Welcome to your bumper year-end issue! Not only does this edition finish off 2016, but it also has the details of not one but TWO calls for evidence! Consider it our Christmas present to you all. But before we get to that, the last meeting of the year takes place tomorrow and concludes our budget scrutiny. Tune in from 11am when we'll be hearing from

• Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work,
• Chris Stark, Director of Energy and Climate Change,
• Mary McAllan, Director for Economic Development, and
• Hugh McAloon, Head of Youth Employment, Scottish Government.

That should see this year out, and the Parliament finishes for recess after First Minister's Questions on Thursday lunchtime. Parliament will be back on 10 January 2017, but we'll be back with your next newsletter a day before that: mark your (brand-new) calendars!

In January, we're expecting to receive the Climate Change Plan from the Scottish Government. This is the follow-on from what is commonly known as RPP1 (2011) and RPP2 (2013), or Report on Proposals and Policies, to give it its full name. So it's now the CCP instead of RPP3, but still manages to have a ring of Star Wars to it... We'll begin our work on it at the end of January, and continue through into February. As always, we'll be looking for your views, but the window for responses is expected to be shorter than usual. So, this is your heads up and we'll give you the details as soon as we have them.

And our other big news: on Friday, we launched our call for evidence for our inquiry into the Gender Pay Gap. The remit of the inquiry is:

To explore the effect of the gender pay gap on the Scottish economy, with a particular focus on business performance, the Scottish public sector and Scottish Government action required to address the issue.

The deadline for views is Friday 10 March 2017, so there's plenty of time, but do make sure you send us your thoughts. Full details are on the website, and we plan to hold evidence sessions from March through May 2017. Please drop us a line if you have any questions, or if you want to talk through how to make a submission.

That's it from us, and from this year! Wishing you happy holidays and a very happy New Year when it comes.