Nid見du ffordd, wrth gwrs, ac yn gweithio i gael y 18 o gweithio i gwrsfyrno ar y Ffwrn Fholdd Cymru efo'r 2014. Fawr ei ffordd o newid i wneud y mwyafodol, ac allan iddo i ddisgrifennu efoemau a'r bwrw edrych i ffordd ti'r modилсяau yr ond mylliant? Linda Fabiani ar hyn wedi eu cymdeithasol, yn cael ei osii rhydwyr, whenthiedig alias i gyfaint gan ei ffyrdd y sylfaen. Fodd iddod, mae nhw'n gweithio i gael i gael y plasau i'r cyffennid gan kidsig. Oedden i agendaethau phaith wedi cael siwydd gael gwaith y gwahanol a phaith y gwahanol i gwahanol a phaith y gwahanol ond i ddigonol yn llwyffоб.那個보다eth peithio a phaith. Dwi'n gweld i agendaethau phaith 3 â gwaith y gwahanol sy'n gweithgwch ar y gwahanol. I would like to welcome this morning to the committee Carla McCormack, policy and parliamentary officer at Poverty Alliance, Morag Johnson, assistant director of financial services at Glasgow City Council, Cliff Dribara, benefits manager of City of Edinburgh Council, Brian Cooke, head of revenue services at North Lanarkshire Council, Jeremy Hewer, policy advisor of Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Keith Dribara, policy manager of City of Edinburgh Scotland, Marian McManus, divisional housing manager at North Ayrshire Council and also Alachow and Jonathan Sharmer, policy manager at COSLA. The format here this morning is around table and the idea is that we try rather than have a formal question and answer that people can pick up points and run with them, challenge the information that is presented. Members of the committee will get a chance to make observations or ask questions, but we should try and keep it as fluid as possible and try and examine as many areas as possible. I'll start the ball rolling just by throwing something out and I'm going to come to Keith Dribara first. I possibly could have come to Marian McManus but it's on the basis of the paper that Alachow gave us because at point 23 in their document it said that for several councils the issue of bedroom tax legacy arrears remains a problem. I'd like to hear the association expand on that but I just thought I would come to Keith first to ask from your point of view do you concur with that and to what extent are we talking about this legacy being a problem? From our perspective, just to say first that the funding given on DHP by the Scottish Government has been successful on local authorities done very well in mitigating the impact of the bedroom tax based on that funding. Looking at our stats, we saw a 25 per cent increase in health and benefit cases last year and a knock-on impact on social rent arrears which went up 33 per cent. Rent arrears are at the highest level they've been since the recession at Sitton's advice period but, obviously, homelessness and eviction rates are broadly stable. I'd say that on the whole local authorities and RSL housing providers that I've done well in mitigating the impact of the bedroom tax, though this does remain an issue in what you do about clients who have DHP but they still have that rent arrears behind them whether they're able to repay that or not and what the next steps will be. Obviously, your paper has instigated the question. You've heard from someone who's taken an overview of the situation from those who are coming to them but from your perspective, why that information? Yes, obviously it was welcome the funding that we received from the Scottish Government to mitigate fully in 2014-15 and obviously the position for 2015-16 going forward. The funding that was available to local authorities in 2013-14 didn't fully mitigate the charges on tenants at that time and that's why there are a number of people who haven't received discretionary housing payments to cover that period, which is resulting in the legacy arrears for that period. For other local authorities, in individual circumstances, is there something peculiar to your situation? We've got just over 1100 cases of our authority but we've got legacy arrears arising from 2013-14 and that's about £475,000 due to us. A number of them, and even as we find this year, are because of non-engagement. We've made offers of help of DHP but there are still, even last year, where we couldn't help all the lost experience when we were making partial contributions of DHP for the amounts that we're losing and they've just been unable to make that money back up. Is that the same for other councils? Certainly for Adam Burra, the experience is very similar to North Lanarkshire for 2013-14. For 2014-15 we have very, very few claimants left now that haven't engaged. It has been a bit laborious, letters, door knocking etc, but we're pretty much there for 2014-15. There are legacy arrears for 2013-14 and we weren't able to fully fund that year. Obviously from Glasgow City Council's perspective we have to engage with over 60 registered social landlords if we don't have our own housing stock and certainly again for 2014-15. We've almost processed all of the applications that are required for the bedroom tax in 2014-15 but we have had a lot of inquiries and engagement from RSLs asking about previous years but again a similar situation. The DHP fund can't go back. Jeremy, from your perspective, is there a particular issue or is it similar to what you hear from the local authorities? I think there is an issue, certainly. Obviously in 2013-14 because the situation changed during the course of the financial year with additional funding being made available I think in September or October time which enabled local authorities to perhaps be more liberal in their interpretation of who needed discretionary housing payments. That obviously did make a big difference but I think that to all the end of the financial year there were some authorities that had not actually spent their full allocation and our hope was that perhaps those that actually had perhaps some money still in the pot might be able to look at back cases but in terms of the support that we did get from local authorities it was by and large very positive and certainly during that financial year cases that the HAP had not been successful in getting DHPs when more funding became available the local authorities, prior to that, got in contact and said that we could now support those people. Before coming to you Alec, I just wanted to give Carla the opportunity even from the poverty alliances point of view those affected by the rears, how big an issue is that? To be honest with you it's not something that we have heard a great deal about and there would generally be more cast or housing associations that would hear directly on that so I don't have much to add I'm afraid. Thank you convener. When we spoke to the cabinet secretary I asked about the issue of a rears coming from 1314 and she made it clear that the level of funding that had been made available to the DHP was in excess of that that was required to deal with issues of the under occupancy charge in the current year and that it was within the discretion of local authorities to use any surplus to look at a rears from previous years. Now what I'd like to ask is is anybody aware of a local authority that is currently doing that using that surplus in the DHP discretionary housing fund to look at previous years a rears and more importantly perhaps is there evidence of local authorities who might wish to do that but simply don't have the flexibility or resources to achieve that? At North East Council, for 1415, the allotted money that we received will only fund the number of cases that we have for 1415 so we don't have any surplus that we can use to back date for 1314 but obviously if there was funding available for that we could look to do that. The fund that we've been notified that will get through the course of the year, both from the DHP and from the distribute from the Scottish Government, I think was predicated on the 1415 case in Values and I don't expect to have anything surplus that unfortunately to go back the way. Exactly the same, that City of Edinburgh in fact if anything we're going to be slightly overspent in 1415 because I think the estimates of the under occupancy levels were difficult to determine accurately so we've got a slight overspending 1415 projected. Having looked backwards there's still issues but Jonathan Sharma from COSLA you've indicated that looking forward there might be a potential problem if the UK Government doesn't commit to the moneys going forward for DHP, you think there's an issue of pending? Is that a fear that you have with some substance? We have the 35 million confirmed from the Scottish Government for as far as the Scottish draft budget is concerned so that is in place. We just need to see what happens with the DHP. Our feeling is that there's nothing that's come forward to suggest that there would be anything different from the assumptions that the Scottish Government has made around what the DHP will provide so we just need to see what that will come out with. I suppose the more general point is that we have an agreement with the Scottish Government to look at the actual experience for each of the local authorities in terms of mitigating the bedroom tax. We will be doing that come May time next year when there are official statistics available about the amount of bedroom tax liability in each authority and the extent to which that's been mitigated by the councils, whether that gives us an opportunity to talk about things like the 13-14 arrears. I think that's still a little bit open there. I think we are guided by our members as to exactly how much of an issue that is. We can certainly take those kind of arguments back to the Scottish Government nearer the time in terms of finalising the 14-15 position. I think that, from Glasgow's perspective, we do have some concern about the 15-16 allocation, but not necessarily with regard to the Scottish Government, it's the DWP. Glasgow has a history of awarding DHPs prior to all those welfare reform changes, regularly maybe over £1 million a year. Certainly our understanding of the allocation last year was that there was a risk that that could have been significantly impacted, significantly reduced, but we are concerned that that might be the case in 15-16. The implications are that it's the other tenancies that are affected, it's the private landlord households that are impacted as a result of that, so I think that that is a risk. I just want to commend on that as well. We've had quite a few people raise with us that they're concerned that the discretionary housing payments are being used almost solely to mend against the bedroom tax, and currently there are other exceptional circumstances increasing liquid sanctions and the benefit cap particularly. People, these people are going to find themselves as well also relying on discretionary housing payments, and if all that is used for the bedroom tax, then we have to think about how we fund these other cases as well. That's a question that's come up before, Keith, from GAS. I was about to say pretty much the same thing, that DHP was never set up just for the bedroom tax. It's just become the funding route for the bedroom tax, so it's important that those who lost out under previous reforms don't do those out as a result of this. Possible future reforms to housing benefits, or under 25s, could again be the funding route to help those kinds of clients. It's important that we know that there is additional pressures, not just the bedroom tax on the DHP funding. Before I come to the deputy convener to ask a question, can I ask whoever it is in the public gallery whose electronic device is clearly operating because it affects the recording, so could you please put it on silent or on airplane mode because we can hear it here? Thank you, convener. It's just gone through a number of the written submissions that we've received in advance of today's session. I'll start with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. We're not at your conclusion. You say that, given the resource disposal and the limits to intervention imposed upon it under the current devolution settlement, the Scottish Government has managed to mitigate many of the negative aspects of welfare reform. North Lancer Council specifically says about discretionary housing payments that the Government intends to negate the impact of the bedroom tax has been successfully achieved. The council suggests that the level of funding that it has through the Scottish welfare fund currently meets local needs. Anyone can comment on that, but specifically the organisations that I mentioned. I suppose that we get a question, do you think that the Scottish Government is doing a pretty good job in terms of trying to mitigate effects of welfare fund with its limited resources and with its limited competencies in this area? With the resources that have been allocated, I would say that our members are very appreciative of the intervention that has been made by the Scottish Government. Indeed, speaking to colleagues south of the border, I think that they cast envious glances at things like the full mitigation of the discretionary housing payment and the council tax reduction in particular. Obviously, south of the border, they have great worries about the local welfare arrangements that are replacing the social fund. On behalf of the DHP, the Government's intentions have been met. We are contrasting in the current year of 2014-15. We have made awards of £2.6 million for DHP against bedroom tax. In the previous year, that was only about £1.3 million. The £2.6 million plus in the new case at the end of the year will exhaust the deductions that we have had for the SPI room subsidy. From that perspective, I think that, yes, the resources that we have made available to us through the Scottish Government have affected the 2014-15 year. Just about, similar to Cliff's comments, we have just about got everybody. We are down to probably the last 100 or so, between 100 and 200 cases that have not engaged at present. We are, as Cliff, telefoning, lettering, door-knocking and trying to get that final application from them. We weren't one of the organisations to be mentioned, but we have said that so far the measures taken to mitigate against welfare reform are very welcome. We have highlighted in our submission the importance of the lick beyond welfare or beyond mitigation now, and we need to think about how we can stop people finding themselves in this situation. While the Scottish Government has had many successes, the Scottish welfare fund overall has worked very well. Last year, for the first year and over a decade, Scotland has seen child poverty figures rising. While there have been successes, we have to be very aware of the fact that we need to tackle this problem, especially before we completely reverse the triumph of falling child poverty. I had highlighted that as well. I wonder if you can say what that means in practice. It is well and good to say to look beyond mitigation, but what does that mean on a practical level? I am very happy that we are a welfare reform committee as well. I appreciate that you are a welfare reform committee. From our point of view, in the budget, what it means on a practical level is early intervention. It means helping children while they are still in school to break that intergenerational cycle of poverty. It means trying to get to people before they are in that case where they are unable to feed themselves somewhere and they are going to food banks and things like that. What that means on a practical level is exactly what the Scottish Government has done. Mr Cook has just spoken there of the efforts of Northlatch Council, a council that I will always praise, if Mr Cook is aware of that, to reach out to people on a proactive basis. There is some evidence of that, is there not? I think that there definitely is. With discretionary housing payments, I know that other people in the room will know this much better than me. From what we have heard, I know at the start that there are problems with people who have thought that the bedroom tax has been abolished, for example. The dreaded paper person thought that they do not need to do anything about that, but I know that local authorities and the housing associations were very good in targeting the people who needed to apply for the DHPs to make sure that they did not miss out. That was an example of being proactive in early engagement, which worked really well in helping people at an early stage. Keith-Anne-Dynge, on the points on moving past mitigation. I think that there is no doubt that the Scottish Government has done absolutely the right thing in mitigating. Local authorities have done very well in making sure that that happens on the ground, but moving on, we need to look at empowering the individuals who are affected, not just protecting them. We need to make individuals and communities more resilient to the impact of changes, because the Scottish Government cannot mitigate everything that happens. We have to ensure that the people who are affected are able to help themselves and, particularly on that point, universal credit is probably the biggest change in all of welfare reform. People are very much going to need to be financially illiterate and digitally illiterate as well, so moving on, there is a case to be said that mitigating welfare reform will involve empowering people who are making sure that they have access to digital internet and are able to use it and are also able to budget well as well as cope with monthly payments. I suppose that those are practical ways in which the Scottish Government could be looking to mitigate future reforms. As welcome as the mitigation measures are, as the report that the Sheffield Hallam did to your committee pointed out, £1.6 billion has been taken from the Scottish economy, and you have some people who have been hurt really hard. The discretionary housing payment estimated that that knocked £35 off the effect on every working-age adult, so it came down from £495 to £460 per working-age adult in terms of the losses. Obviously, that is a huge amount to compensate for, particularly for some of the very vulnerable people, because it was particularly incapacity benefits that hit the hardest. The average loss was about £3,500 for those affected. I think that this is where we are really coming from in terms of the discussion that we are seeking with the Scottish Government is to talk much more strategically and holistically about the impacts of welfare reform, much of which potentially is still to come. I think that that raises the real fear amongst our members. I think it is about, as Carla and Jeremy have said, it is about how you can really help people cope and support people in a different way. I think that we need to have that kind of discussion. It is not necessarily just about throwing money at something. One of the key things is that we do not just keep looking at bits in isolation here. We do actually start to understand that these impacts cut across and individuals are experiencing a range of challenges as a result of the reforms. It is about how you get those people to be able to cope a lot better with that. That is the kind of discussion that we are looking for with the Scottish Government. Annabelle, you want to ask a question? Yes, I do. Good morning. Just a couple of points. To continue with the discussion that we are having and we are looking at issues beyond mitigation, obviously we have going on in parallel with the Smith commission. I note that it was in terms of the ELACO written submission to the committee this morning that, as an optimum welfare function should be wholly devolved to Scotland under the post-referendum settlement currently being considered by the Smith commission, and the caveat subject to a reasonable financial settlement would appear to present the best means of ensuring that Scottish citizens retain a humane and acceptable standard of living in difficult times. I am looking at Mary Ann because she is the representative here today from ELACO, but it would be interesting also to hear from others as well, because we are saying beyond mitigation, well I think that this is a very pertinent element of that discussion, but perhaps computer Mary Ann would like to comment. I think that at the moment that is linked to the Smith commission and what the outcome of that might be on any recommendations that come from that, but certainly in the advent of universal credit, it has just been announced that the first tranche will roll out in Scotland, and certainly North Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire are in that first tranche, which will be moving to universal credit, albeit to small caseload and impact on councils that that will have, particularly landlord rental income and the impact that will have on individuals, and also the work on the local authorities in implementing that in the short term if there were to be some other proposal regarding welfare for Scotland. I understand that SFHA also had some comments in the written submission about the Smith commission process. Yes, I mean I think certainly you cannot see I think housing benefit, which is the thing that's been, if you know, thrown up as possibly the most likely candidate for devolution should stand in isolation that because of the complexity of lives and the interactions between the various agencies, it would make much more sense for a whole scale devolution of social security benefits. Can I just say, convener, also that COSLA, I think, had asked for the, along with the Scottish Government, for the halt of the roll out of universal credit, perhaps the representative here today would like to say more about why they have called for that. Well, we haven't called for that. What we've put or posited to or will be positing to our leaders is that obviously Smith is doing the work that he's doing and will be producing a heads of agreement. All we would like to do is to have a look at what actually comes out of that heads of agreement and what it's actually going to say about detail and proposals. I think it's only right that we, being aware that universal credit is now set to roll out to a further extent in Scotland, as well as a question that we already had about the single fraud investigation service, which is being rolled out in parallel, that we would look to see whether that was a question we wanted to ask back to the UK Government with the support of the Scottish Government as to whether we wanted in Scotland for things just to be put in abeyance until further developments in terms of the Smith recommendations could be taken forward. Sorry, I didn't mean to misquote what the commission submission says, so it was that COSLA have asked DWP to delay universal credit roll out in Scotland until the Smith commission has reported conclusions. I also just briefly raised another issue on the issue of the council tax reduction scheme because it is relevant here, particularly when we're looking at universal credit. A concern that has been raised is the issue of DWP data sharing and the likely cost involved if that doesn't happen. Where that matter stands, as far as people here today are aware, and why is it that this would not be the optimum solution for the DWP to share the data? There was a recent consultation paper from the UK Government on data protection from and a number of landlords have commented back on that and what they would like to see around data protection between local authorities and the DWP and the outcome of that consultation is still awaited. Do you feel that there is likely to be progress here? Obviously, there seems to be a concern that there will be significant cost implications if a sensible approach is not agreed by the DWP. I would like to think that there will be progress made on that in relation to data sharing if the roll out of universal credit is to work properly. There needs to be data sharing between local authorities and the DWP. As there exists at the moment between landlords and local authority housing benefits services, we would be advocating for similar levels of data sharing with the DWP. I'm mindful that we're here to scrutinise the Scottish Government's budget for 2015-16, so while a lot of those issues are relevant and interesting, the implications for the 2015-16 budget in any of those issues is more important. The roll out of universal credit, while it's the technicalities around it, does people have concerns about their local authority budgets or, in general, about the impact on the current Scottish budget? I was going to come to you in a minute, Keith. Do you want to get into that area at the moment? I was wanting to stick specifically to the budget. I was going to talk about COSLA's submission here. They've basically talked about 2015-16, and they say that the Scottish Government is again providing funding at the same level as 2014-15. That is welcome, but they then go on to say that they want assurance that any change to the level of DWP funding would be taken account of by the Scottish Government once it is known in order that the bedroom tax is feeling mitigated. Does COSLA therefore believe that the Scottish Government should meet any funding gap if the DWP does not provide that £50 million? Where should that money come from? I have already provided the answer to that. Clearly, if there was some variation in what DWP is going to be making available, we would expect to have a discussion with the Scottish Government about how that impacts on the funding that it is providing. The policy is to fully mitigate the bedroom tax, so that is the policy that we would expect still to be in place, regardless of the actual level of funding that the DWP provides. As I said, we just need to monitor to see what it is that DWP comes out with. The Scottish Government appears to have assumptions around that, so it does not seem to be too discomforted, but we need to see what it is that DWP actually announces in the next month or so. The discussions would involve the Scottish Government saying that we will come up with £15 million. Do you suggest that DWP pulls the rug out? I would not expect DWP to pull the rug. It will provide a level of funding. Clearly, that level of funding was substantially higher for 2014-15 than it had been for previous years. I think that the assumptions, as I understand it from the Scottish Government, are that a similar level is likely to be announced for 2015-16. It will be the Chancellor's autumn statement that will kick that piece of information off, so we just really need to wait for that. On the budget, you said in your submission that we need to ask what it is that we can do collectively within our powers to address the pressures that welfare reform is bringing in Scotland. What should that mean in budgetary terms? That is the point. It is the discussion that we have had earlier that it is not necessarily about picking out specific amounts of money and saying that we need to financially provide for that. I think that it is about sitting down and understanding more about what the scale of the problem that we think is going to be coming and how we can bring forces together to be able to address that more effectively. Potentially within that, there may need to be discussions about resource, but at this stage, that is not the discussion that is on the table. The discussion is on the table around things like, should the Scottish Government be working with us to do more research, working with other agencies to get a feel for—we have had the mention of the Sheffield-Hallam report that was done, but that was a little while back. It is really about what is the layer of the land now and all of the different issues that individuals are experiencing anything from benefit sanctions to the roll-out of our DLA to PIP. We need to look at those in the round. That is what we are really saying to the Scottish Government. You have talked about a strategic approach, convener. You have mentioned the Sheffield-Hallam university study, and Jeremy touched on that as well. It is £480 a year for every adult of working age, but Glasgow might expect to lose £650 in one area of North Ayrshire, which is £560 per person. Would the Scottish Government be suggesting that additional resources should specifically be allocated to more deprived areas in order to mitigate some of those losses specifically? As I said, I do not think that it is really about mitigation per se now. I think that it is about something a little bit beyond that. Yes, clearly, where we have areas of deprivation, it is likely that those issues will manifest themselves across the piece. I appreciate that it is a bit vague in terms of giving you the answer here, but what we are trying to get over is that the mitigations that we have and are continuing are all welcome. We think that they are appropriate. In terms of the 15-16 budget, that is meeting what we would have expected, but we need to start this discussion now about how we get a better understanding of the impacts that individuals are experiencing and then how we, as the agencies, are able to come together in a different way to support people. As I said, there may be something about discussing resources around that, but it is not about saying that there is so many pounds per head coming out from individual communities. That is the impact, but the point is what is the intervention that we can do, at least to support people in terms of experiencing that impact, because we are not going to be able to necessarily mitigate that scale of impact going forward. Ken Macintosh Very much on the same theme, both Corsal and North Lanarkshire, and other contributions, talked about the increasing demand on council services, because of the increasing demand on the social welfare fund, and North Lanarkshire talked about the benefits and council assistance, generally likely to increase. Do the figures show a big demand in SWF applications across the board and local authorities? Johnston Sharman The most recent figures that I have seen are not necessarily manifesting in that way. I believe that, first of all, the Scottish Government had put additional funds into the Scottish welfare fund. At the moment, I think that some of these issues are still to come about, and that is what we are most worried about. Looking at it, broadly, the spend is not a million miles off. I am happy to take individual councils' thoughts here as well, but that is our understanding in terms of the information that the Scottish Government is gathering about the Scottish welfare fund, and they monitor it quite closely. Johnston Sharman Glasgow's experience is that we are seeing a big increase in demand, but it is hard at this point to assess whether that is just simply—I would say 2013-14 was the first year of the Scottish welfare fund, and it is difficult to draw accurate comparisons. Our current experience is that we are only able to award high priority cases, and our acceptance rates at the moment are at 60 per cent, so that is 40 per cent of applications that we are currently having to turn away. We do not necessarily see that situation changing any way. We may be able to award to medium priority for a couple of months, but we expect only to change that back to high in order to come within budget at the end of the year. Brian Whittle The response from us said that, in the Scottish welfare fund, we will certainly be turning away in similar to Morag for Glasgow. We are at high, and there might even be a category within high where it is high plus—I cannot remember the exact phrase for it—but we are having to manage from now to the end of this financial year that budget with the expectation that, in order to keep money there for forthcoming crisis grants, our community care grants are reaching the very highest ceiling before we will consider awarding those. There is an awful lot of unmet demand there. Last year's stats took a bit of time for the probably awareness of the fund to bed in across our council area, so the April to June to September stats last year were relatively small, but in the first quarter of this financial year we account for about 15 to 20 per cent of the applications across Scotland. The distribution of the money for the Scottish welfare fund across Scotland, we are suggesting, needs to be considered where the demand is and can we target funds to there from the existing budget and probably look for 15, 16, as there is any scope to expand that existing budget. The other side, certainly from a point raised earlier on, but the resources within the authority. We are, again, as an authority having to spend somewhat everybody else money towards the council tax reduction scheme that we agreed with the Scottish Government to jointly fund. We are seeing, and I think that Alacrude mentioned, the increase in the inquiries that are coming through authorities because of welfare changes. A great increase in advice and financial support being sought from is across our range of areas. Those are just going to continue a pace, particularly when universal credit rolls out in the first tranche for us starting in February through April next year. We expect that to not dramatically increase because, as Marianne indicated, probably a relatively small case load at the inception of that, but if it does incrementally increase, then those cases are going to present again at our door for advice, support and assistance. I am just talking about how much evidence is there of it happening yet. If you take the council tax scheme and the bedroom tax, they are very discreet. They are fully funded, mitigated schemes and, clearly, no thanks, I have had a lot of application under those schemes. Have you noticed already an increasing demand on local authorities just for advice, for assistance generally, on the basis that welfare is cut back? I think that the likelihood or the expectation is that people will come to local authorities first and foremost. Is there evidence that this is happening right now, or is it just an apprehension that is about to happen as moved in universal credit and other schemes? No, I think that I can say it. I do not have the stats with me for it, but I know our first stop shop, where the public come in to make those inquiries. There is an increased fall there. I can get the statistics and provide them from across there. I suspect, I cannot say authoritatively, but I think that equally on our advice services side of it, money advice, income advice, etc., there will be an increased demand there. Again, I could source the statistics and provide them. Just on advice, as part of the Scottish Government has funded, the Scottish CAV service has provided mitigation advice. In the past 12 months, that has allowed 17,500 clients to be helped with nearly 55,000 new issues, which is capacity that we would not have had unless we had had that money from the Scottish Government. That has helped us to mitigate the worst impacts for those clients. Clients in this project have had much more complex and time-consuming cases. Clients in this project had an average number of free issues, whereas the average bureau client has two, so they have that one extra additional complex issue. For every £1 given in grants through the project, £7 was gained for the clients. That is about a client financial gain of £7 million. I think that mitigation funding for the bureau for advice has worked in that sense. The funding runs out in March 2015, so we are arguing that that is working and that some of the worst is still to come in terms of personal independence payment and universal credit. We have seen that additional footfall, if you like, because of the mitigation funding that we have been able to meet so far. On the previous question on crisis, we have definitely seen an increase number of clients in crisis or destitution of people that can't afford to put food on the table. We are broadly encouraged by the way that the Scottish Welfare Fund has been operating in the past year, but there seems to be a gap. It does not seem to match up the Scottish Welfare Fund seeing increased people having an underspend at the same time as an increased number of people needing food parcels. We are trying to marry the two to see what the reasons are and why people can't access the Scottish Welfare Fund or are not accessing it. Sometimes it is because they have an immediate need that they need food right now, or sometimes it is that the Scottish Welfare Fund knows that it cannot come within two days of healing and cannot wait that long. I think that there is probably research or work to be done to make sure that that gap is narrowed to make sure that the Scottish Welfare Fund can deal with those crisis situations rather than people having to go to food banks. Sorry, Kenny, you are not finished. I have a slightly severed issue, perhaps with Keith Brown. I will first refer to Carla McCormack. One of the submissions that he had talked about issues of gender inequality and child poverty. In other words, if you look at where the biggest impact of the welfare reforms are going to be, women are disproportionately affected and the Scottish Government's own figures suggest that child poverty is going to rise markedly. However, the way that welfare spending from the Scottish Government is being allocated tends to be on policy-specific issues or on two-par mental lines. Others have got a council tax reduction, bedroom tax mitigation and advice support. However, we have not actually got gender. It is not being spent on gender equality. I wonder if I would like to comment just about whether there should be more to address those bigger themes. I think that that is an interesting question. We know in the universal credit that there is the concern that there will be one single direct payment to households, whereas under current provisions that child benefit and child tax credit can go to one account could be the mothers, for example. There is a Scottish Government analysis that shows that that could be a concern in terms of family income and spending on children if it is to a single account, because women often act as a buffer and mitigate changes on family household. There is a concern that that will impact on gender equality. You are absolutely right to say that child poverty has, for the first time, increased in the last couple of years. There is a case for looking in more detail at those two specific groups. The document, convener, from engender Scottish Women's Aid and Close the Gap in Scottish Refugee Council, has one quote to give you an example. The Scottish Government's own analysis recognises the extent of women's disadvantage and its link with child poverty, but spending plans do not take either set of issues into account. No, Carly, you like to comment. We would certainly support engender's calls for the recommendations that have been put forward to the welfare reform committee. We know that most of the money that has impacted on people's pockets has come out of women's pockets. Child poverty is generally a result of adult poverty, so the realistic situation is that if you are a long single mother and you are living in poverty, then those children are going to grow up in poverty. It is about thinking about how we can tackle that issue. One of the things that the poverty line called for on the Smith commission was the ability for Scotland to create its own benefit. We had thought that we could use that to bring back things like loan-parent grants, which would enable us to help single parents, particularly single mothers, to avoid getting into that situation where we have women directly being affected by poverty and, therefore, their children growing up in poverty also. I was wondering just on that issue about bringing the SEDG as well. Again, as well as gender inequality and child poverty, fuel poverty and housing poverty seems to be one of the huge issues that is emerging or rising. I wonder, Jeremy, if you would comment on whether there should be more done here in Scotland given that a lot of the powers in housing are entirely devolved. Well, one of the things that we pointed out is that the growing housing benefit bill means that there is actually an imbalance. The amount of money that the Scottish Government has for housing is becoming proportionately less because of the rising housing benefit bill. The fact that the investment that the Scottish Government might be making in housing in terms of more affordable housing and fuel-efficient housing, if the benefits are being derived, are not being cascaded down to the right people. We have a lot of concerns, particularly with regard to the universal credit roll-out. You were saying about the single payment to households. That is of a deep concern. Despite representations that SFHA has made and other organisations have made in the various liaison groups, it seems to be something that the DWP seems to be comfortable with. Even to the extent that, on some of the universal credit roll-out schemes, the housing costs have been awarded to the member of the household who is actually the tenant. He may be a person who has moved in with the tenant and, therefore, that creates a lot of legal niceties in terms of areas of recovery. Thank you, convener, and we have heard today that £1.6 billion, according to Sheffield Hallam, will be coming out of the Scottish economy, £2 billion if you look at others. We have a budget of mitigation of £104.22 million in the next financial year. I think that everybody around the table recognises that, while that mitigation is welcome, it is not going to stop the worst excesses of welfare reform. We have heard today from some folk about a strategic view of what we need to do to counter the worst excesses and spend the mitigation moneys in the best way possible. I have not heard very much about what that strategic review involves. Before I come to Mr Sharma, I ask the local authority representatives what their local councils have done to ensure that there is an interlinkage between all the services that they are providing, those that are most in need. We have heard about a lack of signposting, convener, in terms of the Scottish Welfare Fund. We have heard about a lack of information sharing between social work departments and revenue and benefits folk about the Scottish Welfare Fund. We have heard that there is possibly duplication between social work, emergency payments and the Scottish Welfare Fund. With the small amounts of mitigation moneys that we have in terms of the giant cut, are we working smart at local authority level to ensure that we get the most bangs for our buck? I think that we are endeavouring within the local authority to do that. Internally, we have provided a fund of about £2 million from the council to help towards welfare reform changes, and that has been funding advisers on our financial services side of it. It is funding the contribution that we need to make to the council tax reduction scheme. We are endeavouring between ourselves and housing, who look after the council house tenants and the needs that they have of welfare reform, to work and try and prioritise moneys that are allocated there so that our Scottish Welfare Fund will look to see whether there has been a DHP application and will refer there. We will also make reference to our advice services. In addition, our housing revenue account has created a separate fund to help tenants who are in arrears and having difficulty arising from welfare reforms. We have done absolutely everything. There will be ones that continue to fall through the net. It is not dissimilar to the study where £2 billion has been taken out of the Scottish economy, and we have funding of £142 million. Around £1 in £20, there will be households that clearly are not being helped and there will be circumstances that are not being met there. I noticed that you did not mention social work in that answer in terms of discretionary payments that they can make. The social work side of our financial advisers, the income side, are working in our social work sector. When they are assessing incomes of households and endeavouring to source more money, they will make claims for additional benefits that will refer them, but they also, as you suggest, make awards of those grants. Again, we try to ensure that, if they are unable to access Scottish welfare fund, DHP, what we have called the Sustainability Fund from the HRA side of it, and the social work grants where they are appropriate. Mr Drybara. Satmund City of Edinburgh starts with member officer working groups with representatives from all the various areas that you have mentioned. That leads to reports going to the various council committees on a bi-monthly basis, giving updates and recommendations on what the council can try to do to mitigate the effects of welfare reform. That flows down to individual areas, such as we will look after benefit processing, the Scottish welfare fund and CTR. There are linkages across the various areas. We have separate forums with our housing associations, where we specifically talk in some detail about all the aspects that we are talking about here today. However, I would echo some of the comments that Brian is making. The levels of funding that the local authority has put in are mainly to help to administer the monies that have been provided. That might be the fact that, in my submission, I mentioned that we do not have enough administration grant there to better 15 days for a community care grant or two days for a crisis grant. The level of DHP funding, while it is absolutely welcomed, has meant that we have gone from around 400 DHP applications in 2012-13 to something like 5,500 applications in 2014-15. Is there an interlinkage with social work? It is making sure that £104.4 million that is going to local authorities can do its possible best. If there is duplication in some areas and a lack of interlinking between each of the council departments, that money could go further. The reality is that I will finish off finally with Mr Sharma and I will get to my point that I want to make about all of this. There are very close links between our welfare fund and social work, because clearly within the scheme people can and do come back time after time and maybe always don't need to because their needs could be met more directly. That is when we communicate with social work, we arrange home visits, we look at people's needs, for instance, just as an example, to try to make sure that the resources are used in the best way. I wonder if Mr Johnson wants to pick up on that too, please. At the end of 2012, the council set up a corporate welfare reform working group and took representatives from across the council, including social work education services. We have representatives from registered social landlords and links in there as well. When we set up that group, we tried to look at what the changes to welfare reform meant and identify a number of different work streams. We ended up identifying about 20 different areas that we felt that we needed to look at. Some of them were very directly linked to the actual changes coming in, so we had one for Scottish welfare fund, etc. We also had a look at some of the wider implications, so we have a work stream for things such as digital inclusion and financial inclusion. We have representatives from our arms length organisation jobs and business Glasgow who are trying to help people back into the jobs market. We have an area that looks at economic growth and what we are trying to do in the city to improve labour demand as well. We also have a communication strategy that sits across all of that. To recognise that the communication and engagement with citizens and the advice sector is very important across all of that area. That is the way that Glasgow has tried to address it. In terms of specific questions, we have a member of social work on the Scottish welfare fund steering group that we manage, and they link in around section 12 and 22 payments. We have a process for that. I do not know if Ms McManus is able to answer that in terms of her specialty or not. It is similar to the other authorities across service working group within the council looking at different work streams. In addition, as the North Ayrshire council is the biggest landlord in North Ayrshire, a decision was taken early on, given that a high proportion of tenants would be the ones affected by welfare reform to put in place a cost of over £400,000, a welfare reform advice team specifically to provide advice and assistance for council tenants and to work with other services, particularly social services, in providing that support. That has been particularly successful, particularly around discretionary housing payments. I think that we are down about 20 people who have still got applications to get for discretionary housing payments for the bedroom tax. We work closely with our colleagues in social services around applications for the welfare fund and with a number of our community planning partners in the third sector and how we can work more closely with them to deliver better services. For Mr Sharmer, in the COSLA paper it said that the Scottish Government should take a strategic approach. I will come back to points about that in a second. What is COSLA doing to ensure that best practice, if you like, is being exported across our local authorities? What work have you been doing to ensure that best practice is being fed out everywhere? Well, specifically in regard to the Scottish Welfare Fund, we are actively engaged in terms of how we share best practice and knowledge locally. There is my colleague Nicola Dickie, who actually does go out to all of the local authorities and the various officers that are taking forward the Scottish Welfare Fund. In terms of her work, I think that it is about trying to make the linkages as well to make sure that there is the crossover. I think that our impression of the Scottish Welfare Fund is that it has come as effectively a white hole, centrally delivered support, which at the end of the day was not really hugely hitting the target audience. I think that what we are getting from the feedback from our people in the councils coming back is that we have much more of a holistic service that is being provided now. It is quite different from the service that was there before, albeit it does follow quite a number of the key strands of that, but it is a different service. I think that is what we feel is the thing that we need to capture. The councils do have a huge amount of experience and knowledge in dealing with individuals that come to them, and that is something— Mr Sharma, it was quite an easy question in terms of that exporting. You are going into some detail that I have not really asked about and not really telling me very much. Can I ask you about the exporting of best practice and what COSLA has done to help in that regard? We have heard from Ms Dickie previously at the committee. Can you give us some examples of where you have helped to feed best practice across the country in order that each council manages to get the most bangs for its bulk? I think that I have given you the answer in terms of the Scottish welfare fund. As I said, my colleague Nicola Dickie can provide much more detail in terms of that, if that is what the committee would like to see. Although my understanding is that you do have sessions where you have asked my colleague to come. I am actually here to question whether COSLA is delivering best practice. That might be for your other committee, Kevin. What we are trying to do is establish the Scottish Government's budget. Is it going to meet the demands? How best can we meet the demands? You know where I am going with this. If we can stick to the budget, we might actually have a more constructive dialogue between yourself and Mr Shatman. I am trying to stick to the budget to ensure that the Scottish Government's money, as spent by COSLA, is getting as much as it possibly can. I shall move on. My final question is round about the strategic approach that is mentioned in the COSLA paper. I would really like to know—and Mr Gibson tried in his questioning—what does COSLA mean by a strategic approach in terms of providing a budget that is required to deal with that? Beyond that, maybe Mr Sharma can tell us how he has been dealing with the DWP in terms of trying to ensure that they give more so that that adds to the mitigation budget that the Scottish Government has put forward. First of all, this is about working in partnership with the Scottish Government. A key part of that is our joint lobbying with the UK Government. I would say that that has been a positive experience in terms of the willingness of the Scottish Government to engage with us in turn. We have put forward a number of different lobbying strategies around that, particularly around things such as protecting the funding that comes from the UK Government already for a number of strands, the housing benefit administration grant being a key one of those. What I would say—and I thought I had said it, which I think was echoed by the colleagues around the table—is that mitigations, although they are welcome in terms of the 15-16 budget, we feel that they are appropriate and they are the right things that have been called for. There is an emerging issue around the impacts of welfare reform, many of which are still to happen. What we need to do is to get a dialogue which recognises the whole spectrum of changes that are happening here and impacts that are happening here. There probably needs to be some more research work that we do. I mentioned that that was something that we could do. The joint lobbying needs to continue. Advice and support was an area that we identified. I think that one—as I was trying to say just in my previous response—was that the councils are doing a lot of work around that. It is understanding what that work is and bringing that together is very important. Employability got mentioned. It is something more holistic that we can do in terms of how we approach the employability agenda. At the moment, my understanding is that things are a little bit disjointed in terms of how we approach that across the piece. It is about looking again at some of those things. I think that is what we are calling for in terms of the dialogue. That is really as specific as I can be. Does anyone else have any comments that they want to make specifically on the budget in terms of pressures that they might foresee and where issues they would like the committee to take up with the minister to see if there is additional funding or support that we could investigate? Can you make a point? Will you just ask the local government representatives in particular? We are obviously concentrating on welfare-specific budgets, but given that there is an increased demand on local authorities and the local authority budget is probably the one that has been the biggest squeeze in the budget decisions, are you finding—given that you are going through a series of difficult decisions or trying to meet rise in demand in terms of care and community care and demand for elderly services and so on? Is there something more to be done about the local authority budget generally, as opposed to welfare-specific budgets? We have five questions without a scope. Surely that is well out of a scope. I think that asking about whether local government budgets, out of the Scottish Government budget, is within the remit of the budget. I believe that we need to suggest that Kevin's question was wide. We would have one rule that applies to everybody, but that is a fair question. I will point out to members that we are here to scrutinise the Scottish Government's budget, not to scrutinise the local authority budget. That is absolutely right. If anyone wants to comment on Kevin's question, we just leave it at that and call a halt to the proceedings before we— Possible comment, but we supplemented an issue that was raised earlier. It is just really a technical point, if I may, on the issue of bedroom tax rears in the previous financial year. Has there been an assessment across the piece of those rears across the 32 councils, in terms of actually attributing them to bedroom tax rears, as opposed to other rears? I just wonder whether that work has already been carried out, or if it is in process. I am just asking a question as to whether it has been embarked on as a piece of work, because people refer to it as a fact, but without quantifying what the figures are. I thought that it would be helpful to know what work has been done to try to quantify that. Does anyone want to have a good answer on that question? In North East Council, we are undertaking an exercise on that at the moment, but I think that in the actual paper, Wes Lothian had done some work around that. I think that they had estimated about £365,000 outstanding for them in relation to 13-14 bedroom tax rears.  It is quite a labour intensive for staff to come to that figure, but we are certainly not sure that we are trying to quantify that at the moment. Brian Whittle, I turn it on its head and say on our experiences of 1415 and how much DHP we have spent mitigating the effect in 1415. As has been mentioned earlier about the funding not being available to fully mitigate our years for 1314, we could certainly estimate what that cost to DHP would have been by mirroring the 1415 spend. In Edinburgh, I know that we would have needed on our estimate about an extra £1.8 million if we were to go right back to 1 April 2013. We have done a lot of work between our housing systems and our revenue systems with the software supplier. Earlier, I mentioned that we have just over 1,100 cases with about £475,000 of arrears coming from the 13-14 legacy arrears side of it. As Marion said, prior to doing that, it was a manual exercise and would probably be prohibitive over that length of time for all 32 authorities. The work that we had to do with the software guys was to get that to a push-up button. However, if there is an IT guy here and it was not just a push-up of a button, it was slightly more complicated than that. That is interesting. We will look to see more information on that very issue, but if it is the council policy to seek to recover arrears, you would need to know as a matter of law what you are seeking to recover as a debt. I just cannot quite understand how, on the one hand, you would need that legal certainty, but on the other hand, we do not seem to have that information as yet. As you say, Marion, your council is working on that. The individual basis on accounts that officers deal with, they would know how much of arrears are attributed to the bedroom tax 13-14, but to bring that across the board does take some time to do that bit of work. I think that that has exhausted the questions that we are going to get this morning, so thanks to everyone for their contributions. I appreciate you giving up your time to come and inform us on the Scottish Government's budgets and other questions that were asked as well. I will suspend the committee until 12 o'clock when the minister will be in front of us, but thanks again to everyone. Thank you for going back to their places. Our committee will now hear evidence from Margaret Burgess, the Minister for Housing and Welfare, Jenny Brough, team leader, local government finance and local taxation unit, and Adam Reid, team leader, welfare division of the Scottish Government. Minister, do you have an opening statement? I will say a few words, convener. I welcome the opportunity to address the committee on the 2015-16 draft budget. It sets out how we will focus our tax spending and borrowing plans to achieve three primary objectives, to make Scotland a more prosperous country, to tackle inequality and protect and reform public services. It also sets out our commitments that are designed to tackle poverty that continues to blight society. The committee is well aware that the UK Government's welfare reforms continue to cause concern to a great many people and organisations across Scotland, and the Scottish Government's priority is to mitigate the most harmful effects of the UK Government's welfare reforms as part of our wider efforts to tackle inequality. In 2014-15, we allocated £81 million to do that, and we have maintained this level of funding in the 2015-16 draft budget. That funding will maintain investment in the Scottish Welfare Fund, assist councils to support all people by affected by the bedroom tax and invest in a range of third sector initiatives for income maximisation and tackle poverty, particularly in support of our new child poverty strategy that was published earlier this year. The 2015-16 draft budget also includes a range of other measures that will support our welfare mitigation activity, including additional investment in housing, with over £200 million additional being allocated for housing, rolling forward our contribution of £23 million to fill the cut in funding from the UK Government for council tax benefit successor arrangements, and delivering the £9.4 million people and communities fund for 2015-16, which has a refreshed focus on the promotion of social inclusion, tackling poverty, including the mitigation of welfare reform. To deliver those, we are working in partnership with a range of organisations, including third sector, local authorities and others, and this collaborative approach will go some way to meet the challenges imposed on us by the UK Government. The continued investment that we are making of over £100 million when council tax reduction scheme is included can only go so far in mitigating the worst impacts of the reforms. The scale of the cuts is immense, and we are constrained by the powers and resources that we have. With full powers over welfare, we could do much more to fully protect our people and tackle the inequalities that persist in Scotland. Greater coherence across our tackling poverty agenda through better alignment across childcare, child benefit and other measures to tackle child poverty are possible with full powers over welfare. I am happy now to take any questions that the committee has, convener. Thank you very much, minister. Can I open up with a question? We were taking evidence before in our first panel, and we received a written contribution from engender Scottish Women's Aid, close the gap and the Scottish Refugee Council. In that, they obviously concur with you in respect of the increase that is projected in child poverty because of the welfare reforms, and we know how damaging those reforms are being. They obviously pay attention to the fact that that child poverty will come about largely because of reduced incomes, in particular to women. In their analysis, they included that the spending plans that they have looked at from the Scottish Government's analysis do not take either set of issues into account. How would you respond to that criticism? I think that, in terms of the welfare reform situation, we certainly have looked at some of the funding that has gone out from the Scottish legal aid board funding and the money advice making advice work project. Some of that funding has been targeted specifically at women's groups, such as Imperth Women's Aid for one and the East and Bartonshire people that have suffered from domestic abuse recognising that the majority of those are women. We have also looked at the guidance for the Scottish welfare fund to ensure that lone parents, again the majority of our women, are a priority in that, and we are monitoring that closely to ensure that women are not left out in terms of any of the funding that goes from the Scottish welfare fund. We are monitoring and targeting that, but all of the mitigation money that we have put out is benefiting women as well. It is not specifically a pot of money that is targeted at women, but it is targeted at the full welfare reform mitigation. We also fund from our budget one-parent family Scotland child poverty action group. Again, many of those organisations concentrate on women, so we are looking at that. In the wider agenda in terms of increased childcare, looking at the living wage, all of those will help women and help to reduce poverty within women and children. I will open up to the committee. Members, I will go first to the Deputy convener. Thanks very much, convener. We have had some concerns expressed by Caws that we heard earlier today about the lack of clarity thus far from the DWP about the element of DHP funding that they will be providing for the coming year. That has an impact on the Government's budget. Is the Scottish Government any clearer as to what the DWP might be allocating for this coming year? Do we know yet? No, we do not have that information, and we also have concerns about that. We share the concerns of COSLA in a number of issues regarding the DWP, not just in the roll-out of universal credit, but obviously our discretionary housing payment budget is based on the amount of money that we get from the DWP for that, in terms of some of the other things that the DWP council tax reduction scheme, in terms of how that funding we have been very clear, that when the DWP puts a burden on to Scotland or Scotland's local authorities, then they should be funding that, and we have said that to every opportunity and will continue to do so. I think that there are letters going between COSLA and the Government to that effect. That was going to be my follow-up question, as you are actively pursuing this with the DWP then. We are pursuing it and will continue to pursue it. Another issue that was provided to us in relation to DHPs was from a latch, which they said without the additional funding that the Scottish Government had put in place, that council rent arrears could have been up to £49 million by the end of 2013-14. Does that match your assessment in terms of the positive impact of the money that you have leveraged into DHPs? Absolutely, and that is the purpose of it. Clearly, we want to ensure that nobody is in rent arrears because of the bedroom tax and solely because of the bedroom tax and take that part out of the arrears story. That matches what we are saying and the feedback that we are getting from local authorities and housing associations is that the mitigation funding for discretionary housing payments has helped them to reduce rent arrears or the anticipated rent arrears that they saw because of the bedroom tax. It is not happening now and that has been welcomed across the board. Minister, we had some considerable discussions with COSLA in the previous session regarding their submission and one of the points that they raised was the issue of what they call a lack of a strategic approach or what they are basically saying as if it is not a lack of a strategic approach that they are suggesting in their paper. I quote that that a far greater strategic approach is needed with the Scottish Government to look at welfare reform impacts on the ground, regardless of what changes are forthcoming. I am just wondering what is being done to take that forward. That is something that we have been looking at since the very beginning of welfare reform. The Government was very clear that the bedroom tax was the start of it and there was a lot more coming down the road. We have done work as you will be aware on disability benefits and the impact that is going to have on vulnerable groups in Scotland. We are looking at that and we are looking across the board. We have asked the UK Government to halt the roll-out of universal credit. We have asked the UK Government to halt the roll-out of personal independence payment as well. We have to wait and see what we do not know what we are going to get from the Smith Commission and how far ahead we can look. We have worked with COSLA, the third sector, with the Scottish Government analysts to look at the full impact of welfare reform, not just the bedroom tax but everything else that has been introduced for the UK and the further austerity measures. That has been looked at and I think that it is very clear in the budget throughout taking out even the welfare reform mitigation funding that the budget has put together, but the finance secretary is very much looking at tackling inequalities and maintaining public services and reforming public services, as well as making Scotland a more prosperous country. There is an approach right across the whole budget in terms of reducing inequalities in poverty. I wonder if I could just pick up on the area that the convener started on, which is that clearly the Scottish Government has supplied the resources to meet specific needs in terms of council tax reduction and the bedroom tax mitigation scheme. Does the minister recognise, however, that poverty is increasing across the board, particularly when women are experiencing increased poverty in children? Does the minister think that the Government is doing enough across the board, rather than funding-specific initiatives, that it might be better to do more to alleviate poverty across the board, not just alleviate or mitigate Westminster changes, but to do more in Scotland here? I think that that is what was trying to make the point to Kenneth Gibson, that the budget across the board is looking at reducing inequalities and that is inequalities in poverty, narrowing the gap between those that have and those that have not. In every portfolio, that is part of what has been looked at. How can we reduce these inequalities? That is the whole focus of the budget that is reducing inequalities. That has been concentrated on in this budget. We have looked at it in terms of what is happening with childcare and what is happening in terms of the living wage. The Scottish Government's position in promotion of the living wage and funding organisations to encourage other businesses and companies to take up the living wage, because it is absolutely crucial to proving people's chances and life chances what we are doing in our child poverty strategy in terms of the early years and early intervention, what we are doing in terms of that. All of that is about reducing inequalities within Scotland, and that is the whole focus of the budget. If we talk about local authority specifically, several of the witnesses earlier were talking about how, in the written evidence, they were saying that the first port of call for many people experiencing poverty will be their local authorities. Yet local authorities themselves would suggest that their budget is being directed by the Scottish Government towards specific areas—the bedroom tax and council tax reduction being one of them—to be squeezed overall. Particularly with the fact that they have not got the ability to raise the council tax, they have got no discretion themselves to increase the amount that they might want to mitigate. Do you think that the Government has got its approach right there to local government? I think that the local government received £10.6 billion last year, and this year they are receiving £10.8 billion. The local government has done well. I think that the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has said that that is self, given the difficult times and financial constraints that the Scottish Government is under, that local government has done well. I think that we have been fair to the local government in terms of the bedroom tax and the council tax reduction scheme. That was not something that was imposed on local authorities by the Scottish Government, but it was done working alongside local authorities and their partners, listening to them, and we came together to seek the solution for that to mitigate. That is where the funding went, as in the council tax reduction scheme, which local authorities contribute £17 million to. Also, some of what is happening in the preventative approach, which local authorities are using, is using the preventative approach. The Scottish Government is using the preventative approach, and in some instances there will be a shared expenditure, because one department is spending and another one can be saving in that. Local authorities have a part to play in it as well as the Scottish Government, so I think that local government funding has been fair, and I think that that has been recognised by the president of the council. Local authorities have done well, so they should not be complaining that they have money to tackle poverty. I did not say that they should not be complaining. I think that, given the constraints of the Scottish Government and the financial constraints that we are under, local authorities have done well out of it in terms of maintaining their £10.6 billion, and we have increased it to £10.8 billion for £15.16 billion, so I am saying that they have done well, given the constraints that we are under. Why are you putting the financial constraints of council tax freeze in local authorities? That is something that all parties in this Parliament supported. It is fully funded by the Scottish Government. We fund the council tax freeze, and it has been given the money to make up for the anticipated increase. It is helping families across Scotland, knowing that they are not going to get a hike in their council tax at times when they are struggling as well. One of the submissions from the Poverty Alliance, in particular, talked about the importance of housing on poverty and suggested that it is doubtful that the level of budget that is the Scottish Government's level of budget will be sufficient to meet the statutory duty to end fuel poverty. We therefore urge the Government to carry out a full review of how it can fulfil its commitment to eradicate fuel poverty in Scotland. What would you make in response to that? I think that eradicating fuel poverty, given the increases in electricity for fuel, is a challenge. We have never said that it is not a challenge, but we are putting in £79 million of money, which is more than has been put in, both in real terms and in cash terms, by any previous administration. We are putting into fuel poverty and energy efficiency measures. We have managed to bring in money from the eco-obligation and the energy companies to spend over £220 million in fuel poverty measures. We have asked the Smith commission to have powers over the regulation of energy efficiency and fuel energy efficiency in eco-measures and that, often, they are accountable to Scottish ministers as well as UK ministers. In doing that, we can target resources more effectively to suit some of the issues that we face in Scotland and rural communities that face fuel poverty. We are certainly putting in more than any other country in the islands in terms of our commitment to fuel poverty. Do you think that you will meet your commitment to eradicate fuel poverty by the end of 2016? My intention is to eradicate fuel poverty as far as practical by 2016, and that is what we are aiming towards. Do you think that you are on target to do so? As I said, it is a challenge because of things that are out with our powers, out with external sources in terms of the energy companies and their price hikes, and that the UK has recently changed the conditions for eco-reducing. The energy companies are not putting in so much money to match the funding that we are putting in, so it is a challenge, but we are committed to it and we are committed to putting public money into it, and that is what we are doing. Are you on target? Are the figures increasing? The numbers of people in fuel poverty are increasing or are they decreasing? The number of people in fuel poverty is decreasing. Had we not put the measures in, 600,000 households—one in four households in Scotland—have benefited from energy efficiency measures, and had we not put that in, off the top of my head, I can write the committee with the figures because I did not realise that it was part of the discussion today. Of 74,000 more households would be in fuel poverty had we not put the measures in place that we have put in place. Indeed, but just to give you the estimates, this is from the poverty alliance again. The Scottish House Conditions Survey showed that in 2012 there were 647,000 Scottish fuel poor households—27.1 per cent. Energy Action Scotland estimates today that it is 900,000 households. How is that? We are working to the figures that we use, which are the Scottish quality housing standards, and the figures that we believe are the robust figures. We know that the energy action has used other figures. We do not have the background for the figures that they have used. We are absolutely accepting that there are far too many households in Scotland in fuel poverty just now, and that is why we are continuing to put in Scottish Government money. We have used financial and transactional consequentials that have come from the UK as well and put that in in terms of our green homes cashback. We have used that as well. It is not just £79 million, but there are other measures throughout the energy budget that we are taking to reduce fuel poverty and the energy efficiency in the homes in Scotland. That will be sufficient to lift more than half a million homes out of fuel poverty by 2016, as is the Government's promise. I can say that we are absolutely committed to spending money on fuel poverty, which is more money than has been spent by any administration in this Parliament, both in real terms and in cash terms. We will continue to do that. We will look at every method possible to leave in more money from the energy companies. We have written to Ed Davie with our concerns about the way that the UK Government is going around changing the rules to the eco-scheme to say that that is not going to benefit Scotland and that we want them to take that into account. We are doing everything that we can. We have asked the Smith commission to say that it is a priority to have power over regulation of energy efficiency and that the off-gym is accountable to ministers in Scotland as well. In terms of this year's budget scrutiny, the finance committee adopted four principles of scrutiny, one of which is value for money and the extent to which public bodies are spending their allocation well and achieving outcomes. Obviously, there is some very good practice going on in terms of the Scottish welfare fund and certain councils, not so good practice in others. How is the Government ensuring that best practice is exported throughout the country to ensure that the maximum amount of money that is possible goes to helping vulnerable people? I think that I mentioned at the last time that I came to the committee that the Scottish Government funds an officer in COSLA, a Scottish welfare fund officer, which we fund in COSLA. Their role is to go around all the local authorities, the Scottish welfare fund teams, look at best practice, look at the guidance, the whole practitioner meetings and it is about getting that best practice out there. That is on-going and that will continue to be on-going. I did mention before that I also visited a number of Scottish welfare fund teams, spoke to those in the front line to look at issues that they find difficult, pass on some of the good practice that is coming from other areas and that will carry on. We are also looking at the guidance and we put the scheme in a statutory footing to ensure that the guidance is fit for purpose, absolutely right, everybody knows it and understands it and that we do get that level of consistency that we are looking for, but there will always be a bit of flexibility for local authorities in their area because they best know their area, but certainly we need to get that consistency. Can I ask if that officer is also looking at the interlinking of budgets within councils and not necessarily the social welfare fund but social work handing out payments and all the rest? Are they ensuring that again there is that linkage to make sure that we ensure that the most vulnerable are getting what is required and that there is no duplication or is that part of their remit to look at that too? That off the top of my head, I do not know if that is part of the remit, we can certainly look at that, but what I do expect is that that officer does look about forming relationships with other departments of local authorities, with housing departments, with social work departments, but just on what detail they do and I do not know, and it is certainly something that I am willing to take back and get back to you on. If I can change tack just a little bit, obviously one of the things that the committee has looked at previously is passported benefits and ensuring that folk are not losing out to a huge degree because of reforms to DLA, for example, and also making sure that the free school meal provision here was as fair as it possibly could be. Are you still looking at the impacts of welfare reform in terms of the UK Government's agenda on that passported benefit issue? Yes, we are looking at the impacts of welfare reform across the board, and that has been looked at. Some of it has been slower because the roll-out of PIPs has been slower than we anticipated. We have now asked the UK Government to halt it, but we will be following that through looking over the total impact of reforms on an individual or a family. Just a few points. In terms of the discussion that we have had in the previous session, we might get a bit blasé about what the Scottish Government is doing in terms of mitigation and what we are looking at in terms of where budget scrutiny is, the budget lines of the Scottish Welfare Fund, discretion, housing payments and council tax reduction, and indeed perhaps that is put into focus by comments from the submission from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, where they say at paragraph 6 that, within the scope of powers that is currently devolved to, the Scottish Government has managed to implement three mitigation initiatives that colleagues confronted by welfare reform in England and Wales would dearly love to have. I just wonder if you could explain the reasons why the Scottish Government has proceeded with these three mitigation measures. I think that it is always important to go back to first principles. This is something that we are doing here in Scotland that is not happening across the peace in the UK, and it would be interesting to hear the fundamental motivation for proceeding with this approach at this time. I absolutely agree that we are doing something for people here in Scotland that is not happening in other parts of the UK. Obviously, the reason behind it was when very clearly those measures were put on to Scotland that we would not have had this Parliament, had the powers, would not have passed those measures. It was very clear that the people who were going to be impacted most were those most vulnerable in society. I think that the Parliament as a whole and the Government as well, and I think that the Deputy First Minister and recollector are saying that we could not stand by and see people being damaged in that way, and see the harm that is being put right across Scotland. I think that it was about stepping in when we saw that those in poverty and those in the poorest in society were even going to be further disadvantaged by measures that we did not support and that this Parliament did not support. That is the reason behind it. In some ways, it could be said that we were reacting, but we were reacting in a positive way to something that was out of our control, and I think that it was important that we did that. I think that it was right to do it, and I think that across civic Scotland and in local authorities and across the majority of the Parliament, we all accept that it was the right thing to do. Specifically on the issue of the counter-attach reduction scheme, which is a question that I asked in a previous session, some of the submissions make reference to the potential extra costs that will be involved if there is not adequate data sharing on the part of the DWP. I wonder exactly where we are with that, because that seems to be to my mind. I am not entirely sure why they feel that they can make any conditions or restrictions on the access of local authorities to much-needed data that will help them to reduce costs. We will understand that. I may ask Jenny to say a bit more on this. We will understand why the local authorities want the data sharing, and we very much support that, and we are in discussion with the UK Government about that. I do not know if you want to say any more. It might be helpful if I clarify the arrangements that are in place at the moment, because I believe having read the submissions that the concerns were being expressed around the roll-out of universal credit and what would happen with data sharing there. At the moment, prior to the abolition of the council tax benefit last year, the UK Government and the Scottish Government worked together to put regulations in place, which would maintain the sharing of data as existed under council tax benefit and exists for housing benefit with local authorities, and they can use that data with the UK Government's permission to assess entitlement for council tax reduction. That is where the legacy benefits are better in place at the moment. When universal credit rolls out, there will be a need that the Scottish Government has represented to the UK Government on a number of occasions for local authorities to be able to access universal credit data in order to determine entitlement to support for council tax reduction and a lot of other forms of support for those in receipt of universal credit. That is a point on which we continue to represent that very urgent need for our local authorities to have that data. The DWP has established a programme of work to develop universal credit data sharing solutions, and we in COSLA participate in that programme. That is very helpful technical information, perhaps it would be possible to ask the minister to keep the committee updated as to how those discussions are progressing. Following on from Annabelle's question about the use of existing power, you said in your opening comment that with full power you could do more, but I am reminded of evidence that was taken previously on the committee from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who pointed out that around about this time last year, it was certainly a report in 2013 called the review of devolved approaches to child poverty, that they had expressed concerns over the limited focus on reducing the attainment gap in schools and the skills training opportunities for adults with few or no qualifications. Just two examples that they say are among the long-term drivers of poverty reduction and that they are already devolved. The Joseph Rowntree report in 2013 concluded that existing powers and budgets have not been maximised from an anti-poverty perspective, so can you tell us in what way that budget addresses those concerns from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation of last year? Across the budget, as I said earlier, it is one of the priorities, and I think that the Deputy First Minister announced it as well and will be getting the programme for government very shortly, that we have an absolute commitment to reduce inequalities. We are doing it with the powers that we have in terms of—we have committed £300 million over 2014-15 to 2015-16 to expand childcare provision. I spoke earlier about the living wage, what we are doing in the living wage. We have extended free school meal eligibility. We are doing what we can within existing powers. We have other support. We have the enterprise ready fund, people and communities fund, the early years change fund. All of that is about reducing inequalities. The money that we are spending on housing and affordable housing also works towards reducing inequalities, and that is what we will continue to work towards. I am not quite sure whether there is something specifically that you are suggesting that we should be doing that we are not doing it. I gave you two examples that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation had flagged up. I just wondered if you could give us examples of strategies in those areas of increasing employment and improving educational standards that actually help people to get out of poverty. Those were the two examples that they identified. Educational attainment is improving in Scotland. That was announced fairly recently that we are doing that. We have the child poverty strategy, which focuses on family income, sustainable places in communities for people and prosperity, and giving every child the best possible start in life. That is the start of our child poverty strategy. We are working towards that, and we are measuring that, and that is going to be measured against the outcomes against those criteria. We are doing that. We can always be said that we can do more. We work with, as I say, the Ministerial Advisory Group on Child Poverty that includes business in the community. It includes all the key players in child poverty, and we work together to arrive at that strategy. That is not just the Government strategy. That is the strategy from across the sector, but we believe that we will be able to do more with more powers. We have already increased childcare. We are looking at how we can reduce inequalities across the board, and what we are doing in terms of social wage is helping people as well. That helps those in poverty, as well as those in average income or middle income. The UK Government's approach to welfare is to use welfare reform combined with economic measures to manage demand downwards. The Scottish Government has devoted a substantial amount of money to mitigating many of the UK Government's measures, which are additional costs. Can the minister tell me if there are any measures taken by the Scottish Government that she could describe as being designed to manage demand downwards? I mean, if you are saying that we are taking measures to get people off of people that are really struggling and take them off of their benefits, we are doing lots of things to encourage people into work. Absolutely. Employability schemes, what we are doing in terms of modern apprenticeships, we are just training money. All of that is about getting people into work, but what we are not prepared to do is to sit back and allow people to suffer, through no fault of their own, because they have a disability, because they are unable to get work, because the UK schemes have not assisted them to get work, and because of that, we are simply not going to just let them wither in the vine. We are going to help those people at the same time supporting them into work. The absolute priority is about supporting people and supporting them into work. We have limited powers on that just now, but if we get more powers on that, we will be certainly supporting people into work. The overall result may be less people claiming benefit, but the object of it is not to get people off benefit and save money. The object is to support people and allow them to fulfil their potential. If we look specifically at the issues surrounding the under-occupancy charge, for example, the Scottish Government has devoted a significant amount of money to removing the economic pressures on those who are under-occupying homes in Scotland. However, the policy on a UK-wide basis has always been assumed to be one that, when it bites, will in fact change the way houses are occupied and will only have a cost over two individuals over a limited period of time. The Scottish Government's actions have effectively preserved that cost indefinitely. As the cost of implementing the under-occupancy charge in the rest of the UK reduces, that cost will continue to be an expense in Scotland. Does the Scottish Government recognise that it would be a fair assumption that, as costs reduce south of the border, the UK Government might contribute less and you would have to contribute more to compensate for the fact that you have taken no equivalent measures to manage how our housing stock is occupied? For a start, I would have to say that I do not think that the bedroom tax, the introduction of it, should be about managing housing stock. I do not think that the UK Government should be managing the housing stock in Scotland. Housing is devolved in Scotland, and I think that we manage our own housing stock, and we happen to believe that it is right. This Government, this Parliament, almost all of Scotland absolutely found the bedroom tax as something unpalatable when they saw the impacts that it has on families and people asking them to leave their community, move from their community, move to houses that were too small to move them back at a later stage to a house of a similar size, the upheaval it has in families, the distress it was causing people. I know that the committee had heard evidence from across Scotland of what was happening and the impact the bedroom tax was having on people, so I think that absolutely we have done the right thing to mitigate the bedroom tax, we want to abolish the bedroom tax, and I stick with that position. I am absolutely convinced that it is the right thing to do. You have used the devolved powers, you have used them well, you have accrued a cost, surely then it is the Scottish Government that should accept the cost of its own policy decisions. The Scottish Government is paying the £35 million from our policy decision, so I am not quite sure of why you are getting that there. What we are doing is protecting some of the poorest people in Scotland at the request of virtually every organisation in Scotland and the Parliament, almost across the board at this Parliament. The bedroom tax would never have been passed in a Scottish Parliament. You are saying that the policy of bringing down demand is one that you simply do not support, that you accept that the Scottish Government has done the right thing across the board in ensuring that there were no demand reduction measures implemented in Scotland? I think that the Scottish Government has done absolutely the right thing in terms of welfare mitigation when we see the harm that it was having in our citizens, and at the same time we are using the resources that we have to get people into employment, encourage employment, get people into better-paid jobs, promote their living wage, have a training scheme for 30,000 people getting into training. Employment is higher in Scotland now than it has been in the past, but in the meantime, while doing all that and wanting people into work, we want to see people getting out of poverty. We want to reduce inequalities, but while we are doing that, we are certainly not going to see people in the desperate circumstances that we are in because of the bedroom tax and some of the other UK welfare reforms that were simply a bit cutting a budget and not about the individual's concern. Are you confident that in a time of economic growth when unemployment is falling, when employment is rising, that you are not doing the wrong thing by increasing the level of welfare dependency in Scotland rather than reducing it? No, I see absolutely nothing with allowing people to remain in their home, and from there, they have a better chance of getting a job when they have a home that they are stable and insecure in. I think that what we are doing is the right thing. We are supporting people who can work to work, and for those who cannot or who have care needs or disabilities, we are making sure that they have a quality of life and a good standard of living. I am sure that you would agree with me if I was to describe what you have just set out as being a significant divergence in policy in Scotland as compared with the rest of the United Kingdom. We are different in terms of our policy in this part of the United Kingdom. We do not agree with what they are doing in the United Kingdom. The Scottish Parliament disagrees with it, so we have taken action to mitigate the worst impacts of what they are doing. Given that we agree that there has been a significant divergence in policy, how are you going to fund that divergence in policy this year, next year and into the future? As the finance secretary has always said, we can fund things up to the end of a spending review, but we make clear what our commitments are. Our funding is in the budget. It is clear that it is budgeted for. It will be paid for this year and next year. We have removed the cap in the bedroom tax. That shows our commitment about what we think about the bedroom tax and discretionary housing payments that are all the way out of it. We would rather abolish it altogether, and yes, it is budgeted for. Given the changes that are being discussed by the Smith commission, do you foresee any point in the future where your policy decisions will be limited by the amount of money that you can raise from the Scottish taxpayer? I am not going to speculate in what we can get or can't get from the Smith commission. I hear this morning to say that what we have budgeted for, we can afford it this year, we can afford it next year and we will be looking at affording it into the foreseeable future. We will not let people of Scotland down by having the poorest and most vulnerable in society suffer because of policies put on somewhere else. We have to create our own direction in the way that we see that people should be treated. Supporting those into work that can work, making sure that they get a wage that they can live off, but also supporting those that can't work. Thank you. Thank you very much. That seems to have exhausted the questions from the committee. Minister, thank you very much for your attendance and your officials as well. Before we go into private session, I will point out for the record that our next meeting on 2 December, the committee expects to consider its draft reports on the Scottish Government draft budget 2015-16 and the welfare fund Scotland Bill at stage 1. We also expect to consider our work programme and to return to our consideration of the discretionary housing payment limit on total expenditure revocation Scotland order 2014. With that, I will close private session again.