Chamber and committees

Yes.

We participate in the strategic direction of the airport, but commercial decisions about day-to-day operations are for the airport to take.

Operations at the airport remain as close as possible to what they would be if it were run on a commercial basis. Managers make decisions with a view to seeing continued profit so that the airport is marketable as a commercial business. It is important to set that out.

We have more influence at Glasgow Prestwick, given what Colin Cook said, but we also set out our expectations about how other airports across Scotland operate and about their environmental standards. You questioned the chief executive and the board chair about wider decarbonisation and Prestwick airport’s impact on the environment, and we also have those expectations of other airports regardless of whether they are in the public or private sector. We will continue to have those discussions.

We have set out what we are doing to ensure that the airport operates as effectively and sustainably as possible. We will continue to work with the airport to ensure not only that the decisions that it takes minimise the environmental impact but that it continues to be a successful business.

Of course it is an income stream, but the question is about the purpose of that income. You are right that the purpose must be to ensure that it funds the mitigations that are required because of the developments that have been set out.

The airport has a commercial interest, and I respect that, but we have a regulatory and planning interest. Of course I expect the airport to comply with the reporter’s recommendation—with the direction that has been given by ministers.

No—the board is not the shareholder.

The evidence that you heard earlier suggests that the two go hand in hand. The work that is being done to ensure that the airport is a going concern and is becoming a strong asset means that the long-term strategy is working.

The management team has taken strong day-to-day operational decisions and it continues operating in a way that will return the business to being a strategic economic asset for this country.

The First Minister set tackling child poverty as one of his areas of priority for Government in his prospectus. Earlier in the summer, he held a round-table session on tackling child poverty with representatives from all parties. He has tasked us, as cabinet secretaries and ministers, to go away and hold our own tackling child poverty round-table meetings with our stakeholder networks. I had a session with employers and others in my portfolio responsibility to consider areas that we could work together on—areas in which the Government could do more or in which our stakeholders could do more, with our support—with a view to taking that back to a follow-up session that the First Minister will lead.

We want to ensure that we have coherence across Government, and that tackling child poverty is a driving priority for all of us, whether it is a direct responsibility, as it is for Shirley-Anne Somerville, or we have additional responsibilities in our portfolios that are linked to ensuring that we tackle child poverty.

I wish colleagues a good morning. It is good to be back at my former committee—I recognise some of the faces round the table.

Katy Clark is absolutely right that a key target of employability programmes is parental employability, and we work with our partners to ensure that that remains the case in their work. Aidan Grisewood will provide a bit more detail on this in a second, but I can tell you that, so far, the programmes have been doing relatively well. We know that a quarter of all those involved go on to work and a further quarter go on to a further positive destination, including further education or training.

We are pleased with that. Obviously, there is more work to do to contextualise that data, but this is certainly a key priority for us in addressing the child poverty issues on which the committee has been focused. We must continue to ensure that we offer all the support that we possibly can within the resources that we and local government have and support parents who have often—at least in the programmes that we have put in place—been furthest from the employment market.

Aidan, do you want to supplement any of that?

I appreciate your question and, again, I will bring in Aidan Grisewood to supplement the information that I am able to impart.

I go back to the importance of interacting with the UK Government. Given that many of the people who interact with the Scottish Government’s employability schemes are signposted to them through the jobcentre network, it is important that we have good interaction and a good relationship at that level. Having a supportive environment and system at UK level that ensures that people feel able to interact with the jobcentre network is critical, too.

As for our tracking and monitoring, we look at things at every three-month, six-month and 12-month juncture so that we understand where people are on their journey. Indeed, that is where the information and statistics that I have given come from, but we are always looking at what more we can do, working with our local government partners that deliver many of these programmes, as well as with community and voluntary sector colleagues, to ensure that we get as much information as possible and that, as Roz McCall has suggested, we are monitoring and evaluating those investments to find out whether they are being as effective as possible.

I do not know whether Aidan Grisewood wants to add anything that I might have missed.