Chamber and committees

Yes—health ministers have been looking at that issue and taking it into account as part of the overall approach to women’s health. I have seen references to that, but I would have to come back to the committee on how that is being done. However, I know that that has been a particular topic over the past year or two, and health ministers are engaged in it.

That is a good question. We have spent a lot of time looking at the issue over the past year. Clearly, employment and a lot of related issues are reserved to the UK Government but, under devolution, as you are aware, we have responsibility for offering support to people who are furthest from the labour market. We do that through two channels, one of which is a national scheme called fair start Scotland, and you will have heard about that during your visits. It is good to hear that you were impressed by what you saw. It is very humbling and impressive to visit those programmes around the country, as I have done, from the islands to various parts of mainland Scotland.

Fair start Scotland offers pre-employment support for, if I recall correctly, up to 12 to 18 months, and in-employment support, where a case worker will stay in touch with the individual who has perhaps got on to the job ladder for the first time in several years after long-term illness, mental health issues or disability. It could be a range of reasons. In-work support means that the case worker is available to speak on the phone and help people as they get back into a life of work.

We are satisfied that those programmes are working well. We have that national one, and there is a local one. That all comes under the umbrella of no one left behind. We have devolved a lot of resources and decisions to local employability partnerships in each local authority over the past year. That is where joined-up thinking happens at a local level; the DWP, devolved services, local authorities and other local players in the employability scene get round the same table and decide how to allocate resources to take into account local circumstances. There may be schemes for helping women get back into work, or schemes to recruit local organisations to help people with disabilities. That work is very local and joined up.

The question that you asked about joined-up approaches is very important. That work is happening at a local level; it has been rolled out over the past 12 months, and we are monitoring it to make sure that it is working. Services are now being commissioned at a local level with the extra resource that local partnerships have.

Fair start Scotland, which is national, as you will have seen when you met the various organisations that deliver that, is increasingly introducing mental health support to help people. It is becoming more of a one-stop shop. It is not just about getting people into a workplace but about giving them the support that they need to be ready for the workplace.

We are speaking about people who are very far from the labour market. We have had an evaluation report done, which I am happy to send to the committee after the meeting. When any person who has been out of the labour market for several years with various issues gets back into the workplace, that is a big success, first and foremost for that person but also for Scotland, as getting people back into work helps the economy.

I thank Alex Rowley for that question. It is a big question, and it is timely because we are about to publish a refreshed fair work action plan as part of our policy to ensure that Scotland is one of the world’s leading fair work nations by 2025. I have been working on these issues for the past few months. Again, I am happy to ensure that the action plan is copied to the committee as soon as it is published.

The latest figures indicate that, in the five years between 2016 and 2021, the disability employment gap in Scotland has reduced by 6.2 percentage points, and it currently stands at 31.2 per cent. That suggests that we are currently on track to achieve our ambition to halve the disability employment gap to 18 percentage points by 2038. Work is under way on various policies to work with employers on tackling these issues. In addition, the employability schemes that we have discussed, in particular fair start Scotland, play an important role in helping people with disabilities to get back into the workplace. We also have a workplace equality fund that helps employers to adapt to help people get back into the workplace.

You also mentioned the gender pay gap and employment issues. We have outperformed the rest of the UK on the gender pay gap since 2003, and we continue to work on that. We are about to publish the plan—for the first time, we are bringing everything together in one fair work action plan, because there are many intersectional issues to be addressed. For example, a disabled female will face various challenges. We have therefore brought all the policies around gender, racialised minorities—which you also mentioned—and disability, and the general fair work policy, into one action plan. That means that employers can go to one policy to get practical advice and support to tackle all these issues at one time, to enable their workplaces to become much more inclusive and equal.

Alongside the imminent publication of the fair work action plan, we are publishing our anti-racist employment strategy. That strategy will focus on racialised minorities and the employment gap that they face—which you mentioned, quite rightly. It will give practical advice, tips and pointers to employers on how to make sure that all their policies, including their recruitment and personnel policies, lead to a much more diverse workplace, because too many people in racialised minorities in Scotland face enormous hurdles. There is institutional racism in Scotland, as there is in all countries, and we have to face up to that. We hope that the strategy that we are publishing will help.

That issue was brought to my attention by trade unions and others, particularly during the pandemic. The Scottish Government’s view is that we have many people with long-term illnesses and that to pick one condition and categorise it as a disability would mean having to redefine many other long-term illnesses. Further, different symptoms and conditions could be part of long Covid. The decision has therefore been taken not to recognise long Covid as a disability at the moment. Dr Alastair Cook may have medical input to add to that answer.

Does Murdo Fraser want me to come back in on that?

I add for Murdo Fraser’s benefit that the Scottish Government is very keen to work with employers so that they can provide support for employees to come back to work through providing mental health support. The Scottish Government is making available a lot of support that employers can call on to support their workers to come back. Of course, we need employers to do that.

There are some eye-catching statistics: for example, that poor mental health costs Scottish employers more than £2 billion a year at the moment, and that, for every £1 that is spent on mental health interventions, employers get a £5 return on investment. We have to get that message across to employers more, which I will certainly give more attention to. Those statistics show the importance of that.

The Scottish Government has launched the mental health transition recovery plan, and we also have the new NHS 24 mental health hub, which I am told has received more than 200,000 calls so far. That was launched in July 2020, before the end of the pandemic. We also have other platforms such as a new mental health and wellbeing platform for employers and others to call on. We are trying to help employers to do as much as they can to help employees get support.

There is low incidence of Covid in the population generally at the moment, and the inactivity statistics show that it is long-term sickness that is a challenge for Scotland. There are various surveys of samples of the population. If we take a brief look at them, we see that 0.8 per cent of people who are inactive in Scotland say that they have long Covid. The Scottish health survey estimated that 7 per cent of those with limiting, long-standing illnesses reported having long Covid in 2021; in comparison, 3 per cent of those with non-limiting, long-standing illnesses reported having long Covid. Although there are people with long Covid, the statistics therefore show that it is perhaps not the predominant issue.

Many big employers in Scotland are doing a lot. We work closely with all of the business associations and organisations in Scotland on those agendas.

Small businesses and some medium-sized businesses might face some challenges. Clearly, we have to work with them so that they realise that there is a lot more that they can do. It is obviously easier for big organisations, such as banks or supermarkets, that have various departments and resources to devote to that work, but small and medium-sized businesses could do a lot more, too. We are trying to focus more on that.

We are doing more. That is why we will imminently publish the refreshed fair work action plan, which I mentioned earlier. The idea is to encourage employers to become fair work employers, which means being flexible, including by offering flexible hours and implementing other measures, such as: giving employees a voice in the workplace; employing people for a minimum of 16 hours per week so that they have a decent income to make it worth while; and paying the real living wage. There is more to do on the real living wage, although we are doing really well on that in Scotland just now: 91 per cent of people in Scotland are paid the real living wage, which is above the rest of the UK by a reasonable margin.

The fair work agenda is important with regard to this debate, particularly in relation to attracting people in the older age group who might have taken early retirement and who have since had a change of heart or are keen to do a few hours here and there. At a time when we are facing labour shortages, we need employers to be more open-minded, become fair work employers and offer more flexibility to suit the needs of older people and, indeed, other parts of the population. It is not just about older people, but there is a bit of an untapped resource there that we should look at as a country. That is all part of the fair work agenda.

We have a diverse economy—that is just a fact—but most employers, if not the vast majority, have the ability to be flexible. I meet more and more employers who are becoming more open-minded and are offering more flexible conditions and hours of work. Perhaps other members are meeting such employers, too.

The world of work is changing. The pandemic has played a big role in that with working from home, hybrid working and much more flexible work that takes people’s circumstances into account. Employers are also much more inclusive.

We fund a number of projects and initiatives to help employers consider how they can take on more people with disabilities, adapt their workplaces and so on. We also fund Flexibility Works, an organisation that promotes flexible working. Various projects are being funded at the moment to push forward all of those agendas.