Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has recently started to collate a central lists of its contracts. This work is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Question S3W-34472 refers to contracts that make specific reference to compliance with the national minimum wage. The central list of contracts will not capture information on this level of detail.

The Scottish Government has ongoing discussions with COSLA about local authorities'' approach to tackling poverty, as set out in Achieving Our Potential (the Scottish Government and COSLA framework). This has included discussion of what support and guidance is needed by Community Planning Partnerships and strategic public authorities to ensure that tackling poverty is given due regard in strategic decision-making, including commitments within single outcome agreements.

Employment policy is reserved to the UK Government. However, the Scottish Government is doing all that it can, within the scope of its current powers, to promote employment opportunities across Scotland. 

For example:

We are supporting six Urban Regeneration Companies (URCs) to deliver wide-ranging regeneration strategies in some of our poorest communities. All of these aim to create new employment opportunities for local people. We have invested £127 million in these projects since 2004; £92 million since 2007.

We are encouraging the use of Community Benefit clauses, which help to ensure that local people benefit from training and job opportunities arising from the physical transformation of their area. As well as the Commonwealth Games project in Glasgow, there are good examples of this in places like Raploch and Dundee. See the Scottish Government website for more details http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/Procurement/policy/procurecombenefits  

Through ScotAction, we have invested £145 million to support the skills needs not only of the unemployed, but also of those in work and those facing redundancy. We are also in the process of rolling out an integrated employment and skills service across Scotland. Delivered in partnership by Jobcentre Plus and Skills Development Scotland, this service will help to ensure that all unemployed people have timely access to appropriate careers advice and training.

We continue to work closely with CPPs and local employability partnerships to join up and otherwise enhance support for those out of work, as well as to promote enterprise and healthy working lives. This includes work to develop links between employability and, for example, the health and voluntary sectors.  For more details, visit: http://www.employabilityinscotland.com/.

In February we launched a Supported Employment Framework for people with disabilities. The Framework aims to ensure that supported employment is seen as a valued and integral part of local mainstream employment services. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/02/23093849/0 for details.

The Fairer Scotland Fund is no longer ring-fenced, having been rolled-up into local authorities'' general revenue funding for 2010-11.

Going forward, single outcome agreement (SOA) annual reports are the key means of monitoring progress made by local partners in using their collective resources to tackle poverty and concentrations of disadvantage.

Councils are required to submit SOA annual reports on behalf of their Community Planning Partnership to the Scottish Government each autumn. My officials will continue to review these reports in the context of the Scottish Government''s joint statement with COSLA, Equal Communities in a Fairer Scotland, which clearly sets out our commitment to tackling concentrated multiple disadvantage and builds upon the key principles of the Fairer Scotland Fund.

Question S3W-34473 referred to a living wage which is generally understood to mean a wage over and above the statutory national minimum wage and the answer was provided in that context. Contractors engaging UK workers are required to comply with UK employment law including the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. It is imposing a requirement to go further than the 1998 Act that could restrict the freedom to provide services guaranteed by article 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

The figure of 45 percent quoted above appears on the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics and Scottish Government websites and refers to the proportion of children in Scotland living in households that are dependent on out of work benefits or where Child Tax Credit is more than the family element. At a local authority level this is used as a proxy indicator for child poverty and is the Scottish Government''s current preferred indicator for examining the distribution of child poverty across local authorities. It is not however comparable to the official child poverty estimates which are published for Scotland and the UK.

At a Scotland level the Scottish Government uses the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to measure child poverty and the 2008-09 figures for the preferred child poverty indicators are as follow:

Percentage of children in relative poverty (Before Housing Costs): 21 percent.

Percentage of children in absolute poverty (Before Housing Costs): 11 percent.

Percentage of children in material deprivation and low income combined: 16 percent.

FRS figures are not available at local authority level or for smaller geographical areas and so proxy indicators, such as the one quoted above, are used for poverty research concerning these areas.

The Scottish Government is keen to ensure that people have a decent wage and from 1 August this year nobody employed by the Scottish Government will earn under £7.15 an hour - the current living wage level proposed by the Scottish Living Wage Campaign. However beyond the levels set by the National Minimum Wage, which is reserved to the UK Government, private sector pay is a matter for companies, their employees and Trade Unions.

In February 2008 the Scottish Government published a detailed report and guidance on Community Benefit clauses with practical information on how and when to use the clauses including case studies, model clauses and lessons learnt. The report provided clear examples of how local authorities, housing associations and regeneration companies could use the clauses to achieve training and recruitment opportunities for a range of target groups through housing investment.

We are continuing to work with the wider public sector to roll out Community Benefits clauses. These have now been used in a variety of public contracts and contractors have committed to over 2,000 placements for people who have been out of work and to SME and social enterprise development. For example, the Scottish Government Energy Assistance Programme contract has achieved a commitment to between 12% and 16% of the workforce being new entrant trainees in addition to a range of opportunities for SMEs and social enterprises.

The legislation does not require the needs of all carers to be assessed. The Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, as amended by the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002 (the 2002 Act), gives substantial and regular carers the right to request an assessment of their ability to provide care. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995, as amended by the 2002 Act, gives substantial and regular carers of a child with disabilities the right to request an assessment of their ability to care. The legislation also requires local authorities to inform carers of their potential right to a carer''s assessment.

We are working with partners so that they better understand the importance of the carer''s assessment and that they take forward proposals to increase uptake of good quality outcome-focussed assessments. Some ideas being taken forward by local authorities include the introduction of carers'' self-assessment and the development of e-learning carer awareness modules for staff.

The Carers Strategy for Scotland, to be published shortly, will include action points to encourage the uptake of good quality assessments and will highlight good practice in the carrying out of carers'' assessments.

Contractors to the Scottish Government are usually required to demonstrate that they comply with their legal obligations, including obligations relating to employment law and that they are suitable to be awarded a contract. Subject to compliance with relevant legal obligations, a contactor''s relationship with its staff is a matter for the contractor not the purchaser. Imposing a requirement for the payment of a minimum level of wage in the context of any particular procurement process may amount to a restriction of freedom to provide services and could therefore be in breach of EU law.