Fاتch ddweud, gwi'n ddechrau, a iawn i gyd ddim yn ddechrau'n gwneud eich bidang. Fy stori o'r byd pethol yn gweithio gaerithig? A wnaeth rydw i gyd amdano i ddymi25 yn Gbandongol? Mae'r ficion yma, sy'n dechrau'n gwneud. Fud yn gweithio i'r gweithiao'r gweithio'r fater. Siarad gan Caerdyddol, mae erbyl i'r ddechrau. Mae'r fion yn gweithio'r gweithio erbyn amdano i ddychrau'r gweithio. at 11 am, as will others in the building, to mark the tragic events in Manchester. Our first agenda item is agenda item 1, decision on taking matters in private. First item today, item 3, would that be okay to take it in private committee? Thank you. Agenda item 2 is two child tax credits. We have two panel witnesses here today. Before we start, I really would like to thank everyone for the submissions that they sent in. They were very thorough, and thank you all very much. We also received the letter that had been copied into us, as well, mentioned by Rape Crisis Scotland in Gender and Scottish Women's Aid, and thank you very much for that. The first panel that we have given Evans today are Rob Gowns, Policy Officer, Citizens Advice Scotland, Emma Rich, Executive Director in Gender and Joe Osga, Policy Worker, Scottish Women's Aid. I will open the discussion up by asking the first question. I do note from the submissions, and I am sure that other members will be asking further questions, that the child tax credit is an area that fills your time. People come in and ask most questions about child tax credits when they are seeking advice. I therefore ask, with the introduction of the two child cap, if you have seen an increase in people inquiring and how you perceive the legislation, which is going forward, will affect your clients and will open it up to whoever. In terms of child tax credits, one of the most common things that people will seek advice on is around 13,300 cases in the last year. In terms of, since the introduction, because it has only been six weeks and because it is only affecting children who were born after the 6th of April, there has not been a huge spike. What we would expect to see is a gradual increase over time, as more children are born and people will come in for advice about that. Our concern is obviously for women who are experiencing domestic abuse. The importance of social security as a safety net for women when they leave an abusive partner. The evidence that we have submitted highlights the impact of the cuts to social security on women, particularly on lone parents, the majority of whom are women. We see the two-child limit as it is going to further impoverish women, which limits their capacity for action, and their ability to make choices, and their ability to leave an abusive partner. For women, the two-child limit is having a third child. The case study that we submitted from the women that is currently receiving support from one of our women's aid organisations, where she is working part-time, is a cleaner and very insecure contract, is currently pregnant and has ill health. As a result of the domestic abuse that she has experienced, it is a typical example of the women that women's aid works with and will really affect women in that situation in terms of whether they can make that move to leave an abusive partner or not, and they will have to weigh that really carefully. It also reinforces the messages that women get from an abusive partner, that they are not of equal value, that they will not be able to manage on their own, and that their children will suffer as a result of them leaving that partner. We do not have service uses as in gender as a policy and advocacy organisation, but along with a whole range of women's organisations, we have been doing work to test some of the ideas around the proposed social security changes and the use of the new powers in Scotland. Women are deeply concerned by the introduction of the two-child limit, extremely horrified by the notion of the rape clause and the other exemptions, but also just to have a strong sense that this is a signal from the UK Government that women who are living with poverty should not be having more than two children, and that the same choices about how to plan their lives and their families are therefore not open in the same way and are not supported by the UK Government, which I think is a profoundly stigmatising message to send through the social security system.  Basically, in your opinion, if you are going to have three children and you are having to produce this letter, if you are going forward for any other types of benefits, would you perceive that people have to produce a letter as well? How will it have the knock-on effect if most of the people are working? The working families are not on benefits per se. Will that have a knock-on effect for any other aspect of the welfare system for these women? That is a good question, and that is something around which we are still unclear. The letter that Rick Chryst of Scotland, in Gender and Scottish Women's Aid, sent to Damian Hines, UK Minister for Employment, asked 10 quite broad questions about the way that information will be gathered and will be stored, and then how it will be signified in communications that may need to be shown to other agencies. There has been some concern among England-based organisations that, when parents are making applications for free school meals, they will require to show a letter that may be coded in such a way that makes it clear that a child has been conceived as a result of rape. We are desperately concerned about the potential breach to privacy and dignity of the child and of the mother that that would entail, but the implementation of the rape clause has been extremely opaque. The reason that we have written to the minister is to seek urgent clarification on a range of questions that women are posing to us. I do not know if Jo has. The letter spells out a lot of our concerns about how that information will be used if women were to choose to complete that form, which I think is questionable. Also, the lack of privacy, as Emma said, if you are applying for a school clothing grant and you have to provide proof of income, there are only a couple of reasons why you will be receiving tax credits for three children. How will that information be protected? That is one of the key questions that we have. I think that losing entitlement to tax credits will result in a loss of income. We have seen from previous changes in 2012 that we have caught a bit of a glimpse with the issues around concentrics and people's tax credits being stopped, how much of an impact tax credits has on family incomes, that people will be driven further into hardship. In terms of the technical interplay between the benefits, it may have an effect on people's entitlements to other benefits, but we need to go through a particular case to see if there was a change of entitlement. It is something that may have an impact on wider things. Alison Johnstone, you want to come in? Thank you, panel, particularly for some very informative written submissions. I note from the submissions that there will be a particular impact to child limit on religious communities, on lone parents, the majority of whom are women, on black and minority ethnic communities. I am just concerned about the evidence base for the policy. It seems very much to come from a view that those who claim child tax credits should, as you have said, have to be subject to the same financial decisions as those who can't claim it, but, as has already been noted, most people who claim tax credits are working 69 per cent and there are two parents in the home 64 per cent. Do you think that there are any weaknesses in the way that this policy has been justified? Yes, I think that you have put your finger on a number of weaknesses in the development of the policy. I think that our analysis of the statements that the UK Government has made throughout the development of the two child limit, but then the exemptions, has been that there has been very little clarity about the underlying thinking behind the policy, about the evidence base for the policy and certainly a failure to impact assess the policy. The UK Government is required, as all public bodies are, to undertake a quality impact assessment required by the Equality Act 2010. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has also written to Damien Hynes to say that they do not feel that this has happened and therefore the impact on those communities that you enumerate, women, black minority ethnic people, people from religious communities, has not been captured, but I think more fundamentally there is not an evidence base that has been shown to the public to explain why the UK Government would think this would incentivise families to behave in a different way. There is one very brief reference to some work that IFS has done in the impact assessment published on the Entity of the Welfare Reform and Work Act and that does not amount to a convincing case to suggest that reducing tax credits will encourage families to make different choices about the number of children that they have and I think common sense would tell us that if you can claim child tax credits up until the age of your child being 20 that people do not have a crystal ball to see into the future and so bereavement, illness, disability, family breakdown, blending your family with that of another person, all of these things are not predicted by people but we know that they happen to millions of families across the UK. So to compound the weakness of the argument for doing it in the first place comes the additional indignity that the needs of communities which are protected by law, including women, have just not been considered adequately in the development of this policy. Would anyone else like to comment? I think there's a range of situations where people who are not claiming tax credits at the time their child is born subsequently will need to claim tax credits if a family breaks up, if people fall ill, if someone's made redundant for instance. So it's not necessarily the case that at the time the child was planned, conceived or born, that people would either realise or predict that they would need tax credits at some point in the next few years. You mentioned there was quite a particular impact. Loan parents in particular were up on loan parents who would have three or more children and need to be affected by other changes to the social security system from the official figures published since the reduction in the benefit cap, that 57 per cent of households affected in Scotland are loan parents with three or more children. So we have considered that there will be somewhat of a double whammy between the benefit cap, between the changes to the tax credit system and to other social security changes coming in, such as the changes to employment support allowance and the reduction of the removal of the family element in tax credits as well. We'll have quite a significant squeeze on the family incomes for people with three or more children. Also for the women that we are working with and supporting, it's an assumption that the two child limit assumes equal control over indifferent families on making such decisions about whether to have children or not. For many women who are experiencing domestic abuse, sexual violence and rape as a component of their experience of domestic abuse is really common, so women don't have control over their reproductive rights. Did you want to come back in again, Alison? You've spoken about rights quite a lot in your responses.  It's fair to say that there's been some disagreement, even in the chamber here, over what the claimant has to do to prove non-consensual conception. The Conservative leader actually said, and I'm quoting from the official report, that the woman writes her name and a third party professional who is helping her sets out the rest. Others have said that this isn't accurate. As far as I'm aware at the moment, there are no third party referees confirmed in Scotland. No one is willing to undertake this, just to be involved in such a dreadful situation. So could I ask you to give the committee your view on the impact on the rights of the women and the child and what actually has to happen? I'm happy to start. The exemption raises serious doubts about the rights of the women and the child and I think it contravenes women's and children's rights to privacy. The form itself does require a lot more than the women just signing and putting her name on a form and signing it. She has to write her own name, she has to write the name of the child and sign to say that she believes that that child was conceived as a result of rape. The form has at the top of it, a really large font, which says that it's a form that you're filling in to say that your child has been conceived as a result of coercion or rape, which we believe will be extremely distressing for women to even consider doing. We know from our work and the work of Great Crisis Scotland how re-traumatising that having to contemplate filling in a form to say that your child has been conceived as a result of rape would be for women at a time not of their choosing to do so and having no control of however what might happen to that information. We agree with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which wrote to the minister to say that, in their view, the invasive reporting requirements of intimate details was penalising women and was the real issue for women off their child, perhaps potentially finding out that they were conceived as a result of rape. We know that women will go to huge lengths—that's the last thing that they want their child to know was that they were conceived as a result of rape. We know that 80 clinical psychologists have written to the minister as well, outlining their concerns about the impact that they would have on women and on children because they work to support children who have found out that they've been conceived as a result of rape and how traumatising that can be for children. On the point about third party referas, we are not aware of any organisation that has agreed to be a third party refera in Scotland. The DWP has a list of organisations under the Survivors Trust umbrella, which is an umbrella membership body for organisations that work with women who have experienced violence against women. They have produced a blanket membership list, but from our discussions with the individual members on that list, none that we have spoken to has affirmatively agreed to be a third party refera. One of the questions that we have asked the minister is how can this be implemented in Scotland given that circumstance and given the communication from the Cabinet Secretary for Health that NHS staff will not be participating as it's a breach of, they believe, their professional ethics given human rights concerns. I think the House of Lords, when the post legislative scrutiny committee looked at this question and looked at the two statutory instruments which kind of framed what's now colloquially been known as the rape clause, they also asked a question about appeals and how an appeals process would work, because the DWP has articulated that because of the third party referas DWP staff themselves will not be involved in making any deliberations and won't have access to this sensitive information. The response that the DWP made to the House of Lords was that the usual appeals process would apply in this circumstance and therefore DWP staff would have access to the most sensitive information, the contents of the disclosure if there was any question about the veracity of it.  Yes, a follow-up to your answer to Alison Johnson on equality impact assessment. You mentioned specifically minority ethnic communities. Of course, we're talking about from April of this year, so we don't really yet have, I don't know what assumptions we're making, but have you had any discussion with any organisations in the minority ethnic community? To my knowledge, no one's raised the issue or I don't know if that's what you're alluding to the Catholic community of which I am one and who tend to have big families or did in the past and depends on your view of what doctrine of the church you follow, but many women don't will follow the doctrine of the church by not using contraception and I wondered if that point had been, I mean do you have any figures for example on the size of families in the communities that you're talking about? Have you had any discussions with the churches and the groups that you're talking about? The churches and many faith-based community representative organisations made strong representations to the DWP during the formulation of this policy based exactly on the concerns that the member raised. We also, in our submission to the consultation, which happened in November 2016, the DWP consulted on the implementation of the exceptions for a period of one month, so we submitted, as others did, evidence that outlined the issue for black minority ethnic communities, faith-based communities and others who would not necessarily want to either access contraception or terminate pregnancies that arose when they already had two children. There is a question about the evidence base on which the Government is acting in this regard and one of the questions that we have put to the Minister is how many terminations do you expect to arise as a result of this policy because it seems to us without a clear equality impact assessment and without a clear publication of any evidence or thinking on the part of UK Government that they are indeed expecting that women will terminate pregnancies that arise when they already have two children and I think that's insupportable given the attitudes that you outline of some religious and other communities to that particular medical practice. Interestingly to us, the UK Government did not adopt the exception which is widely used in the case of American family caps and this policy has very much been copied wholesale from those introduced in 90s Clinton so-called welfare reform moves but it doesn't include an exception for the instances where long-acting reversible contraception has failed so in America that was very much the case that if you used an IUD or an implant and that did not work to prevent pregnancy then you would also receive an exception and that very question was put by the House of Lords to the DWP who came back and said we really need something which is easy to prove and so we're content with the exceptions as they stand which I think is quite inconsistent as a position about inducing thinking in families about the number of children that they can afford. As to your question about have we spoken to black minority ethnic organisations, yes and they are members of Rip Crestus Scotland and Scottish Women's Aid, have specifically BME service provision organisations that have contributed to the position of their umbrella organisations and in terms of the churches we have just drawn on the written material they have produced in response to these policies.  I was interested in the comparisons that engender drew among the American case studies and I don't know if there's any other points that you want to draw out on that particularly the fact that the family cap didn't change behaviour and actually pushed people further into poverty and I think I associate myself with the premises behind Alison Johnston's question. I think it's important to remember that this policy will affect a huge amount of people who are in work and given the research from Cardiff University that came out this week that 60 per cent of families in poverty are in work. I think that this policy is important to remember where this policy sits in terms of the social economic makeup of the UK. I also, if you don't mind convener, because the American question has been raised as well as information on the American question, I would just like to draw a little bit harder and a little bit more into the point that was raised earlier about changing circumstances, because I think that's particularly from women's aid. I know you've said before that the policy ignores real life when contraception fails or when there's unemployment or ill health and I think it would be good for all of us to understand what you're feeling is on the ground around those issues and how that policy is and can affect. With CAS as well, although the statement was rightly made earlier that this will apply to new claimants, is it not important to remember that, particularly given the point that I made earlier about families being in work, if insecure work is part of that, that people will be falling in and out of the labour market and people who are receiving tax credits at the moment may need to reapply in the future and that will have an impact in terms of this family cap policy. The question that you raised about engender and the US evidence, I would be clear that we are not experts on the US experience but we did a brief literature review when we were pulling together a response to the consultation and looking around for examples of where this had or had not functioned internationally. The findings within the American context and many states have had family caps in operations since the 90s has been that they have not at all really affected the number of children born into families. They've slightly increased the rate of pregnancy terminations where state funding was available for those medical procedures and they have substantially impoverished women, principally lone parents who were subject to those family caps. Although the context is slightly different because they were principally applied to the types of social security payments received by people not in paid work, they have had an effect of making it so that women could not afford such things as nappies and food for their children, housing costs, so really have profoundly impacted on women's security and dignity and an adequate standard of living and really acted against children's rights and in Scotland we are trying to realise the ambitions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Everything that goes into the committee on the rights of the child emphasises that social security payments to parents is a fundamental part of ensuring that children have an adequate standard of living. What do you want to give in this particular? Yes, it's just, Nareef, to be something that she mentioned, we'll see a growing impact of the policy, doing a bit of rough calculations on the number of births in Scotland. There's probably been just over 7,000 children born since the start of April, so it's not a huge amount that would be affected by the policy as yet, but there's something like around 150 children born every day in Scotland, so there's numbers growing of people who will have a third child and then seek advice on how they can maximise their income through claiming tax credits or not. So, quite a large amount of advice that we give is about making claims for child tax credits, for universal credit, for people who are in work, who could be in precarious or in secure work or into work, but need support to pay basic living costs, so it's going to be something that the impact may be slightly unpredictable in the extent that we don't necessarily know what's going to happen in people's lives, but also many people will need support from tax credits, universal credit in the future and won't be able to get the additional support that would come from a third child. You want to come in on that one then, Adam Tomkins, you want to come in on a supplement? I think to supplement what Emma said about the evidence from the United States, we also looked at and did a quick literature review and really to find out how that worked for women who were experiencing domestic abuse and there's been some significant amount of research done about the impact for women in that situation and the entrapment that resulted because of women not being able to access sufficient social security to be able to begin to rebuild their lives and to take care of their children, but they also did have similar domestic violence waivers exemptions for women in that situation and the research found that these were largely unused because women didn't trust the welfare agency and felt shame and humiliation in having to use those in order to get social security for their children and that also the privacy deprivations from that process meant that they didn't then go on and access other forms of assistance and support so it actually further impoverished them and their children because they sort of began to slip out of the system altogether and that was a real concern in terms of the women and children's health as to what happened as a result of that and we also know from our work I've done quite a lot work recently with women researching their own experiences I am both of homelessness and of the impact of social security reform on their ability to rebuild their life swim when become lone parents following a relationship separation as a result of domestic abuse and they are often because of their circumstances where they've been prevented from working or they've been primary caregivers for their children for long periods of time it's really difficult for them to access well paid employment and so they're often ending up in low paid insecure jobs where they need tax credits to supplement their income in order to be able to retain their independence and what we're beginning to see from some women's aid support workers is that when women are coming for an initial assessment looking for support or maybe have been brought there by the police or social work and looking at what their entitlements will be to social security support they often don't see these women again because they're having to weigh up how they're going to manage to support themselves and their children in these circumstances and that's really a huge concern to us and we've fed in evidence recently to the quality and human rights committee for their destitution inquiry on the destitution of many women that we're seeing now in these circumstances. An increase in occurrences of what you just described in recent weeks? It's a lot of its anecdotal we're gathering case studies and doing focus groups with women but yes certainly and that's been my experience in working with groups of women who've got direct experience of these issues is that that's what they're saying and that's what they're struggling to come to terms with when they're you know being encouraged to seek support that they shouldn't be living with domestic abuse but the reality of then their lives afterwards is that women with children is you know leads them as a real sense of injustice so this is why have their lives have ended up and they often describe it as a real struggle you know they just they don't see a way out of their situation. Adam Tom can you want to come in with a supplementary? Yeah thank you I do want to ask a couple of supplementaries that are rising out of the questions that Alison Johnston was asking a little while ago thank you very much for your very powerful evidence that the case that you make against the two child cap is a case that makes it sound to my ears very much like this is a policy which is illegal the arguments that you make about contravention of the Equality Act the argument that you make the arguments that you make about privacy concerns and data protection concerns are not just political points in which you know you are arguing that the policy is unwise or inappropriate they're legal points in which you are arguing that the policy is unlawful so my first question arising out of what you've said so far is what action are your organisations taking or proposing to take to challenge these policies in the courts either in Scotland or in England? I think we are considering our options in that regard Mr Tomkins if you'd just let the witness movie come in without Joe did you want to come back in on that one as well? I think I would agree with what Emma said I think our first response has been to write for asking for much more detailed information from the minister on how is the issues that we're concerned about will be addressed and I think as since the advice I've said the policy is relatively new I mean I think you would need to in terms of looking for evidence or of taking any further action you need to that needs to be developed. Do you want to come back in with your other supplementary or sorry to drop one I don't know from that one? I mean it's we don't tend to bring test cases though I'm aware that there's this other organisations who are looking at whether it's impossible to bring a legal challenge but I think it would be something that the citizens of Scotland would necessarily initiate. I see. The reason why I ask that question is just because over the course of the last decade or more legal actions taken in the courts have been a very successful means of putting brakes on policies including welfare reform policies that groups such as the ones that you work with have thought to be contrary to basic provisions of the equality legislation or basic provisions of data protection or privacy law so I think it's a useful avenue for you and your organisations all to be all to be thinking about. The second question community if I may it was is this it seems to me also that the two child cap on tax credits is a test of something that was very important to the Smith Commission of which I was a member and what the Smith Commission did was to agree that a whole range of welfare benefits should be devolved in full to this parliament and that in addition the Scottish Parliament would have the power to top up any reserved benefit. The idea being that the United Kingdom would set the floor and this parliament would not have the power to lower that floor but the United Kingdom would not set the ceiling and if this parliament thought that the floor had been set too low by the United Kingdom we would have the power in this parliament to top up any reserved benefit whether it's within devolved whether it would otherwise have been within devolved competence or or not and there has of course been a vote in this parliament 91 to 31 that says that this floor has been set too low so my question is what what pressure are you bringing to bear on the Scottish government to exercise its powers to ensure that none of these issues that you're talking about apply in Scotland at all given that we have the power to do something about that. For that question Emma. Sure yeah thank you for your advice about pursuing strategic litigation. The question about mitigation I think is quite an interesting one for our organisations and in terms of pressure to bear I think I would echo Jo's points about there being a lot of discussion with UK government still to run on this question about whether ultimately the two-child limit and its exemptions will seem to be a useful policy. I think that there are a number of questions raised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and by our organisations that I think we are still at the discussion stage of and I think the most charitable interpretation is that perhaps because of a lack of equality impact assessment some of these issues simply haven't yet been considered by UK government so we are certainly not at the end of the process of determining what is going to happen to the two-child limit. So the question for our organisation then which has been very much involved and engaged with Scottish government in the development of the new social security powers is what is ultimately best for women's equality and I think we would want to consider that question in the round undertaking adequate equality impact assessment using gender mainstreaming approaches and pursuing the principles of dignity and fairness and human rights which the Scottish Minister for Social Security has indicated will be part of development. So the the short answer is that we have not yet determined whether it is in most in women's interests and the interests of women's equality to propose that mitigation of the specific policy is the most useful avenue or if actually a different decision with regards to the use of Scottish Social Security powers and the budgets thereof would be most in women's interests and that will obviously require some modelling perhaps but also a clear essence of the content of what will be in the social security bill which will be forthcoming quite soon. So we will continue to have those discussions and continue to push for women's equality and rights to be realised through the implementation of social security powers in Scotland. I mean do you want to come in on that one Jo? I've got three people want to come in on that supplementary. Did you want to come in on that one Rob? Yeah I think just basically we would welcome positive changes whether the UK government were to make them or whether the Scottish government were to mitigate them. There's obviously our priority is that that it's as simple and straightforward for people to claim the benefits they're entitled to as it possibly can be in mitigating the mitigating policies as we've seen with schemes around the bedroom tax and around the the removal of housing support for 18 to 21 year olds. There's I suppose it tends to be sort of necessarily quite complicated and not as straightforward as not applying the policy in the first place would be but that being said if the Scottish government willing to make changes then we would welcome that. He supplementates to that one. Ben Macpherson, Gordon Lindhurst and George Adam. Just very quickly, convener. Given the potential cost of a judicial review to third sector organisations like yourself and given the potential cost on any Scottish government in terms of mitigation shouldn't the focus remain right now on this policy at source and given there's a general election going on at the moment shouldn't we all be putting pressure on the UK government in the coming weeks and continue to do so going forward to bring to abolish this policy at source this policy that's not as Adam said has been voted against in Scotland or at least to think about a geographical exclusion. I mean yeah absolutely I think if the if the policy can be amended and I mean the two child limit here can be amended changed or removed that would ultimately be of most use I think to women in Scotland but also across the rest of the UK and particularly in Northern Ireland where there are devastating consequences of the way the exemptions operate and where there's mandatory reporting of serious crimes such as rape to the police and where there is exceptionally limited access to abortion healthcare so incredibly difficult decisions to be made by the women of Northern Ireland who of course would not be assisted at all by any mitigation that was Scotland specific. We of course would judiciously consider the use of any of our members money which is what we would be using to seek judicial review and would obviously wish to spend as little as possible in achieving our policy ambitions so yes. Anyone else want to come back in that one before I bring Gordon Lindhurst in? No? Thank you convener just to bring the questions back to Scotland. If I understand you correctly I'm a rich you say that the whole issue and the issues that arise are being considered against the background of other other matters and consideration and how the Scottish Government takes things forward. It's always easy to criticise a policy of whatever type. It's much more difficult to actually give an answer which provides a better way forward and I'm just wanting to know from each of you that your organisations will be providing specific proposals to the Scottish Government as how to approach this matter in the context of the social security system in Scotland which of course is now and will increasingly perhaps differ from that in England. I mean I hope I can provide reassurance on that point. Engenda has been co-ordinating a coalition of women's organisations that have been working on social security for a number of years now in Scotland. We have been vigorously critical of some of the implementation of social security in Scotland and what we see as weaknesses in gender mainstreaming within that. We will continue, we hope, to be challenging to the Scottish Government as it develops its proposals for the use of devolved social security powers and would be commenting in great detail on the bill and engaging in all of the consultation processes available to us to achieve that. I think I would echo what I said. We've obviously been partnering with Engenda and other women's organisations over the last few years on providing evidence to this committee as well as reporting on our concerns about how social security has been implemented in Scotland and in particular campaigning vigorously on the need for split payments for universal credit as a means of ensuring women's financial independence. We will continue to do that until it is happening for women in Scotland. Thank you. Did you want to comment on that role before I bring George Adam? Yes, I would say that the case is taking a substantial amount of work on the new social security system. It is an opportunity to, not from southern squares, we have done a substantial amount of engagement with the CEP clients, advisers, ever submitted extensive evidence to the Scottish Government's consultation and a vision with them on a very regular basis about the details of the new system. It is one of our biggest policy priorities over the next year. Just a very quick follow-up on that. Have you got draft proposals in relation to this particular issue that you have provided to the Scottish Government at this point for an alternative, or is it something that you are looking at in the overall picture rather than saying the best way is to respond to this particular issue that you are here to talk about today? I would refer back to my answer to Adam Tomkins and say that the question of how best to respond to what ultimately happens with this policy, and we do not yet know the outcome, there are a number of conversations that the minister has obviously been engaged in. Once the outcome of that is known, we will be able more effectively to say what we think the Scottish Government should use its resource in implementing the new social security powers. To do that, we will work with academics and institutions in Scotland to do modelling, micro simulation. We have been involved in expert groups looking at some of the detailed entitlements within the new social security system. We will be contributing to discussions about the establishment of the agency, so we will be bringing detailed proposals as detailed as we can with our capacity forward when the time is right. At the moment, we would not want to comment on this policy in a vacuum with regard to mitigation. Sometimes when you are in this place, you end up thinking that you get to a stage where you think you have heard absolutely everything, but when you hear a Tory member sitting here saying that third sector organisations should run to the courts to try and sort legislation, then you have to ask yourself what kind of place are we working in here and what kind of environment. When, at the end of the day, would you not think that it would actually be the case, a better idea for organisations like yourself, third sector organisations, to spend your members' money on other things and trying to mend Tory policies in Westminster? My main question, because it always seems to get here as the fact that it is from the opposition, is to either litigate or mitigate. That seems to be okay if you are a lawyer and many of the Tory benches are lawyers, so that would be good for them in their profession. However, one of the things that I would like to ask is, let's get the policy right, let's try and get something sorted, let's do it the proper way and actually try and get the policy correct. We know that this policy is immoral, the way it has at the moment, but one of the things that Engender said, and I think it was my colleague Ben Macpherson that brought it up, was the fact that in America, some of the states when they went down this route, Emma and they decided that they would have a family cap, many of them moved away from it eventually, and not only did they move away from it, they actually found that it got people into further poverty, but also at the same time, would it not be the case that we would find ourselves in a similar situation that we've basically got a policy here coming from the UK Government, which is actually going to lead to failure anyway, because it doesn't actually make any difference to what it's trying to achieve in the first place? I don't know who wants to respond to that particular one. Yeah, I mean, I think a point I would wish to re-emphasise is that a quality impact assessment is absolutely critical to the development of complex policy, all policy, but particularly complex policy such as social security policy. And I do think some of the profound weaknesses in the thinking underpinning the two-child limit would have been brought to the surface if that process had been undertaken with any kind of adequacy, and so I think that that's vitally important to get policy right at the start rather than to be seeking to either mitigate it or to challenge it in ways that become quite difficult. I mean, I think there is virtue to legal certainty, so I wouldn't want to rule that kind of approach out for organisations such as mine on every single topic, but certainly collaboration, participatory approaches to developing policy, hearing from women's lived experience, I think, would have produced a dramatically different kind of policy. And I would urge this committee to consider all of those approaches when looking at the development of the new social security approaches that Scotland will be taking so that it can avoid some of those mistakes in analysis and thinking that colleagues perhaps have had down south. Anyone else from the panel wants to make a comment to Mr Adam's question? I think that, as I said earlier on, welcome changes regardless of whichever route they came from, but we've asked the UK Government to reconsider the policy in light of the evidence from ourselves and from other organisations. I think that that would be the most straightforward step to changing policy in terms of how it comes about and what tactics people might use. It's not necessarily for me to say or say that we are evidence and I hope that people act on it. Can I just come in? Sorry, Mr Adam. On that particular point, Rob, you mentioned the fact that on behalf of the people that you see in CAB, you would prefer to be scrapped altogether for the policy. I want to make that clear for the record that you have made submissions that should be scrapped altogether. Ruth Maguire and Richard Leonard. Good morning, panel. Thanks for being here and for all your evidence and your work. We know that the two-child limit applies to child tax credit and universal credit, but many folk won't know that other forms of income to support children, such as income support and jobseekers allowance, have also been amended to prevent an amount being paid for the third child from 6 April. Even housing benefit regulations have been changed to prevent the effect of the policy from being offset by additional entitlement to housing benefit. Is this something that the panel recognises and what impact do you see from cutting off such fatal income streams? As I was leading to earlier, it's still, I suppose, slightly unknown what the exact impact will be because it is a complex picture that it might change entitlement to other benefits, not just child tax credits or universal credit. In terms of when changes like this tend to happen, sometimes the impact on the ground in the citizens advice bureaus is quite subtle. What they can tend to find over the long time is the such an increasing amount of people struggling to pay for essentials and needing support from whatever social security support they can get. We've seen an increased number of people who have been seeking food bank referrals over the past three or four years. It's something that I think probably will potentially see the impacts as it comes in, but that might be in the form of people who are struggling and difficult to get suitable social security entitlement to cover all their costs. I want to come in on that. Sorry, it's still, obviously, this is still evolving in terms of our being able to collect evidence from our members on the impact, but we know that women's aid groups are having to try and cobble together destitution funds to be able to supplement women coming in who can't afford to buy nappies for their child or formula milk. All of these things are because of the cumulative impact of cuts that women are experiencing and their inability to manage day-to-day living needs. We'll be continuing to do that with our members to be, as this develops, gathering evidence from them directly and case studies of their experiences. The women's budget group has come to a determination that 86 per cent of all the cuts made in the decade of austerity between 2010 and 2020 will come from women's purses, which is a staggering figure and repeated in work that's been done in the House of Commons library and other places. Succesive UN committees, when they've been looking at the UK's performance against its international obligations, have required the UK to undertake what's called a cumulative impact assessment, so to look at the combined impact of all of these different policy changes on disabled people, black minority ethnic people and on women and children, and so far those calls have not resulted in any action. I think we would join the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has repeatedly urged the UK government to do that also, because we simply don't know. We can pull together all that evidence and say that these things collectively will be having a detrimental impact we can see from indicators such as food bank use increasing, that real people and real communities are being very seriously affected by the withdrawal of services and of income, but the UK is not holistically looking at the picture that is being painted by its social security reforms and is instead increasing and sustaining the severity of those. If we're at a point where women are having to come and be given nappies for their children and milk to feed them, it strikes me as cruel the change to policy. Just really quickly, convener, if I might, Scottish Women's Aid, within your evidence there's a case study, which I think sets out quite starkly the impact, but probably more over than that, it reflects how lacking in a grounding of what people's lives are like, this policy is. Would that be reflected across the client base that you work with? I think that it's a very typical example of the case studies that we gather in terms of women only being able to access largely low-paid employment, temporary employment, juggling that with childcare and school holidays and other care of elderly parents. For women who have experienced domestic abuse, they have often been prevented from working outside the home or through educational opportunities. They are likely to be experiencing more inherent poverty and risk of increased poverty than other lone parents. Anyone else wants to come in that answer? I'll bring in Richard Leonard in. Thanks very much, convener. I suppose that the Court of Public Opinion will be a test in two weeks' time and people may well pass judgment on this policy amongst others. I have to say that the geographical exclusion that I would like to see is for the whole of the UK to reject this policy. Can I come to the cost of it? It seems to me that we've seen different figures. I think that the Minister for Social Security spoke about a £12 billion saving at a UK level. We've seen figures of £1.5 billion saved per annum across the UK and £85 million saved across Scotland if this policy is applied. Do you get a sense looking at things in the round? Do you get a sense of where those savings are going to be reapplied? Are they going to be reapplied to help the poorest in society, or are they going to be reapplied to afford tax cuts to those who are better off? Where the UK Government chooses to spend its savings is a matter for the UK Government rather than citizens of I Scotland. One thing that Lee is worth pointing out is that when we talk about welfare savings, it doesn't necessarily mean that the taxpayer has saved money in the long term. It impacts on the health service, on housing, on crisis support and local authorities, where people are struggling to get by, facing constant stress and worry. It's not necessarily that money would be entirely saved. It would be somewhere else. The Sheffield Hallam University reports for this committee have highlighted the money that's lost to the economy in local areas. It's probably more of a complex pitch than merely making out-saving that it's saved to the public purse. Emma or Jo, do you want to come in on that particular one? Richard, do you want to come back in again? No, no, that's fine. As advocacy organisations, I would have thought that you may have a view on the distribution of resources in society. I just asked that. I've already asked Rob and for the benefit of the committee and the evidence that we've heard from your organisations, would you prefer to see this so-called legislation scrapped completely? I'll call the meeting to a close just now and thank you very much for your evidence.  Thank you so much. I just want to welcome today and thank you very much for your written evidence. It was very helpful for the committee. I just welcome John Dickie, director of child poverty action group in Scotland, and Devon Galani, if I've got it pronounced properly. I'll start off with a basic question that I've picked up from the previous witnesses. One of my questions is in regard to the legislation and how it will have an knock-on effect in any other benefits, as you may call that, even such as school meals and school clothing grants. My question to the witnesses is how will that affect John Dickie and the role that you play in the child poverty? How will that affect children already living in poverty and also how could that policy be implemented in that respect? I'll open it up to the witnesses. I'll start off. Initially, it's a high level. I guess our analysis looked at, just tried to effectively evaluate the policy on its own terms. I think we've talked a lot about just using numbers to look at whether or not it's meeting its objectives as originally set out, which are two-fold. One is changing behaviour and the second one is saving money effectively. In terms of responding to that particular question, what impact will it have? Specifically, it affects about a quarter of a million people who are already in poverty today, pushing deeper into poverty, just over a quarter of a million children who are currently above the poverty line who will move below. This is from a UK perspective. I was trying to do the numbers specifically for Scotland. I think it's tough on the plane. Then, 600,000 children who are above the poverty line will remain above the poverty line, but will be worse off. That's looking at the children who are born and won't be receiving that support, but also their siblings too, because again, this by default affects larger families. The knock-on impacts on other benefits does exist. It is relative to other reforms that are happening at the same time, relatively slight, but the complexity of putting all of these, looking at, I guess, the cumulative impact of welfare reform and looking at the combined impact of all of these welfare reforms together, is effectively what policy impact is to, because I think that's what affects people at the end of the day. That's what affects the families. This particular policy will have an impact on specific families, but really they're interested in the combined impact of this, the benefit cap, universal credit, other things that are coming in that ultimately affect their ability to meet their spending commitments. John Finch-Evon, I was like Devon. Our focus has been on the overall impact of this particular policy on levels of child poverty, and I can go into that in a bit more depth in terms of those knock-on effects that you were talking about. We've done less work in terms of working out where the risks are for particularly for devolved benefits such as school clothing grants or free school meals. I think that we've already had commitment from the Scottish Government that it won't impact on council tax reduction. I think that we need to make sure that there are similar arrangements in place to just because you're a third child in a family and are losing entitlement to UK child tax credit or universal credit, that that's not having an impact on passported benefits. I just wanted to explore that a bit. Obviously, we're looking at that and it opened up to questions. I remember the stigma attached to children getting free school meals when you had a different ticket from everyone else, and the evidence that we were given there would need to fill in a form. Would it possibly take—we're talking about Scotland here, but it's a UK-wide policy—is that the kind of form it could possibly take that people would be given back to having a stigma for school grants or free school meals? I hope not. I need to go back and look at that in more depth to see how we can ensure that in Scotland loss of entitlement for third and subsequent children doesn't lead to any administrative barriers to claiming devolved social security or devolved benefits such as free school meals or school clothing grants. I think that there's actually good work going on anyway in terms of removing the need for application. For example, Glasgow is looking at automatising entitlement to school clothing grant and now to free school meals using data that it already has about people's financial support, but making sure that that happens in a way that it doesn't just feed through the loss of universal credit, child tax credit and that impact on free school meal entitlement is something that we need to look at. Devon, do you have any thoughts on that particular, because it is a UK-wide legislation? Do you have any thoughts on that? Would that be the effect that it may have on people? Rather than the stigma, I think that if you think about some of the specific interactions that this policy will have, which I think was your first question really on the knock on implications for other benefits, there are a couple that come to mind. The first one is that, again, that commitment to ensuring the household that council tax support isn't affected by this reform is relatively straightforward in the context of the current method of assessing council tax support. Under universal credit, there is a strong chance that that gets more complex. We have modelled council tax support schemes for 40 local authorities across the UK, many of which have now been implemented. There are some interesting drivers in a universal credit context, particularly given the high administrative cost of administering council tax support that will make it more difficult to meet that same commitment under universal credit. There are a couple of other potential short-term knock-on consequences, but I think the longer term impacts as well on take-up of other benefits is relevant to. In some respects, it can actually increase the demand and requirement for some types of later down the line anti-poverty measures, things like the take-up eligibility for free school meals. You mentioned the school clothing grant, we looked at a couple of others, things like the pupil premium policy. Depending on what the future eligibility criteria for those types of policy are, if children are worse off effectively at the outset, the take-up of some of these other later down the line costs for government are likely to increase. Thank you very much. I have got… Ruth, you wanted to come in on Alison. Thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. In written evidence, I think it was from child poverty action group. You mentioned that the coalition government estimated in 2010 that as many as 350,000 children and 500,000 working adults could be moved out of poverty by these changes, and that was referring to universal credits introduction. By virtue of the changes to entitlement and increase to take-up of benefits, that clearly has not been the case. Could you elaborate on the difference that you see now between now and the 2010 estimate and what is actually happening, and by how much was the UK Government wrong in its estimations? The original modelling was that universal credit in itself would reduce child poverty by 350,000 across the UK by 2020. That was against the backdrop of a whole series of other cuts to the financial support to families freezing of upgrading cuts to child benefit cuts to other sources of financial support. In itself, on paper, the model was that it would reduce child poverty. We have looked at the actual impact on child poverty by universal credit, and it is now looking like there will be a million more children in poverty by 2020. Clearly, there is a massive difference in the impact of universal credit. It is not just about the two-child limit, but about the wider cuts that have been made to universal credit, so changes to work allowances in universal credit, changes to the taper rate at which universal credit is withdrawn as people increase their earnings, a whole series of cuts to the value of universal credit that is reducing its poverty fighting potential. Our key focus at the moment is to try to fix that in the UK Government. The model is being rolled out now, but it can be fixed and you can invest in it to ensure that it has more of that poverty fighting potential than it had when it was originally designed. Devon had more to say about how the original design worked and how that would impact on levels of child poverty, but it has been clear that what was in principle would have had a poverty-reducing impact is now, in terms of modelling the IPPR analysis that we have done, at increased levels of poverty. The OBR has also acknowledged that its overall universal credit regime will be less generous than the system that it is replacing. For those that are unaware, I was part of the team that developed universal credit as a policy concept at the Centre for Social Justice. Initially, the concept behind simplifying the benefit system and ensuring that people are better off in work hopefully still has broad cross-party support. The way in which I think it is sensible to think about universal credit is in two ways. One is that aim of changing the structure of the system and how that works, and the second one is how much money we spend on the system, both in terms of the out-of-work support and the levels of in-work support and how they are tapered off. From my perspective, reducing the levels of in-work support to be less generous than they are under the current benefit system is probably a step backwards for a Government that implemented universal credit on the basis of making work pay. That is probably fiscal constraints aside, still a trade-off choice between other spending decisions elsewhere. I would also say that, from my perspective, the policy concept behind universal credit of simplifying the benefit system and ensuring that people can clearly and conceptually see that they would always be better off in work and working more still stands. The policy practice does an awful lot of work on looking at the practical elements of implementing universal credit to, and we see part of our role as taking the practical voice of the organisations we work with, housing associations, local authorities and others on the front line, and feeding them back into the policy process to try and implement where the starting point is a policy issue, trying to iron those out, and sometimes where it is an implementation issue, working with officials to try and find a constructive route through that. I am very concerned by the evidence that we are hearing that once universal credit is rolled out, the two-child limit will result in another 200,000 children being pushed into poverty in the UK. That is gravely concerning. In your written submission, you say that 51,000 families across Scotland with more than two children claimed tax credits in 2014-15. You make the point that 39 per cent of children and families with more than three children live in poverty compared to 26 per cent with two children. What I feel in policy and practice that you touch on is that we are seeing a corruption of our needs-based system. You make the point that we are moving away from the needs-based principles on which the British welfare system was set up. It seems that we are assessing needs, recognising it and then saying, well, do you know what? That is just tough, because you do not meet those criteria. Do you agree with that characterisation? Is there anything that we can do to stop what I see as the rot that is beginning to set in? It is not just corrupting, it is breaking the link. Clearly, the two-child limit breaks the link between the needs of a family and a child for additional financial support and the level of support that is going to be made available through the social security system. There is a breaking of that, and that is one of the most invidious aspects of this policy. I suppose that what concerns us is the mismatch or disconnect between the apparent policy objective of the two-child limit and the actual practicality of how it plays out. The explanation given to it is meant to introduce some fairness between working families and those who are not working, but it is meant to make parents think carefully about whether they can afford to bring up a child. Is that at odds with the reality of the bulk of people who are going to be impacted by the policy? Two thirds of the families who are going to be impacted are families who are working, and two thirds of them are families who have only three children. We are not talking about huge families, we are talking about families with three children, and two thirds of those families are affected are families who are in work. It is hard to see how that is creating fairness between working and non-working families if any such unfairness exists at the moment and we would question that at all. The other assumption that is based on how families can plan on the basis of absolute financial security for the 18 years that it takes to bring up a child—very few, if any, families are in that position and no family that I am aware of can guarantee that it is not going to be impacted by unemployment, redundancy, ill health or by widowhood or by separation.  I am not quite sure how families are meant to plan for that, so it is not possible to plan for that. Then, if the system continues to operate fails to provide support on the basis of need when one of those financial security hit a family, that seems to be a real undermining of what we mean by social security or what social security should be able to provide for families across Scotland and across the UK. I am sure that the session will move on to ways forward, and I wanted to answer this question in a way that has got us all thinking about that. Yes, it is a shift away from some of those needs-based principles, but I think it is worth thinking about how we assess and think about needs. I say that for two reasons. One, partly, the drive about how poverty is currently measured based on income means that if you take money out of the system, clearly more people will be in poverty. In the same way that if you put money into the system, fewer people will be in poverty. I think that there is a more sophisticated way of thinking about poverty. We have done some work for a number of authorities to model the expected expenditure of different households based on different size levels. Certain authorities have been able to use that to identify households that are coping versus those that are struggling versus those that are at risk and those that are actually in crisis. Again, when you are trying to intervene and work with households, you often have contact with those that are in crisis. They are generally the households that are more likely to present. It would be interesting to see what level of intervention could happen with households that had gone from struggling to being at risk. Actually, there is a potential concern that there is an opportunity to intervene. The way in which we go about doing that and the reason that I wanted to mention it is because with, hopefully, some of the powers that Scotland will have, thinking about new ways of developing a social security system that gets the right kind of support to the right people at the right time is something that is worth all putting a lot of energy into. It is probably a step away from simple mitigation. Do you believe that the cost of this policy will ultimately fall on the children affected? I mean, I think just we did a couple of bits analysis and if you look at where if you look at where sort of the arguments that government made for ring fencing certain aspects of social security, particularly those for older people and those for people of working age, I think the driver behind that has been older people do not necessarily have the ability to do anything to change their current circumstances. That is one of the drivers for one of the justifications for protection. I would apply that same argument to the children who are affected by this policy, both the babies that are born into these families and their siblings of how much ability they had to necessarily influence that. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't fundamentally do, perhaps that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do anything about it. There are, if the objective is to save money, you could save money by reducing the level. There are other policy alternatives depending on what the policy objective is. I think that's where our concerns stem from.  You know, modelling the impact of this policy without the two child limit and then with the two child limit, 200,000 more children in poverty across the UK. I mean, I hope the evidence that we've previously given to this committee about what the impact of growing up in poverty, growing up in an income that's so far behind what is the norm in our society and what is needed to provide a decent start in life for children, that comes at a cost, and it comes at a cost in terms of all the evidence that we've presented previously to the Parliament in terms of people with children's education, their health, their wellbeing. You can't drive children into poverty, increase levels of child poverty, without significant impacts on children's wellbeing and significant costs for all of us in society, and significant costs that Devon and previous panels flagged up in terms of other public services. Gorddlyn, have you wanted to give in a quick supplementary on that one? Question really for Devon Geleney. You referred to this being a step backwards against the background of considerations relating to the idea being that it should be, I think, pay more to be in work than out of work, the Government policy and so forth. Now, I'm not suggesting other considerations are not also important, but I think you mentioned in the written submission to the committee as well, this aspect of that. Have you done calculations purely on that sort of financial aspect to demonstrate the value or lack of value of this particular alteration in the tax credit system? Is there a tipping point where, even from a purely financial point of view, you could show that it's either worth it or not worth it? I'm not sure how to frame it, but I'm just interested in your thoughts on that, developing on your earlier point. You know that we have a minute silence at 11 o'clock. Yes, it was announced earlier. You may start. I will stop. I'll kick off with a response. Hopefully, it won't take five minutes. No, but it's a very good point, so I think it's worthwhile raising. We have done, so the modelling we do is again that cumulative impact assessment that I think others have mentioned before, and I think the Parliament has commissioned. The driver behind policy and practice approach to this, as well as modelling all reforms combined, including things like mitigating measures, like increases in the national minimum wage and the personal tax allowance in the context of this and universal credit and everything else that could potentially be coming in, is also the ability to effectively do this at the individual household level. When these analyses are typically done, you look at them using sample data, the family resources survey or other large-scale data sets that exist. Our work has primarily been working with local authorities own administrative data anonymised, and working with effectively working with that to track the impact that these policies are having on individual households. Because you're tracking these individual households over time, you can start to see causation between one policy and the next. I think this is very relevant to Scotland, which is why I bring it up. We've done this in London, whereby we've managed to pull together data across 14 London boroughs over the last, well, what we'll be pulling it together over two years. That's more than 450,000 low-income households with individual data points each month. Some of the conclusions that's allowed us to, some of the questions that, more analysis tends to lead to more questions at times, but some of the things that that's pointed us toward is, we were asked to look at, for example, the cost of temporary accommodation when impacted by a particular benefit reform, specifically the benefit cap. What we found was that 80% of households had been in temporary accommodation for more than the last 12 months, so putting those aside for those 20% that had moved into temporary accommodation, we really now have to ask the question of, are they affected by the benefit cap because they're in temporary accommodation and the cost of temporary accommodation are higher, or were they affected by the benefit cap, and that drove them to leave a tendency and move into temporary accommodation. These are questions that we're now able to answer. The other way in which some of this work can happen is in targeting discretionary support, so I think from reading other submissions discretionary mitigation is one route forward for families affected by this. I think there are some serious administrative challenges, both in terms of the cost of administration, but more importantly in terms of getting support to the families that are actually affected. That is a challenge without being able to pinpoint individual households. I think this is, for policy and practice, this is a very powerful and important way forward to think about how we address these broader questions of social security, so the ability to model policy all the way through to 2020, so the crux of your question is, have we done this modelling? Yes, taking into account all of these reforms together, but also modelling multiple scenarios through to 2020, so there's a pre-Brexit and a post-Brexit scenario looking at differences in increases in wages, for example, or increases in rent levels. I'll pause there and happy to take a supplementary, but I think we're close to 11. And one last point in the last 20 seconds, though, is I think the other reason it's relevant to mention here is that data and information has been very powerful in influencing Westminster, so when I look at the local authorities' successes that they've had, those have typically come with local authorities that know how to use and wield the power of information. That, I think, we've all benefited for that minute's silence and our own private thoughts. Could I just continue, obviously, the discussion? Gordon Lindhurst, did you want to come back in again on that and then Pauline McNeill? Just very briefly, convener. Thank you. In relation to the specific issue of the child tax credit cap, it may be that there's not been the time or opportunity to do these sorts of calculations or broad considerations yet. Will you be undertaking these? We've done this for a number of individual local authorities, so for example, for Croydon, their ability now to pinpoint households with two children that could potentially be affected. Now exists, and the next step for them is to tie that into information around, potentially information around life birth, and there are obviously a lot of other considerate administrative considerations around things like that, but that's the way in which this kind of information, the use of this kind of information could potentially be applied. Similarly, again, if it was around mitigation, where a third child was born and notified the relevant authorities, you could then immediately target mitigation to that household. Thank you very much, Pauline McNeill. Thank you. I found what you said very interesting, so I'm going to search my questions to get a bit deeper into what you've said. Of course, there was a point where we didn't have child tax credit, a Labour Government introduced it. It's something that I would wish to continue to defend. I believe that it has reduced poverty across Britain, but the context that we live in now, as you previously mentioned, is financial crash, where people lost their jobs, where more people went and fell into poverty, and Brexit has to be a factor in all of this, so more families will be in poverty. It's hard to make assumptions because the objective of the policy is to get people to think about planning their families if the state is paying. Of course, they may ignore that and continue to do it anyway, having more children, even though that's not supported by the state. What you were telling the committee about trying to identify those families who are struggling against those families who are coping, I think, is quite important evidence. I recognise what you're saying. It's what we've listened to already about the role of local authorities, crucial work of local authorities in tackling poverty, but, of course, they can only do that if there's an increase in the resource to do that. Is it your view, then, that this should be addressed in terms of Government policy? If the Government of the day, whoever they happen to be, is not going to reverse the policy itself on only supporting two children with, obviously, some exceptions, are you suggesting that there should be an argument made to the UK Government that there should be some other way of recognising that the policy might have quite a dramatic effect years down the line and that there should be some way of recognising how the endopause could be adjusted? I think that we need to think about this policy in two ways, effectively, in two ways. The first is how do we use information and analysis around this to influence at a strategic policy level and how might we use it to, once a strategic policy direction has been determined, to make better operational choices? So, I think there are two ways of looking at it, and I'll work with local authorities to effectively local policy, local strategy, but also local operational decisions. I think at a broader level you could ask some quite important questions about this particular policy. For example, is the causal impact on fertility rates evident? You can easily compare whether the likelihood of changes in fertility rates between two different groups of families, those that were affected by this policy and those that weren't, for example. These are things that can now be answered. Whose role it is to ask and answer these questions? I think there are some relevant points being made in the first session about impact assessments and how in depth and how detailed they should be, but fundamentally I think it's also a relevant responsibility for everyone who's concerned about these choices, and equally at an operational level too. Perhaps that's not the place for this committee, but I do think, I agree with the point made that local authorities do an awful lot of important work. In getting the right kind of support to particularly the most vulnerable families, and the ways in which they're using information to show whether or not their interventions are effective or not is very relevant and useful to themselves and their future direction, but also other local authorities and the development of best practice. There's a real role for local authorities both in terms of this change to social security system, this cut, but also others in terms of identifying those households that are affected and doing all that they can within their powers to support those families. I'm a bit concerned that we're moving away from the fundamental problem here, which is the two-child limit. Now we have a range of evidence from Dellans policy and practice, a quarter of a million more children in poverty by the end of the decade, the IPPR-CPAG analysis, 200,000 more children into poverty by the end of the decade, using a different methodology. We've got the Institute of Fiscal Studies, 200,000 more children in poverty as a direct result of the two-child limit. The focus needs to be on repealing the two-child limit and doing all that we can to ensure that the next UK Government does that. I suppose that there's a key part that I was wanting to make. In terms of the other dynamic effects in terms of some of the suggestions as to why this policy is there to encourage parents to plan more, to encourage them to have fewer children or whatever, we heard in the first panel evidence from the US, very small if any effect on fertility and the number of children low-income families we're having. The UK Government's own impact assessment doesn't attempt to incorporate any such effect, saying that they are uncertain. The policy is coming from there, so rather than trying to justify it or trying to find the evidence that this won't have an impact that it's meant to have, there's no evidence being presented that it will have the impact that it's meant to have, but we have a whole lot of evidence that it's going to have an impact on the levels of child poverty. I think that as Devon or somebody earlier suggested that IFFs do suggest that there's some evidence that fertility decisions can be affected by benefit changes, but they're unable to establish and I'm quoting timing effects and an impact on the total number of children, so there's clearly very limited evidence that this will have that kind of impact. The other point I'd make is encouraging families, those working families or families out of work, whoever they are, to have fewer children. Is that the policy intent that we want in an ageing population? Are we really saying that working families should be having fewer children? I suppose I just want to get back to the fundamentals of this particular policy and why we need to be focusing on repealing it. I'm sorry, I have to sit down and finish it with you. Can I just say? It's our job to interrogate all the evidence before us and I'm just interested to hear. At the moment, I don't see that the current government seemed convinced even after the debate that we had in the Parliament was embarrassing for the current government, but it doesn't seem to have resulted in a policy change, so I'm just interrogating the idea that if we fail, and who knows what will happen on June 8, we need to come up with something. We have to continue, because I do believe that we're heading for something much bigger. I do believe that there will be an impact of Brexit on the policy, and it would be quite useful to get your evidence on that that will be an added dimension, but it's only once down the line of the implications of Brexit, and I presume that there will be more families in poverty as a result of it. Would that be your view? I mean, a certain of the modelling that was done by IPPR for us factors in the employment rates, the tax and benefit modelling based on what we know about cost of living employment rates. I think that there is substantial evidence out there that cost of living is likely to increase, and we've already seen that happening. Clearly, if we see benefits more widely being frozen and reduced in lots of different ways, clearly that's going to have an impact in itself in terms of levels of family poverty. I take the point that it is important that we look at what we can do pragmatically, as well as how we go about repealing. I guess I was taking down a slightly geeky path of data-driven analysis. The main point around that fundamentally is how you change policy in Westminster, and also how you deliver mitigation in practice operationally can both be very heavily influenced by how you wield this information. A lot of it sits within the local authorities across Scotland. We've done some work with North Esher in the past, and the example I gave across London shows it is possible, although no mean feat, to pull some of this information together, particularly with the powers that Scotland will have with the Social Security Bill, how you think about how you implement those in the broader scheme of what's happening to the social security system. It's worthwhile thinking about how you use that information to do that, and to achieve your objectives, which again, for me, it's not quite clear to me whether or not they're to influence Westminster and have this national bill repealed, or whether it's to think about how Scotland can mitigate the impacts, I think, in either case, how you actually use the data slightly different, but it's still relevant. Thank you. Ben Macpherson and then Adam Tom. Thank you, convener, and thanks both of you for your evidence. In the policy and practice paper that you stated, it states that over a million children will be hit by the policy. It says that by the end of this Parliament we'll take that in the coming years, and 2.1 million families are at risk of being affected should they have another child. As well as the impact that that will have on the wellbeing of the individuals involved and the wellbeing of our society, do any of the panel members foresee any long-term costs of this two-child limit on the economy specifically, particularly given forecasts of hundreds of thousands of more children being pushed into poverty as a result, and given that we know that the costs of poverty are significant and that children who grow up in poverty have lower productivity as adults and have a higher risk of falling into unemployment? So, work I've done previously on outcome-based government looks at the costs of policies, both obviously the benefits of policies and the costs of policies in three main ways, so fiscal, economic and social. The analysis we did in that paper looked specifically at the fiscal because I think again within its own terms does it save money was a question we were looking to ask and I think we identified a number of fiscal costs that were going to come into effect to offset that. What we didn't look at alongside it, which is why I think it's a very good question, we didn't model the economic and social implications. I think it's relatively clear to me through common sense that again families, and we're talking about children that are moving into poverty, the children that are already in poverty and perhaps families are already struggling with meeting their obligations around rent and other things that will have knock-on consequences both on public services but also on the well-being of children in those families and it's very difficult to say exactly what that will be but net is unlikely to be very positive. It's likely to have a negative impact on their ability to pay attention in school, I think the evidence points towards all of that. So, from an economic perspective then if they're not doing as well in school I think there are concerns and we say this policies like to have long-term fiscal and social implications well into the future and I think that's a nod toward some of these unfully kind of not fully costed but quite concerning scenarios as to what happens to the children growing up in those families. At the same time I think there was a point earlier to say that kind of I think net spending on social security that the IFS did this modelling and I'm not sure where they did it on social security overall or working age social security is still higher than it was pre tax, pre the introduction of tax credits so I think there's a driver I saw in one of the the reading notes here so I think there's a driver here from the current government and previous government to sort of say actually the benefit system is too generous and they're making calls here as to who should and should not get that support. I think they're valid questions for politicians whether or not they're being done in the right way can only be really answered against the policy's own objectives which is why we would look to this policy in the way that we have and again if you're trying to influence Westminster is to say you wanted to achieve this did you and the only other point while I'm while I've got the microphone is to say in the context of behaviour change really as well as the evidence that says will or will this not affect policy I think it's important to look at how much effort has gone into making people aware of this policy in order to influence their behaviour. Now again there's a lot of work we've done around how you make people who are affected by one benefit policy aware of all the others that affect them so this kind of work is is entirely possible but I don't think and again if you think about nine months before this policy was introduced how many families were aware of it very you know next to none and I think so if that's a policy objective how much effort did you really put toward achieving it is a is a valid these are the kinds of questions that I think can be powerful. Do you want to reply to that I know we're running out of time I've given you an extra five minutes but now four minutes. Just in terms of the cost of policy we don't have anything specific on what the cost of this specific policy are we do know that the overall loss into Scottish households of cuts to the value of social security post 2015 cuts over a billion pounds 20 to 25 20 to 2015 a billion pounds that's money out of families pockets in communities across Scotland that's money not being spent in local businesses in local shops there's a knock on impact not just for the families themselves but for the for the economy in terms of the cost of child poverty work done there in modelling the actual overall cost of child poverty 29 billion pounds a year in the UK the cost of both picking up the pieces in terms of additional pressures on education social services health and all the rest of it as well as the lost income as a result of having a generation of children who are less likely to be in work and less likely to be earning decent wages so there are big costs to tolerating a situation and pushing for even more children into poverty thank you Joe better that you add and talk as you wanted to come yeah please thank you convenient um given what you said john about um the modelling that's been done about the numbers of children that we've pushed into poverty as a result of this and I understand the force of the argument about trying to tackle this at source and it's UK policy not um Scottish policy but as you very well know we have a child poverty bill uh in front of us at the moment in this in this parliament this committee's reported on it already um and we'll deliberate on it um at next week in the chamber is there anything specific in the child poverty bill that we should be thinking about um strengthening or changing or adding to the bill um you know with with this with this particular policy in mind you just got that at the very very end because there's nothing absolutely to do with what we're talking about I think what you're trying to say is yeah you you've managed to get three words I think I think I'm not what you're actually saying to mr dickie is is there anything from this child poverty this two child clause which could be affecting the child poverty bill is that is that correct I think the way I expressed the question was clearer than the way you might question but I'd like to hear the answers we may change we may argue that point but I think mr dickie knows exactly what I'm saying john you want to come back in that because we've got a minute to go this is a part sorry it's the kind of extension of the mitigation question I think is what what coming down here I mean the first thing I've just again say I suppose this is a policy that affects children across the UK um the cpa g our purpose is to end child poverty across the UK um this you know there's this policy is unacceptable whether you're a family living in Liverpool Carlisle or or Edinburgh and we will continue to focus in terms of our campaigning work but also picking up on mr Duncan's earlier point and focus actually challenging this legally as well we do believe this is this policy is unlawful and our legal officer in London is actively exploring how we bring up a judicial review and challenges policies and working with families to actually challenge this policy in the court and we'll continue to do that and that that I suppose is where our focus is at the moment um I've given a couple extra minutes you've already said that you're challenging it so I take it that you would wish to scrap this policy throughout the UK absolutely Mr Devan I know that you're an academic would you have any thoughts on that particular one because from where I'm sitting if you are low paid you're a woman and you've got more than two children you're affected but if you're well off uh you can have as many children as you like you're not affected by this so I just see there's a bit of anomalies within this policy I don't want to put you on the spot but please if you would I mean I guess an interesting point that we haven't really touched on is is perhaps the idea that this policy is likely to be relatively popular with the electorate um so that suggests that there's something in it that um people like um and and that's worth investigating I think for me taking the academic response is to look at whether or not the policy is meeting its objectives in its own terms um I think in that context it probably isn't and therefore there's a case to ask the Government to reassess plumatically put I could bring this beauty to an end and we'll now again to private session thank you very much