Chamber and committees

We continue our evidence taking on the inquiry, and I welcome our second panel of witnesses to the meeting. Anna Ritchie Allan is the executive director of Close the Gap; Chris Brodie is the director of regional skills planning and sector development at Skills Development Scotland; and Anjum Klair and Jack Jones are policy officers at the Trades Union Congress. Anna Ritchie joins us in person and all the other witnesses are appearing remotely.

I thank our witnesses for giving us their time this morning and for their written submissions. We estimate that the meeting will run until about 11:30, so each member should have approximately eight to nine minutes to speak to the witnesses and ask questions. I am keen to ensure that everybody gets the opportunity to speak; therefore, I apologise in advance because, if time runs on too much, I might have to interrupt members or witnesses in the interest of brevity.

Will the witnesses briefly introduce themselves?

Thanks, Chris. That is helpful.

Does Anjum Klair or Jack Jones think that it is likely that many workers who have taken early retirement over the pandemic will be forced back into the labour market, given the current economic outlook and the cost of living crisis? Have any of those concerns been reflected through the Trades Union Congress membership?

Can I move first to questions from Alex Rowley, then I will come back to you?

I ask Bee Boileau to raise her hand if she can hear me. We have a bit of a technical issue with one of the witnesses’ feeds.

I will move on to questions. As Bee is unable to hear us at the moment, I will start with Jonathan Cribb. Will you provide an idea of what the early retirement trends were prior to the pandemic? Have there been changes to trends previously following global shocks, such as the 2008 recession?

That is really interesting, and it is one of the issues that we, as a committee, have been considering. That brings me to my next question. Do you think that the shift to early retirement will be sustained as another recession looms, or will the cost of living crisis, the likes of which we have not experienced in more than 40 years, reverse that trend because people will not be able to afford to retire?

Thank you.

We had some technical issues, but I think that Bee Boileau is with us now. Can you hear us, Bee?

We move to questions; I will ask the first one.

My colleague Jim Fairlie brought up this issue during the earlier part of the meeting. I recently visited NHS Ayrshire and Arran to discuss menopausal support for its workforce, because 40 per cent of the board’s workforce is made up of women of menopausal age. Have you seen anything recently that has impacted women’s inactivity in the workforce due to menopause?

We have a couple more minutes left. Does anyone have any further questions? Does Brian Whittle want to come in?

As no other member wishes to make any comments or to ask any more questions, I thank the witnesses for all their evidence and giving us their time. If they would like to raise any further points with the committee, they can do so in writing. The clerks would be happy to liaise with them about how to do that.

The committee will undertake some informal engagement sessions before we conclude the evidence taking in the inquiry on 8 December, when we will hear from the Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave and for the meeting to move into private.

I have a point to make before we move on to Alex Rowley. We get the data on the positive destinations of kids who leave school at, say, the age of 17, but it would be really interesting to have the data on where they are at the age of 25.