Chamber and committees

Thank you for that answer. Do you know when it will become the default rather than the exception?

I have one more question, and I will be brief. Yesterday, I met representatives from the Partick Thistle Charitable Trust’s accepting activity group, who said that the financial support that they get has underestimated their energy costs by hundreds of thousands of pounds. From evidence that has been given to the committee, we know that a number of third sector organisations are in just as much financial difficulty as the people they are supporting, as a result of the cost of living, and they do not believe that the funding support has taken account of that insecurity.

Does the cabinet secretary intend to introduce any cost of living measures that would help organisations to meet those costs? What can I tell the Partick Thistle Charitable Trust and others about whether there is an intention to increase the offer to those organisations to account for the rise in their operational costs?

I want to follow on from what my colleague Jeremy Balfour asked about. David Wallace said in committee a few weeks ago that hitting the 10-day figure was going to be a challenge. It feels like having that figure is meaningless if we are not going to meet it. I wonder what further work you can do to help us to get to a position in which it can be met.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. That would be appreciated.

I understand that there was a significant response to the widening of the eligibility. We cannot be surprised at that, given that the group of people who were applying for the payment at that point had been entitled to it for a number of years but had not been able to access it. I am not surprised at the scale of interest. I hope that the cabinet secretary and Social Security Scotland were not surprised either that that was factored into the announcement in November and that the roll-out was planned properly.

Will you hit the child poverty targets, cabinet secretary?

I also want to pick up on something that the Scottish Fiscal Commission said, which is in a similar vein to the issues of administration and budgets. Last week, the SFC talked about the data that it was getting to enable it to make assumptions around its financial forecasts. It said that some of the data was not published and that it was getting that data almost “through the back door”.

Is there a commitment from Government to encourage Social Security Scotland to publish the data that the Scottish Fiscal Commission uses to make its forecasts, so that that data is transparent and everyone can see it?

Will the cabinet secretary set out what percentage of outstanding Scottish child payment applications was processed by Christmas? Is there still a backlog for applications?

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I have no further questions just now, convener.

Thank you—that would be helpful.

I have no further questions at this point, convener.

I have a brief supplementary question. Thank you for answering our questions so far and for what you have shared in advance of the meeting. I want to pick up on the points that you made on mental health and the backlog in the NHS. Can you give a proportion of the increases that are attributable to those two factors?

With the exception of one small question, my questions have largely been answered. I noticed that, in the data—forgive me if I am misreading this—there are assumptions that there will be no increases in the winter heating payment or child winter heating assistance and that there will be less spending on best start grants. Can you say anything about what led to those assumptions?