 Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to the 27th meeting of the Covid-19 recovery committee in 2022. This morning, we will conclude our evidence taking on our inquiry into the impact of the pandemic on the Scottish Labour market. I'd like to welcome to the meeting Richard Lockhead, Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work. Lewis Hedge, Deputy Director of Fair Work and Labour Market Strategy and Dr Alistair Cook, principal medical officer for the mental health division. Welcome. Minister, would you like to make any short opening remarks before we move on to questions? Yes, thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the committee. I'm grateful for the opportunity to appear before you for the first time and discuss the impact of the pandemic on the labour market and some of the key reasons behind and relating to economic inactivity in Scotland. It's worth starting with a brief look at the labour market in Scotland overall. It remains in strong shape with low unemployment and clearly we have not seen the significant increase in unemployment rates after the pandemic, which we may have feared, which up to now is welcome. However, we know many businesses still face labour shortages across the country and across the economy, even if vacancy rates are more stable now than at some points of recent months. Of course, the wider economic context is also concerning with the effects of Brexit still being felt, an acute cost crisis and a potential recession on the horizon. Turning to economic inactivity, I think that it's important to start by putting this issue in the right longer term and international perspective. Scotland's inactivity rate is not a significant outlier compared with the UK or other countries, but we do have an increasing older and less healthy population and we have seen an increase in inactivity over a number of years, both of which mean that we need to take this issue seriously. Looking at the medium-term picture, the UK and Scotland may be experiencing quite different effects from Covid. The UK is seeing significant increases in inactivity, which have reversed a previous downward trend at the UK level. In Scotland, of course, we started from a higher rate pre-pandemic than the UK, and we have seen some increase in the rate in recent years between 2019 and 2021. There was a net increase of 42,000 people inactive, about 5.5 per cent, but we haven't seen the dramatic reversal in trends that maybe other places have seen. In the very short term, and here it's important to emphasise that the data is very volatile, there are many different dynamics, it's very difficult to pinpoint some of the issues that we'll be discussing today and to be totally accurate. However, if we look at the latest data, it looks like the rate may be falling in Scotland at the moment, which is good news, whereas it's still rising in the UK and the gap has been closing over the last year or two. All of this means that we should be cautious about assuming that all the commentary and analysis of economic inactivity elsewhere automatically reads across in Scotland. It may or it may not, but it does not mean that we can rest easy. We have still seen an increase in activity in Scotland in recent years and the longer-term picture will remain of some concern. Long-term sickness appears to be the main drivers of the recent increases in activity in Scotland. It was the largest single contributor to the increase in activity between 2019 and 2021, accounting for 24,100 people out of the total increase of 42,000. I welcome the committee's engagement on this topic and look forward to your report recommendations in due course. I should, of course, touch upon the picture on early retirement, which is less clear than the picture on long-term sickness. It's too early to draw strong conclusions, but we don't see clear evidence of significant recent increases in the number of people inactive due to early retirement in recent years. There has been an increase in activity amongst the 50 to 64-year-olds, but that increase appears to be driven more by sickness and caring for others than, necessarily, by retirement. Our emerging sense is that we don't think early retirement is on the same scale as long-term sickness as a driver of increasing inactivity. On the health side, our emerging sense again is that Covid and long Covid are not directly driving the increase in activity due to ill health, albeit there could be indirect factors. However, although health and health services are clearly enormously important, we should not forget that the drivers of inactivity overall can be very complex, multifaceted and varied for each person. We cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem or the solutions. I could talk about what we are doing to address some of those issues, but I think that you wanted my remarks to be relatively brief. I look forward to working with the committee on those really important issues for Scotland's future. I will now turn to questions. If I may begin by asking the first question. Minister, you will be aware that the committee has been looking at the economic inactivity specifically in long-term illness and early retirement. I know that you touched on it briefly just there, but one of the things that has come out so far is those that are off work with long Covid at the moment. Does the Scottish Government agree with a suggestion from the IFS that many working people may be off sick leave with long Covid rather than being economically inactive? There is low incidence of Covid in the population generally at the moment, but in terms of the inactivity statistics, it is long-term sickness that is a challenge for Scotland. If I just briefly look at the statistics here, 0.8 per cent of people—there are various surveys—are samples, so 0.8 per cent of people who are inactive in Scotland say that they have long Covid. If we look at those who have illness, the Scottish Health Survey estimated that 7 per cent of those with limiting long-standing illnesses reported having long Covid in 2021. In comparison to that, 3 per cent of those with non-limiting long-standing illnesses reported having long Covid. There are people, but the statistics show that that is perhaps not the predominant issue. One of the things that this committee will be looking at in the new year is doing an inquiry specifically on long Covid because it has been an issue that has been raised during this inquiry. One of the things that was raised by Inclusion Scotland regarding long Covid is that it is not necessarily considered a disability. I totally appreciate and understand that a lot of people with long Covid are self-diagnosis, so there is a lot of work still to be done and a lot of that is unknown. It is not one of the conditions that is listed in the Equalities Act 2010. Does the Scottish Government have a view on whether long Covid should be recognised as a disability? That is an issue that was brought to my attention by trade unions and others, particularly during the pandemic itself. The Scottish Government's view is that we have many people with long-term illnesses and to pick one condition and categorise that as a disability. Even within that, there are different symptoms and conditions that could be part of the definition of long Covid. We then have leaders to have to redefine many other long-term illnesses, so the decision has been taken at the moment not to. Alasdair Cooke is here, of course, and he may have some medical input to that answer if you want to hear from Alasdair. From a clinical perspective, it makes sense to assess disability on the basis of function as opposed to the diagnosis. Some people with long Covid may well be disabled by that condition over the longer period. There may be others who, despite having the diagnosis, are perfectly able to contribute to the work. It is the same with other long-term conditions. From a clinical perspective, I think that the idea of naming conditions as a way of defining disability is probably unhelpful. I will refer to the wellbeing economy monitor, which I saw for the first time yesterday, which I thought was fantastic. The monitor brings a range of indicators as a baseline for assessing progress towards the wellbeing economy. One of the many indicators in the monitor is to look at young people between 16 to 19 participation rates in education, training and employment. Is the Scottish Government using the indicators to inform its approach to addressing economic activity, including economic inactivity, including sickness and early retirement? Is that included in the indicators? We take that into account. The finance secretary and others are probably a bit closer to this. Overall, we look at how we can support people getting back into work or education through clearly support through the NHS and the expansion of, for instance, mental health services, occupational health support for people. Clearly, the Government makes that available, but we need support from employers. You mentioned young people in terms of education institutions. Is that taken into account in the round? Clearly, the Government wants a healthy working population and, therefore, that is why those services are made available. When we started looking at those issues, we identified two areas where we recognised there had been changes in the employment market with people dropping out. One was long-term illness and disability, and the other was people taking early retirement. This is my view anyway. The impression that we got was that the early retirement issue was one where people had made that choice and, whatever Government did, we weren't going to necessarily attract those people back into the jobs market once they had left. The focus has shifted a bit on how we tackle long-term illness and disability. I am really interested in trying to explore what initiatives the Government could bring in to try to address that. Just to look at some of the figures, there has been an increase in Scotland from 6 per cent to 7 per cent of the 16 to 64 population who are inactive and long-term sick. 1 per cent, but, as against the 6 per cent base, that is quite a big chunk. Anecdotally, a lot of what has come back to us is that there is quite a large cohort of people who, as a result of Covid, are long-term sick. One of the interesting bits of evidence that we got was—I think that this came from John Byrne Murdoch, who has done some research for the Financial Times—is a component of those people who are on NHS waiting lists, who are waiting for an operation and, therefore, their sound off work until they get that. It is interesting to get any thoughts that you have or any evidence that the Government has as to whether that is a contributing factor and the fact that it is now taking so long for people to get operations. Is that a factor in people dropping out of the workforce? It is a good question, and I was discussing this with colleagues because I anticipated the question, but I am not sure if I have got a precise answer for you. Clearly, it is a very serious situation facing the NHS in Scotland that is under huge pressure. We are all familiar with the reasons why that is the case. Therefore, there is no doubt that there are people who are unable to work because they are waiting for treatment. However, it is difficult to get evidence to back up at that point because the statistics in terms of inactivity in Scotland are largely due to long-term illness and sickness. Indeed, the increase in the proportion of people who are inactive with long-term illness was beginning before the pandemic, so it is very difficult to link it directly to the pandemic and to back up the point that Murdo Fraser makes. However, of course, there will be people in Scotland who are unable to get treatment as quickly as they like at the moment because of the pressure in the chest, and therefore are unable to return to work. They may be on sick leave, but, as I said, the addictivity figures are largely down to long-term illnesses, and people who have got a combination of long-term illnesses are not just in one condition. Perhaps, if you find some more information on that, you can write to us. We are looking at all the issues to learn more. The issue of long-term illness and disabilities is a really important component in all this. The evidence that we heard from Inclusion Scotland and John Byrd Murdoch highlighted two key areas that were contributing to this. One was mental health issues, and the other was chronic pain. Those are two major components in the figures. When the Scottish Government produced its emergency budget review at the beginning of November, there was some resource reprioritisation at that stage. 65 million was reprioritised from primary care, 38 million was reprioritised from the mental health budget. I am just wondering whether that was a false economy. If those two issues— chronic pain and mental health—were most likely to be impacted by primary care, was that a sensible move to take money out of those spending areas, when that would perhaps be an intervention that would most contribute to helping people to get back into the workforce? There has been expansion as you will be aware of resources towards mental health in Scotland and reprioritisation. As you said quite rightly, mental health and chronic pain are the two underlying causes of the figures around long-term illness and the inactivity rates in Scotland. There is a lot of help made available in Scotland to help people to get back into work that employers can call upon to help with mental health issues and indeed other health issues in relation to occupational health, which are funded by the Scottish Government. I think that it is very difficult for us to pin points, because, as I said at the beginning of opening remarks, every person's situation is different, whether it is people with disabilities or people with mental health or chronic pain issues, and quite often they have multiple issues, and that is why they are long-term inactive. You might want to contribute to that, because Alasdair's specialism is the background of mental health as well. I work in the mental health directorate, and the reprioritisation has clearly been an issue for us in terms of that. I am working through how we manage that, but we were on a trajectory of a shift away from a focus on the delivery of services that are at the end of fixing things towards much more early intervention and prevention within mental health. I think that what we have learned over the last decade is that by continually investing in more more service, all we are seeing is that the demand continues to rise at least equally, if not ahead of that service provision and our ability to provide it. We have made some good progress in things like CAMHS and psychological therapies targets, but I think that it was important in terms of that reprioritisation to try to preserve some of the work that we are doing around community mental health and wellbeing and the delivery of those supports at an early level within localities, so that people have the opportunity to get involved with support at that earlier stage. That needs to be the direction of travel for us going forward. I would always argue for more resources into mental health and primary care, but we are in a resource constrained situation. We have to look to see how we get the best value from the resources that are available to deliver those services. Just one more follow-up, if I can, because I think that that is really quite interesting. Anecdotally, at least, we have heard quite a lot about increases in mental illness post Covid, because of lockdown isolation. Is that something that you are saying that is coming through in the numbers? Yes, it comes through in numbers. It is a hugely interesting area. We do need to do further research and analysis on that, but it comes across in two ways. One, which is increased activity within our secondary care mental health services. That is probably more related to the late presentation and the periods of isolation that people had during the lockdowns. However, we are also seeing a smaller but significant increase in prevalence of things such as anxiety and depression among the wider population. Those are reflected in all the surveys and those have an impact on the rate at which people are coming into services. I think that it is a really interesting area. I would love to see us have more time to pursue in detail. The Scottish Government is keen to work with employers so that employers provide support for employees to come back to work by providing mental health support. The Scottish Government is making a lot of support available, which employers can call upon to support their workers to come back. Of course, we need employers to do that. There are some eye-catching statistics that poor mental health costs Scottish employers over £2 billion a year at the moment. For every £1 spent on mental health interventions, employers get £5 return on investment, so we have to get that message more across to employers. I will certainly give that more attention, but it shows the importance of that. The Scottish Government has launched the mental health transition recovery plan. We have got the new NHS 24 mental health hub, which has received, I am told, more than 200,000 calls so far. That was launched in July 2020 before the end of the pandemic. We have other platforms and new mental health and wellbeing platforms that are hosted for employers and others to call upon. We are trying to get employers to do as much as they can to help employers to get support. We visited a number of projects last week in Airdrie, and it was certainly very interesting. The routes to work and re-employ were running specific projects through Fair Start. A couple of questions on that. Firstly, in terms of Government schemes that you have run in Light, Fair Start, how are they evaluated? Have you got up-to-date reports on them? How successful or otherwise are they? What we saw was very impressive. We talked to individuals who, on the number of occasions, raised mental health as clearly being a barrier for them to get into work. The one-to-one support that they had received was very successful in getting them into work. Here we are with that. Given that we are trying to reach people who are well removed through the labour market and need a lot of support in place, what can they join up working as they are? Obviously, there is the brief of the Scottish Government. You have the UK Government through DWP, Job Centre plus and whatever. You have local government, albeit very reduced economic development and community development, that they do due to cuts. You have the third sector. You have quite a lot of different schemes, different organisations trying to help here. Is there a joined up strategy? Are people working together? Is there a need to do more around that? That is a good question. We have spent a lot of time looking at this over the last year in particular. Clearly, employment and a lot of the related issues are reserved to the UK Government, but under devolution, as you are aware, we have the responsibility to offer support to those furthest in the labour market. We do that through two channels. One is a national scheme called Fair Start Scotland. You will have heard about that during your visits. It is good to hear that you were impressed by what you saw. It is very humbling and impressive indeed when you visit some of the programmes that I have done around the country, from the islands to the parts of mainland Scotland. Fair Start Scotland offers pre-employment support, if I recall correctly, from 12 to 18 months up to 12 to 18 months. Employment support, where a case worker will stay in touch with the individual who has perhaps gone to the ladder for the first time in several years after long-term illness or mental health issues, disability, it could be a range of reasons, and they get that in work support. They are available to the worker to speak on the phone and help people as they get back into the life of work. We are satisfied that those programmes are working well. You get that national one, the local one, and it all comes under the umbrella of no-one left behind. We have devolved a lot of resource to local employment partnerships in each local authority. That has been taking place over the past year, devolving many of the decisions and resources to local employment partnerships, and that is what joined up thinking happens at a local level. The DWP, as well as devolved services and local authorities, and other local players in the employability scene get round the same table and decide how to allocate the resource to take into account local circumstances. They may have schemes for helping women to get back into work, they may have schemes for the recruit local organisations to help people with disabilities, so it is very local that it is joined up. The question asked about joined up approaches is very important. That is happening at local level. It has been rolled out over the last 12 months, so we are monitoring that and making sure that it is working. It is now commissioning services at local level with the extra resource that it has. Fair Start Scotland, which is a national as you will have seen when you met the various organisations that deliver that, is increasingly bringing in mental health support, for instance, to help people. They are becoming more of a one-stop shop, so it is not just about getting people into a workplace if they are giving them support they need to be ready for the workplace, but we are speaking about people who are very far from the labour market. I am happy to send a report afterwards. There is total evaluation. We have had an evaluation report done. I can forward that to the committee after this meeting. Basically, any person who goes back into the workplace who has been out of the labour market for several years with various issues, that is a big success for the person, first and foremost, and also for Scotland getting people back into helping the economy. That is by view. The report would be good. You mentioned the type of financial constraints in which Governments are working just now. There will have to be a prioritisation, but I am sure that the taxpayer would say that we want to ensure that we are getting the best buck for our money, whether it is one army Government or another or whatever it is, it is all taxpayers' money. Is there a need to, as part of that review, to look at how we are maximising what we are getting for our buck, as it were? I look forward to the report. I also thought, because you mentioned gender and disability, I got a note from a senior lecturer at St Andrews University last week. He says to me, there are shocking gender, race and disability pay gaps across the sector. According to the University of St Andrews' own figures from 2021, men were paid an average of 20.2 per cent more than women, whereas of 2020, white employees were paid an average of 5.6 per cent more than employees of colour. These disparities are shocking and are entirely within the power of the university to undo. What is the role of government in those kind of disparities? Going to another sector, which would be the care sector, you have a clear divide between public and private in the care sector in terms of pay terms and conditions, and people are choosing not to go into those sectors as a result of that. Is there a role for government here to look at the inequalities between the gender pay gap, disability pay gap and certain sections like care? Is there more that government needs to do to try to address those issues to get people back into labour market? It is very timely, because we are about to publish a refreshed fair work action plan as part of our policy to ensure that Scotland is one of the world's leading fair work nations by 2025. We are literally about to publish that, so I have been working on those issues for the past few months as well. Again, I am happy to make sure that the action plan is copied to the committee as soon as it is published. First, if we look at the disability employment gap in Scotland, the latest figures indicate in the five years between 2016 and 2021 that the disability employment gap is reduced by 6.2 per cent, and it currently stands at 31.2 per cent. That suggests that we are on track at the moment to achieve our ambition to halve the disability employment gap by 2038 to 18 per cent. There are various policies under way to work with employers to tackle the issue. The employability schemes have just discussed playing a very important role, particularly Fair Start Scotland, in helping people with disabilities to get back into the workplace. We have also got a workplace equality fund, which helps employers to adapt to help people to get back into the workplace. You mentioned gender pay gap and employment issues. We have outperformed the rest of the UK in terms of the gender pay gap since 2003, and we continue to clearly work on that. We are about to publish the plan, and for the first time we are bringing everything together into the one fair work action plan, because there are many intersectional issues. A disabled female will face various challenges, and we have brought all the policies over gender and racialised minorities, which she mentioned, disability and the general fair work policy into the one action plan, so that employers can go to the one policy. Within that policy, they can get practical advice and support to tackle all those issues at one time and become much more inclusive and equal workplaces. Alongside the publication of the fair work action plan, which is imminent, we are also publishing the anti-racist employment strategy. That will focus on racialised minorities and the employment gap that they face, which she mentioned quite rightly, and that will give practical tools and advice and tips and pointers to employers to use to make sure that their recruitment policies, their other personnel policies and all their policies can ensure that they become a much more diverse workplace. Too many people in their racialised minorities in Scotland face enormous hurdles. There is institutional racism in Scotland, as there are in other countries and all countries, and we have to face up to that, so hopefully our strategy of publishing will help. I am going to move on to Jim Feogh, but can I just ask one brief, quick question just regarding the local employment partnership that has been rolled out in the last 12 months. Is this to all 32 local authorities? Is it like a funding from the Scottish Government to the local authorities for a team? There is over £50 million and no one left behind. That is not including fair to Starch Scotland. There is over £80 million overall. In terms of local employment partnerships, yes, the money is allocated to each of the local employment partnerships across the 32 local authorities. The money is held by local government, but it is there for the partnership. It is not for local government to invest or spend. It is for the partnerships to agree how that is allocated locally to commission local services. It is across all local authorities. In my constituency, it is called Murray Pathways. It is what they call the local employment partnership in every other area of the country. It is only approaching it. I am encouraged by it because I have visited Renfrew, and I have been to Shetland, and to the others across the country. It is very heartening to see the way that local authorities are approaching this because you go into a hub and there are different services within the hub. Going back to Alex Rowley's question, now they are using those hubs that are good one-stop shops for the public to use to maybe offer some mental health support or counselling or other services that they can bring in to be in the one location. I think that the clients are finding that really helpful to that one-stop shop approach. Not all local authorities are doing that, but some of them are being very innovative and forward thinking in doing that. That is a very decentralized, devolved way of approaching employability services. That is interesting. I will have to see what South Asia is doing. I am probably going to go slightly off-peast here, which the clerks always love. Alex Rowley, I will come back to you if that is okay. You have just said that you have put more resources into mental health, but the demand usually outstrips it. Anecdotally, I keep hearing about more and more demand. You guys will confirm that there is more and more demand for mental health services. It is not always the result of Covid, because this was spoken about before Covid. Why? What is wrong in society that we have such an increase in the demand for mental health services? Is it because we are recognising it better? Are we more prepared to accept it? Or is there something in society that is causing mental health issues? That is a very big question, of course. I am sure that we will be writing a PhD on some of those issues somewhere. You have already touched on some of the answers to it. At one level, there is an element to this in which the work that we have done over the past couple of decades to reduce stigma and increase recognition of mental health problems means that more people recognise and present seeking the help that they are looking for for those problems now. We have uncovered what was a lot of hidden mental health issues, but there are other factors that are impacting changes in society. Social media is undoubtedly a factor particularly among younger people, but increased pressures, increased expectations, the increased perception of the gap between the haves and the have-nots within our society, the recognition of the impact of trauma and the trauma that people experience growing up and our greater awareness of how that can impact on people's mental health. There are a whole range of factors that are leading to an increased recognition. It is debatable and controversial. I often have conversations with my colleagues about the fact that some of the secondary care mental health services were largely set up to deal with severe and enduring mental health problems such as schizophrenia, bipolar illness and such things. The prevalence of those conditions probably has not changed very much. They are still very much there and people require help and treatment with them, but what we have seen the rise in is in what, as a psychiatrist, I would describe as more mild, moderate mental health problems and distress and stress within our population as opposed to a rise in diagnosable, severe and enduring mental health conditions, but it still arises in prevalence. That has got to be having an effect on the employability, the economy and all the rest of it. Brian, you will probably come to this because you always do the data stuff, but I'm going to pre-empt you a wee bit. You'll come back into it. We had Professor Aziz Shaikh talking about the data that Scotland has. He said, my slight frustration is about the fact that in Scotland we have absolutely phenomenal data sets in the health space. No other country in the world has data that we have. How do we now deploy the data beyond questions about whether vaccines are working? That would be a relatively straightforward move. The wider question whether we can move to a whole system intelligence for NHS Scotland, that would be absolutely crucial. We want to improve services and begin to bend the cost curve. There's also the question about bringing health data, which are so rich together with economic data, which could be done. Major investments have been made, but again, somebody senior needs to instruct the country to move in that direction. Is there a move towards using the data that is world-beating in order to get people who are, because essentially it's about health, economic and activity? Is there something being done in the Government's ranks to say, we've got this data, how do we use it in order to get people back into work and deal with the issues that we talked about as mental health or whatever else it is? I think that the short answer is yes, in that that data helps to guide us to the mental health services and support that we are delivering. I mentioned earlier on some of the areas that we're trying to help employers, so in turn it can help employees. There's also the many different ways in which the NHS is responding to the mental health crisis just now. There's been a huge expansion of resource for that. Alistair may know more about the data and how we use that in detail. Just to say that we're aware that there are multiple sources of good data within the system, and I would agree with the analysis that we don't necessarily use it as well as we possibly could at the moment, and that that will form a significant part of the mental health strategy that we will be publishing in the spring time, because I think that there's a real recognition there that one of the things that we need to progress is better use of the data that is available, and the question then would come, how do we link that then into the economic activity field, but we need to better understand the data even within the mental health field. Okay, well, if we get any out of this then that would be a good start. I'm getting a changed subject again. Has the government taken account of the effect that menopause has in taking women out of the workplace environment? Yes, I mean I'm sure health ministers have been looking at that issue and it's been taken into account as part of the overall approach to women's health. Again, I'm not sure, but I have seen references to that, I have to come back to the committee on how that's actually done, but I know that that's been a topic, particularly in the last year or two, when health ministers are engaged in that topic. It's always good when your colleagues tell you what you're going to ask. The good news is that I'm not going to go into data on all my reliefs in data, especially on healthcare data. We are very good at collecting the data and not particularly good at deploying the data, especially across sectorial. We need to get better at that, and we could get better at that. However, where I want to go with this really is, I want to follow up on what Murdo Fraser started. I think that that is actually an extremely important issue that we could probably spend the whole time talking about that. During Covid, we know that access to healthcare was restricted. That had a significant impact on chronic pain, especially around elective surgery. It had a significant impact on access to mental health. Therefore, to extrapolate that, it would be reasonable to suggest that the economically inactive would slide in that direction. If you have a certain level of pain and you don't get that treated, you become chronic pain, so there must have been more to slide that way. I'm always interested in the cross-portfolio impact of decisions. I go back to the idea of the reprioritisation of primary care funding to £65 million in mental health of £38 million. You yourself, minister said, for every £1 spent, you get £5 back. So surely that has to indicate a false economy, because if you take it out on one side of a ledger, it appears on another side of the ledger. Wouldn't it be prudent for the Government to revisit that if that's the return you get on that kind of investment? Clearly that's one of the reasons why the Scottish Government has allocated so much more resource to mental health in the last year or two, in particular, and throughout the pandemic. Alasdair Fouke said that the forthcoming strategy will obviously be published shortly, so I'm sure that that will take into account the issues in relation to inactivity and employment in Scotland. I guess that the point that I was making earlier on is that it's very difficult to make up your hobby horse of data to make so many assumptions when we don't have the data to back up some of those assumptions. As I said before, Scotland has quite a long-standing issue with long-term illness, and we project that in the future years it will be an even greater issue. I'm just honing in and saying that it's one particular factor or it's directly related to Covid. It's just difficult to back that up and justify it because of the nature of long-term illness and many different illnesses. However, your key point is correct in that we are looking to how we can further deliver mental health services in Scotland because it will save longer term in terms of helping the economy and helping people to get back to work or whatever, and that's why we'll continue to take it very seriously. I think that it would be important not to get that confused. That figure is if employers spend a pound, so that would be around their occupational health support for people and mental health support for their employees. If it were the case that for every pound that we spent on mental health services, we could see a £5 return in the rest of the economy. It would be wonderful, but I don't think that we can draw that in terms of overall mental health support, specifically around employment support and occupational health services in particular. You mentioned £2 billion cost of mental health to our businesses. I've actually seen last term more than £4 billion plus to the economy. Obviously, there's a balance to be had here, and my question is how we get to that balance. If you're going to bring data up, we're going to use that. The point is that we collect very good data. We're not deploying that data in a way that gives you the answers you need. We need to invest more in that data. We could get into this big time today. Should we be focusing it first and foremost on how we deploy that data to give us better and more accurate responses? Of course, we can always deploy our data better and collect it better. Of course, a lot of employment data is collected at UK level, not Scottish health data, which you're referring to largely in terms of mental health, is a devolved issue, but in terms of its relationship and impact on the employment situation, a lot of that is collected at UK level. We have very small samples for Scotland out of that UK collection. When you're interrogating, for instance, the inactivity rate and you're trying to drill down, we're quite often relying on the very small subsamples from a UK survey, so it's very difficult to reach firm conclusions because that's a UK exercise collecting a lot of that data. The health data obviously is a devolved issue, but I'm just saying the relationship between health data and the employment situation. The inactivity is quite difficult to pin down because that's collected at UK level and we've got very small subsamples. That's just an important point to make. Lewis, do you want to come in on the data point, if I can bring Lewis in? Thank you minister. I guess it's worth remembering one of the reasons that we think about economic inactivity and participation in the labour market is because of the relationship between the size of the workforce and economic performance over time. One of the actions in the national strategy for economic transformation is to look at this issue and this trend of inactivity. There'll be a piece of work over the next period where we'll be looking at some of those questions around making sure that we're understanding the connections across portfolios in the economic context as well. That's just starting. Just to finish on this, Minister, we know that Scotland is one of the unhealthiest nations. Is the unhealthiest nation in Europe slightly concerned that we're going to get worse? We know that economic inactivity will follow that ill health, so surely what we should be doing, and Covid has exacerbated that. No doubt about it, Covid has a significant impact on that. Surely by focusing on health and education, we would positively impact the employment rates and inactivity rates in Scotland. That's what I mean by it's time that we looked more at cross-portfolio working rather than what we're doing just now is in silos. I'm not arguing with the general point that you're making. It is something that we should continue to look at and I'm sure there's always room for improvement. Obviously, if the committee makes recommendations along those lines, we'll treat them very seriously. I welcome the fact that the committee is doing this inquiry and if you can give us some recommendations that will help us, help people and help Scotland, we'll definitely take that on board. We've met various people over the last few weeks and one subject on which we discussed with some people with experience was early retirement. There seems to be quite a mixture in there. There's clearly some professional people with good pensions who just in their mid-fifties or six-day or whatever feel that they want a different work-life balance and they take retirement. Yet the economy, to some extent, we lose their experience, we lose their energy, we lose all of these things. At least in paid employment, there may be doing other things at the same time. Firstly, is that a group that we just accept that they've gone and we can't do anything about, or should we be trying to bring some of them back into the labour market? My view is that we should be doing more to bring people who've taken early retirement hopefully back into the workplace, albeit through flexible working, part-time working, not necessarily back into a full-time position. We have labour shortages in Scotland, but not just that. Things change and evolve and people who perhaps took early retirement having reflected on the life-work balance and other life and quality of life factors during the pandemic now we are hopefully through the worst of the pandemic maybe reflecting and we should take advantage of that. We do know the cost of living crisis is perhaps encouraging some people who took early retirement from a previous job to go back into the workplace to some degree, but again maybe part-time. We are working with Age Scotland and funding some work there doing with us to help them train and work with managers and organisations to make their employment policies and workplaces more attractive to bring back people from the 50 to 64 age group back into the world of work. Again, there are different factors out there. Early retirement is one of the factors that has led to an increase in activity in the last few years, not as much as long-term sickness, but when we look at some of the data, those who have taken early retirement are doing for some specific reasons like caring for others or caring for family, so it is not quite simple as they are available to come back into the workplace, so there are a variety of factors out there. Okay, you are giving me a few answers so I could have 20 supplementaries I think, but I mean take the training one for example, because we did if somebody spoke to us that they felt as they got older their employer was less and less willing to put them on a training course or whatever and their IT skills maybe weren't quite up to speed in things and especially if they had a break over Covid for a couple of years the thought of going back to some of that. Well, that's encouraging if employers, do you think that this is widespread that maybe employers in age Scotland and things can do a bit more for training older workers? Yes, I do and I think that there is ageism with many employers in Scotland and people age 50 to 64, potentially older, it's up to individuals, have a lot to offer. They've got a lot to contribute and offer and we have to tackle ageism. I do think perhaps because of Labour shortages and the number of vacancies that employers are now a lot more open-minded and willing to listen to what they can do to make their business more attractive to older people and to recruit from people who are age 50 to 64. I'm in that bracket myself, I've not been made an employee jet, who knows, but I've been forced to take early retirement. It's a huge part of the population, it's a fantastic resource and we should be doing what we can to encourage people in that age band to come back into the workplace if it suits their lifestyle and suits their personal circumstances. Your country needs you. I've slipped just beyond the 50 to 64 age group. You've mentioned flexible working once or twice and I think we've had a mixed picture from witnesses. We've had some very good examples, there was a young guy who had health issues and he's gone to Tesco and he can't handle big crowds so they've got him working at night, so that struck me as very good and he's really, really happy about that. Another person, I think it was an older lady who had had the break, I'm not sure if she was furloughed or what, but between health issues and being older and maybe carrying responsibilities she wanted to go back in a slightly more flexible way than she had, but her employer, and I can't remember if it was private or public sector, it might have been public sector actually, was just being totally inflexible, they basically said you can back for your nine to five or whatever it is. So it does seem to be a mixed picture. Can the Government do more or is it really just up to individual employers? We are doing more, that's why we're publishing a refreshed fair work action plan, which I mentioned earlier on, that will be imminent, and that is about encouraging employers to become fair work employers, which means to be flexible, offer flexible hours, to implement a number of other measures like giving employees a voice in their workplace, employing people hopefully for a minimum of 16 hours per week, so they've got a decent income to make it worthwhile, to pay the real living wage, and we're doing really well in Scotland just now with the real living wage, we've got more to do, but about 91 per cent of people in Scotland are paid the real living wage, which is above, by a reasonable margin, the rest of the UK. So the fair work agenda is really important in terms of this debate, in particular in terms of attracting people in that age group who've perhaps taken early retirement, maybe a bit of a change of heart, or quite keen to do a few hours here and there, and when we are facing labour shortages, we do need employers to be more open-minded and to become a fair work employer, and offer more flexibility to suit the needs of older people, or indeed other parts of the population, not just older people, but I think there is a bit of an untapped resource there that we should be looking at as a country, and that's all part of the fair work agenda. Yes, because when you say fair work, I think that the thing that jumps to most people's mind is a living wage, but it is correct to say that fair work includes quite a lot more than that as well as like flexibility and things. Yes, it includes a lot more than just flexible, the real living wage and one key other additional measure we're looking for employers to adopt is to offer people flexible working from day one. More and more employers are doing that, we've got more accredited employers in Scotland who've signed up to fair work criteria than the rest of the UK as well, so we're making good progress with the fair work agenda. It's actually more important than ever before now because of the cost of living crisis, we want more people to have the real living wage and because of labour shortages, we want more employers to be more flexible so they can attract people back into the workplace, particularly perhaps those who have taken early retirement in the 50 to 64 age group. I mean another group is people with kind of fluctuating conditions which you know one day they feel good and they can work eight hours another day they're not feeling so good and again we've had evidence of that that you know in some sectors it appears it's just easier for the employer to be supportive because if it's office work in one sense it doesn't matter too much whether you do all your work on Tuesday or all your work on Wednesday but if you're if you're serving in a restaurant you've got to be there. Is there a challenge with some sectors that it's more difficult for them to be flexible do you think? Well clearly we've got a diverse economy so you know that that's just the fact but I think most employers if not the vast vast majority of employers have the ability to be flexible and as I said I'm meeting more and more employers perhaps you all are as well who are now becoming a lot more open-minded and offering more flexible conditions at work and hours and that's really really important the world of work is changing and the pandemic has played clearly a big role in that working from home hybrid working and much more flexible working to take into account people's circumstances and also employers being much more inclusive and we fund a number of projects and initiatives to help employers consider how they can take on more people with disabilities adapt their workplaces and so on and so forth and we fund also flexibility works one of the organization that promotes flexible working so there's various projects being funded at the moment to push forward all these agendas because another group is those who either have already had a long term disability or because of Covid they've got health issues and they're actually very nervous about going back to work and being with a lot of people and again that I guess that could be difficult for employers to be able to adapt to that well I think a lot of big employers in Scotland are doing a lot more and we work closely with you know all the business associations and organisations in Scotland on these agendas we've got a challenge with perhaps small businesses and some medium-sized businesses clearly we have to work with them so they can perhaps realise actually that there is a lot more they can do it's obviously easier for a big organization you know like a bank or whatever supermarkets and all the large organizations that have got various departments and resources to devote to this but there's actually a lot more that small businesses medium-sized businesses can do as well and we're trying to focus more on that that's great thanks thank you I was running short of time but one thing I just wanted to just on what John was just saying there the national strategy for economic transformation it did say there was a commitment to launch the center for workplace transformation which would give employees guidance on flexible working can I don't know if it's a minister or Lewis can give us an update on when that will be published so we are still committed to a center for workplace transformation and for all the reasons we've just been discussing it's very timely we'll clearly make announcements in due course these are commitments for the the course of this parliament we're keen to make these announcements as soon as we are able to but we've got lots of different considerations to take on board as you know with the current climate but yeah we're absolutely still committed to that and we'll keep the parliamentary committees in Parliament up to date. That'd be great because we've got a keen interest in hybrid working flexible working. Brian did you want to come in we've got a couple more minutes yeah thank you one of the things I want to touch on one of the most important things I think was said today was the impact that employers can have on the health and well-being of staff and given we have you know a real problem with mental health and wouldn't it be prudent from the government to start really pushing that initiative that encouraged that occupational health and the promotion of health and well-being within the business because that could take a significant burden off statutory services if we could get employers to recognise the £1, £5 sort of correlation wouldn't that be somewhere where the government could really focus on and really wear down on? Yes and I'll take that message away from today's appearance at the committee that you know we have to focus on working with employers more to encourage them to tap into the support that is made available by the public sector. There are various initiatives the Scottish Government's funding and agencies working on this and that's the resource that's available through primary care as well as to employers in some cases as well you know through occupational health and other channels so again at a time of labour shortages you know isn't the interest of employers to look at all the options that are available to them and support this out there for them but you know it's helping employers and also make sure the NHS provisions there as well I think are you wanting to come in there Alasdor are you hinting? Yeah I mean I think there are initiatives there so Public Health Scotland and the Scottish Government have got that website which healthy working lives for all or something I think is the name for it which helps employers and gives them a lot of resources but I think as we progress towards from my perspective the progression towards the mental health strategy the strategy needs to be clear that it's a strategy across government that looks at all portfolios and that actually the relationship with employers is an important element of that. Thank you that concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time this morning with the minister I'd like to thank the minister and his supporting officials for your attendance this morning the committee's next meeting will be on the 15th of December when we'll be taking evidence on COVID-19 surveillance that concludes the public part of our meeting this morning I now suspend the meeting to allow witnesses to leave and I'll move into the private thank you