Chamber and committees

That was a helpful example to give us. I will hand over to Emma Roddick for her question, and then Paul McLennan will finish off with a very short question.

The committee continually hears about the mainstreaming of equalities and the use and application of data once decisions are made. As everybody knows, I will talk about the need for gendered and disaggregated data, and about how that can be applied in an intersectional way, until the cows come home.

We will move on to questions about council tax. Paul McLennan will ask the first question on that theme.

That echoes what we have heard in previous evidence sessions in our inquiry into low income and debt. We know that pre-existing issues will be exacerbated and that new people will be finding themselves in those situations.

Before I hand over, we heard from colleagues in the first session about the fact that Scotland has a fixed budget when trying to reprioritise spending. There is a recognition in the submissions from the SCVO and the Poverty and Inequality Commission that there needs to be more funding from the United Kingdom Government. Do we need to see the cost of living crisis in the same light as the pandemic and have a response along those lines?

My colleague Paul McLennan is probably quickly rewriting some of his questions or figuring out how he can truncate his questions when we get to that topic.

The committee is highly aware of that. We recently launched our next inquiry, which will look into meeting child poverty targets via employability. I go quickly to Morag Treanor.

I would like to pick up on that point. There is really good practice in my daughter’s school. The school did that for the children—no identification was asked for. That was a response to the fact that there was a low uptake. We know that that can happen; the question is how we get that practice rolled out.

I have experience of retendering and the devastation that that caused.

The next set of questions will be asked by Natalie Don.

Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Our first item of business is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private and whether to consider pre-budget correspondence or our report in private at future meetings. Do members agree to do so?

Members: indicated agreement.

Thank you. I have written down “employerability”, because we definitely need to chase that up.

The next theme is the impact of the reduction in spending that we will see in 2023-24.

Thank you for that answer, Dr Hosie. My colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy will come in on that theme.