Chamber and committees

Elizabeth Baird, you said that you are providing wage incentives or wage supplements for employers. Did your local authority decide to provide that from the money for the no one left behind policy? Does that flexibility come with that funding? How are you delivering that?

That concludes the first part of the evidence session. Dave McCallum has generously offered to send us more material. If anybody else has more material that they feel they could not share with us this morning, we would be happy to receive it. Thank you all for your contributions. We will suspend the meeting while we change over witnesses.

I welcome David Cameron, chief executive officer of the Scottish Union of Supported Employment; Oxana MacGregor-Gunn, assistant director of operations at Scottish Action for Mental Health; and Ashley Ryan, director of Enable Works, Enable Scotland. Thank you all for coming.

I will start with a question that relates to our previous panel and come to Ashley Ryan first. We have a change in the delivery model from fair start Scotland to no one left behind, which in turn led to the creation of the local employability partnerships, from which we had witnesses earlier. I am interested in your view on how the LEPs are working. What has their impact been and have they been a positive move?

Where your experience is inconsistent, what is it about the LEPs that is not working? Ashley mentioned a lack of transparency and difficulty engaging. Is that your experience?

With “No one left behind”, we saw the devolution of employment policy to local authorities and local partnerships, to deliver policies that were bespoke to their local area. It is the Government’s policy to close the disability employment gap. Is enough being done from a Government policy level? Evelyn Tweed might come back to this, but most of the recommendations that came from the 2022 “Review of Supported Employment within Scotland” are aimed at the Scottish Government, or at that level of Government. The Fair Work Convention did a recent report into Scotland’s progress as a fair work nation where we come sixth in a list of eight, in terms of our progress on closing the disability employment gap. Denmark is way at the top, but Denmark at a national level has invested a lot in employment services, whether that is subsidies for firms or various other Government policies such as wage subsidies, positive discrimination and preferred access to employment for disabled applicants.

While the “No one left behind” money is funding the local employability partnerships, it is the Government’s commitment to close the employability gap. Do you feel that there is more that the Government could be doing? We recognise that we are in difficult financial times, but do you think it could be doing more?

Thank you. In the earlier panel, I think it was Philip Ritchie who talked about the young person’s guarantee. Edinburgh has introduced an Edinburgh guarantee. One of the review recommendations is for a supported employment guarantee. Would you look for clarity around the 2022 review?

I want to make some progress. Kevin Stewart, do you have a supplementary?

Sorry, Ms Chapman, I want to make some progress. We are a bit short of time.

Thank you all for giving evidence this morning. The committee will now move into private session.

I was going to request the same, given that the Scottish Fair Trade Forum has noted that legislation does not have any definition for fair trade, which has led to significant variance in what is categorised as fair or ethical among public bodies. The minister says that there is a clear definition, so it could be just about how that is being interpreted instead of there being a lack in that respect. However, we have heard evidence of differences in the way in which authorities categorise or report their fair trade products.