Chamber and committees

Welcome back, everyone. I welcome to the meeting our third panel of witnesses this morning. On the panel we have Gordon MacRae, who is the assistant director of Shelter Scotland, and Frank McKillop, who is the head of policy and research at Enable Scotland. Frank joins us remotely.

I have reminded members that we cannot just direct all of our questions to Gordon MacRae because he is in the room with us and that we have to remember that we have Frank McKillop online. As always, I ask members to direct their questions to one of the witnesses to start off, then the other witness can respond if they want to. Frank, I will keep an eye on you, so give me a wave if you want to answer and then give our colleagues in broadcasting a second to turn on your microphone before you speak.

Thank you, both, for your written submissions and for making time to join us today. The deputy convener of the committee, Natalie Don, is going to start us off with some questions on the impact of the rising cost of living.

I remember vividly the days of all those meetings to get the sectors together so that we could implement that ban.

Gordon MacRae, I would like to discuss the proposals that Shelter has around changing the approach to affordable housing. I am specifically interested in the idea of considering it from a national perspective. As the COSLA spokesperson on this issue, you will be aware of how tense the situation is when 32 local authorities are looking at where the grant money is going and how much each one’s share is going to be.

What do you think the benefit of having that national approach could be? With regard to the empty homes partnership, how could we increase the speed with which we work collectively to buy back those properties and force a movement away from having properties sitting empty?

Could you also say something about the types of properties that councils and registered social landlords are building, with regard to them being convertible? I am talking about, for example, a two or three-bedroom property being able to become a four-bedroom property if it is built with capacity in the loft or whatever.

We have just a small amount of time left. I will bring Pam Duncan-Glancy back in to ask a quick question, then Miles Briggs.

Our next item of business is an evidence session on budget savings and reductions in 2022-23. On 7 September, John Swinney announced £500 million of in-year reductions to the budget, and some of those are relevant to our remit—namely, employability, education maintenance allowance, concessionary fares and rail fares, and child poverty consequentials.

I welcome to the meeting the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, John Swinney, who is also covering the finance brief at the moment, and his officials, Julie Humphreys, deputy director of tackling child poverty and financial wellbeing at the Scottish Government, and Michael Walker, senior finance business partner at the Scottish Government.

I hand over to the Deputy First Minister to make an opening statement.

I turn to members for questions. We have grouped questions into themes of employability, education maintenance allowance, concessionary fares and transport costs, and cost of living consequentials and child poverty. Members, as ever, will also have their own questions, which I will bring them in on towards the end. To start, members should direct their questions to the Deputy First Minister, who will bring in his officials when he decides to.

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. That clarifies the point for us all.

Who is that for?

I thank the witnesses for joining us this morning to give evidence and for their written submissions. I should say that the committee undertook human rights training over the summer; the PANEL principles are therefore at the forefront of our minds, and we think that they represent a key way of undertaking our scrutiny work as best we can.

I suspend briefly for a changeover of witnesses. If everyone could be back in approximately five minutes, that would be helpful.

Do you have questions on spending powers, which is the next theme?