Good morning, colleagues, and welcome to this meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have had apologies received from Natalie Dawn. Evelyn Tweed is attending in her place. Our first item of business today is a decision to take items 5 and 6 in private. Are we all agreed? Agenda item 2 is another decision to take business in private. Members are invited to agree that we consider a draft letter or report for the 22-23 budget in private future meetings. Are we agreed? Excellent, thank you very much. We now turn to our next item in business, which is an evidence session on the committee's pre-budget work in preparation of the Scottish Government's publication of its 22-23 budget. The focus of this morning's session is on the spending required in 22-23 to meet the interim child poverty targets in 23-24. I am very pleased to welcome to our panel this morning, who are joining remotely, Chris Burt, who is the Associate Director for Scotland of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, John Dickie, who is the director of the Child Poverty Action Group, and Bill Scott, who is the chair of the Poverty and Inequality Commission. Good morning, colleagues. Thank you for joining us this morning. A few housekeeping points to mention before we kick off. Please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn on your microphones before you start to speak. That includes colleagues joining remotely. If witnesses are looking to come back in for any particular reason, please put R in the chat box so that I can see that you are looking to come back in. Do not feel that you have to answer every single question. If you have nothing new to add that has not been said by others, that is okay. We have about an hour and 15 minutes for this session, so I would like to invite colleagues to ask questions in turn, starting by Marie McNair, please. Is Marie there? I think that she has maybe lost connection. I know that Pam was looking to come in at this point as well on the first section, so Pam Duncan-Glancy, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning. Thank you very much for coming along. I would just like to know the panel's assessment of trends in child poverty in Scotland, the likelihood that we will meet the targets and do you think that there is any way other than social security to meet the targets? Any particular preference for who goes first? I will take it from top left around the corner. I will start with Bill Scott, then Chris Barth and John Dickie, please. Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation to provide evidence this morning to the convener and the committee. The commission has done a lot of work on evaluating whether we are likely to meet the interim targets. Our assessment at the moment is, unfortunately, that we are unlikely to do so. There has been an increase in child poverty. That is the trend. It is upwards rather than downwards. That means a lot of work that we need to be done in the next two years to achieve the targets. Social security will have to do most of the heavy lifting simply because the other levers that are available to the Scottish Government, such as tackling low pay or reducing housing costs, generally take longer to achieve results. If you want to change the economy to provide more better-paid jobs, that takes time and to build more social housing. Social security will, unfortunately, have to do most of the heavy lifting. That is why increases in social security are going to be necessary to meet the targets. We are going to need to see a significantly higher-level investment in tackling poverty, both to meet the interim targets, but even more to meet the 2030 targets. That investment should be across the board and not just on social security. It should mean that every public pound that is spent should have some means of measuring whether that will assist us in achieving the targets. That means looking at the budget in the round rather than just at social security. What else can be achieved through the other spends on infrastructure, for example? Can we reduce transport costs below income families and childcare costs, which are also a significant barrier to work? There is a lot that could be done, but in the shorter term, I think that a lot of the heavy lifting is going to have to be done by social security. I won't repeat much of what Bill said, as a lot of what he said I would agree with, as he said, how poverty has been drifting up over the past couple of years. I don't think that anybody would credibly suggest that it won't have gotten worse during the pandemic. We did a lot of work on that just prior to the election and studied what are the different kinds of means that we could get to the targets. I suppose that my key message is that we can meet those targets and we should, but it's not going to happen by accident. As Bill has set out, the investments that we put into housing and getting people better jobs are vital, and we need to do more, but let's face it. The interim target has to be met by April 2024. Social security is going to have to do, Bill called it, heavy lifting. That's right. Even the doubling of the child payment, which needs to happen very soon, we are about to update our modelling in poverty in Scotland, but I would have thought that we will still be four or five percentage points short of the target. We've got a long way to go, and social security in the short term is going to have to do the heavy lifting. We shouldn't forget, too, that the massive investment that we're putting into social housing is a protection against poverty. We have to keep that funding going and go further. It's not like the spending there isn't having an impact, it's just that housing costs are less likely to drive down these overall poverty rates, but let's not overlook the importance of investment in better homes for people. I very much echo what Bill and Chris have both said. There's no question in terms of the clock ticking to the 23-24 interim child poverty targets. There's no question that the priority needs to be investment in social security and using Scotland's social security levers to make real progress and achieve those targets. I suppose that we're just looking at the longer term picture to understand what's happened in terms of child poverty trends. The reality is that the rising levels of child poverty that we've seen since the early 2010s are very much a result of extraordinary cuts to the value of social security at UK level. That's what's driven up levels of child poverty cuts to social security at the same time as people have seen real insecurity and continued to experience low pay and lack of hours in the labour market. That's what's driven up child poverty. The reality is that the levers that we need to use to bring down in the short term those levels of child poverty social security will need to be top amongst them. As Bill and Chris have also said, social security alone won't achieve the child poverty targets—certainly not the 2030 child poverty targets—but investment in social security and Scotland investment in the Scottish child payment, at the very least, doubling that in this coming budget, is essential to achieving those targets. Can you lay the foundation on which the wider action that we've touched on already can be built that will take us towards and enable us to achieve the 2030 targets? Before I bring Pam in, if she's got any supplementaries, I can see that Bill Scott had something additional to add around housing costs as a driver of poverty. Bill, would you like to come in to articulate that, please? As Chris has said, investment in social housing needs to continue at a higher level if we are to progress towards the targets. However, at the moment, poverty in Scotland is about 2 per cent lower than it would otherwise be simply because Scotland has more social housing than other areas of the UK. Therefore, housing costs for some low-income families are lower, and because we measure relative poverty after housing costs, that reduces the proportion of low-income families that are in poverty in Scotland. I very much agree with Chris, and, of course, with what John Scott said as well. That's really helpful. I have two very brief follow-up questions. One of them is whether or not you felt that doubling the child payment as soon as possible as in now and again next year would have an impact on meeting the targets. On the point about housing and social housing, are we currently targeting that social housing to the right families in Scotland? We'll go in reverse order this time. John Dickie, first, please. On doubling the child payment, we've been saying that, at the very least, it needs to be at least doubled in the coming budget. The modelling suggests that, in itself, we wouldn't meet the interim child poverty target, but it will give us a period in which to understand the impact that is having and look to the next budget to see what further investment would be needed to meet those child poverty targets. As you are well aware, Fraser Vallander modelling that was done for the commission and, no doubt, Bill will pick up on that as well, it is suggested that we meet the interim target at a £40 per week Scottish child payment that would be needed if that was the only policy leaver that was impacting on that interim target. That is what is all things being considered, assuming that none of the other policy leavers will have an impact between now and 2023-24. That is what would be needed, but we still have time to ensure that investment in housing and childcare starts to have the kind of impact that is needed to achieve, particularly building the infrastructure that is needed to achieve the 2030 child poverty targets. At the very least, we need to see the doubling in the coming budget and then take stock and ensure that, if further investment is needed, that investment is made. Those interim child poverty targets were set knowing trends at UK level, knowing cuts at social security at UK level or driving up levels of child poverty. There were not any qualifications or caveats to those targets. The leader of targets of the entire Parliament is cross-party support. Meet those targets, they are statutory targets. We need to do everything that is needed to achieve that. To maintain momentum, we need to build the foundation on which the 2030 target can be achieved. Our modelling before the election showed that a £40 per child per week child payment would probably get us to interim targets. I should say that when we did that modelling, we did not have the latest survey and the latest survey showed that child poverty was getting worse. It will definitely let us not mess about. A £40 per child payment would make a significant difference, but it might not necessarily get us all the way there. In our modelling, we also showed, for example, that if we had a £25 per child payment to get to the targets, all parents would need to be working on the real living wage, local housing allowance would have to cover private rents, social rents would have to be frozen, and the benefit cap would be removed. There is a lot of road to travel with just a £20 per child payment to get us to the targets. The challenge is that, if we are not suggesting that social security will do all the work to get us to interim targets, what are the things that are, what are we going to do to get there, and how are we going to know if they are going to work? Your question on housing is a really good example of that pattern. There has been a significant amount of social house building over the past few years. That is lookset to continue, which is really welcome, but is it going in the right places? Is it supporting the right families? We know, for example, that single parents face very high housing costs and are often pushed into poverty simply because of their housing costs. Are we providing enough houses in the right places that would fit those families? We also know that we do not have enough properties for single people, so that is driving people into poverty as well. Frankly, is the affordable housing supply programme targeted best to lift people out of poverty? At the moment, we do not really know, and that is something that, frankly, we need to get a good handle on quickly. I am not going to add very much, because some of the commission's positions have already been set out by John and Chris. We would like to see an immediate rise to £20 at the very least. We do believe that a £30 targeted rise at those priority families and families containing disabled children, disabled parents and lone parents could just about get us over the line, as could a £30 rise if the universal credit cut was not made. That will have a massive impact in making it more difficult to reach the targets. If another £20 uplift ends, another 20,000 children are immediately going to be plunged into poverty by that cut. If the cut was not made and we managed to uplift the Scottish child payment to around £30, either by increasing it to that for everyone or by some targeting, we could just about get over the line. However, it is going to be very difficult. I want to continue to re-emphasise that we need to think how we are tackling poverty across the board. Every investment decision that is made by the Scottish Government, we need to think, is that acting to reduce child poverty and how? We need to see the details, not just a general, well, we are creating jobs and therefore poverty will be reduced. The real problem is that employment used to be a route out of poverty, but now two thirds of the children living in poverty are in working households. We need to increase the income for those households who are in work. That means better jobs, better pay, more regular hours, predictable hours, etc, so that families can budget so that we really need to look at infrastructure investment in childcare and in transport, particularly buses, because that is what most low-income families used to get to work or involve themselves in the community. That is where we need to see how is the public pound working to reduce poverty? John, I can see that you are looking to come back in there. Yes, I just picked up on Pam's point about housing and whether it was clear enough that investment in housing policy was having the impact that it should be having. Without repeating what Bill and Chris have said, we need to understand what we mean by affordability and affordable housing in Scotland and make sure that that is looked at through a child poverty lens. The investment that has been made in social housing in Scotland over the years has been an important protective factor. It is not more analysis, more clarity on the extent to which the way that that investment is being made and the kind of housing that is being built is contributing to the child poverty targets would be helpful. Thanks, John. Returning to the theme of the key drivers of poverty, have any of you got an estimation for the total value of social security cuts that have been made and the impact that they have had over the last decade in child poverty levels in Scotland? Oh, John has disappeared. Bill or Chris? I think that Bill may have frozen as well, convener, so if I could answer in part that. I mean, I think that, as John O'Ludw tune has first answered, so-called welfare reform has driven the rise in poverty over the last few years. It has been hundreds of millions of pounds taken out of the system, but I think that we are where we are. Let's look at the immediate issue. We are about to see the biggest overnight cut through the basic rate of social security since the welfare state was started. This is a bleak picture that families across Scotland face. The UK Government must stop the cut to universal credit and working tax credits. We were getting past the point where a message on this needs to be subtle, but it just needs to stop. It is an awful decision that is going to cause poverty in Scotland and across the UK. Yes, there has been damaging cuts to social security over the last few years. The chancellor spotted that at the start of the pandemic when he knew that people were going to have to rely on universal credit for the first time, and so they made it slightly more adequate. Nothing has changed over the course of the pandemic. The social security system is inadequate going in, but it still is now, so the cut really needs to stop because it is going to cause misery over this winter if it goes ahead. Thanks, Chris. Bill or John, do you have anything further to add on estimations of cuts under impact on poverty? I would add that our own modelling suggests that the cut to universal credit, if that uplift is removed, will push over 20,000 or 22,000 children into poverty in Scotland alone.  The flipside of that is that it is an example of where social security has played a protective role through the pandemic. The uplift has prevented children from being pushed into poverty through a difficult period. As Chris said, there is no but about it. That uplift needs to be sustained. We need to see UK policy working alongside Scottish policy to provide the levels of financial support that families need to protect themselves and to ensure that we meet those child poverty targets. I lost some of what Chris said. I was off air for a small while there. The last estimate that I saw was that the cumulative effect of the cuts from around 2010 onwards to 2019-20 was around £2.2 billion in Scotland alone. It may have increased since then. As Chris said, the 20-pound uplift restored some of the income that had been lost to low-income households over that period. To give you an idea, about half of those cuts fell on priority group families, in particular households containing disabled people and lone parents. Social security is inadequate. We have seen during the pandemic that sick pay, for example, is not enough to cover the costs once we become sick and unable to attend work. The 20-pound uplift was a relief to so many low-income households, and its loss is going to be devastating. It is going to result in indebtedness, rent arrears and homelessness. Eventually, if you want to see the ultimate cause of so many dark drug and alcohol deaths in Scotland, that is what results from homelessness, and we are going to see families broken up. It is going to be a very devastating cut. Thanks, Bill. Certainly, anecdotal evidence having visited food banks in my constituency would suggest that the 20-pound uplift has made a real difference in terms of the number of people that they would have ordinarily expected to come through their doors. It has been a very good thing, so credit where it is due for it coming in when it did. Have you any assessment on the impact of not extending that uplift to legacy benefits and what that has had on levels of poverty in Scotland? In the reverse with Bill. It is very difficult to estimate what has been happening exactly during the coastal pandemic, but what we can look at is usage of food banks, for example. The Trust of Trust reports that there was a massive increase in food bank use at the start of the pandemic, and that, in 2019, destitution had increased by 50 per cent. If there was a massive increase at the start of the pandemic, that is a massive increase over the 50 per cent increase in 2019. Of the families that are using food banks, over half of a disabled person in the household. Again, we are coming down to the priority group families, and lone parents are particularly likely to use food banks. Those are the groups in our society where poverty is deeper. It is not just that those households are in relative poverty, they are in deeper poverty. Again, Trust of Trust surveyed the users of food banks, and it found that the average household income after housing costs for 95 per cent of the users was £280 per month for a family to live on. You can get an idea that food bank use is not people who can afford to buy food elsewhere. It is people who are being referred to food banks by agencies who are dealing with them in absolute crisis. Again, one of the biggest drivers to food bank use is the five-week delay in receiving universal credit payments. That is the main driver that is reported by those who use food banks. The wait for five weeks is almost impossible to deal with. Thanks, Bill. That brings statistics, if ever there was one for us to hear. John and Chris, have you got anything to add on the impact of not extending the uplifted legacy benefits? I would not have a figure to hand on the numbers of children left in poverty as a result of not extending them. We can look into that and see whether there is a figure for that. Just as the uplift has had a beneficial impact for those who have received it, for those who have not received it because they were not on universal credit, Bill explained that the kinds of consequences of that are quite extraordinary. We know from our work and the surveys that families who are already in poverty for the pandemic have been particularly hard hit and have seen their circumstances facing even greater pressures, trying to ensure that children are able to maintain contact with learning during lockdown, providing food during school closures, additional heating, all the rest of that. Those have raged up costs for our lowest income families, where other families may have actually been able to save money over the last year or so. Just on the legacy benefits in particular, this is something that the committee should keep in mind in its future work as well. The explanation given for that extension not happening by the DWP appears to be that it was logistically very difficult in IT systems, etc. Many of the people who are receiving legacy benefits either have long-term ill-health issues or are disabled, yet they still get hungry. We talk about food banks and food poverty. Those are euphemisms for people not having enough to eat. In a country as wealthy as ours, that is completely unacceptable. Over the pandemic, we saw that the Scottish Government and the UK Government do remarkable things such as furlough and bringing in the vaccinations for Covid, yet we were not able to extend payments to people on legacy benefits. I do not think that that is a position that we should accept. As I said, that has caused hunger among people who are already struggling. You do not need a statistic to back that up. I know that I made the sticking to the theme of key drivers of poverty. I know that Pam wanted one final supplementary before we moved on. First of all, I want to put on record that I think that the £20 uplift to universal credit was necessary. We had the lowest form of social security in decades. To take it away will leave families completely destitute, they will be unable to buy food, etc. Everyone has made the point about how serious that is, and it must be reversed. I also think that not including it for legacy benefits was discrimination. Chris, your point about disabled people still going hungry is absolutely key to that, and it should have been applied to that. What I am getting quite frustrated with, and to be honest in both Governments, is the answer that it is logistically difficult, or IT systems make it impossible to start doing work on certain things. We hear that quite a bit. I feel that there is a real need and an urgency to act to put money in people's pockets now, given everything that we have heard. On the basis of the universal credit cut happening, something like 4,000 children in Scotland may no longer qualify for the Scottish child payment. Can you guys think of any mechanism that we could make eligibility for those 4,000 children be retained so that they still access the Scottish child payment? On the same vein, is there anything else we can do with the social security powers in Scotland to start to improve the incomes of families across Scotland at this time? There is an issue around the fact that the Scottish child payment is a top-up to universal credit. If the universal credit cuts go ahead, that means that many families, thousands of families, will lose not just their entitlement to universal credit, but their entitlement to the Scottish child payment. What that flags is, it is really important that we review—and there is already a commitment to review—the legislative basis and the delivery model for delivering the Scottish child payment and look at how we might—are there other models? Are there other legislative bases, for example, establishing a standalone benefit? It would mean that we could ensure that that kind of consequence is not so direct. That absolutely needs to be looked at. We need to, quite rightly, in the way that has happened with the interim bridging payments and with the additional Covid hardship payments. It took a while, but we now have systems in place for delivering additional financial support, with the Scottish and local government working together to get that financial support, at least to some of those families who would otherwise be entitled to Scottish child payment in the run-up to full roll-out of Scottish child payment. There are ways that are found to get financial support to low-income families, and we need to build on that. We need to, in the medium to longer term, look at reviewing the delivery model and the legislative basis for the Scottish child payment, to ensure that it is not vulnerable to cuts to universal credit. Thanks, John. Bill, I think that we have to accept that when somebody loses entitlement to benefit, it is very difficult to keep them in the system. How will you distinguish between someone who has lost universal credit because the £20 uplift has ended or because they have increased the hours that they work and therefore are getting more pay, and then the universal credit entitlement is extinguished? It will be very difficult to keep track of which families are entitled and which families are not. Therefore, you need to think of other routes to provide support to priority families other than just the Scottish child payment. We are relying a lot, possibly, over much on what can contribute to lowering poverty. We could use the other devolved benefits to deliver more support to priority families. For example, we know that families with disabled children and families with disabled parents and lone parents are all at a much greater risk of poverty. Therefore, raising adult disability payment for parents would be a targeted approach for parents to school-aged children. Raising carers allowance for lone parents could help to lift families out of poverty, yet those benefits would be retained even if they started work, particularly in terms of carers allowance if they allowed lone parents to work more hours and retain more pay. You can look at the entitlement criteria and adjust them so that families in the priority groups have more income coming in. That would lift them out of poverty. As I said, because they would retain in work for adult disability payment, that would be a permanent addition to their income, as long as they retained entitlement to that benefit. It would be well targeted, as I said, because we know that 42 per cent of children living in poverty in Scotland are in families with a disabled adult or child. Of the 90,000 children living in lone parent families, 30,000 of them are living in a lone parent household where either the lone parent is disabled or the child is disabled. Again, targeting disability benefits, uplifting them could also be a route to lifting priority groups out of poverty. Before we move on to Chris, you made a comment in the chat function online if you could around employment support allowance and food bank use. Would you mind articulating that so that it is on the record, please? I was referring to food bank use earlier, and more than 50 per cent of the users of food banks are households where disabled person is either a child or adult. That is, in some ways, an indication that those unemployment support allowance, who are people with long-term health conditions and impairments, i.e. disabled people, are much more likely to use food banks. That is why the huge rise in food bank use accompanied by the knowledge that over half of the users are households where a disabled person indicates to me that we are seeing a rise in destitution among those groups that are probably linked to the failure to raise the legacy benefits. I think that, Pam, you have hit upon the tension that is always going to be there between speed and perfection. The way in which I would encourage us to think about it is to bring it back to the individual. The complexity of the support systems that are available for people is mind boggling. Try and do it yourself. Never mind while trying to balance your family, your family budget, keep your kids going and all that sort of stuff. What we are cautionous against is creating another layer of complexity for families in a system that is already fine. We have discretionary housing payments to help people with the bedroom tax. We know that take-up is not as high as it should be, because it is hard to get it. We have heard from people who have really benefited from the experience of how they get the Scottish child payment and the approach that Social Security Scotland has taken—much more human approach, much more inclusive, time-posting them to other support, etc. The raise benefit in doing those things properly, as it were, and sometimes, sadly, that can take time. However, there are definitely routes to take on really immediate problems. Bill's encouragement about prioritising those in the deepest poverty is really important, because we could play a political game where we attack the relative poverty targets. Obviously, people who are closest to the relative poverty targets are in the shallowest poverty, as it were. However, there are people who are facing real immediate destitution just now. As Bill has said, they are often focused in the priority groups. Single parents, people who were disabled, ethnic minority families, and ethnic minority families' poverty rates are almost 50 per cent. That is outrageous. Yes, there is always where there is a will, there is a way, etc. However, we should also be thinking about who are the people who need this most now as a platform to build towards the 2030 targets at which we would be a much better Scotland than we have today. We have covered quite a bit of ground already and some of the themes that we are looking to explore further on in the meeting, but I would like to bring in Emma Roddick now to discuss the Scottish child payment. I am aware that modelling shows that the same amount of money paid through universal credit will be more effective paid through the Scottish child payment in terms of bringing down child poverty. Are you concerned that if the Scottish child payment is doubled around the same time that the uplift to universal credit is removed, that it will be less effective because it will be closing that gap that is being created rather than driving down poverty? I think that ultimately that is right if universal credit is cut. The families who will benefit from the uplift from the Scottish child payment will overall have their family budget, so it will level out. Obviously, it depends on so many kids and things that are in the household. The £20 cut to universal credit understandably is focused on the child poverty targets today, but universal credit provides a level of support to single people, which puts them in destitution. The cut will put them even further in destitution. Single people become parents, which is how humankind works. The fact that we are going to punish single people through the cut to universal credit is something that we should not lose sight of. The child payment is effective in lowering child poverty because it is well targeted at families. We absolutely welcome that, but let us not lose sight of the punishing impact that the cut to universal credit will have on single people. That is very interesting. Thanks, Chris. Bill? I can only agree with Chris. I have pointed out that, before, single people are going to be punished, probably way, harshest by the cut, simply because they will not have the Scottish child payment coming into the household. What results in that? People have choices to make between do they put food on the table or do they pay a rent? Do they pay the electricity bill or do they put food on the table? The higher levels of indebtedness to get into the more they are driven towards desperate measures, and many of them end up homeless. As I said earlier, once they are homeless, they are very likely to develop dependency on drugs and or alcohol. We know what that means in Scotland. That dependence leads to death. You want to solve the drug death crisis in Scotland top people becoming homeless. That is the quickest route to that. Once you are homeless, your life expectancy is going to drop dramatically into your late 30s. We have problems in Scotland and we need to prevent homelessness. That is why the cut to universal credit is so devastating. As I said, there is no question that the cut to universal credit is hugely concerning. From the broader point of view, as Kristen Bell flagged up from a child poverty point of view, we reckon that it will push around 22,000 children into poverty in Scotland alone. Clearly, if that goes ahead, that undermines or cuts across the positive measures that are being taken in Scotland towards doubling the Scottish child payment and increasing it. What that means is that that investment in the Scottish child payment becomes even more important than ever and even more urgent than ever. Ideally, we maintain the uplift. We have the additional investment in the Scottish child payment. We see that doubled and we start to make some very real progress towards the interim target and see that those targets are within sight. However, if that goes ahead, it just makes the investment in the Scottish child payment and the urgency of making that investment even more critical. I am already hearing from quite a few of you rightly that even doubling the Scottish child payment is not going to be enough. My question is what would be enough, what would you see as an adequate amount to be paid through the Scottish child payment as an end goal? What is needed is the level of Scottish child payment that, alongside the impact of other policy interventions on employment, childcare and housing, will ensure that we meet in the short term the interim child poverty target and in the long term the child poverty target. No-one is saying that that should be done through social security alone, but in the short to medium term social security will, as Bill has said, need to do more of the heavy lifting in order to meet those targets, sustain that progress, build the foundation on which change in our labour market, tackling the gender and disability inequalities that exist in our labour market, driving levels of child poverty in that area until the impact of the improvements in childcare that we need to see sustained and built on and until the impact of ensuring housing costs continue to contribute to reducing child poverty. However, we need to see a level of Scottish child payment that will deliver against those targets. Those were targets that were set by this Parliament. We have a Government that is committed to ending child poverty as a national mission. We need to design our social security and design a budget and subsequent budgets between now and 2030 that will deliver on that outcome of ending child poverty. Thanks, John. Chris. I think that your question highlights how important the Scottish Government's work on a minimum income guarantee is, because I wouldn't want to put a figure on what the child payment should be, one thing I should say is that, as a child payment rises, the cliff edge that is created by it at the moment becomes much more of a problem, so I think that that is something that will need to be addressed. Ultimately, we need to look at what is the level of income that we as a society expect people to have. We all have our expectations of the NHS and the brilliant work that it does, but we need to have a collective agreement on what is the floor below which nobody should fall, and then we need to look at the mixture of how work, social security and help with their housing costs help everyone to get to that level. I wouldn't put a figure on the child payment exactly, but it certainly has to be higher than it is now. I'm keen to move on now to talk about areas that you've just touched on around other policy drivers that can help address poverty. I'm keen to bring in Evelyn Tweed at this stage, please, followed by Jeremy and Marie. The contributions that you have made this morning have been very powerful, and I find myself sighing quite loudly. I think that the convener has glanced a couple of times to see if I'm okay. I think that what interests me in this debate and how we're moving forward is that I am getting a lot of letters already from anxious constituents. How are they going to deal with the cuts to universal credit? How is the Scottish Government going to mitigate what they are frightened is coming? In your view, in terms of the new programme for government, can you tell us what you think are going to be the greatest impacts of the policies contained there? I think that some of the interim payments in advance of the child payment being rolled out will be helpful efforts to stop people falling into homelessness, where we've seen over the last 18 months or so local government working so closely with the third sector and the Scottish Government to ensure that people are on the streets in a way that, again, has shown us the kind of art of the possible during the pandemic. Ultimately, the UK Government needs to stop this cut, because there will be citizen vice-bureau staff, staff in homeless support in councils, staff in the Tristle Trust and other food banks worrying about how much more work they're going to do if this cut comes ahead. First, that cut needs to stop. Unfortunately, I don't think that the programme for government will reverse the impacts of that cut. There are well-come things in it, but I don't think that we should get ourselves that the programme for government will fix all of that. That's not the Scottish Government's fault, per se, but there is definitely more that we could do. I think that some of the things in programme for government are very helpful. I'm not going to repeat the one that stressors have already mentioned, but in the longer term, the increased investment in childcare and the childcare infrastructure are absolutely essential for tackling poverty, because poverty is gendered. Women are more likely to be living in poverty than men. That means that those who face childcare responsibilities, particularly when they are the sole carer, are lone parent households.  An increasing childcare provision at low or no cost to those households enables them to enter the workforce, and even more importantly, if they are already in the workforce, to increase their hours without the worry of paying for additional childcare. In the longer term, that is one of the most important investments. The jobs that are going to be created in the green economy are going to be very important, but in terms of solving poverty, we need to think about how those who are furthest from the labour market—again, women, disabled people and so on—will get those jobs, and how we will ensure that those who are in the greatest poverty have not just equal access, but, in some ways, prefer access to those jobs. That means that training, skills programmes have to be directed towards those people. They have to be not just targeted at them but adapted to them, because we have a very low success rate in getting disabled people into work. The disability employment gap is higher in Scotland than in any other nation in the UK, so we need to think very hard about how the programme for government can target the priority groups and help to lift them into the jobs that we hope to create in a wellbeing economy, in a just transition, et cetera. Those phrases are meaningless unless social justice accompanies climate justice. At the risk of repeating myself, the single most important policy that will have the biggest impact is the commitment to doubling the Scottish child payment, which is certainly in the short to medium term. It is now vital that we see that the commitment is for that to happen as soon as possible. That is why it is so important that, in the coming budget bill, we see the resources allocated to doubling that from April next year, so that it starts to have an impact and starts to protect families across Scotland. Chris has flagged the bridging payments. Again, another very welcome investment that will help to support at least those children who are in families in recreative free school meals until full roll-out to under-16s. Other policies that will make a difference support to reduce costs and barriers to participation at school, so that removing curriculum charges and working towards ensuring that all children have a device in connectivity and the ability to use that to be able to participate fully at school, the extension of universal free school meals entitlement—all of those are really important policies that will reduce the costs that families face and provide additional financial support to them. However, the single most important commitment in there is to double the Scottish child payment as soon as possible. That needs to happen. I will, essentially, be part of the budget and start to protect children and families as soon as possible. In terms of the programme for government, is there anything that you are concerned might have unintended consequences as regards child poverty? I haven't identified anything specifically that would say that it's more about ensuring that we inject urgency into the positive commitments and the positive policies that are within the programme for government. This is about urgency and about ensuring that this budget adequately resources policies and the policy intent set out in the programme for government. I'm afraid that I don't know. The reason for that is that what we need to do before programme for government is compiled is that we need to poverty-proof policies. We need to look at the policies and, as I said before, make sure that the public eye is acting to deliver a reduction in poverty. If it is a national mission, then it should be informing the policy content in every area of government, not just in social justice. If we silo it in social justice, we will lose the fight. We need to see it in forming policy and education, in housing and in local government. Who uses those services that local government provides? The lowest-income households, most usually, et cetera, and particularly investment in infrastructure. We would like to see childcare and social care being seen as infrastructure investments that are essential as schools and railways and energy production in terms of a modern economy. In terms of a functioning economy, we saw during the pandemic what the impact of school closure is on women's ability to work, because you cannot work and look after your children at the same time. We need to cover a more modern approach to infrastructure that recognises what is really needed to make a modern economy function. As I said, childcare and social care are essential in that. Thanks, Bill. Poverty-proofing policy and having a cross-government approach is a key theme that is returning to the evidence that we are hearing and is very useful. Chris, do you have anything to add? I will just be very brief. Bill's point around that we do not know is really well made. The Scottish Government has a really welcome commitment to driving down poverty. We have the tackle poverty action plans and all those things. It is great, but I think that one of the unintended consequences of that good intention is that we have hundreds, thousands of individual policy lines that should appear to be targeted at reducing poverty, but very few on the scale that are needed. Focusing on things that we need to do, particularly in the priority groups, would perhaps be more impactful than having hundreds of little things that are not having the impact that we all want to see. Thank you very much, Chris. Now questions from Jeremy Balfour, please. Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you, convener. We spend a lot of time, and rightly so, maybe talking about universal credit, but clearly that is a different parliament, different politicians make that decision. We can have our own views here, but we cannot change that. What we are trying to focus in on as a committee is the Scottish Government's budget and what we can do here in Scotland as MSPs. I would like to go back to the point that Bill made in his opening statement, and that was, and I think that John has picked up as well, the role of benefits in the social security system both short-term and medium-term. The two issues that I would like to reflect on is the Scottish welfare fund. Obviously, that was something that the committee in the previous Parliament looked at. From your impression, is that working? How has it been funded in the right way? Should it be more centralised or devolved down to local authorities? Is the money getting to the right people? Secondly, obviously we now have control of quite a number of benefits here in Scotland, and if there was a political will, we could see an increase in PIP, attendance allowance and all those other benefits. I suppose that it may be more for wishlist than necessarily absolute reality, but of all the benefits that are now under the control of the Scottish Government, which of them would you put more money into to affect child poverty? Would it be PIP, would it be the child children's benefit? If so, would that make a difference to the figures and actually people on the ground? Two questions are first of all around the welfare fund, and second of all around if you were able to invest in one area, which would it be? Starting with Bill, followed by John and Chris, please. As you know, Jeremy, the commission produced a report on how well the welfare fund was functioning during the pandemic and suggesting the number of areas where we would like to see improvement and there could be improvement. For example, digital access and digital only approaches obviously exclude the lowest income households, so there should be other routes to claiming from it. We have to recognise that the welfare fund is a crisis fund largely. There are crisis grants and community care grants, and I am sure that the commission would prefer to see families not being in crisis and having to use the welfare fund. That means having adequate benefit levels to start with. The child payment will help towards adequacy, but we have to keep on returning to that reduction in the support that they get from elsewhere. I agree that it is not a decision of this Parliament. The commission wrote to the chancellor asking that the universal credit cut should not take place, and, unfortunately, we have the same answer as everyone else has until now, which was that it was going to go ahead. I have to make this comment. The comments by the secretary of state that low-income households would only have to work in additional two hours to make up the £20. That is a real ignorance of universal credit, because the clawback in universal credit is £62 in the pound. For every pound extra that you earn, £62 is clawed back from universal credit. If they were to increase their hours and if they were on the minimum wage, they would have to work an additional nine hours, not an additional two hours, and that is if those nine hours are available. The Scottish welfare fund could be improved, should be improved, and we go along with that. I understand a review of how it operates is going to take place. We, as a commission, will feed into that. Could you remind me of the second part of the question, Jeremy? Obviously, we now have, as you know, Bill, pal over a number of benefits, PIP, all the different benefits. Which one would be the best one to increase to meet the targets? I think that I indicated earlier that one of the ways that you could approach it is by looking at increasing the support available to households who are a disabled child or a parent who is disabled. The greatest risk of poverty is having a disabled parent in the household. It accounts for over half of the children in poverty, whether there is a disabled person in any sort in the household. You could look at increasing adult disability payment for parents. In other words, when you completed the application form, if you indicated that you were a parent who had children of school age, you could increase, in other words, pay a premium, a supplement to that household. That would be a well-targeted approach that would increase the income of those households that are at the highest risk, or one of the highest risks of being in poverty. Similarly, you could increase the money going into households with a disabled child in a similar way. As I said earlier, one of the other approaches could be looking at carers lines and seeing if households where there is only one adult looking after a child or another adult, you could increase their payments. Again, by increasing the payments to lone parents, in particular, you could have an impact on poverty. There are a variety of powers available. I believe that we need to look at the adequacy of support for the lowest income families, and that could be done through adult disability payment and child disability payment. On the Scottish Welfare Fund, as Bill says, it is primarily in relation to crisis grants about support for families in crisis. We need to look upstream from the Scottish Welfare Fund and tackle the issues that we have been talking about, such as adequate social security, purity and reward in the labour market to prevent families from being in crisis in the first place. Having said that, the Scottish Welfare Fund has played a really important role, and certainly speaking to colleagues and people with experience elsewhere in the UK, where there is no statutory welfare fund, there is some envy as to what has been available in Scotland. It has provided really welcome support for families in crisis, facing exceptional pressures, not least during the pandemic. It is critical that we sustain the levels of investment that have been made in the Scottish Welfare Fund. That review of the Scottish Welfare Fund has been committed to looking at the issues, because there have been various real issues. We know from our work in working with other organisations working directly with children and families that too many families did not even know about it. The Scottish Welfare Fund has ended up relying on charity handouts and charity hardship funds and on food banks when they may well have been eligible for a crisis grant through the Scottish Welfare Fund. We need to look at awareness, accessibility of the Scottish Welfare Fund, consistency of decisions making across the country, and we need to make sure that, as we do that, we then resource the funds, both the amount in the fund and the administrative capacity of local authorities, to deliver the funds to ensure that the resources are there. We need to make sure that it plays its fullest possible role in protecting families from crisis, protecting families from destitution and ending the needs for food banks in Scotland, but it won't. It won't be the expenditure that works to end child poverty. It prevents some of the worst consequences of child poverty. On your second question, I don't think that it's very clear that I'm notwithstanding what Bill said, that we need to look at the adequacy of Scottish social security across the board. There's no question that, for us, the Scottish child payment is the primary vehicle that we have now of investing in low-income families that will have the biggest impact on the levels of child poverty and likely to have the biggest impact on the Parliament's ability to meet the targets that it set and the Government's ability to fulfil its mission to end child poverty. The Scottish child payment investment in the Scottish child payment has to be the absolute priority. I won't add much on the welfare fund. I think that others have made the point already. The welfare fund is an emergency fund. Let's not pretend that it's about tackling root causes of poverty or the like. On universal credit, I wrote a lengthy rant on this the other week about the fact that the Scottish Government has powers in social security, but the UK Government's powers are bigger, and there's only one Government that has the power to cut universal credit, and that's the UK Government that's doing it. On which would we put more money into? I think that we need to ask ourselves fundamental questions about what the payments are for. The Scottish child payment is a targeted payment to reduce child poverty, so it's the most obvious way to take on the targets. Things like new disability assistance payments, I want the Scottish Government to do their review of the eligibility and the purpose of those payments quickly, because what HIPP and DLA are supposed to do, but don't, is to reduce the additional costs on disabled people to help them to live independent lives. They are not doing that, so we need to think about how we use that tool to do that, as well as the role that can play in reducing poverty. I totally agree with Bill about the potential in those areas, but we need to fundamentally think about what they are for. Thanks very much, Chris. Your point about the UK Government having more powers around social security is interesting, and I would have loved if we had time to have had a discussion around the ability of Governments to deliver demand-led social security without sufficient borrowing powers, but time is against us. I look forward to bringing in Marie McNair, please, followed by Fausal and Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener, and I just first perform all the apologies for my connection issues. I really appreciate the time from the submissions this morning from the groups that are here. I welcome your comments on the need for affordable housing and the longer-term impact that it will have on reducing housing costs and poverty. Looking at ways to support people who mitigate housing costs, we are obviously aware that the policy for both housing benefit and UC housing support costs are reserved to Westminster. The cap on local housing allowance means that many are not getting the full belief that, to move forward on this, the UK Government need to reverse this cut, or do you believe that this is something that needs to be fully mitigated by discretionary housing payments? On LHA rates, I agree that they are inadequate. Frankly, I do not really mind who fixes that. I think that, from the Scottish Government's perspective and from the Scottish Parliament, let us keep building social housing, let us make sure that it is in the right places for the right people. That could be a fantastic part of the green revolution in our economy. Let us build energy-efficient, accessible in every respect of the term houses that keep people's energy bills down, giving them a safe, warm and comfortable place to live. The most powerful thing that we could do is build social housing in the right places for the right people. John Lennon, you are absolutely right to identify that gap between actual rents and the level of support that is available within housing benefit and universal credit that does leave families spending money from benefits that are meant to be for other basic living costs in order to meet their housing costs and pushing families into even greater pressure. We need to look at local housing allowances. I think that there is scope for Government in Scotland to look at the powers that it has around that. We need to look at discretionary housing payments and ensure that the budget includes a funding settlement with local authorities that ensures that the resources are there to continue to mitigate the bedroom tax until that is tackled at source, but also to better mitigate the impact of the benefit cap. Our evidence is that there is real inconsistency across the country in the extent to which local authorities are using discretionary housing payments to mitigate the benefit cap. That is an area where, through adequate funding, clearer guidance and agreement between local and national Government, more could be done to come close to fully mitigating the benefit cap, at the very least. Thank you very much, John. Bill? I am not going to add very much more. I will be repeating most of what I would say. The commission would like to see the LHA at a level where it actually pays people's rents rather than a level that punishes them for being in a higher-rented accommodation, which has no choice over. The vast majority of properties on the market are advertised at levels over the LHA's 30 per cent lowest bracket. A survey in Edinburgh and Lothian showed that more than 90 per cent of properties that were advertised were over the LHA's limit for universal credit. Families have no choice to either take what is available and get punished for it, or, I do not know, they will live on the streets again or they will get into the rent of the years. It definitely needs to be tackled, but, as Chris emphasized at the start, the way to do that in the longer term is to invest more in social housing, which is much more affordable and where there is no cap on rent. Chris, I can see you looking to come in on DHPs. Yeah, just a really quick thing. I mean, I said I did not mind where the money came from, that was going to be a bit flippant. We need to think about this from the position of the individual. Again, a bit like the welfare fund, we are trying to get DHPs to do things that they are not designed for, so it lowers uptake and makes it more difficult on the individual. If we are to fix it, we need to do it in a way that makes it easy for those who are eligible for the support to get it. Thank you. Marie, do you have any further questions? Yeah, sorry about that. I missed some of Chris's first part of the submission there. I think that it is obvious that decent wages, meeting a real living wage and fair terms and conditions are really meeting child poverty targets. Do you have any suggestion about when it would be possible to achieve that and what can be done in respect of existing Scottish Government responsibilities? Also, the responsibility is set in the statutory minimum wage and control of working benefits remains at Westminster. Is it not essential that employment law and social security is devolved to the Scottish Parliament to allow maximum progress for this to be made? Yeah, thanks, Marie. We will go quickly in the reverse order there. Bill first, followed by John and Chris. I gave evidence in another capacity to the Smith commission that employment law should be devolved to Scotland, but at the moment the commission does not have a position on that, so I cannot really comment. What we can do with the powers that we have, I think that we have to do everything possible with the powers that we have. I was very glad to see that the Scottish Government will be insisting on any grants that it gives that the living wage is paid by the recipients of those grants. That is a step forward, but we need to see more done in the procurement area. The London living wage was largely where the campaign for living wage started, and it is spread out across the UK. The London living wage area is a contract compliance requirement of those who are receiving contracts from local government. The recipients of the contract pay the living wage to their workers. I would like to see that, and the commission would like to see that in every Scottish Government procurement contract. We have had pushback on that. We have been told that it is against competition law. We need further clarification on that, because if London local authorities can put it in as a contract compliance requirement, I do not see why the Scottish Government can not. We need further clarity on that, but we need to use every lever available. Again, the small business rates scheme that reduces business rates for smaller businesses is getting our value for money for that, because a lot of the employers are not paying the living wage. Again, could we see more compulsion around whatever we are spending, public money, trying to get a result that provides the workers of the recipients of that public money, their employers, to pay the living wage so that we drive it as something that is the standard in the Scottish economy that you pay the living wage? We have seen the difficulties that the hospitality industry is currently facing because it cannot attract workers. It is the same in agriculture because it cannot attract workers because wages are so low. What can the Scottish Government do? I think that it needs to do much more with the powers that the Scottish Government has, and the commission thinks that it believes us, that we need to do much more with the powers that we have to try to drive towards a living wage economy. Thanks, Bill. John, Chris, if you have anything further to add. Very much echo Bill's points on the role of the Scottish Government and other public bodies in Scotland in terms of potential use of procurement to lever improvements in the quality of work, not just in terms of wages, which is moving towards ensuring, at the very least, that wages are at the real living wage level, but also looking at security of employment and the progression that is available, particularly to women, to develop and increase their earnings in their jobs. The need to lever improvements in family-friendly working policies to ensure that parents are able to balance and juggle the realities of working with the realities of bringing up their children. One other thing to add to what Bill said about the budget and the Scottish Government and other public bodies in Scotland is that, when it is looking at public sector wage settlements and setting, it needs to be looked at through a child poverty lens.  We need to see very clear analysis of that and look at sectors in which women dominate, because we know that child poverty is inextricably linked with women's poverty. The scope for ensuring that a child poverty lens is applied to the work that is done around wage setting in various bits of the public sector to drive up improvements in the quality of work and the rewards from work. Chris, do you have anything to add? I was just in the interest of time. Most of the decisions about people's working conditions, their wages, their hours are made in boardrooms, not in parliaments. We should not necessarily overstate the impact that both the Scottish Government and the UK Government can have on practice. A lot of this comes back to employers. Many employers play good wages, give reasonable hours, give good flexibility, but not all do so. It is also important to drive home the point that people's wages are obviously important, but the number of hours that they work and their ability to access a decent number of hours will have a far greater impact on their overall income. The Scottish Government should not deny its own agency in this space. We need to work with employers to help to drive up people's income from work. As Bill said much earlier in a session, in-work poverty is now endemic in the UK and in Scotland, and that needs to change. Thank you very much, Chris. I am moving on to the next theme around human rights and poverty proofing. I have a question. Where are the gaps in monitoring the effectiveness of policy intervention in tackling poverty and inequality? What monitoring action could be taken? I would reverse the question and say where can we find the bits where we are monitoring at where, because it is not widespread. We need to be able to far more readily assess the impact that our policies are having on broader inequalities and on poverty, because there are not many spaces where we do. In some of the newer policy areas, such as the new social security payments, the Scottish Government is doing quite a good job of trying to assess that as we go along and get handle on eligibility and so on, but it is an area that we have a lot more work to do on. I would echo what Chris said.  There are real improvements in Government and developments, but we are still away. We should not just be looking at proofing policies once they are developed to see what impact they have on child poverty. We have a target to effectively end child poverty by 2030, a national mission committing to ending child poverty. We need to work back from that and look at what policies we need to design that will achieve those outcomes. As part of the design process, we will be looking at what impact to those policies, whether it is childcare, housing, employment, social security, what impact will they have on enabling us to achieve those important targets. We have talked a lot about targets today, but behind those targets are individual children who are being left in families who do not have enough money to give them a decent start in life, with terribly damaging consequences to their education, health, wellbeing and their chances as they grow up and become adults. We need to fundamentally put tackling child poverty at the heart of the budget process to ensure that policies and spending decisions are all contributing to that goal. It is too late to ask whether the policy is effective or not, and what we really need to see are the involvement of those living in poverty—they are the experts on it—in policy development. Only then will we identify what actually works for them. There are policies that are well intentioned, which are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. In some cases, we cannot even tell whether they are doing anything to achieve the intent, and that goes back to Chris's point. We are not measuring some of the impacts at all, but the key issue here is that, if we involve those living in poverty, a human rights approach would say that that needs to be the case. If we want to reduce the poverty of disabled people, then disabled people have to be involved in the policy making process. That is what the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled people says. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says that we have to take into account the child's needs and the child's views. We need to involve children and young people in policy development that is supposed to affect that. Women have to be involved, and particularly lone parents, around the development of childcare policies. So that childcare is not just available, but is wraparound and meets their needs. The most important point is that, if we involve those people from the outset, they can tell you what will work for them. That way, the policy is then tailored to their needs and is a much greater chance at achieving its intent and outcomes that they want to see. Thank you very much indeed, Bill. The final set of questions come from the personification of patients that is Miles Briggs. I thank the panel for joining us today. In terms of saving time, I wanted to put two questions together. First, we know that undertaking a caring role has been a key contributing factor at Link to Poverty. During the pandemic, over 390,000 more people—more Scots—have become carers. It is now estimated that 45,000 young people are an unpaid young carer. I wanted to know the panel's views on priorities for the budget, the 2022-23 budget, maybe specifically around potential reforms to young carers' grants and also around young carers qualifying for carers allowance supplement. The second point on that is about benefit uptake and what you think should be done to improve that. Thank you. The final set of answers will be from John Fallbychriss, and the final word will go to Bill Scott. No question that carers and the families of carers live in, facing very particular pressures with impacts on their income. Very much support investment in young carers allowance and in young carers grants needs to be sustained and developed as part of the overall package of support that is needed towards eradicating child poverty. That needs to be a clear part of it. On benefit take-up, a really good question on something that we have not touched on yet. It is vital that, when we are talking about whatever the benefit is, whether it is young carers allowance or Scottish child payment, benefits need to reach people who are eligible for them, entitled to them and who will benefit from them, both ensure that they are protected and that they have additional financial support, but also if we are going to achieve the child poverty targets that the Parliament and the Government have set for themselves. Take-up is critical in thinking about budget and budget settlements. Part of that needs to be about ensuring that we gain investment in advice and information services, ensure that people are able to access the support that they need and the advice that they need to fully realise their right to the social security support that is available, good work in developing in different ways in terms of inscruting advice, welfare rights and income maximisation advice in education settings and health settings. That means that people are able to access that in the places where they are rather than having to go to specific specialist welfare rights or to different offices, but making sure that that advice and support is available where families are to enable them to take up the financial support that they are entitled to is absolutely critical to achieving the aims that we all want to achieve on child poverty. On carers, some of the thresholds are particularly high for people to be eligible for carers allowances. I am sure that you will forgive me, Miles, for mentioning that lots of carers will be impacted by the cut to universal credit, and they will not be able to work to make up additional income. On benefit uptake, I think that if you imagine how you have got to as an individual access the things that you are eligible to, you have got to go to different people, you have got to hand over different information to different folk, if you were dealing with a bank like that, you would find a new bank. It is far too difficult. We need to have the idea of a no-wrong door, a one-stop shop or whatever you want to call it. It needs to be far easier for people to access what they are eligible to. Income maximisation services, which John has mentioned, are really impactful, but the need for those and the need for excellent advice services are frankly also part of the problem. It is so complex for people to navigate on their own. It is making it easy, but the friendlier service that is provided by the social security agency on the child payment is really important. Thanks, Chris. We have lost you just at the tail end, but I think that you were saying that there was an easier access to the Scottish child payment. I am just losing a picture there. Final word from Bill Scott. I lost you there for a minute, convener. I am glad to hear you. Just to add to what Chris and John have said, there has been research that has demonstrated that providing welfare rights advice on benefits in health settings, particularly GP practices and so on, is a particularly successful approach. The commission really welcomes the additional investment that will go into that, which will mean that there will be 200 welfare rights workers placed in GP surgeries. That will result in much increased take-up. There are hundreds of millions of pounds going unclaimed in Scotland. If that money could be released, it would help to reduce poverty directly in those households that receive the money, but it would also then be spent in low-income communities, generating jobs and sustaining jobs in those communities, because low-income households tend to spend the money when they live. They do not go on expensive holidays abroad, etc. There is a real need to do that. I would also, and the commission also favours approaches where we go to the other places where those living in poverty are likely to be going. If we are concentrating on families with children, schools and nurseries, we need to see investment in welfare rights there. Work done in Edinburgh and other areas has shown that if there is welfare rights in a trusted location like a school, no stigma attached to the approach that welfare rights workers have for support, we can increase take-up significantly in those areas. We really need to see those approaches in the longer term. One really important issue here is that the Scottish Government has stated that, because of the fiscal framework, it cannot run take-up campaigns on reserved benefits, because it believes that there will be clawback from the Scottish Block Grant if there is a move to promote take-up of reserved benefits. That includes universal credit, obviously, pension credits and all the means-tested benefits. That needs to be clarified. I understand that there will be discussions between the Scottish Government and the UK Government. I would like to see it written in that there should be no clawback if there is a promotion to take-up of benefits to which people are entitled by the nature of their circumstances. There should be no clawback. The Scottish Government may be mistaken in its belief that that is how the fiscal framework will be applied, but we need to have that clarified. Otherwise, we cannot have proper benefit take-up campaigns because any big take-up campaign of a devolved benefit has knock-on consequences for the reserved benefits, because premiums could accrue from the take-up some of the devolved benefits. Again, that needs to be clarified going forward. I hope that the discussions between the Scottish Government and the UK Government will clarify that, and we can get ahead and promote benefit take-up to all those who need it. As the three of you have done for the last hour and 40 minutes, the last point that you have made has left us with much to chew over. I thank you all, John Dickie from the Child Poverty Action Group, Chris Bart from Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Bill Scott from the Poverty and Inequality Commission for your time this morning. It is greatly appreciated and will no doubt speak to you again soon. Thank you very much indeed. I will now briefly suspend to allow for the changeover of witnesses, please. Welcome back everyone. We now agenda item 4, which is consideration of the legislative consent motion for the Social Security Upgrading of Benefits Bill. It is a UK Government bill that is introduced in the House of Commons on 8 September. It is following an expedited timetable and is currently waiting second reading in the House of Commons. As the bill changes the law and of all matters, an LCM is being sought of the Scottish Parliament. I would like to welcome Ben Macpherson, Minister for Social Security and Local Government, and Matthew Duff, Social Security Policy Advisor for the Scottish Government. I invite the minister to make a brief statement on the Scottish Government's LCM and then turn to questions from members. I am grateful for the opportunity to be joining you today to discuss the legislative consent memorandum and associated legislative consent motion lodged in the Scottish Parliament on 10 September. I am grateful for your swift consideration of the issue at short notice. As you know, the UK Government has introduced legislation to suspend the triple lock formula for calculating the amount by which state pensions and benefits linked to earnings should be upgraded for the year 2022-23. The UK Government Social Security Upgrading of Benefits Bill was introduced on 8 September. The bill gives UK ministers powers to upgrade pensions and benefits linked to earnings by 2.5 per cent or in line with the increase in prices instead of in line with annual earnings. It also proposes to give equivalent powers to Scottish ministers to upgrade industrial death benefit in Scotland. That provision will affect around 300 recipients of industrial death benefit in Scotland. IDB is devolved but currently administered by DWP under agency agreement. Industrial death benefit is paid to the spouse or dependent of someone who has died as a result of an industrial accident or disease. It was abolished in 1988 for deaths occurring after 1988 and all new claims were abolished in 2012. We were only informed of the decision by the UK Government on 6 September. In light of the tight timescales afforded to us, the need to protect the payments of the 300 IDB clients and our overriding commitment to safe and secure delivery of Scottish disability benefits we have considered carefully how to proceed. I consider an LCM to be the right course of action in order to enable the upgrading of IDB that is required under the terms of our agency agreement with the UK Government. If the agency agreement with DWP were to be terminated, we would have to make arrangements to administer IDB in a short space of time. That would be very challenging. Because industrial death benefit can only be paid if relating to a death that occurred before 1988, many of the 300 cases are over 30 years old and are all held on paper files. If the Scottish Government were to decide to administer IDB to this timescale, it would need to identify relevant Scottish cases and transfer them from clerical files to a new system, which would be time-consuming and require significant resource. It would not be achievable to effectively build a new benefit and progress primary legislation on an expedited basis to this timescale during what is already a benefit delivery programme operating close to capacity with CDP, ADP and Scottish child payment roll-out that are all happening this year and next. Designing, building, undergoing procurement, securing the necessary agreements and collecting the required data for a new system would require significant time and resource. For context, and this is important, the build for Scottish child payment took 17 months and carers allowance supplement took two years from announcement to delivery. Therefore, for practical and delivery reasons on balance, I consider an LCM to be the right course of action. Moreover, the only alternative legal mechanism to a legislative consent motion would be to introduce equivalent Scottish primary legislation. We would need to have primary legislation in place before the Secretary of State concludes its review of benefit rates by mid-November in order to ensure the 300 recipients of the benefit did not fall out of payment. That would mean that scrutiny would have to take place under an emergency timetable with all stages in one day after the October recess and agreement of the UK law officers, Lord Advocate and Secretary of State for Scotland to an expedited royal assent procedures so that the bill was similarly enacted by 26 November. Even if that was feasible, I do not consider that a good use of parliamentary time. Overall, co-operation in this instance is therefore necessary to maintain the agency agreement for IDB and protect the delivery of our existing programme. I want to emphasise that we continue to support the maintenance of the triple lock and oppose the decision to suspend it by the UK Government. A decision we have no control over and we have very little notice of. On a point of clarification, the committee will have noted the letter from the DPLR committee, which has considered this LCM and considered it acceptable in this circumstance. The DPLR committee has identified a minor error in the memorandum at paragraph 4 and 8, which refers to the current bill creating a discretionary power to operate, whereas the bill places a duty on the Secretary of State and in devolved areas on Scottish ministers to operate. Letters to the committee and the DPLR committee will be forthcoming to clarify this point. I look forward to any questions that the committee may have. Thank you very much, minister, for looking around the room to get an indication of questions. I think that your statement throws open areas of concern that we have around interaction between the UK Government and the Scottish Government and the relationship that is there and underlines the reason why we are so keen to have the Secretary of State come before us at a time of her choosing in order to discuss those areas and ensure that the two Governments are working well together and communicating well together to ensure best delivery of social security. Have we got any questions that Pam Duncan Glancy was looking to come in? Thank you, convener, and thank you, minister, for coming and drawing this to our attention. I see no reason why we should not support this. In fact, conversely, I think that, if we do not, we will deny some payments to some individuals, so I agree that a legislative consent motion is the right thing at this time. I would ask, though, that we are consistently hearing that any additional changes to benefits. This morning, we heard some really strong evidence from a number of poverty organisations that we need to be doing things around eligibility and disability benefits, eligibility and carers benefits sooner rather than later. So, we are consistently hearing that the system is almost at capacity in terms of the safe and secure and in delivery of what we are already delivering. Is now the time to start looking at the capacity in that system and considering what additional resources might be needed? Pam Duncan Glancy, for your statement of support for the course of action and that important question, your point about resource will be aware of the significant resource both in terms of capacity building, structures and IT equipment and systems and, of course, the agency physically itself and the significant staff investment that has gone in and is ongoing in the recruitment process that continues at pace. The significant resource is going into Social Security Scotland. I am not fully sighted on all the evidence that you heard this morning due to coming to this committee, but I am aware of the different considerations that stakeholders are undergoing in terms of what the wider social security programme looks like and what we are doing in the round. I should say that the social security system is at a crucial point of delivery in terms of next year. The roll-out of child disability payment this year—a full roll-out in the months ahead—will be a significant milestone and then adult disability payment next year. The undertaking of safe and secure transfer of existing cases is as quickly and as safely and securely as possible. We have to do that in a way that builds very strong foundations for the system and, most importantly, delivers payment to people who are expecting payment, but also in a manner that gives us the capacity in the years ahead of a strong foundation and makes sure that we do not have a two-tier system where some people in Scotland are in a more benefited position than others as a result of case transfer. There are all those considerations going on. I do not feel now that it is potentially the time to talk about matters in the round with regard to disability benefits, but I am sure that that is something that we will talk about collectively in the weeks ahead. Of course, the cabinet secretary is coming to committee next week, so I wonder whether the wider programme will be a point that you will wish to discuss with her. I appreciate the response, minister. Are there any other questions? Miles? Thank you, convener, and I reiterate your point about intergovernmental links. I think that that is something that we have to see improved. Good morning, minister, and Mr Duff. You mentioned that all those records were in paid perform. I wonder if you could give the committee any information about what percentage of records now within Social Security Scotland are still in paid perform. In terms of Social Security Scotland, we are building an electronic system, an agile electronic system, where people can make paper-based applications if they wish because we are committed in the 2018 act and in our principles around inclusivity to make sure that people can apply in a way that is most suitable for them. That is appropriately processed into our wider IT infrastructure. What Social Security Scotland is delivering, the living benefits that we are delivering, seven of which are new, are electronically managed and organised. However, those are historic cases that have been transferred under the Scotland Act 2016 to devolve responsibility. We are administering them under an agency agreement for a number of reasons, one of which are the practicalities that you highlight. I will bring in officials in a minute, but as I talked about, in my opening remarks, the benefit was closed some time ago, and that is indicative of why it is in paper format. Matthew, do you want to say any more? I would just emphasise that point. With industrial injuries, disabled benefits in particular, they are almost entirely clerical. It is worth raising that that is a major challenge for us going forward. Moving those clerical files on to a modern and updated system is part of the challenge, but it is an important point to raise in this context that that will be a big challenge for that particular suite of benefits. That is helpful. Given that we have seen cost double for the establishment of Social Security Scotland, has that piece of work significantly been under resourced to meet some of the transfer? No, because we are delivering that with DWP under an agency agreement. The costs that are going into making sure that we have a very strong foundation and deliver social security in Scotland proficiently through the period ahead, as we have done since 2018, is to make sure that we have the appropriate staffing. We are on a trajectory to have similar costs of administering social security in Scotland, as the DWP has. We are doing that in a very appropriately efficient and professional manner, as you would expect. Just looking at the original estimates, the Social Security Scotland staff requirement has doubled from the original estimate of 1,900 to over 3,500. What you have just said does not add up to what has happened? I do not think that that is fully relevant to the LCM, but I will be happy to follow up with Mr Briggs and the committee afterwards. There has been correspondence or parliamentary inquiries on those matters from Mr Briggs already, as far as I am aware. The initial estimates have increased, but in terms of the delivery of social security in Scotland on the trajectory that we are on at the moment, the percentage of spend on social security on delivery will be similar to that of the DWP. You have to remember that we are recruiting those staff in order to deliver the benefits that the people of Scotland have asked the Parliament to do in the elections and that we have committed to as parties through the 2018 act. We are creating good employment opportunities and wider macroeconomic benefits, so there is significant benefit from both a client's perspective and the wider perspective in communities of Scotland of what we are doing in social security in Scotland. I have let the conversation go slightly tangential from the matter before us. I know that Pam Duncan Glancy was wanting to ask another question, but that is fine. I am sure that we will have further opportunities to explore some of the issues that have been raised beyond the LCM before us. I thank the minister for his time this morning and Mr Duff as well. It is very much appreciated. We will now move into private session.


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