Chamber and committees

I think that we all want to thank those Scottish Water workers for what they did during that period.

Has the energy price increase made any difference to you?

Why did you have so many queries this year?

Are they from you or from elsewhere? You volunteered that point, and it would be interesting to know the answer.

Mr Ruskell makes a fair point, but it is clear that the new national planning framework 4 is partly about improving timescales for approvals. As for expenses, that is a question that we could come back to after we wait and see whether the regulations improve matters. Of course, they will not be the only factor. We know that we have to move towards recovering the costs for supporting planning applications—it is just a sensible thing to do—but we will see the proof only after the regulations come into effect, and we can monitor them together with the changes to regulations in NPF4.

Patricia Findlay might want to focus on that, and I will direct my final question to her, if she is the appropriate person to answer it.

We have already touched on procurement in the construction industry and your construction inquiry, and you touched on what would be legal and what would not be legal. I am not sure how visible that is to everybody; there might be an issue about how we make it more visible. At what point in the process of public procurement for construction can fair work requirements be legally embedded? Currently, it is, I think, at the point at which the grant is given, which is after the contract has been awarded. Should something be done further upstream in the process to enable better conditionality? If that point came when the contract was awarded, everybody who was bidding for it would be required to comply. I am not sure whether we can improve the process by changing the point at which fair work comes in.

Professor Findlay, you set out clearly why fair work is good for business in relation to recruitment and retention, and, on the issue of productivity, you said that collaboration can lead to innovation. For the Economy and Fair Work Committee, those are interesting aspects. How do you see the Fair Work Convention working with the committee? What are your expectations of us?

We understand that fair work is good for business and productivity, and Mary Alexander mentioned the national strategy for economic transformation. From what you said, I take it that you think that the strategy looks at fair work more from a social perspective. Does the strategy need to be strengthened by pushing the economic and productivity aspects of fair work? Would you like to see improvement in that regard?

You will be familiar with the fact that, during the pandemic, rapid work was done to bring together trade unions, employers and the Government on a sectoral basis in order to get the country back to work after lockdown. That was intended to continue, through the industry leadership groups, to make sure that the creative working that took place helps us to improve a range of economic levers that businesses, the Government and trade unions want us to improve. Has that happened to your expectation?

Is that happening across all the public sector bodies that have procurement contracts?

Thank you.