Chamber and committees

Alasdair, you might want to comment on that as well. Some of the figures that have been published on retention, for the previous fair work scheme—I cannot remember what it was called—and for “No one left behind”, show that people get into employment but that four weeks, eight weeks or a year later, the number starts to tail off.

There is fair start Scotland, but some of the data is on no one left behind, although issues have been raised about the difficulty with transparency around no one left behind funding. Is your local authority also monitoring and working out what works and then feeding into the shared framework measurement?

Could I ask the panellists to be brief in any replies? I am keen to bring everybody in and we are getting a bit short of time.

David, is that similar to your view of how they are operating?

Is some of the difference between local authorities to do with their understanding of definitions or a lack of clarity on what they are trying to deliver?

Ashley Ryan, there is a question that is linked to that about how we measure success. The Government’s target is about employment, which is a legitimate target and it is the one that we are scrutinising, but does that maybe not recognise that some people are involved in other roles? For example, some of the young people we met yesterday were in volunteering work. I asked whether they wanted to move into paid employment and they said that they felt that the volunteering role suited them more in the circumstances that they were in. Voluntary organisations say to us that, sometimes, it is about increasing somebody’s confidence and their life skills and it is not always about employment. Do you think that we are measuring enough or we are measuring the right things?

Welcome to the 13th meeting in 2024 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. I have received apologies from Gordon MacDonald; Bob Doris is attending as committee substitute. Our first item is for the committee to agree to take item 3 and all future consideration of evidence for the inquiry in private. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

As I said earlier, the committee did have a look at this last year and one of the issues that we identified was unmet need. All organisations talk about how many people have been supported. Do you think that there is an unmet need out there in the Borders and what have you done to reach out to or identify people with those needs?

As I said at the beginning, we have met young people and people with lived experience. Most of their experience of school or of leaving school and transitioning has been not very positive. Do you think that is an area where we are letting down young people with neurodivergent conditions and learning disabilities?

We are taking evidence from Colleges Scotland in the coming weeks.