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Would you expect that figure to fall over time, proportionally, as a percentage of the benefits bill?

The First Minister has set lifting children out of poverty as one of the central pillars of his Government. The graph in the SPICe paper from last July says that, after the Scottish child payment had been paid, 25 per cent of children were still below the poverty line and 75 per cent were above the poverty line. A significant number of children were above the poverty line prior to being in receipt of the Scottish child payment. If you are serious about eradicating child poverty, would it not be bolder if you were to address the needs of those who are effectively below the poverty line, rather than the needs of those who fall below the UK median income?

Would you say that your Government is better at getting people on to benefits than it is at getting people off them?

I think that colleagues might want you to do so.

In relation to the work to lift children out of poverty, the Scottish child payment has been welcomed by a number of third sector groups and independent analysts, but I want to talk about those above the poverty line who are in receipt of the payment. You will be aware that, last July, SPICe prepared a paper that contained a graph that showed that more Scottish child payment recipients are above the poverty line than are below it. Do you not think that, if the Scottish child payment was better targeted, you could be more effective in lifting children above the poverty line, rather than measuring its performance against recipients’ average disposable incomes after housing costs?

I am attending alongside Rachael Hamilton to speak in support of the petition lodged by Kenneth Moffatt, which reflects the real sense of public anger and concern at the culling of wild goats by Oxygen Conservation in February. The petition was signed by more than 13,000 concerned citizens, which is, I believe, one of the largest-ever groups to petition the Parliament and the committee.

The Langholm goats have grazed the hills peacefully and quietly for generations without any significant issues, and with careful and sensitive management. If anyone wants to know more about the history of the goat population in Scotland, I note that the committee has listed on its website a reference to the paper “The ‘Poor Man’s Mart’: history and archaeology of goats in Scotland”, which was authored by Catherine Smith and is useful for putting the issue into context.

In February, we saw those with outside commercial interests go too far in a rush after maximum financial return. They dramatically reduced the goat population for entirely the wrong reasons, and they did so without undertaking proper and meaningful community consultation. The petition that we see before us reflects the community’s response. Worse still, alternatives such as fencing around tree planting or working more closely with neighbouring landowners, including the Tarras valley nature reserve, were not properly explored.

Companies such as the natural capital organisation Oxygen Conservation need to better understand the need to work in partnership with communities in the Scottish Borders and Dumfriesshire rather than work against them, which is what has occurred in this instance. NatureScot and other bodies should not turn a blind eye when those commercial entities do not take cognisance of community concern. Sadly, in this case, I think that NatureScot has done so and that it is too remote and bureaucratic. I encourage the committee to explore that directly with NatureScot.

My constituents feel that, in the case of the hundreds of wild goats that graze the 30,000 acres between Newcastleton and Langholm, NatureScot came down on the side of big commercial and corporate interests rather than serving the local people, who care deeply about their local landscapes and their ecosystem. That reflects the fact that the present processes fail to recognise or understand the strength of local feeling. They fail to recognise and understand how important it is to the local community that the goats are free to roam the Langholm hills. Therefore, anything that the committee can do to address that imbalance must be explored.

The petition makes a strong case for more robust protection measures and processes for locally important species, such as the wild goats of Langholm moor. As Rachael Hamilton said, without some form of designated protection, it is clear that NatureScot and other bodies will not intervene in such cases. In future, important local heritage and biodiversity could be lost. I therefore ask the committee to urge the Scottish Government to grant protected status to this primitive goat species—or, as the goats are described by the popular local newspaper, the Eskdale & Liddesdale Advertiser, “our feral friends”.

That leads me to my next question. If you are talking about size, scale and function, one bit that seems to be missing from the debate is the productivity of the Scottish Government workforce. What more could the Scottish Government, supported by bodies such as Audit Scotland, be doing to look at the productivity of the workforce rather than simply its size and cost?

Is there a cultural issue emerging that relates to productivity but also to pay and conditions in the public sector and the private sector in Scotland? We see organisations such as BlackRock now saying that it wants staff back in the office three days a week, and senior management four to five days a week, but we see a different culture perhaps emerging within the Scottish Government. We heard the permanent secretary discussing how difficult it was to get civil servants to agree to go back into the office. We see a possible reduction in the working week in terms of number of days, and we have seen a reduction in the working week in terms of number of hours. Is there a sense that the cultures that are emerging in the public and private sectors in Scotland are at variance, and will that have an impact on the Government’s ability to deliver productivity and efficiency through the public sector?

Is there a risk with all the different documents that come before us, including your reports—when I was on the Public Audit Committee, I could sense your frustration when you came back time and again on the health service or major capital projects and identified the same weaknesses in the system—that we simply cannot see the wood for the trees, because there is so much verbiage, and that a simpler approach to how we set, monitor, report back on and audit goals would be more useful for this committee, Parliament and the public at large?

No, I wanted to come in on public sector pay.

On that 9 per cent target, you will be well aware from ministers that the Scottish Government has a fixed budget and that, therefore, its capacity to borrow or to fund public sector pay effectively comes out of other public services.

Over the years, as we have considered the Scottish budget, the finance secretary has said that she did not want to set out a public sector pay policy because that would become the floor through which public sector pay negotiations are conducted. What is the mood among your members on public sector pay specifically, given that we now have a 9 per cent policy over the next three years? That could be subject to change but that is the policy now. Is there an awareness that there will be cuts to front-line services if your members, particularly public sector unions, continue to press for pay settlements that are above that 9 per cent, which is what we are tracking towards at the moment?

I have two questions on a quite different subject. I asked the Audit Scotland witness earlier whether they had a better definition of preventative spending and whether we could get a categorisation that could be baked into a budget and therefore become ring fenced. Is there any international best practice around that that you and the Government could learn from? It strikes me that preventative spending is still quite nebulous.