Chamber and committees

That is helpful. The committee might decide to follow up on that issue in the future.

That brings us to the end of the evidence session. I thank all the witnesses for coming along and sharing their knowledge and expertise.

Thank you. I will begin by asking some questions about progress on fair work. You mentioned the report card that was published in December 2020, where the convention raised concerns about lack of progress on realising the 2025 vision. In March 2021, the convention warned that, unless the Scottish Government took urgent action, the vision would not be realised.

Have you seen the urgent action that you called for since then? Are there actions that the Government needs to take forward to make sure that we reach the 2025 target? Why has progress in some areas been so slow?

Good morning, and welcome to the Economy and Fair Work Committee’s 26th meeting in 2022. No apologies have been received.

Our first item of business is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private. Are members content to take that item in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I am going to change the order of questions and bring in Jamie Halcro Johnston, as his question is relevant, I think, to what we have heard so far. I will then come to Colin Smyth.

You have started to address issues that other members will want to pick up on. The convention’s report of December 2020 said that the Covid-19 crisis

“laid bare much of the unfairness in our economy”

and that

“even before the pandemic, limited progress was being made in improving key fair work indicators.”

The refreshed plan is due out quite soon—I think that it was meant to have been out in the autumn. Will it be able to address the existing unfairness, which has been added to by the pandemic? Will that be the plan’s focus, or will its focus be elsewhere in terms of addressing any gaps?

What would you like to see in the plan when it comes out?

Our next item of businesses is an evidence-taking session with the Fair Work Convention. The purpose of the session is to provide members with an introduction to the convention’s work and to discuss with it the challenges and opportunities that businesses and workers face.

I welcome Mary Alexander and Patricia Findlay, who are co-chairs of the Fair Work Convention. They are joined by Helen Martin, who is head of the convention secretariat.

As always, I ask members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as short and concise as possible.

I invite Mary Alexander to make a short opening statement.

Thank you. I will bring in Graham Simpson.

Okay. Thank you. I thank the minister, as we have run over time a little.

I briefly return to where we started, which was the supply chain development programme. The committee’s inquiry was prompted by disruptions to supply chains. Ms Hyslop picked up on some of those issues. How do we put resilience into the system to deal with disruptions? The supply chain development programme seems to be focused more on developing new supply chains and supporting supplier development and not so much on how we make sure that we as a country are fit and able to respond to unexpected shocks to our economy. People think that such things are never going to happen, but we have had three in the past few years. Would the supply chain development programme be the focus for that, or is somewhere else in Government looking at how we respond to such events?

I think that there is a 0.1 per cent difference between the Scottish figure and the UK figure. Our rate is 21.6 per cent and the UK rate is 21.7 per cent.