Chamber and committees

My question is primarily for Mike Corbett, because he mentioned the Morgan review. Since then, there have been two revisions to the additional support for learning action plan, which includes at least half a dozen references to transition and improving transition. Have the repeated updates to that national strategy filtered through to schools? From your work, are you aware of them filtering through at local authority level?

The point about variation between children and adult services within a local authority and variation between local authorities has been mentioned a couple of times. There are two schools of thought about what the bill could achieve. One is that it would force a level of consistency. The alternative point of view, however, is that the bill could result in more tension, because it is not about creating a consistent approach among children’s services in general across every local authority or among adult social care services—that is a different debate that we are having in relation to the national care service. There is a potential danger that the bill will add more tension, because the approach that a local authority takes to its children’s services will still be different from its approach to its adult social care services, but the bill will create a third element in relation to what is expected nationally. Do you have any concerns that, rather than create more consistency, the bill will just add a third approach, which the other two approaches—the local authority’s pre-existing practice—will have to wrestle with?

Cabinet secretary, I am interested in hearing some more detail about the delivery plan for the expansion of the provision of free school meals to those in primary 6 and primary 7. In the current financial year, £30 million has been allocated to that, and £80 million is allocated to it for the next financial year. Between those two amounts, do you think that that is sufficient funding to achieve the required capacity? How is the Scottish Government monitoring the deployment of the £30 million in the current year? Has the deployment of that funding and the capacity expansion that has been achieved so far indicated to you whether the £80 million might be sufficient?

You mentioned the interim expansion to P6 and P7 on the basis of SCP eligibility, which would apply to 20,000 children. That is fantastic news. Will that apply from the start of the next school year, in August, or do you expect councils to implement that closer to the start of the financial year?

Finally, how do we make sure that as many of those 20,000 eligible children as possible take up the free school meals? I recognise that there has always been a significant difference between eligibility and uptake. I presume that the most effective way of doing that will be to work with Social Security Scotland and those who are delivering the SCP, to make sure that those bodies notify eligible families, as well as working through the councils and schools. How will you make sure that all the eligible families are aware that that opportunity is available to them?

I am not moving a motion to annul the instrument, because the specifics of it are harmless enough. I just want to put on the record that the Scottish Greens do not believe that it is good value for the public purse to give £1 million a year to a private school when there are four state music schools in Scotland that would benefit greatly from that money.

I appreciate that it is not as simple as saying that the £30 million in the current financial year will achieve X per cent of the capacity increase that is required and that the £80 million will therefore achieve the remaining Y per cent. Nevertheless, is there a way of quantifying what has been achieved with that £30 million? I recognise that I am, in essence, doing post-budget scrutiny rather than the pre-budget scrutiny that we are here for this morning. However, if we are to be confident that we are going to get value for money out of the £80 million, it would be good to be able to quantify what has been, or is currently being, achieved with the £30 million.

You have talked a lot this morning about the wider policy intent around the additional dwelling supplement, and you mentioned second and holiday homes specifically and distinctly from the private rental sector. Will you expand on the Government’s policy intent around second and holiday homes?

The £34 million that will be raised will go towards public services, and we all recognise that that is needed more than ever during a cost of living crisis. We should not lose sight of the fact that the measure will raise a small amount of money during the remainder of this financial year, which will be important in closing a challenging gap in our public finances.

I associate myself with the comments that John Mason just made. Generational inequality is an issue. In the past, a lot of folk who were my age—28—or a little bit older or younger would have been able to own their own home. Previously, that would have been the norm, as John Mason said, but it is not the case for many of my friends from school and those whom I met during my brief time at university. There are a range of reasons for that, and the imbalance in the housing market, which favours buy-to-let landlords, is one of them. In a small way, this tax change will begin to redress that imbalance.

The change sits alongside other measures, such as the new powers that have been given to local authorities to regulate short-term lets. We need to take a range of other measures. However, as well as the primary consideration, which is raising revenue for public services at a time when we really need it, redressing that imbalance in power and the generational inequality in our housing market is a strong argument in favour of the modest change. We could have gone much further, but the change gets the balance right.

Thank you. That is all from me, convener.