Chamber and committees

Bill Kidd has an important question to put to you.

Sorry, Mr Simpson, but procedural matters may well be the subject of future litigation, and I am not having anything played out at the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament that may later form parts of arguments that take place at employment tribunals or in other litigation settings. Please do not put that question to the Auditor General. If you have other questions about the report, please ask them, but if not, please draw your questions to a close.

Okay, thank you very much.

As no other member of the committee has a question to put, I thank you, Auditor General, for your evidence this morning. David Hoose and Rebecca Seidel, I thank you both, too.

I second that, but maybe from a slightly different perspective. If there is a concentration or consolidation of ownership, it would be useful to monitor that, because that, in turn, will affect the way that the sector functions and its relationship with the public sector. We would certainly welcome a bit more evidence on that.

I thank Sophie Flemig from the Accounts Commission and, from Audit Scotland, Rebecca Smallwood, Tricia Meldrum and the Auditor General for their evidence, which has been very enlightening. Thank you very much indeed for the work that you have done on the subject. It is, by everybody’s understanding, an extremely important piece of policy work, and the auditing of it is especially important. We would certainly like to ask you to give it active consideration in the future, because it is an important piece of new developmental work that has much broader implications for young people, the wider economy and so on.

I will now draw the public part of this morning’s session to a close.

Was there quite a wide variance between those different groups of households? One of the stated and agreed public policy objectives of the expansion of early learning and childcare is about increasing levels of economic activity, is it not? If it is not serving the needs of parents and carers who are at work or want to go to work, that is a public policy issue that needs to be addressed, is it not?

Has there been any response yet? Do we know what actions the Scottish Government will take in light of the report on the 10 pilots?

Yes. Of course not all other things will be equal over that time, but it would still be very useful to have those assessments.

Before I ask my next question, I had better remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests.

I want to ask about the living wage and fair work practices. You remind us that an ELC living wage and fair work implementation group has been established. You have also mentioned that there is a paucity of data about the living wage and whether it is enforced. Does that organisation not have in its terms of reference some responsibility for getting that data? It is an implementation group, so I presume that it needs the data in order to understand whether the promises that have been made are being kept.

Okay. That is helpful. The terminology that we use is “living wage and fair work”. I presume that “fair work” covers things such as the use of zero-hours contracts, the right to trade union membership, trade union recognition and so on. Will that be monitored, and will data on that be collected?

Okay—thanks. I will move on to something that is an increasing part of our agenda and questioning, which is net zero targets. We have seen significant capital infrastructure investment, primarily in new buildings or in the refurbishment of existing buildings. To what extent were net zero targets set around these infrastructure projects, either by the Scottish Government or by the Scottish Futures Trust?