Chamber and committees

Just—

I accept that some courses were modified more than others or were modified in significantly different ways. In hindsight, would it have been better if the study materials that you published in the spring had re-emphasised the modifications that had already been made to some courses, rather than publishing some guides that seemed, on the face of it, much thinner than others?

I absolutely agree that some of the revision support was of really high quality. I think that it was the variation that caused a lot of frustration for young people who—

If you had shared that with them in advance, some concerns might have been raised.

It is just a yes-or-no question, so, if there is time at the end, that would be ideal.

What will the engagement process with stakeholders look like? That leads me into a wider discussion that the committee has had in the past, which is about public and stakeholder understanding of our public finance landscape, and the extent to which it is important for certain stakeholders to have a greater level of understanding of devolved public finances than is currently the case.

I will probably get a row from all my friends in the climate movement for saying that, in all the relatively well-funded third sector organisations in that space, I do not think that there are many people who have a depth of understanding of our public finances. Historically, that is not an area that those organisations and campaign groups have focused on. However, it is probably important that we get their input into the process. Whether we are talking about climate organisations or the alliance of healthcare organisations—which might be in a slightly different position but is probably in roughly the same place—will part of the process involve your assisting and enabling them to give useful feedback?

It might be worth the committee getting in touch with Social Security Scotland about that.

My main line of questioning is about your consultation process. I am interested in how you will go about that in the fiscal sustainability review. Examples of priority areas that you mention are the climate and health inequalities, which are spaces that have pretty robust third sector organisations in them. Have those organisations engaged with Fiscal Commission consultation processes in the past? Do you have an established relationship with such groups, or are you taking a new approach in order to achieve a wider level of engagement?

I would like to pick up briefly on Claire Murdoch’s explanation for why certain points of detail are not collected in the social security application process, which was that they are not necessary in order to process the claim. I will caveat my question by saying that I accept that you are not Social Security Scotland, so you might not know the answer—that is fine. I assume that the reason why Social Security Scotland is not asking questions as part of the application process that would otherwise provide useful bits of demographic data is that the more fields that are on the form, the more people will drop out of the application process. Is that the case?

I am interested in what that will look like. I presume that a punter can go to the SFC’s website, fill in a consultation form and answer the questions there. However, if you are trying to get greater depth, particularly from those key groups with which you are engaging for the first time, what will that work look like? Will it involve workshops, seminars or one-on-one meetings?

I have one final question, on a different note. You mentioned this at the start of the session, but much of your written submission is about improvements in data and process that should improve the accuracy of forecasts. On the flipside, given that inflation might top 20 per cent and we are entering an indeterminate period of profound economic instability, should we be expecting greater accuracy in forecasting in the immediate future? Are those improvements going to pay off in five or 10 years’ time once we are on the other side of that instability?