Chamber and committees

A final quick question from me. You mentioned a couple of times about the real living wage being paid. That has been announced as an uprating to £12 an hour, so a rate of at least £12 an hour is what we are speaking about here. You said that that would be funded by the Scottish Government. Do you know for sure that all employers in the voluntary, private and public sectors are paying their staff the real living wage? Do you monitor that? How do you know that?

What do you do about the 16 per cent?

Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to the 25th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on the agenda is a decision on whether to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Are members of the committee content to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

The committee’s main agenda item is item 2, which is a session on the Auditor General for Scotland and Accounts Commission section 23 report “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”. I am pleased that we are joined by four representatives today. We are joined, from the Scottish Government, by Neil Rennick, director general for education and justice, and Eleanor Passmore, deputy director for early learning and childcare, and, from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, by Matthew Sweeney, policy manager for children and young people, and Joanna Anderson, policy manager for local government and finance.

Before we ask questions of the Scottish Government team and the representatives from COSLA, I ask Mr Rennick to give an opening statement.

Thank you. When we took evidence previously, one of the elements that we were interested in was construction inflation, which was defined as being about 30 per cent—considerably higher than even the retail prices index and the consumer prices index. We were not clear on what you have identified as the principal drivers for inflation in the construction sector. Can you shed any light on that?

Thank you. I turn to the representatives of COSLA. Joanna Anderson, I am sure that your ears pricked up when you heard the director general say that no local authority had approached the Government for additional support for capital investment. What is the local government perspective on what has happened with capital spending?

But is it the right hard data?

I am not sure that we accept that data and delivery are two entirely separate entities. I think that there is an extremely strong relationship between the two.

Willie Coffey has some questions to put to you.

I hope that one of the outcomes that is measured is not just economistic but is about the flowering of the human spirit and how the programme will help the children and young people going through it to prosper in the future—not just as economic units, but as human beings.

Graham Simpson wants to come in on a similar theme.