Chamber and committees

Thank you very much.

You have clarified this morning that various portfolios are contributing to the £200 million that you announced last week for business and self-isolation support. Can you confirm the breakdown in that respect? Is the contribution from portfolios coming from projected underspends, or have other priorities been paused or cancelled so that the money can be redeployed?

My apologies; I did not phrase my question very well. What I am trying to confirm is whether you still intend to use that money for the same purpose as you had planned, but at an earlier date, or whether it will now be deployed differently from how you had previously planned for it to be used in the budget.

Going back to Liz Smith’s questions on the Auditor General’s report on the underspend in 2021 that was carried over into 2021-22, I know that you have explained the reasons behind that and the purpose of doing it, but to what extent do you expect a similar underspend to be carried forward from this year into the 2022-23 budget?

I apologise for the fact that I had to step away from the meeting for a couple of moments to take a call, convener. If any of the questions that I am about to ask have been covered by a colleague, please interject and tell me to check the Official Report later.

Cabinet secretary, in response to John Mason’s question, you clarified that the initial £220 million that was announced last week by the UK Government in response to omicron was money that the Scottish Government had budgeted for in next year’s budget. Was that committed to other priorities, or is it all being used for the same Covid-specific purpose, meaning that it is being spent in exactly the same way as planned, just earlier than intended?

The context for my question was a wider concern about when it comes to consultation with and the involvement of employers in the development of SDS policy and systems such as FIPS. I used FIPS as an example. In that previous meeting, a wider frustration was expressed about the need to have employers in the room and to give them a voice as systems are developed. Taking on board what you have just said about the involvement of employers in the use of the system, which was very useful, when systems like this are being developed, what kind of user testing and consultation do you do with employers so that they are clear about exactly how it operates, what their role is or is not, and how they should engage with the system and with providers?

How are employers supported to make sure that their apprentices are on FIPS? Forgive me, but I am not familiar with how long the FIPS system has been in operation. I do not know whether it is relatively new or whether it has been around for a while.

Therefore, this is a business-specific issue with the one contractor—the one provider—and you are not encountering multiple instances of delays in registration.

Thank you, convener. I want to make sure. Can you hear and see me okay?

Excellent. Thanks. I have a couple of questions specifically for SDS colleagues, and I will direct them to Katie Hutton in the first instance.

You might be aware that, when we took evidence last week, some of it was from employers, one of whom flagged up some concerns with FIPS, SDS’s system for registering apprenticeships. The issue that was raised was essentially about how an apprenticeship that was lodged and registered with FIPS could not account for any time served before the point of registration. The example used was that, if they had started an apprentice at their company over the summer but had only now sorted out the FIPS registration, all the time that that apprentice had been with them would not count towards the time-served element of the apprenticeship and would therefore extend the duration of the apprenticeship beyond what would be desirable for either the apprentice or the employer. I have already mentioned the trade unions’ concerns.

In the first instance, could you clarify the technical requirements? Is it possible to register and process an apprenticeship through FIPS and backdate the time served, or does only time that is served from the point of registration count?