Chamber and committees

I move to the second item on the agenda, under which we will conclude our pre-budget scrutiny by taking evidence from the Scottish Government.

I welcome to the meeting, from the Scottish Government, John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery; Simon Mair, the deputy director of Covid recovery and public sector reform; Andrew Watson, the director of budget and public spending and Christine McLaughlin, the director of population health. Thank you all for attending this morning.

Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any remarks before we move on to questions?

I know that you briefly touched on this in your opening statement. Following the UK Government’s fiscal announcement last week—we will not get any more information until 23 November—can you update the committee on any changes to the Scottish Government’s fiscal timetable and approach to budget setting?

Absolutely. Thank you for that answer.

No other member wishes to ask a question. I therefore thank all our witnesses for their evidence and for giving us their time. I think that we can all agree that our session has been informative and beneficial. If our witnesses would like to provide any further evidence to the committee, they can do so in writing; the clerks will be happy to liaise with them on how to do so.

The committee’s next meeting will be on Thursday 29 September, when we will conclude our pre-budget scrutiny by taking evidence from the chair of the Scottish Government’s standing committee on pandemic preparedness, followed by evidence from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery.

That concludes the public part of our meeting.

That is interesting. Does anyone else want to respond?

Thank you. I agree with your point.

Murdo Fraser will ask the next questions.

I ask the witnesses who are participating remotely to type an R in the chat box when they would like to respond to an issue that is being discussed. We will bring you in at the earliest opportunity.

We will facilitate the discussion by inviting each member to speak to our witnesses. Each member will have approximately 15 minutes to ask about specific issues. We need to finish the discussion by 11.30 am so that members can attend chamber business later this morning. We should be okay for time but, if time runs on too much, I may have to interrupt members or witnesses in the interests of brevity. I apologise in advance for that.

I will begin by asking the first question. We face challenging times. What impact could current and future inflationary pressures have on the effectiveness of the outcomes that the Covid recovery strategy sets out?

Just when we need it—absolutely.

I want to bring in Álfrún Tryggvadóttir from the OECD, who is online. I have to say that I am really impressed by the online OECD Covid-19 recovery dashboard, which I could have spent hours on. I refer it to anyone for a look, because it is fascinating.

How was the dashboard developed? Why were the indicators that it uses chosen?

Thank you. The approach is really important, especially given—this goes back to the previous question—all the challenges that we face at the moment. When the pandemic hit, there was no guidebook that set out the correct things for each country to do, and the comparisons between the different nations, which show who is and who is not doing things well, are really important for us to monitor. The website is fascinating, and it would be appreciated if you could get back to me with any information that you can get.

I want to move on to the issue of our ambition in recovery of moving towards a wellbeing economy. Lukas, I note that you have concerns that

“the current spending allocations will not be sufficient to achieve a meaningful redesign towards a Wellbeing Economy.”

Can the Scottish Government balance the competing pressures of the cost of living crisis and Covid recovery while also achieving a wellbeing economy?

Good morning and welcome to the COVID-19 Recovery Committee’s 20th meeting in 2022. The committee has agreed to focus its pre-budget scrutiny on how the Scottish Government plans to fund its Covid recovery strategy and the on-going costs that are associated with the pandemic, as set out in the Covid-19 strategic framework.

I welcome our witnesses, who will speak about the Covid recovery strategy. I invite them to introduce themselves. We will go round the table; two witnesses are participating remotely.