delivery of 1140 hours to ensure that the policy meets the stated aims with a focus on increased flexibility for the provision of childcare for families. I know councils across the country are facing a difficult task to deliver this, and I have a huge amount of sympathy for Aberdeenshire and the difficult decisions that they have had to take. They are the second lowest funded per head of population council by the SNP Green Government, the first being my own council here in Edinburgh, but the minister has to recognise that there is a critical need for more childcare provision outwith the times that it is traditionally provided. I think that that is at the heart of what the report is calling for, if I have some time. I am grateful to Mr Biggs for giving way, and I am interested in the substance of the point that he and Meghan Gallagher are advancing in this debate. Essentially, they are saying that the design of the 1140 hours delivery around the country is inflexible and it is inflexible because of the provision that is made on the ground. I represent an area that, until 2022, was led by a Conservative-led council. The Conservative-led council introduced the childcare arrangements that are in place that I am sure Ross McCall is probably disassociating herself from, despite the fact that she was part of the administration that set it up. Does Miles Biggs accept that the flexibility that he seeks is contained within the powers of local authorities to design the childcare provision in their locality? If they choose to design it in a fashion that has been designed in my locality, where there is very little provision outwith the sector that is provided by the local authority, it is that councils are taking those decisions. Would the Conservatives take that power away from councils to affect the solution that Meghan Gallagher has got her head in her hands about just now? I think that the thing that the former education secretary, Deputy First Minister, needs to also understand is that the Scottish Government has created this model, where the Scottish Government funded early years units in nurseries, providing free hours for preschool. That has an impact on where people are working in the sector. We know that, in Scotland, the number of individual childminders, for example, has fallen considerably, so having flexibility to be able to decide yourself as a parent what childcare you want has been impacted. I do not think that the Scottish Government still—I do not think that I will be able to get six minutes back as such. I am interested in advancing this debate, because I think that we have got to flush out the rhetoric from the Conservatives on this question. What Mr Briggs is arguing for is taking away from local authorities the power to design 1,140 hours at local level. Ross McAll and Meghan Gallagher, as they have done to the whole debate, are shaking their heads and gesticulating. Is that the Conservative position? I cannot see how they can effect the propositions that they are putting to Parliament and criticising the Government for without being open about that very point. I think that the key thing is choice. The problem is that the legislation that was created in this Parliament by this SNP Scottish Government is not watertight. You get 32 councils doing 32 different things across all local authorities. What you have got is a system where the councils are the competitor in the banker. The buck falls with the SNP in its legislation of not being watertight. I think that this is at the heart of what the report was really capturing, because the committee has asked the Scottish Government to reassess the scope, to accelerate its work in childcare provision and has noted that the exact timings, errors of provision, eligibility and income thresholds for child provision has still not been announced by the Scottish Government minister. We do not know what the Scottish Government is expecting councils to achieve. The committee has also called on the Government to provide detailed spending plans in relation to child care provisions. The latest programme for government does not set out any new funding that will be available to meet the new childcare commitments. The committee is therefore called on ministers—cross-party, I will say—to set out detailed spending plans showing what they aim to achieve and where spending will be also provided for that. The committee has also called on ministers to undertake and assess the current childcare workforce availability as we have touched upon for the sector. That should include skills for children with additional support needs and the levels of provision required to allow children from different cultural backgrounds to access services, as well as provision needed in remote and rural areas for parents to look to return to work. I think that that is when we were on the Western Isles, we saw how different models are being provided by employers, by the third sector, by councils, and that flexibility for parents, sometimes with two or three jobs in rural and remote areas, needs to be really considered as well. That flexibility to return to that point is where I do not think that the Government has got this policy quite right, and hopefully this debate can be an opportunity for them to pause and think about that. Perhaps most pressing is the need for the Scottish Government though, to do more for parents also returning to education. The committee called on the Scottish Government to evaluate successful initiatives and scale up work to ensure that there is a national provision for adults seeking to return to education. Specifically, the committee has also recommended that the Scottish Government provide part-time courses with flexibility built in. I think that that was a really important piece of evidence that we got when we were in Glasgow meeting with parents returning to college. I think that it is also important to look at Inclusion Scotland's briefing ahead of this debate. I think that the member has been very generous. Deputy Presiding Officer has been very courteous with the time. The Inclusion Scotland briefing does state that proposed changes would be disproportionate to benefit households if we look towards a number of what I think are really positive suggestions further around increasing funded childcare entitlement to equivalent of 50 areas a week for low-income families. There has been significant work from low-and-parent families asking around the child payment as well. Investment in targeted employability support to deliver fair work and consider particular needs of priority family groups. That was really at the heart of some of the evidence that we took as well. The delivery around employability commitments, the best start and bright futures policy, is also something that we still need to see delivery on. John Swinney touched upon a number of points with regard to what he was arguing a holistic approach to help families. That is why I hope he will join us in championing a policy that we want to see piloted around family hubs to look towards supporting integration of health, social care and education to provide that one-stop shop for families seeking support. It is maybe something that we can expand at a further date, but I think that that could help families as well. There is cross-party consensus, I believe, that the best way to tackle child poverty is to ensure that parents and guardians are able to look towards access to employment opportunities and fair work. However, the report makes clear that parents across Scotland still face significant barriers to employment and training opportunities. That is why I hope that the report will focus SNP and Green ministers on looking again at innovative policies, looking at the suggestions of the committee to expand childcare provision and flexibility, to look towards additional support schemes for parents, looking to re-enter the workplace as well and potentially to gain educational opportunities as well. The report is a useful one, and I certainly hope that, beyond ministers' comments today, they will genuinely look at some of the suggestions to take forward. I now call on Paul O'Kane on behalf of Scottish Labour. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and it is a pleasure to open for Scottish Labour in this debate. I welcome the chance to highlight the support in Parliament and to take the opportunity to highlight the important role that improved parental employability has to play in our fight against child poverty. Tackling poverty and particularly child poverty is a mission that I believe is broadly shared across the Parliament. Indeed, there have been many instances where we have worked across the chamber to act in this area, not least setting those ambitious 2030 targets for the reduction of child poverty or the introduction of the Scottish child payment, which is something that Labour has long been calling for and indeed backed in its introduction. However, I think that it is no secret—I think that we have began to hear this already—that we do need to go further and faster in terms of what we are doing if we are really going to tackle child poverty and indeed meet those very ambitious 2030 targets. I think that we need to be cognisant in terms of this report and more widely that there are a number of concerning calls that we may fall short of those targets and indeed of those interim targets that the Government has set. Supporting parental employment as a mechanism to tackle poverty, which has been highlighted by the report, is just one of the places where we can go further and faster. I became a member of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee halfway through this inquiry. I am very grateful to Mr McCain for giving way. I wonder if he believes that the Government would be able to go further and faster on the tackling of child poverty, which I absolutely, wholeheartedly endorse efforts in that direction. If the Government had followed the tax advice of the Scottish Labour Party in the recent budget debate, which would have resulted in there being about £500 million less resources available to the Scottish Government, would that have helped us to go further and faster in our efforts to tackle child poverty? I think that those arguments in the budget were well made about the growth of the economy that is required. What I did not detect in the Scottish Government's budget was a focus on economic growth and on employability and on improving the access to work for people across Scotland, indeed people who are parents of children and particularly young children. Of course, we could have another debate on the council tax freeze, which has attracted a degree of commentary from across the country about what that could have paid for instead of that intervention, which was not welcomed across the piece. If the minister would let me just make a little progress, I will come back to her. I joined the committee, as I have said, as we progressed through this, and I was not able to go on the committee visits, but I did hear evidence from a number of leading organisations in Scotland who spoke about the work that needs to be done in supporting people back in to work in terms of a strong economy, as I have just referenced. There was a lot of concern raised about some of the budgetary decisions that have been made. We have to look at, for example, the promised £53 million in funding for employability schemes and the scrapping of the parental transition fund completely. That was seriously concerning and was raised by a number of organisations that gave evidence in the process of the inquiry. We also have to look to the research of one-parent families Scotland, who have put on record the difficulties families experience in terms of not being able to afford essentials. IPPR has spoken about a massive chasm between the overall number of people being reached by current employability programmes and those who are supported in to work. Joseph Rowntree has highlighted the one in 10 Scots in persistent low pay, with women particularly impacted, as we know, because they are more likely to be single parents. I certainly will give way to the minister at this point. I have heard many times from Labour benches over the years that I have been hearing that they support the devolution of employment law to the Scottish Parliament. Is that the current position? The minister knows full well that we have had a number of debates in this place prior to Christmas on the devolution of employment law. What we have stated quite clearly is that we need to have a UK floor in terms of the standards that are expected. Our new deal for working people, which I am about to come on to talk about, has to be the floor in terms of what we will deliver for people across the UK, within a view to the second phase of that being looking at what we can do all further. We need to make sure that those standards are embedded across the UK. What are those standards? Those standards are a real living wage paid to workers right from day one, the end of zero hours contracts, the end of fire and rehire. Those standards should be on the floor, supported by both the TUC and the S2UC. At the end of the day, that could be a huge moment, I think, for that new deal for working people under the Labour Government, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, to put money back into the pockets of working people and to support people in work. The point that I was making prior to the intervention was about that persistent low pay that impacts families across Scotland. It really does hinder people from accessing all the support that they need in order to afford those essentials. I want to refer to some of the excellent work that has been done across Scotland. In the chamber, we would attract a degree of consensus around where we can learn more and do more. Fife Gingerbread, in particular, is an excellent organisation that we heard from during the inquiry. It has excellent advice and support services for lone parents and families who need to co-ordinate with local employers to parent-proof vacancies and establish an action plan to help parents through training, education and employment. That is backed up by financial advice and all the holistic services that you would expect that can support someone on their journey back into work. I met Fife Gingerbread and she commented to me that her whole approach is not just about the individual and the person seeking work. That has to be about the employer and the flexibility that we can expect from employers, which is not always forthcoming. I encourage the Government to continue to work in that space and to meet Fife Gingerbread again and to do further work. If the minister is going to support that, I will certainly give way to that. Does Paul Cain not admit that, in terms of compelling employers to do anything around workplace conditions, that employment law needs to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament? As I said already, we need a floor of rights for workers and expectations on employers. We can do that at UK level with that new deal for working people. I am expected to take a lecture on employment rights from a Government that does not pay £15 on air to social care workers, despite the demands of the trade unions. It sold off £700 million of renewable licences without a single condition for workers and used their airs contracts themselves to deliver leaflets in the Rulligland and Hamilton West by elections. I do not think that I will take any further lectures on employment rights from the Government. I am now conscious of time, having been generous with interventions and relying on your generosity. I will conclude by saying that Scottish Labour remains committed to working with whoever is willing to drive forward a mission to tackle child poverty. We welcome that report and what has been done to highlight the issues in parental employment, and we hope that we can do more in this space to tackle issues such as childcare and transport. Fundamentally, we know that we must have that floor of rights across the UK and that that can only come with a Labour Government. I am pleased about the debate, because I was, as is by want, gently critical of the Government before when it made the debate in recent weeks about the child payment, because it seemed to be that the payment of the child payment seemed to be the success that was regarded by the Government, rather than perhaps getting more families and more parents back into work and making work pay. I am pleased to see that there is a focus on employability and, in a way that John Swinney rightly highlighted, that it is not just one single thing, there is a package of measures that you need to put in place. I am pleased that the debate is happening. There has been a lot of better focus on childcare, which I will come to just now, because I do not quite agree with Megan Gallacher about her analysis of the problem, but there certainly is a problem. It was built in from the very beginning when the childcare arrangements were put in place. There was an agreement between the Government and COSLA that there would be a differential in pay between council workers in nurseries and the PVI sector. That has been built in from the start. I understand why it was built that way, because the sector has been evolved in that way. It was fine when there was a much bigger private contribution to childcare, but, as the state provision has increased, the ability for cross-subsidy has been limited. Therefore, we are ending up with the PVI sector really under the cosh. The recent review of the rates has not really helped. It has maintained that gap. The result of that is that we are losing experienced staff from the PVI sector into council nurseries. Closing that gap is not going to be easy. It will take some years but it needs to be closed if we want to maintain the flexibility that is provided by the PVI sector offer flexibility, the extra capacity that we require but also it is important that they provide quality. I am really worried about the last one, that if we have experienced personnel leaving, not always to other council nurseries but sometimes to supermarkets where they get paid more, we are going to result in a loss of quality in the PVI sector, which we desperately need. I will take the cabinet secretary first. I am grateful to Willie Rennie to have the opportunity to point out to him that 93 per cent of households receiving early learning childcare were very or fairly satisfied with overall quality. I hope that he takes that reassurance on board. Will he also welcome the £16 million worth of funding to uplift paying the private voluntary and independent sector that the First Minister very recently announced? The important point here is that I accept that just now many parents are satisfied. What I am predicting here is a problem for the future and I hope that the cabinet secretary takes it in that light because the PVI sector is sending out very clear warning signals that they are losing staff already. Some of them are reducing their capacity. We cannot do that, we need more flexibilities because councils often cannot provide that flexibility that the PVI sector provides. I hope that the cabinet secretary will speak to her colleagues to try and close that gap. I do not think that it is necessarily anything to do with how it is structured. I actually think that it is to do with the funding rates that are available. The £12 an hour helps, but it does not close that gap. When the starting salary in the council nurseries—in Stirling, for example—is £15 or £16 an hour, whereas in private nurseries just down the road it is £12 an hour, now I know where I would go and work. We need to have good people in the PVI sector for this to thrive. I will change your answer. I am very grateful to Mr Rennie for giving way. I agree with a lot of the analysis that he has put in place. The point that I have been trying to advance with the Conservatives is that, essentially, local authorities had the ability to design the arrangements at local level. Many have chosen to expand their own capacity under their own stewardship. There is a difficult issue there that Parliament has to confront, that it is not just about putting a point in the finger at the Government. We have to engage local authorities about the design of the system, and that cannot be ignored in the contribution that we have heard from the Conservatives today. I think that it was both. There was an agreement between the local authorities and the Government at the very beginning that, built into the system, would be that pay differential. Council workers would get the national terms and conditions, and the PVI sector would get the living wage. That was built from the start. I accept his point about that. That has been built in by the way that councils have built up the service, and I accept that completely. That is going to take quite some time to fix, but it needs to be fixed. Otherwise, we are going to see a depreciation of the PVI sector, which I do not think that any of us want to see. Just another point about ELC is the two-year-old take-up. It is something that I was a strong advocate for, I remember, weekly, almost encouraging Alex Salmond to adopt this policy. I was really concerned recently, despite the fact that we have an access agreement to information from the DWP that the take-up from two-year-olds has dropped. That is exactly the group of people that we are talking about here. Why has it gone down when we know where those people are? I appreciate that some councils are on top of that. There is a big variation between one local authority and the other. However, the fact that it has gone down should be deeply alarming to us, especially if that is exactly the type of people that we want to get back into work. After school clubs, I have had two clothes in my area very recently. It is part to do with the job market. They cannot get the people to work in them. Sometimes in the rural areas there are not sufficient numbers of parents, but also the councils, because of their financial constraints, are pulling out of providing support within areas. I do not know what is happening in Aberdeenshire. I do not know what involvement our councillors have had in that, but there is a problem across the country after school clubs. They are essential for that flexible offer that we desperately need. Although England seems to have cocked it up, the fact is that we have the ... Okay, I will withdraw after all. My mother will be back on the floor again. Thank you, Mr Rennie. Obviously, your mother might still have concerns, Mr Rennie, further to last week. I will withdraw that offensive remark. They have had difficulties in England with the roll-out of the ELC provision for working parents for one and two-year-olds. They have got an ambition at least to do more. It is more than the pilots that we have got here. I hope that the Scottish Government is able to fast roll out the programme, because I have had a lot of parents in my constituency who have been inquiring as to why the provision that is available in England is not available in Scotland, and I have to tell them that it is different systems. Nevertheless, they are looking for enhanced provision. I do not know how much more time I have got. I will give you to that just after eight minutes. All right, okay. Interest in inclusion in Scotland is about the work programmes that disabled people have. Their assessment was that the pathways to work under Labour, the work programme under the coalition and the Conservative Government and the fair start Scotland programme were all pretty ineffective, despite their different design and different ways, and they found that the best programmes were ones that were driven by disabled people's organisations such as the Glasgow Centre for Inclusive Living with their internship programme. I wonder whether there is a lesson there to learn about drawing from the experience of on-the-ground organisations to make that provision available to trusted individuals. That applies therefore to colleges. We need colleges, which are easy access to education, sometimes micro-credentials and short courses, so that for people who have been out of the workplace for some time they can easily get back into a newer opportunity. If I finish on one thing on bus services, I know in John Swinney's area that stagecoach have stripped back an awful lot of the services. For small villages, communities, rural areas, those families desperately need good, regular, reliable bus services if they are going to be able to get to work. That goes back to my first point, where there is no one single answer to that. We need a comprehensive suite of measures to get people back to work. I speak in this debate as a member of the social justice and social security committee. I thank the committee clerks for their assistance with the production of our report. We received very helpful evidence from a range of expert witnesses and those with lived experience. The information provided was considerable and extremely helpful in reaching our conclusions, and tackling child poverty, especially without the full powers needed, is complex but essential. That is why it is a national mission of the Scottish Government and one that can only be achieved if we tackle all the drivers of poverty. Every sector and Government must be up for that mission. Currently, too many families are locked in working poverty and unable to progress in the labour market, while others are unable to access the labour market at all due to structural barriers. The committee agrees that we need to ensure good quality, flexible work as a route out of poverty, while also targeting support to those who are unable to work. The Scottish Government's best start bright futures plan aims to support up to 12,000 parents to access the state employment and up to 3,000 in-work parents to increase their earnings. To do that, the Scottish Government proposes investment, employability support, improvements in connectivity and childcare, promoting fair work and investing in local and regional economies. To fully achieve that, the committee agrees that the Government must supercharge efforts and take decisive action now. The Scottish Government aims to make employability services contribute to reducing poverty and inequality and transform the economy, and alongside COSLA are jointly exploring opportunities to scale up employability support for parents. Employability services, of course, need the resources to deliver interventions throughout people's journeys, so we need to know how scaling up will be achieved, particularly after fair start Scotland ends in April. There are many recommendations in our report and the time available. I cannot cover them all, so I will just highlight a further three issues. Not being able to access childcare is a common barrier to employment and most often it affects women the most. There is also a particular issue in accessing childcare for children with additional support needs. Chaz gave the following example. Just the other day, I was talking to a parent who had in place a very significant package of support, but was simply unable to recruit the staff that she needed to support the child, so she is giving up work in order to be the sole carer for her child. That is why, as a committee, we want to see a detailed assessment of the current childcare workforce availability across the sector, including skills for children with additional support needs. The social security system, acting as a barrier to getting into or staying in employment, is another significant issue. In the conditionality regime, in universal credit, there is nothing to support people into work, often causing misery and hardship instead. In Marine, Davis of One Parent, Family Scotland, when illustrating the significant impact on lone parents told us, we end up having to take them to food banks because they have had their benefits cut, and that has a huge impact on employability and adds to the crises that families face, which prevent them from moving on and achieving what they want to achieve. In Philip White of IPPR Scotland, in evidence to us regarding conditionality, he said, we have collected a lot of UK-wide evidence that suggests that the regime is still incredibly prunitive, rather than supportive, and that ratches up under employment because people are quite often directed and take low-quality jobs. It is clear, Presiding Officer, that approach is not one that sets work on a strong track to help and reduce poverty. Instead, work must pay, and it must be flexible. Providing jobs that pay a fair wage are family friendly, with flexibility to meet parents' needs, is central to tackling child poverty through employment. Here, we are also hindered by the lack of control that we have over employment law. Encouragement can only secure so much, and that is why Andrea Bradley, on behalf of the STC, told us, from an STC point of view, we want to see Scotland in control of the levers that will have the greatest impact on the pay conditions in working lives of people in Scotland. For that reason, we want to see the devolution of employment law to Scotland. Until we secure the necessary employment powers, I certainly welcome the approach that has been taken by the fair work first policy. We must use that approach to maximise and secure what working people deserve. To that end, I welcome that we are looking at the procurement and tendering processes as a way to secure decent terms and conditions. The aim of tackling child poverty through parental employment is so important to get right. By helping parents to secure stable, flexible employment, we can offer a sustainable route out of poverty for many families. As you know, every child should live happy, healthy lives and be able to reach their full potential. So, let's push forward on this and prioritise the policies that really tackle child poverty. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I think I'm going to start with an incredibly cheesy line because my mum and dad are my heroes. They taught me so many important life skills growing up, especially that hard work pays off, and it's something that is always stuck by me. Working hard, getting a job and getting yourself into the position where you're financially secure, that's what most people want in life. Becoming a parent in 2022 will be the most important job I will ever have. With the joy of watching your children grow up, however, comes the realisation that you'll need to work to provide for them and parents right across Scotland understand this. There is no other way. We are living in a completely different world from what generations before me and others experienced. Traditionally, the mum would stay at home, look after the kids while the dad went out to work, but with the global cost of living crisis, most parents don't have the option to choose this sort of lifestyle anymore, and that's why work has become integral to tackling child poverty. Parents should inspire not just for their children but for themselves. Getting yourself a good, well-paid job with opportunities is the best way to give your child the best possible start in life. That's the ethos that my parents taught me, and that will be the ethos that I'll pass on to my daughter should she ever wish to start a family. There are many topics that we can touch upon today, as the debate topic is so broad. It has crossed so many different portfolio areas, but for me, unsurprisingly, with interactions we've already had, it will be childcare, because that's what I am passionate about. Not just because I'm a new mum navigating the childcare sector, but because parents need this Government to give them the tools that they need to succeed. That's why I do back the roll-out of free childcare expansion here in Scotland and in the rest of the UK, because it's staggering how much parents pay for childcare here in Scotland. At one point, I was well over £500, but my eyes did water when parents told me first hand that some have to pay well over £1,000 per child. That's a whole whack of a parent's salary gone. Of course, there's added cost pressures, gas, electricity, council tax, food shopping, phone and internet bills, and all the other cost pressures that an average household faces, so it's no wonder why some parents decide not to work or to reduce their hours to balanced childcare and family income. Parents have told me that, after their first child, they might not be able to afford a second. With the number of babies expected to be born over the next decade in free fall, we need to make it easier for mums and dads to be able to raise a family. I will ask the member to encourage the UK Government to end two-child care, which is a punishment for those on low incomes that have more than two children. I was hoping that we would have a debate that would not descend into politicking, Cabinet Secretary, but we are obviously descending into politicking today, and that's shame on the Scottish Government when we're actually trying to encourage parents into work so we can try and eradicate child poverty. There will be some in this chamber this afternoon that will tell me that the current childcare expansion is a huge success, there's no problems, and that parents will have been able to access 1140 hours of free childcare. Willie Rennie, I think, made the point—that was an important point—that, although parents enjoy the childcare affordability just now, there are serious, serious problems coming down the track. Jeremy Balfour. I am grateful to the member to take intervention. Will the member agree with me that the system at present, if you are working weekends or shift work, is simply not able to do that if you need childcare and the provision that we have in Scotland is not working for those types of parents? Nurseries, doctors, those in the front line services, they are all going to be impacted by this. That is why we need to look at childcare. How will childcare work in Scotland? I think that everybody in this chamber wants childcare to work in Scotland, but every time myself and others raise the issue of childcare, we seem to be shot back down as if there is no problems whatsoever. In terms of the childcare sector that we have currently, nurseries in the private sectors are closing their doors because this Government has not supported them in terms of the current policy. Childminders are leaving the sector entirely. That is a shame, Presiding Officer, because the private sector is the backbone of our childcare sector. There, the ones that Jeremy Balfour just highlighted, the ones offering the choice to parents so that they can get back to work. Without them, more parents will need to reduce their working hours or leave the workforce entirely, and that is us going backwards. Then there is the issue of councils. I learned recently within my own area of North Lanarkshire Council that they are not offering funded childcare to parents the day after their child turns three. That goes against the principle of 1140 and actually received a response from the education department who told me that they had to revert to the statutory guidance because of the legislation to defer entry to primary one. That is the financial issues that our councils are facing just now. They are having to go back to statutory policies because the Scottish Government has cut their funding. That is absolutely true. It is absolutely fact, and the Government cannot continue to bury their heads in the sand over that issue. Presiding Officer, I do not want childcare expansion to fail. I want it to be a success. I want it to work, and I want it to work for parents and young people. It is far too important. It supports parents back into the workforce, and it drives down child poverty. I will end with another plea this afternoon and get the childcare expansion back on track so that we can all collectively work together to support parents and their children. Thank you, Ms Gallagher. I call John Mason to be followed by Cara Mockin. Thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity to take part in this important debate today. Like others, I only joined the committee as the report was being written, so I am afraid that I did not personally hear any of the evidence that was given. To start with, it seems clear that there is no one magic bullet to overcome child poverty. I think that both the committee and the Government are agreed on that point. Parental employment will not be the only answer if that employment is poorly paid, part-time or precarious, and for some families and some parents paid employment will not be part of the answer at all, especially if severe disability and caring responsibilities are in play. As the Government points out in its response to the committee, there needs to be wider action to tackle poverty, including more affordable homes, free school meals and social security. The fact that the social security budget is rising from £5.3 billion to £6.3 billion, while many other budgets are rising little, if at all, seems proof to me that this Government's priorities are in the right place. Affordable and accessible childcare, as many others have said already, is a critical factor. Some would argue that any such provision should be universal and not risk the stigma of some families paying and others not. There is also the risk of some parents not applying for what they are entitled to because of a lack of understandable information or struggling to complete forms and paperwork. However, given the limited resources that we have at our disposal, I think that it is right to target low-income families in the greatest need or, as the Government says, focusing on those who will benefit most. I wanted to make some comments particularly in relation to transport. This is specifically a problem in rural areas and islands, with little integration often between buses and ferries or with onward trains on the mainland. However, there can be a problem in cities too, with parents trying to juggle work, school and childcare. Often, bus and rail services only go into the city centre rather than around the city, and that is certainly a problem in Glasgow. So two or more journeys are required if you are travelling around the city. The Government's response talks about, quote, ensuring that everyone has accessible public transport, regardless of where they live, unquote. To be frank, I wonder if that is ever really going to be possible. I suspect that some people will always need their own vehicle because of where they live, and we have responsibilities of such families as well. The Government's response also refers to bus provisions in the Transport Scotland Act 2019, which, quote, empower local authorities to respond to their own transport challenges. That is fair enough, but empowering is only one side of the equation, the other side is money, and no amount of empowering automatically provides the required money. The committee heard about the ready-to-go scheme in and around Inferuri, which seems to have been successful, but the costs were too great for it to continue. Again, on affordability of transport, I note what the Government says about support will be for people accessing employability services, ideally rather than a wider concession for low-income parents or other groups. Ideally, concessionary travel would be expanded to include all modes of transport, as the poverty alliance suggests in its briefing. However, as I have said on a previous point, I think that it is inevitable, given our current financial position, that support needs to be targeted. The committee also— Mr Mason, could we— Absolutely, Mr Swinney is taking over. I am grateful to Mr Mason for giving way. On his question about the expansion of the concessionary travel scheme and his point about it being targeted, does he accept the argument that it is part of an employment or a path to employment offer that might be possible to offer concessionary travel support for a limited period that would then be removed once an individual was in sustainable employment? John Mason? I think that that would be targeting. In many ways, I like universal benefits, and those of us of a certain age have all got our bus pass whatever our income is, but I think that the point is right that we should target, and there should be imaginative ways of looking at that. Another imaginative way is demand responsive transport. That was particularly mentioned in the report in relation again to rural areas, but personally I think that it can be part of the solution in urban areas as well. In Strathclyde, we have my bus, which is currently restricted to a very limited group of people, I think that aged over 80. That kind of rules out most working people. At the same time, SPT subsidises a number of routes like the 310 route in my area, and often there are only one or two people on that bus. I gather that Transport Scotland is reviewing DRT and digital DRT services, and my instinct is that there is potential for more to happen in that space. Again, in the theme of transport for low-income families, the committee asked the Government to take into account child poverty and parental employment when allocating funding for delivering transport policies. The Government responds and refers to the national transport strategy with mention of the concessionary travel schemes, the on-going fair fairs review and the ScotRail peak fairs removal pilot. To those, I would just also add something that we looked at on Tuesday evening at the cross-party group on sustainable transport. E-bikes, while expensive, are a lot cheaper than cars, and can give someone an increased range for travelling to work or college. France appears to be subsidising e-bikes to a much greater extent than the UK is, and anything that we can do in that respect could be a real boost for working parents, as well as benefiting traffic congestion and air pollution. Then, just yesterday, we had a very interesting spice breakfast briefing from the Fair Work Convention. Its definition of fair work is work that offers effective voice, opportunity, security, fulfilment and respect. In some ways Scotland compares well with other countries. However, I was struck by the figure that came then that around 75 per cent of workers in Scotland do not have access to flexible working, and that surely has got to be a challenge if we are trying to get children and their families out of poverty. However, it was encouraging to hear one academic yesterday say that most employers do not actually set out to be bad employers, but many feel constrained by the whole system, for example in the care sector. I also note the point in the briefing from the Scottish women's budget group that the committee report is too gender-neutral, and there is not enough emphasis on the link between child poverty and women's inequality. I think that that is probably a fair point. All in all, the report is a very wide-ranging subject, and perhaps the committee report could not encompass every single angle. However, I think that the inquiry and report have been very worthwhile, and I commend them to Parliament. I thank the Social Justice and Social Security Committee for putting together this very timely report. I am not a member, but tackling child poverty should be the core task of this Parliament and every Parliament. I hope that today it encourages some tangible steps to achieve that, rather than just talking. I think that people and children really need some action. If we want to have constructive debate in this chamber, we have to have an understanding of what the Opposition MSPs have a responsibility to do. We have a responsibility to work together, as my colleague Paul O'Kane outlined in the report that we agree with, and we feel that the committee has worked really well together. However, we have a responsibility to hold the Government to account on promises that it has made and to ask questions about what it may wish to do or may be able to do to tackle that problem. I agree wholeheartedly with the committee that parental employment is a key determinant in ending child poverty. I personally say that it is a primary one, and I have been given far too little attention by Governments across the UK who often seem to think that poverty is the result of some mysterious trend, rather than a logical consequence of making it harder and harder for people to secure long-term sustainable employment. To be clear, and I have said that in the chamber before, I do not believe that the UK Tory Government policies of the last 14 years have helped this at all, and I always make that position clear. However, I also make the position clear that my job in this place is to hold this Government to account for the actions that it can take. Parental unemployment, especially over extended periods, is at the heart of increased levels of child poverty. We have agreed that. Combining that with an increased hostile environment surrounding benefits, and you end up with a recipe for this desperate problem that we must look to seek solutions to. Decreasing child poverty is, I am sure, a shared goal across the Parliament. I have heard that, and I do believe that yet. We know from the report that the Scottish Government is set to miss its own child poverty reduction targets next year. If we want to reach the 2030 target of 10 per cent, even more work will need to be done, and the work does really need to start now, and it needs to be work on action. Currently, the Government's own poverty statistics show that 24 per cent of all children were living in poverty between 2019 to 2022, and that is an extra 40,000 children added to the ranks of the poor over the last decade. I do not think that the Government wants to end its time in power with that as a headline. I wonder if the cabinet secretary might be able to give us some feedback on what model they have done to look at that as the numbers increase, so that we secure some good work for the future. That is why the Government should be taking more proactive measures to achieve its aims through making sure that it is efficiently utilising the powers of the Parliament that it does have. What can it do? We do not hear enough from the Government about what actions it can take. It is the job of Opposition to push the Government on this and to push the Government to say that something different has happened, and in response to that, we are going to do not just about the difficult thing that has happened. Sitting on our hands and allowing significant levers to remain untouched is not good enough, and it does not help families' budget and families who are struggling to get into employment funding. Parental employability funds were stripped of more than £20 million in last year's budget, as we know. Little has been done to address that shortfall. The Government promised to make support dependent on grants, not loans, so families are not trapped in debt as part of the parental transition fund, but that has fallen by the wayside. I hope that the cabinet secretary may be able to address that point in terms of what they are actually thinking that they might be able to do in this space to help families. My party has set out plans to create jobs, grow the economy and tackle poverty. I believe that good quality employment is a key driver in reducing poverty, and we need to do more in this field to achieve that. We also need to look at affordable public transport, as others have mentioned, viable housing support, proactive action on debt and measures to help families with soaring household bills. Others have mentioned education and childcare as a massively wide area, and we can all cover all points in the debate. I think that we need to understand have we done things in a meaningful way, and is there more that we can do? The report certainly indicates that this Government could be doing more. Our advocating poverty in this country will only come from delivering secure and long-term employment that parents can build a family around. Precarious employment, things that drive unemployment, really play into those figures in child poverty, and we must address them. Let us not suffer another lost generation of children. Let us supercharge, as others have said, this important area. To do that, I plead with the Scottish Government that we must look at the promises that we have made, the reality of where we are, being the best of other parts of the country is not enough, and what actions can you take with the devolved powers that you have? I think that families would appreciate some answers to those questions, and if we can get some answers to those questions or even questions to those questions that we can work together, I think that certainly the Scottish Labour Party would be happy to work together on those points. One of the tasks that I performed before I left government was to chair a group of public service ministers, which met on a very regular basis, certainly during the pandemic, intensively. From that group, we provided the ministerial supervision to the creation of the child poverty delivery plan, which is at the heart of the debate that we are having today. Work that was very rewarding, because what it did was that it drew together all the different aspects of the Government's responsibilities to focus on one single problem of the reduction and eradication of child poverty. That plan developed and recognised that the solution to the issue of child poverty did not lie in one single intervention. It rested on employment support, it rested on the child payment, it rested on the provision of a range of other support in childcare, transport, health and education. The intervention that I made to the minister earlier on is perhaps a little bit of self-interest to see if the things that I believe to be absolutely critical, where I was assured in some of those discussions within Government, are being maintained at the heart of Government. We have to recognise—this is a point that Mr Rennie made with which I completely agree—that the tackling of child poverty must be multifaceted within Government. No area of Government should be left out of the activity to tackle child poverty. I think that it is reassuring that ministers have put on the record to the committee in its report the importance that is attached to cross ministerial working through the tackling child poverty programme board and the ministerial group on driving down child poverty, which is absolutely fundamental to the work. Also, what is so important is the perspective of external organisations that can provide substantial challenge to the agenda that the Government is taking forward. We had to intervene on you in this debate, but I also wanted to ask one of the key parts that I think the report does touch upon, is sometimes employability schemes being vulnerable and facing cuts in budgets. Now, I know as finance secretary Mr Swinney cut employability schemes as well, where do you think embedding that and making sure employability schemes are at the heart of decision making in government and that cross-party and the cross-government approach is not working? The schemes are integral to the work and tackling child poverty, and I make that comment absolutely. When I removed funding from employability support, the one thing that I checked before I did so was that there was still capacity to absorb anyone who wished to come forward to be part of those employability programmes. Although I may have removed money because I had to deal with rising inflation and cuts to the budget from the United Kingdom Conservative government, I did make sure that there was still provision for anyone who wished to come forward for employability support to be able to achieve that. Now, what the Government and what the Child Poverty Action Plan has delivered has been formidable, and the committee narrates that information. The committee narrates the fact that in 2122, 23 per cent of children in Scotland were living in relative poverty. The Government's estimates of what that current figure might be is around about 19 per cent. The modelling that demonstrates that if the Government was not applying the policies that it is putting in place, it was not putting in the child payment, it was not putting in the other measures, child poverty might be 28 per cent in Scotland. To Carol Mocken, who asks what the Government is doing about all this and what powers have been used, the Government is undertaking intervention, which is removing 9 per cent of the levels of child poverty that would be the case if the Scottish Government was not acting. Of course, all that is happening against the backdrop of prevailing austerity that we have had in our public finances for 14 years, in addition to the significant challenges that we have faced from soaring inflation. When we look at the performance in Scotland, the direct interventions of the Scottish Government are resulting in fewer children being in poverty than if the Scottish Government was not acting in the way that it was today. Although I absolutely lowered the word that I am about to use, the question of destitution, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimate of destitution is that in Scotland destitution is rising at a slower rate under a climate of austerity than in the rest of the United Kingdom. I know that Carol Mocken does not like those comparisons across the United Kingdom, and I despise the fact that, in 21st century Scotland, we are still talking about destitution, but that shows what the Government's actions are actually delivering in the face of a poverty-inducing agenda, which has been at the heart of the Conservative agenda since 2010. I thank the member for taking an intervention. I hope that the member recognises that I do not shy away from talking about the fact that I understand the different policies across the nation's result in child poverty. However, does he understand that we need to talk in this Parliament about what else we can do? Sometimes it does not feel like the Government will address other things. It feels that the Government spends a lot of time debating its betterness than other parliaments, which can be frustrating for people who spend their whole life trying to say that there is more that can be done and that there is more that can be done. I am all for more being done, I am all for supercharging, I am all for going further and faster. What I am pointing out to Parliament today is that the actions of the Scottish Government have delivered real and substantive improvements in reducing child poverty at a time when the prevailing climate in the United Kingdom is increasing poverty because of the austerity agenda of the Conservative Government. When it comes to going further and faster, we have to be able to take measures on further steps on employability. I agree with Mr Rennie's point about the role of the third sector in trying to secure greater involvement for those organisations on public transport. I am going through a very agitated period in my life about public transport provision in my constituency, so the more that we can ensure that that has been undertaken in the interests of the wider public, it will help. However, what I would say to the Government is that please maintain the focus on cross-portfolio working to make sure that every element of government is brought together to tackle child poverty in Scotland. I thank the committee for its detailed work and report on the issue. Of course, through the third sector organisations that have shared immensely important and helpful briefings, it is another debate that in a just and compassionate world we would not need to have. No child should be living in poverty anywhere, and the fact that so many do in a hugely prosperous country such as ours is a source of deep collective shame. We can speak glibly sometimes about equality, but there is no greater inequality than this. Whether or not a child goes to bed hungry and cold depends primarily on how much money their parents have, and that largely depends, except for a privileged few, on what kind of work those parents do. That, when we think about it objectively, is a ridiculous and incredibly unfair situation. It is one that we can mitigate, and to some extent with the Scottish child payment and other social security measures, we have done, and I am proud of the part that the Scottish Greens have played in those. However, as important as they are—and we know that they are keeping many children away from the brink of poverty, as we have already heard this afternoon—they are not enough alone. As the report demonstrates, addressing parental employment has to be an important and urgent part of our response. For that response to be effective, we need some fundamental changes. We need to change some mistaken beliefs and assumptions. We need to change the way in which we view, value and deliver childcare, and we need to change our economy itself—what it does, what it enables and who it works for. One myth is that parents are not already working. As the Poverty Alliance has pointed out, over two-thirds of children in poverty live in a household where at least one adult is in paid work, yet that work pays too little or covers too few hours to meet a family's basic needs. That really is shocking. Whether we are talking about deliberately exploitative employers, small enterprises themselves squeezed by financial pressures or care and transport deficits that limit availability for work, that is a failing system, not families that are failing. That is why it is so important that best start bright futures aims not only to increase access to employment, but specifically to increase earnings. That is why fair work really matters, work that provides an effective voice for employees, opportunities to develop and learn, job security, human fulfilment and real respect. Of course, we also know that being a parent is work in and of itself and that, too, should be valued. Another myth is that not all types of family are facing the same challenges. I share the disappointment expressed by closed the gap that the committee didn't choose to take a gendered approach to their investigation. It is not an eradication of the existence or importance of fathers for us to recognise that most primary caregivers and the vast majority of lone parents are women and that those women are encouraged to seek jobs in low-paid, inflexible and undervalued sectors. On the contrary, acknowledgement of those realities allows us to see and articulate the particular challenges faced by single and caregiving fathers, which may often be less about financial pressures and more about societal attitudes and assumptions. Secondly, we collectively need to change the way that childcare is seen, valued and provided. The recent funding announcement was very welcome, but that is a wider and deeper problem than childcare workers pay. Child care, as we have heard, needs to be affordable, accessible and flexible, not limited to school hours or to a traditional 95 working day. With a decline in the number of childminders, family and informal networks often come forward to fill in childcare gaps, but for many these are unavailable, including where families move or work or study. The special challenges for student parents were rightly highlighted in the committee's report and I urge all colleges and universities to follow the sensitive approach that some have pioneered. We should recognise too that different children have very different needs, socially, developmentally, physically and emotionally, and that those needs change throughout their childhood and adolescence. We need to employ our imaginations as well as our intelligence, recognising the many dimensions and relationships of our own lives and not expecting those of families in poverty to be any less complex or nuanced. I particularly commend the childcare vision and principle set out by Close the Gap and One Parent Family Scotland and hope to see them widely accepted and implemented. Thirdly, we need to see fundamental changes in our wider economy. As the report wisely highlights, nothing short of a whole system approach will be enough. Inclusion Scotland and the Poverty Alliance have both outlined some of the most critical elements, the need for accessible, safe and free public transport, 10-minute neighbourhoods, living hours provision and flexible and home working made available much more widely. A just transition is deeply needed away from the obscenity of an £8 million pay package for BP's chief to adjust green economy that is at its heart an economy of solidarity and care. That is not only about renewable technologies, as important as they are, but about all the work that creates, builds and grows a healthy Scotland and a peaceful world. I would like to close by speaking directly to those families, children in poverty and the parents who struggle daily to give them what they need and deserve. You are not invisible, you are not forgotten and this is not your fault. It is our job to sort it out. I wish to put on record my thanks to the committee clerks for their diligent work on drafting such a comprehensive report and all those who supported the inquiry. Scottish Conservatives believe that the best way to tackle child poverty is to ensure that parents are in paid employment and earning a decent wage. It is very concerning fact that over a third of children in poverty live in households who cannot get work. Delivering a growing economy with employment is a key to tackling child poverty. This is an approach that the cabinet secretary partially agrees with and was detailed in the Scottish Government's response to the recommendations of the committee, where she said that the Scottish Government recognises the importance of increasing family incomes from work and earnings as a key component of achieving a balanced and sustainable approach to breaking the cycle of child poverty. I also agree with the cabinet secretary's statement in the same letter, where she reaffirmed the Scottish Government's view that a sustainable exit from poverty will never just be about securing and retaining a job, however securing and retaining parental employment is a crucial element in addressing child poverty and that cannot be overlooked. This is particularly important for women and I am grateful for closed the gap for providing their briefing ahead of today's debate. They state that action to address women's labour market inequalities is vital for tackling child poverty. The truth is that we still have a situation where parents face barriers to employment such as poor childcare provision and lack of support when re-entring education and a failing transport system. Not being able to access childcare was the most common barrier to employment raised in response to the committee's call for views. The Scottish Women's Convention, for example, quoted a mother struggling to juggle work and childcare, where she said that there is no childcare providers through there, so you are constantly having to look at what family or friends are available. No woman can develop their work or their career until their child has reached high school age. Accessible affordable flexible childcare is essential to support parents in to sustainable employment. The tackling child poverty delivery plan, progress report 2223, recognised the need for more accessible, flexible high quality childcare. A recent review of the impact of childcare on parental poverty, noted that the formal childcare is an indispensable part of a policy toolkit to tackle child and in-work poverty. Unfortunately, the toolkit is missing a wrench in a couple of spanners. I have to mention the proposal in Edinburgh to phase out funded childcare in private and independent nurseries for parents who live outside the city. That will have a massively detrimental impact on my constituents in Fife who commute to Edinburgh for work. I was recently informed that North Lanarkshire Council, due to the give them time deferred start date for primary 1, would not allow three-year-olds to start their funded hours the day after their third birthday. Reports that some councils are looking at cutting the provision entirely in some areas due to lacking of staff is deeply worrying. Removing choice for a blended childcare provision goes against the Government's commitment to getting it right for every child, and it actively hinders parents from returning to work. The committee's recommendation that the Scottish Government should redress the scope to accelerate its work in childcare provision and to announce the exact timings, hours of provision, eligibility and income thresholds as soon as possible is, therefore, an important recommendation to which the cabinet secretary should take note. Ensuring that adequate provision within proximity to places of work or learning would also make a marked difference. Instead of making it harder for private nurseries, might I suggest that looking at ways for increasing on-site nurseries and campuses at schools, for example? Streamlining the process of funding to ensure that money does actually follow the child will certainly allow parents to increase flexibility to choose the correct blend of childcare for them. The Scottish Child Minding Association described their workforce decline in this way. In the sixth years of the ELC expansion, the child-minding workforce has declined by 34 per cent in real terms, a loss of 1,926 child-minding businesses and more than 11,000 child-minding places for families. In their annual audit for the Scottish Government, they looked at where authorities currently are regarding their child-minding offer, and they projected that those trends are almost set to double by July 2026 unless we take urgent action. That is a sobering thought. I also wanted to use my speech this afternoon to highlight the importance of our public transport options and how they can be used to encourage parents back into the workforce, including orbital trips, for example, between suburbs so that they do not need to travel via city centres. I joined up thinking towards more workable transport options, and I will give it to you for instance. I was approached by Fife Council recently because they had to cancel a course in their Carcody campus, which was fully subscribed, all because the bus route changed its time. This is not the first time that this has happened. It is surely not beyond the realms of combined intelligence to ensure that processes within local government, local transport and local education can work together to provide a proper and sensible solution. In conclusion, I fear that, if we do not work towards finding sensible solutions to this issue, we are actively forcing families and parents to stay in this imposed poverty trap, where self-worth, pride and individual achievement are sidelined by hopelessness and reliance on others, and that cannot continue. At the heart of the report is a recognition that, if we want to tackle child poverty through parental employment, there needs to be a wide range of interventions, and we cannot focus on just one. As Bob Doris touched on earlier today, Dumfries and Galloway Council covered this very well within its submission to the report, there is no single thing that could be prioritised. The approach must be considered as a whole-system approach and not separate policies or interventions, and we need to look at a wide range of interventions in access to childcare, in transport, in training and in education. As I read the report and I got to each area where the report discusses what more could be done, I found myself thinking what has been done in Aberdeen. After all, when my SNP colleagues won control of the council, they spoke of how they wanted to make Aberdeen a better place to grow up in, and I know that work is on going across the city to make that a reality. The report states that flexible childcare was a priority for participants of the committee's focus group and visits. I saw a fantastic example of flexible childcare recently when I visited Cummins Park nursery within my constituency of Aberdeen and Donside, where folk can book spaces on an hourly basis rather than a day rate if that is what they require or what they need. There, I met the hard-working team, along with Susan McGee, the chief executive of flexible childcare services Scotland. The new home of Cummins Park nursery is absolutely amazing, and it provides a great learning environment for our young folk to learn and to grow. As the report looked to education and training provision, I found myself thinking of the work that is being done by ABZ Works, Aberdeen City Council's employability and skillservice. The initiative was launched in 2021 and is now helping parents and carers across Aberdeen to access the Scottish Government's Parental Employability Support Fund. Just some of the support that ABZ Works can offer to parents now includes free training and funding, certified training courses, coaching to help build digital skills, help to find childcare, financial support to ease the transition into employment. It is a fantastic example of what can be done when Aberdeen City Council works with the Scottish Government to the benefit of the many folk who call our city home. Taking childcare provision and education together, I was saddened to hear from a constituent recently who was struggling to access the UK Government's tax-free childcare scheme. They found out that if they went to university, then their household would lose their entitlement to tax-free childcare. Without saying what this course was, so just not to identify my constituent, it is one that is particularly demanding and one in which its graduates are particularly in demand. The value of tax-free childcare could be worth thousands of pounds over a year to this household and that could make the difference in whether my constituent decides to go to university this September or wait until their child is old enough to qualify for the Scottish Government's 1140 hours of free childcare. Although tax-free childcare currently sits under HMRC, the implications of this policy have a knock-on implication across a range of devolved policy areas, including early years, higher education and within the sector in which my constituent would be seeking to work in after their degree. While tax-free childcare is not explicitly mentioned in the report, my constituent situation is an example of why we need a whole system approach. The report then goes on to discuss public transport provision and Aberdeen has said to have the highest rate of car ownership of any city in the UK. That probably says something about the need for improved public transport in the city and the challenges associated with realising that. Through a combination of the expansion of free bus travel and bus prioritisation supported by over £10 million of Scottish Government funding, which I will commend Douglas Lumsden on applying for during his time as the finance convener, things are slowly starting to get better. More, something bigger needs to be done. Something bigger is exactly what I am hoping to see delivered in the coming years. In particular, I am keen to see Aberdeen rapid transit roll out across the city. A city-wide mass transit system that could help to improve the times, frequencies and reliability of public transport in Aberdeen, which in turn could and should unlock employment opportunities and provide a lever to reduce child poverty. There is a lot in this report that I have not had time to touch on, but I want to finish by focusing quickly on the success of the work that has been done in recent years. The report mentions modelling that suggested without the impact of Scottish Government policies that child poverty might be around 28 per cent this year, which John Swinney has already mentioned, and that is significantly more than the estimated 19 per cent, which is still too high. A range of decisions taken in this Parliament, not least to implement and increase the Scottish child payment, is making a real difference. There is more that needs to be done, and as this report highlights, that spans across a wide range of Governments from early years to higher and further education, to transport, fair work, social security and local government. I am confident that Scotland is moving in the right direction on that, and that is certainly helped by the strong desire across this chamber and nation to give the next and future generations the best possible start in life. Thank you. Thank you. We move to winding up speeches, and I call on Foisal Chowdry up to six minutes, please. Presiding Officer, closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers is paramount to tackling child poverty. Encouraging and supporting parents into employment is one crucial way to ensure children are lifted above the poverty line. The Scottish Government have paid this far too little attention in recent years, as Carol Mokhan rightly pointed out. The consultation process for this inquiry found that many individuals see childcare as the most important aspect to securing a well-paid job. As Miles Briggs mentioned, for many parents, finding affordable and flexible childcare is the biggest obstacle they face in seeking employment or returning to work. This disproportionately affects single parents who continue to struggle to find good quality employment that allows them to juggle childcare responsibilities. With this statistics, we see a gender disparity once again, as women are much more likely to be primary caregivers and account for 91 per cent of single parents in Scotland. The expense of childcare can be incredibly high. Megan Gallacher pointed out that it can be up to 1,000 per child a month. This means that a big percentage of a single mother's salary needs to be dedicated to funding childcare if they wish to remain in employment. The current 1,140 hours of funded childcare only cover the duration of an average school day. This means that single parents again, often women, are limited to the hours they can seek out in employment. This often leads to single mother being stuck in a pattern of working part-time jobs. As my colleague Paul O'Kane pointed out, the latest budget in the Scottish Government cancelled a promised £53 million in funding for employability scheme and scrapped a parental transition fund entirely. Parents need to have ample opportunity to seek out a decent wage in addition to having adequate childcare options. Scottish Labour is committed to improve access to early-year childcare, but the Scottish Government have to be transparent about whether they intend to make additional resources available. As the inquiry points out, the programme for government does not set out what few funding will be available to meet the new childcare commitments. A detailed spending plan is needed to show how it aims to achieve this with relevant timescales. Presiding Officer, it is clearly that the labour market in Scotland is not working for everyone. Mani McNeer rightly pointed out the barrier that exists for parents accessing fair work. The poverty alliance have emphasised that more than two-thirds of children in poverty live in households where someone is in paid work. Access to fair work is crucial. One way we can do this, ensuring that parents from disadvantaged backgrounds have the same opportunities in the labour market as their peers. Labour's new deal for working people will tackle scourging in work poverty by making work pay and supporting parents' progress in work. Scottish Labour understands that only by delivering secure jobs and fair pay can we drive down poverty in Scotland for good. The committee's inquiry highlighted the importance of good quality, flexible work as a route out of poverty. This needs to be done in conjunction with targeted support for those who are not able to work. The procreation and consequences of childhood below the poverty line can be long-lasting. It can impact on both physical and mental health, creating a strain on already overworked NHS. It can have an effect on education and children's ability to learn and develop. It significantly reduces children's life opportunity and experiences. That is why Scottish Labour welcomes the recommendation of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee inquiry. Tockling child's property was outlined as the national mission of the Scottish Government. Let's now see the mission put into action. I am happy to be closing today's debate for my party regarding the committee report on addressing child poverty through parental employment. I am very proud of the work that we as a committee have done over the past year or so. I would like to say my thanks to those who have contributed to the report and those who have engaged with us, gathered evidence to the clock and for the help that we have in drafting the report. I am the sad last member standing who is there at the beginning, and I am still here today. I am actually interested in picking up the point that was made by Maggie Chapman. I think that it would be worth going to check this probably 90 per cent of the people that we took evidence from will actually from women and their experience. Although perhaps we did not do it deliberately, I think that the report is and does reflect many of the views that are held by women in Scotland today. Child poverty in any form is absolutely unacceptable. It is a shame on all of us that, in the 21st century, Scotland still had children going to bed hungry. I hope that this report can be part of a conversation that moves us towards eradicating poverty in Scotland. The report is long, and there have been a number of excellent speakers already who have outlined a number of key findings. Myra Briggs and others talked about data, Paul Cain and others talked about doing it faster and quicker, but undoubtedly the debate has concentrated on two factors—child care and transport. I want to spend my short time on a couple of those findings that have already been picked up. Everyone has identified the issue. I think that where we have to start working together on is finding solutions to those two issues. If we are here to get people into work, we have to make sure that they can get to work in the first place. Unfortunately, we no longer live in a world of the last century, where our local communities provided ample working opportunities. Instead, we live in a society in which the majority of people have some form of a commute to undertake before they get to their place of work. If they are unable to drive because of financial restraints or disability, the only option is to use public transport. Unfortunately, there can be a lack of services, including for those who do not live in cities. A number of years ago, before coming here, I looked at applying for a job in the Highlands of Scotland. From where I was going to be working, there was one bus from the centre of that place to where I might live and one bus back a day and meant that the job was never going to be possible to work. There was highlighted as a major issue in our report, particularly people working shifts of who we need to travel outside office hours, where service frequency can be much reduced or non-existent. The recent cancellation of vital bus routes across the country has raised by a number of respondents during our evidence gathering. That underlines the findings of the report that was produced by the cross-party group on disability over the last year on the experience of disabled people across the country. Over and over again, we heard that there was a lack of bus services for those who live in more remote areas, making it near impossible for those with outcasts to get around easily. The problem is even worse for those with disabilities as a lot of public transport is not accessible. We have heard about train stations with no lifts or ramps and buses that have space for only one wheelchair or buggy on board at a time. If we are hoping to address child poverty by encouraging parents into employment, we have to make sure that parents can get to their place of work. For that reason, I really want to underline the committee's recommendations to the Scottish Government and how it needs to consider how public transport services can be designed better and supported to have more affordable, frequent direct services for young people and parents. I want to finish my time by talking briefly about employability services. The support that they can provide to those who are aspiring to be in work can be truly life-changing. In the last year, I met with FEDCAP, a provider of those services here in my own region of Llorian, but who also work across the country. Some of the stories that I heard were inspiring and really showed the difference that investment in people can make to their lives. As we see in the report, it is very important that the Government makes it clear how it will scale up employability services, especially following the end of a Fair Start Scotland contract this year and how we will specifically allocate funds to employability for parents. I wholeheartedly endorse the report. I hope that the minister can shed some light on how the Government will address some of our recommendations in her closure. Thank you. I call Shirley-Anne Somerville up to seven minutes, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thank the members of the committee for bringing forward this debate and, indeed, for their report and the very considered recommendations that are within that. We have only really begun to scratch the surface of today, as Jeremy Balfour said. It is a long but a good read, I think, from the committee, and I thank them for it. Tackling child poverty is a central mission of the Scottish Government. What is clear from the report and from what we have heard today is that there is certainly more that needs to be done over different areas, both within the Scottish Government, local government and within the UK Government. I think that it is right to point out that the Government is taking action to ensure that families are protected from poverty and given the opportunity to thrive here in Scotland. That is why I would very much at the outset wish to confirm that the Scottish Government does believe that we have a path to meet our child poverty targets. It will be difficult, it is challenging but we are absolutely determined to do so. It is made more difficult, I have to say at the outset, by UK Government policies. They have an impact on what the Scottish Government can do in terms of its budget and also a direct impact on the people of Scotland. That is why I gently say to Meghan Gallagher that it is not politicking to bring up the two-chill cut, but that is reality for people in every one of our constituencies. That is the context in which we are having this debate. Many members did quite rightly point to the fact that they would like to see the Scottish Government go further. I think that the committee's term for it is supercharged to move forward on that. We take that challenge very seriously, and it is something that we quite rightly have to do as a Government but also as a Parliament. I would again say to everyone in the chamber that we have just gone through a budget process where the Government has had to take difficult decisions and where all parties have the opportunity to come forward with costed proposals, everything that we should be doing differently, spending that money differently and not spending it on something, spending our money somewhere else. That is why, within the budget that was passed, we see £3 billion worth of investment from this Government to tackle poverty and protect people from harm. When Carol Muckin and others ask what we have been doing, that is £3 billion worth of investment is exactly what we are doing. We do, of course, need to see what more can be done, which is why the Government looked at the parental transition fund. Unfortunately, when we get down to the difficulties around devolution and what is reserved, it is impossible for the Government to be able, within the powers that we have, to develop such a fund because of the intricacies of the tax system. That is just a statement of fact, it is not a politicking, it is just what can we therefore do if it is not the parental transition fund, which we do not have the powers to do, what more can we do around those issues? That is why, also, when the Deputy First Minister unveiled the budget, she did absolutely see and commit to that multi-year funding for employability schemes. That was one of the major asks that came through from the sector on that. Again, when we look to what the Government is doing, we see the modelling that has recently came out, which says that there is a forecast of 100,000 fewer children in relative child poverty because of the Scottish Government policies. That is direct action that is making a difference. Once again, I do not shy away from the fact that poverty levels in this country remain still too high and there is absolutely more to be done. Mr Swinney, in one of his interventions today and his speech, did talk about the importance of cross-party working and the need for the Government to work together. He mentioned the meetings that he used to chair, which I remember fondly, Mr Swinney, from those days. I am not sure whether it is a reassurance or not, but he can be reassured. I hope that I now chair meetings on cross-ministerial groups for taking over the discussions around tackling child poverty. We recognise, as many members have pointed out, that we need to look very seriously at that over a number of issues within Government. One of the issues that many people spoke about was childcare. That is quite rightly we have focused on that today, because it has a very significant impact, both on the families who need it and for those who work in the sector. I point out to the chamber that, in 24, 25, we will continue to invest around £1 billion in high-quality funded ELC. That will ensure that we are continuing to deliver a very, very high-quality service. I have quoted to Mr Rennie earlier on some of the recent Scottish household survey results that show that. We are also, of course, determined to go further. I am happy to give way to Megan Gallacher. I will just say at this point that we have a little time in hand for interventions. I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way. Will he engage with the private sector to make sure that those nurseries do not continue to close their doors, because that will make the childcare policy fail? Nobody wants that, but the Government must engage with them, sort out the problems to get the childcare roll-out back on track. I know from my time within education, and I know that that has carried on, that we, of course, engage very heavily with many stakeholders, including private providers, within healthcare, because I would again. I am trying to get some consensus with Megan Gallacher. It is often hard for us, but I will endeavour my best to say that I also recognise that the private sector and voluntary independent sector are an integral part of what we have within Scotland, and they must have a successful future to ensure that they are delivering for families and delivering that high-quality service that they do already. Now that I have tried to have some consensus with the Conservatives, I will move on with my speech. I hope that the attempt was appreciated this time now. I am also willing to be consensual to Mr Rennie of Akan. One thing that I omitted to mention earlier on was the First Minister's commitment when he stood for the leadership of the SNP, that he would close the gap between the provision for council nurseries and the PVI sector. The education minister wrote to me yesterday and said that, basically, they are not going to be able to meet that commitment. Why is that the case? Why are we not making progress towards closing the gap, especially since the First Minister promised that we would? Mr Rennie has me a bit of a disadvantage, because I have not seen the letter that the education minister wrote to him yesterday, but I pointed out that £16 million of uplift to pay from the Scottish Government has been provided to make progress on that. I say that it is progress. It is not fully closing the gap, but it is progress. I am sure that, if Mr Rennie is not satisfied with the reply that he has had from the minister, it will not be the last that she hears from him on that. I would also point out to the work that has been on-going on ensuring that we are scaling up the role of childminders. I again accept that, as members have pointed out, there has been a decrease in childminding, and we need to look very seriously at that. A number of members mentioned transport, and I would point out to the fair fairs review that is coming forward on that. Of course, on employability, we know that employability services have had a positive impact, but we know that there remains work to be done to ensure that people are assisted into work. What I will give, once again, is the commitment that we will do that in partnership with parents, not against them. We will also ensure that there is sustainable and fair work for them, and there will be no threat of sanctions in that. It is also important that we look at the benefits that we have in the eligibility of that within social security. That is why we continue to do what we can to extend the eligibility. We have just had a recent example of that with our best art foods, where we estimate another 20,000 families will be able to benefit from the healthy food and milk within that. That shows a demonstration of what we are doing and what we will continue to do within social security. Members are quite right that the best way to deliver on that is through employment. It is a matter that we have to consider right across government, and I can give assurances to the chamber that we will continue to do so. I call on Bob Doris to wind up the debate on behalf of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee up to decision time, please, Mr Doris. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I start off by doing what I did at the start? That is by thanking the clerking team and all those behind the scenes that made this inquiry possible and all those that gave evidence that I did at the start. That was a remiss of me. I am pleased that we have had the opportunity to reflect on the committee's wide-ranging report and the striking evidence that was heard throughout the inquiry. The report has clearly brought to light the importance of strong governance and robust infrastructure to support the development of the best possible parental employment offer that we can make. I would like to focus briefly on employability services in the role of employers, then I welcome on to the member's contribution shortly. The Scottish Employability Services structure is made up of a range of devolved and reserved programmes with low employability partnerships set in their own priorities and activities. It is put on record because it came up during the debate that the minister highlighted that the Scottish version or iteration of that does not lead to consequences or sanctions if you do not take part in those particular programmes. This complex system could be hard to navigate for parents who are often battling with financial issues, securing childcare and the lack of confidence to take the steps to progress in the job market. One parent family Scotland highlighted that if you are in poverty and you are stressed, it is very difficult to even think about looking for a job. For parents being able to obtain and sustain a good job and provide for their children is a very individual journey. Some will need a personal centre support about the essential skills, whereas others will benefit from work-based training to develop a career. Jackie Dunbar mentioned that that is possible because we heard about A, B, Z works in Aberdeen. If that can happen in Aberdeen, why can't it happen systematically and routinely across the country? We have to look at best practice and share that. Family-friendly jobs that pay a fair wage are essential to maximise parental employment and prevent inward poverty. The Scottish Government has stated that it would use all levers available to make fair work the norm across the economy. Private sector employers need to be encouraged and incentivised to implement the right practices and changes and match their business needs with the right career opportunities for parents. Witnesses come up with a range of initiatives that they believe could make a difference, such as partnerships with large employers, accreditation and reward schemes, and tax rebates for socially responsible employers. The committee urges the Scottish Government to prioritise the needs of parents when devising offers and schemes for the private sector. I should also reflect, of course, on where employment law should sit to enable to do all those things. It was put on record by others that the STUC and IPPR think that employment law should sit in that place, but, on behalf of the committee, I will just leave that hanging there rather than taking a view on it at this point. Although I think that Mr Balford probably knows my view on it, however, at one point we also had a mini-budget debate near the start of contributions pollocky, and others were demanding more funds. I understand and expect that. Maiden Gallachyrs was specifically mentioning local authorities during her asks, and Carol Monant mentioned the parental transition fund, and the cabinet secretary explained why she thought that could not be brought forward, but she is keen to know where that money is going to be used effectively elsewhere. However, an intervention on Mr Cain suggested that even less money for the current financial year—the coming financial year—a £500 million had labour tax policies being brought forward by the Government, and Mr Cain mentioned economic growth in response to that. However, what I would say is that—this is the important bit, I think—when Mr Swinney suggested that the Scottish child payment was reducing child poverty to 19 per cent in relation to modelling work, I would also put on record that that is a £450 million commitment. That is not a commitment to get people out of poverty, it is a commitment to tackle the manifestation of poverty that is in society and to make people out of poverty on a sustainable basis as they get them into well-paid meaningful jobs. That is why this report is so important, irrespective of our party political views. I just wanted to put that on the record. We heard a lot about transport in the debate, and that was not surprising either. In particular, in rural transport issues, Mr Rennie and others were talking about that, but John Mason did want to remind us of an urban MSP that cities have issues as well. However, we seem to get a consensus when Rosemary Collin and John Mason spoke about towns and cities becoming transport hubs and orbital routes and other routes that people need to travel to make transport sustainable for them and their families were simply not available in many cases. Some members mentioned provisions within the new transport act. I suppose that the jury is out on that, Presiding Officer. I am conscious that the Strachael passenger transport is looking at potential franchising arrangements in relation to Glasgow in the West tomorrow. However, what I have been interested to know as a committee, rather than as a Glasgow MSP, would be that when those new powers are brought in, I would be looking at what the strategic transport authorities would be thinking carefully about the journeys that parents and families need to make. If you are that night shift worker, if you are that weekend worker, if you are working in the antisocial hour, so bringing franchising in may be one solution, but only if it actually knits together all the competing demands of working families to make that possible. I think that the jury is out on that and we will see where that goes. I shall mention in relation to transport, Mr Rennie, who seems to be speaking all the time in this debate, Mr Rennie, mentioned in response to demands for more consesional travelling, the possibility of almost a tapered or a temper expansion for consesional travel for those moving into employment for a period of time. I think that that is worth noting. We all said quite a debate—this was the central debate that Mr Balfour said that this was at the heart of it as well—was the debate on flexibility and the effectiveness of high-quality childcare provision across local authorities. The minister commented, I think, that there may be a variability in the quality of some of that provision during some exchanges that we heard in the chamber. Megan Gallacher suggested that the central role of local authorities playing the delivery of childcare may squeeze out other providers and particularly private, voluntary and independent sectors. There was a bit of discussion around that. Miles Briggs suggested that there was a lack of flexibility in relation to something different—something that Mr Swinney and others disputed and, again, a lively debate. However, the question is left hanging, Presiding Officer, of course, that if some local authorities can use their statutory obligations and commitments to provide flexibility and innovate, why can't others? If the powers are there, why aren't all local authorities not doing that? However, it was important that we discussed that in early years in Workforce, Mr Rennie, and consistently raised this education committee, as well as within the main chamber. That concerned that those in the independent sector are moving over to local authorities because it is well-paid and more secure employment and the gaps could be leaving a potential decline of that sector. Mr Rennie mentioned pay is one of the reasons why there could be that move. Many McNair mentioned that it is also important, irrespective of where the childcare staff are, that they are sufficiently skilled workforce and gave an example of where that training and that workforce were not always available for working with young people with additional support needs. Many McNair put that on the record from her own experience. Maggie Chapman said that we should think about childcare. Yes, pay is absolutely important, she said, but it is about raising the status and importance of society more generally. I think that that is something that we sometimes also forget. Finally, on childcare, it is worth mentioning that Rosamucall said that when we are looking about whether it is the private, voluntary and independent sector, whether it is child-minders with its local authority, we should think about what a blended childcare approach looks like to get the balance and flexibility right for most. Our inquiry in today's debate has highlighted how breaking the cycle of child poverty is a tough mission and that it can only be achieved through collaboration and decisive action. The committee does not underestimate the challenge of effective governance and leadership across portfolios in difficult economic times. However, the progress in some priorities has been slow and time is short. We thank the Scottish Government for its response to the report and look forward to receiving progress updates on the delivered of best at bright futures. As a committee that puts great stock in tracking progress, we will carefully monitor progress of the plan and of child poverty targets until the end of this parliamentary session. The Scottish Government has carefully planned its approach to parental employment, but it is time to move forward and deliver more, providing a strong foundational infrastructure for parents who can thrive in employment, contribute to the economy and build the best possible future for their children. In closing, I thank all members for their contributions and our committee looks forward to deflecting this debate as we take forward our work in this area. That concludes the debate on addressing child poverty through parental employment. It is now time to move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of motion 12479 in the name of Angela Constance. On legislative consent motion, investigatory powers amendment Bill UK legislation. I call on Angela Constance to move the motion. Thank you, cabinet secretary. The question on this motion will be put at decision time. There are two questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first is that motion 12468 in the name of Collette Stevenson on behalf of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee on addressing child poverty through parental employment be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. The final question is that motion 12479 in the name of Angela Constance on legislative consent motion investigatory powers amendment Bill UK legislation be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The motion is therefore agreed. That concludes decision time and I close this meeting.