Good morning and welcome to the 15th meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Apologies have been received this morning from Foisal Chowdry and also from Natalie Dawn. I'm pleased to say that Evelyn Tweed is back attending as Natalie's substitute. Our first item of business today is a decision to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Thank you very much indeed. The next item on the agenda is on post-budget scrutiny of the 2022-23 Scottish budget. This morning, we will hear from two panels, the Scottish Fiscal Commission, followed by the Scottish Women's Budget group. We will hear first from the Scottish Fiscal Commission. I welcome to the first panel Dame Susan Rice, the chair, Professor Alistair Smith, a commissioner and Claire Murdoch, head of Social Security and Public Funding at the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Welcome to you all this morning. I invite Dame Susan Rice to make an opening statement and over to you Dame Susan. Convener and committee, good morning and thank you for the invitation to help you with your scrutiny of the 2022 budget. We last appeared before you, I think it was 11 weeks ago in early October to discuss the updated forecasts that we had published in August. At that point, we had just started work on the budget forecasts that we published earlier this month, so a bit back to back. The main headline in our August forecast, which we discussed with you in some detail in most the costing of the new adult disability payment, we now expect the total additional costs in 2026-27 to reach £567 million, a figure broadly unchanged since our discussions in October. We are conscious that the Scottish Government published regulations last week and that you may have more questions following your recent evidence session with other stakeholders. Another area that we are interested in was the doubling of the Scottish child payment, which the Scottish Government had committed to delivering during this Parliament but was not costed in our August forecast. The Scottish Government has confirmed that the payment will increase to £20 in April, and we expect it to cost an additional £103 million in the upcoming budget year 2022-23, rising to over £180 million per year from 2023-24. That cost allows for potential increases in payment of both universal credit and Scottish child payment in addition to the £20 payment. Higher inflation forecasts and UK Government changes to universal credit announced in their October budget also increased the costing and the underlying forecast for Scottish child payment compared to the August position. In our new forecast, we expect spending on devolved social security to rise from £3.7 billion this year to £4.1 billion in the budget year 2022-23 and to reach £5.5 billion in 26-27, once the full costs of adult disability payment and Scottish child payment are included. That is nearly £1 billion more than in our budget forecast in January this year, mainly accounted for by the introduction of adult disability payment, the doubling of the Scottish child payment and the higher inflation forecast. We highlight in our report how a significant funding gap is expected to open up between the forecast spending on social security and the devolved funding received from the UK Government. This gap reaches £3.25 billion by 2024-25. This is money that has to be found from elsewhere in the Scottish budget, and that is within the context of a resource budget that is under pressure, not helped by a negative net tax position for the next five years. There is significant uncertainty around our forecasts, particularly for Scottish child payment in the coming budget year, where a number of changes are being made at one time with the expansion to older children, the doubling of the payment amount and the impact of significant changes to universal credit. Finally, I should add that our forecast closed the day before the new Omicron variant was announced by the World Health Organization. We are now happy to take your questions. Thank you very much, Dame Susan. Can I ask committee members and panellists, if you would like to come in at any point, either to supplement a question or an answer to type R in the chat box? I will do my best to facilitate that. Also for colleagues on the committee, if you could please direct your questions in the first instance to Dame Susan, she can then disseminate from there. I turn now to colleagues' questions and I turn first to Pam Duncan-Glancy, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning, everyone. Good morning to the panel, and thank you so much for the evidence that you submitted in advance, but also for the presentation that you have just given. It is extremely helpful. If it is okay, I have a couple of questions on a similar theme. The first question that I have relates to the evidence that you have just given, and it is specifically that, when you have included the higher costs for £23.24 on the Scottish child payment, what rate did you cost that at that time? The other questions that I have are around the written evidence that you have. In the written evidence, you note that you have revised downwards for eligibility and uptake, so I am just keen to understand a little bit more about that downward revision and what the impact or your assumptions around eligibility and uptake have been on that. I have another further couple of questions, but they are on a slightly different track. In terms of the change for the upcoming budget year, just a reminder that the Scottish child payment originally was offered for children under six, and the age range is now raised up to children up to the age of 16. One of the factors affecting the overall forecast amount is that we have a lot more children included in the total of those eligible. The amount paid in the upcoming year will be doubling from £10 to £20 per week per child. To give you a little more detail, I wonder if I could just turn to my colleague Alasdair Smyth. Thank you, Susan. The dates at which the changes that Susan has just described were introduced in our forecast as the dates announced by the Scottish Government for the doubling of the payment, the introduction of the payment to eligible children being six and 16, and the operating of the payment at the end in December 2022. As far as eligibility is concerned, we have assumed, and that seems to be the message of the data that we currently have, a pretty high level of uptake close to 80 per cent for children under six, and just a very slightly lower rate of uptake for children between six in when they become eligible. We have also assumed that there will be some increase in uptake primarily because of the interaction with changing rules for universal credit, because universal credit is the main qualifying benefit for Scottish child payment. The increase in the taper for universal credit makes some changes to the incentives for families to apply for Scottish child payment, so we are assuming that there will be some increased eligibility that those eligible will have increased incentives to apply for it, especially if they have children in the age of six to 16 who weren't previously eligible. There may be some incentive for people eligible for universal credit who weren't applying for it to apply for it, and there are also some incentive for people to stay on universal credit if they can. There is a bit of a work disincentive right up at the top of the eligibility band. Those eligibility effects are quite hard to be precise about. We are assuming that a 1 per cent increase in eligibility and a 2 per cent increase in take-up because of those incentives, but there is a lot of uncertainty about those eligibility and incentives. To go back to the very first question about the exact payment amount, Susan Alasdair said that we assume the payment doubles to £20, which is the Government's stated policy. From December, which Susan Alasdair mentioned, is the roll-out to children aged six to 15. We assume that the payment is £20.80 a week, and the Government has basically brought forward the operating that would have occurred in April 2023 to December 2022, so that is just to confirm those payment amounts. That is very helpful. Thank you to you both. Dame Susan, did you have anything further to add? No, I think that that is enough for that one, unless the pen would like more information. Pam Duncan-Glancy, please. Thank you, convener, and thank you for your responses. That was indeed very helpful. I have a further question about some of the assumptions as well. This time it is around the unemployment figures, and you have assumed that you have now amended that to be 4.9 per cent. How much of their employment are you able to talk about in terms of secure work? Do the figures break down so that you can have a look at how specific groups are affected? For example, women, black minority ethnic people or disabled people and so on, and how would those things affect the forecast? I have one last question in this area. I do not think that we have absolute detail on how it breaks down, but we look at age populations within Scotland. For instance, younger working people who will typically have been more involved possibly in leisure and hospitality sectors, who have been particularly constrained over the two years of the pandemic, we are assuming that employment will be lower in that group. We look at it that way. We also look at the fact of the changing demographic in the population where we are seeing a heavier growth in people in the older age levels, and those are individuals who are less likely to be in employment. Those are some general comments. I would again turn to my colleague Alistair Smith, who I think can give you a bit more detail. No, Susan. I have nothing to add. You have covered all the points that I would have made. Thank you. Pam Duncan-Glancy, please. Thank you very much. My final question, thanks again for your answers, is given the forecasting and the spending that you set out both in your written evidence but also this morning, what does that suggest for the affordability of the social security budget in Scotland in the longer term? I could answer that best simply by repeating the message that you will have heard in early October, as well as now that social security will cost the Government here a good bit more than the funds that might be coming over from the UK Government. That is a decision to make those benefits more widely available and, in some cases, make them easier to access. The job there is then for the Government, and I assume for the Parliament as well, to find ways to cover those extra costs. That means just looking at priorities and where in the budget money might or might not be spent for other things to balance that out. Thank you very much, Dame Susan. Just before I bring in Jeremy Balfour next, I think that we will cover points that you have raised around the cost pressures, the fiscal framework and the cost of adult disability payment, which is the real driver behind the increased cost to the Scottish Government of social security. I wanted to take you back very briefly to the question that Pam Duncan-Glancy asked about employment. What is your expectation around the Omicron variant? How much of an impact will that have on employment levels and, therefore, social security levels in the coming months? Have you any view on that to update on your previous forecasts? That is a very good question to ask. As I pointed out, this became known to us the day after we closed down our economy forecast a few weeks back, but we have considered and we obviously have watched closely the impact of Covid throughout. What we have assumed at this stage is that the Omicron virus is a downside risk to our central forecast, but our assumptions in our central forecast do not actually change at this stage. We had put into those assumptions some ups and downs in relation to the ongoing pandemic. We had considered some of the factors that would come with an increase over the winter. We also had observed the ability of businesses all around to come through what we had earlier this year and the year before a little bit better than everyone had first thoughts. We see Omicron as something to keep a close eye on, but not changing our central economic forecast just now. Once again, I think that Alistair might give you a more nuanced response to that question. To add to that, it is worth emphasising that the social security budget as a whole is not very sensitive to unemployment or to economic conditions. It might well be that Omicron is going to have an effect on employment, especially as Susan said earlier in the hospitalities sector, but the social security budget is driven by disability benefits, which are long-term entitlements not much affected by the economic circumstances of the recipients. Also by benefits that are tied to universal credit and universal credit is available to families of lower income both in and out of work. Even universal credit is not very sensitive to employment levels. If Omicron turns out badly, let us hope that it does not, and there are some positive signs, there may be some significant effects on the economy at large, but there are unlikely to be big effects on our social security projections. Plus, whatever the Omicron effects are likely to be, they are going to be in this year or next year, and they are hopefully not going to have much effect on our long-run forecasts, which has been the highlight of this report. Professor Smith, that is helpful. I will bring in Jeremy Balfour. Good morning, convener. Good morning, panel, and can I also thank you for your submissions and your paper? I wonder if I can ask two questions around the adult disability payment, one fairly short-term and one longer term. The short-term one is—again, I think that I've asked this before, and I'm still not sure that I fully understand the answer, so I apologise for my ignorance. In regard to the adult disability payment, you have put an increase forecast for the budget in the next couple of years because you think uptake will be higher. I just wonder again, how are you working that out in regard to uptake will be higher? With the regulations coming forward, it looks like the way that the benefit will be assessed is almost identical to that at the moment. How do you look to that flesh with the new regulations, and is that making any difference? I'll begin to turn to Alistair, because it's good to hear from both of us. The place to start is really by the motivation, if you see what I mean. The Scottish Government has expressed an aim to increase take-up and increase the number of people receiving the payment. A number of levers or a number of ways to try to do that, one of which is around promotion and encouragement to apply, one of which is around helping to shape the application process to make it somewhat more accessible, a little more supportive and easier for applicants. However, there are a number of other elements that would lead to our judgment that there will be more take-up. Alistair, if I can turn to you, do you want to fill in some of those others? Thanks. Mr Balfour, you are right that the formal rules of eligibility have not changed. However, as Susan has said, the Scottish Government has announced various ways in which it wants to make the whole process friendlier towards people who might be entitled to benefits, to encourage them to apply and to encourage take-up of the benefits. Mr Balfour, I think that you can be excused for feeling that you might not have understood the full effects because they are terribly complicated. We have looked at six or seven channels through which the ADP being administered by the Scottish Government might lead to higher expenditure. For example, we expect that people who have previously applied for personal independence payment but whose applications had been turned down might have another goal at applying under the new system. We expect that, perhaps more properly, a bulge in applicants after the ADP comes in and some of those applicants will be successful. I am now trying to think my way through all the complications. We have looked at what has happened when other changes in social security systems have been brought in, such as the switch from DLA to PIP, for example. Past changes have had the effect that, as people get reassessed under a new system, more people become eligible for payment, so there is an increase. Those are two of the main ways that we think that there will be an increase in expenditure. However, the main thing that Susan said is that it is the Scottish Government's policy to make the system more friendly to applicants and push-up take-up rate in that way. Jeremy Balfour, please. The second one is a longer-term one. The Scottish Government is going to have a nice overview of the criteria for getting adult disability payment. That may or may not be implemented in this Parliament, depending on the time and what they are asking for from the independent commission. How much notice do you require to be able to forecast if there was a differential? For example, if the mobility criteria was increased from 20 to 50 metres, more people would be able to get that benefit. Would you be able to forecast that and what information would you require, both from DWP and from the agency, to be able to do that work? It is a very good question. I wonder if I could turn to Claire, who I know will have her arms around all of that detail to give you the response. I think that the short answer is that we will produce a forecast when the Government has a policy. We always stand ready for the Government introducing these changes. If they were to have a review, we would obviously have notice of that review. Once the Government had decided the policy, we would include it in our forecast to make sure that that was available to Parliament before you considered any regulations changing the rules. In terms of the information that we need, I suppose that we have said this multiple times in this adult disability payment forecast, we are having to make a lot of judgments here that there is information on how the current system works, but nobody knows exactly how the new system will work. I think that, to a certain extent, when the policy is changed here, we will be in a similar position that nobody will know exactly what the effects of those changes are. However, we can look at people who currently qualify and we can also look at when you apply for PIP at the moment, you obviously score points under these different criteria, and we can look at how many people are receiving those points or not receiving those points and then assess how that might be different if the rule was changed. We would be looking for DWP and Social Security Scotland to collect that information and hold it in a way that we could use it to produce our forecast. I hope that that answers your question, but I am happy to elaborate further. Jeremy Balfour If Parliament were minded to alter the regulations that we have at the moment, how quickly can you do that piece of work? Dame Susan? So, just to repeat what Claire said, what we do not do by our framework, if you will, is to cost potential or possible changes. However, as soon as there is a policy that has been announced, we will go in and cost it. If we have some advance warning, it is hard for me to put a number of days or weeks, but we will be anticipating what that might be. Claire, you are closer to the actual team who do the modelling and do the work. Can we put a timeframe on that once the policy is announced? I sort of want to say anything is possible. The longer we have, the more we can look at something in detail and the better, the more confidence that we can have in our estimate and the shorter amount of time that we have, I suppose the greater uncertainty. The ambitious part of me would say a couple of weeks, a month, and my team would probably currently say that it is a bit longer that we need. We do the whole budget process in 10 weeks, and the Government is free to announce policy in that time and change it. We work in a similar timescale, if required. Your flexibility and ambition on behalf of all of us is admirable, and we appreciate that. Jeremy Balfour, have you got a further question? Thank you very much. Pam Duncan Glancy had a brief supplementary here before I bring in Miles Briggs. Thank you. I just also to say to echo the conveners thanks and appreciation for your flex on work like this. In your estimates for added disability payment going forward, have you made any estimate about how many people's award would increase, decrease, or stay the same? If so, what are your assumptions around those three areas? Can I again turn to one of my colleagues who will have what we do know in terms of the assumptions? Claire, are you able to answer that? Maybe you will have that at your fingertips. I am not sure about my fingertips, Susan, but our forecasts, Ms Duncan Glancy, do not quite go into numbers increase to numbers decrease. We are focused on what is the overall number increased, and we are forecasting that the introduction of ADP will increase the number of people who receive that benefit. I am tempted to go a little bit further and say that we do not see any forces suggesting that there would be a substantial number of people who would have received the benefit under PIP and would not receive one under ADP. However, the assessment process is friendly to applicants. I cannot guarantee that there would not be some people who would have succeeded in application under PIP who would not be under ADP. Overall, the pressure is entirely in the other direction that there will be more recipients under ADP than under ADP. The short answer to your question is that we have not broken it down in the way that you have asked. I wonder whether Clare has a supplementary comment to that. I am not sure that we are doing quite the way that you are suggesting, but what I can say is that we have considered what effect we think we will receive for people who are new applicants and what will happen when people go through the award review process. For new applicants, we assume that 25 per cent of clients who would have received a Nill award under PIP will now receive a standard award under ADP and that 15 per cent who would have received a standard award under PIP will now receive an enhanced award under ADP. We assume that some people will receive a slightly higher award than they would have done before under the PIP system. Once people are in the review process, at the moment about 19 per cent of clients under PIP will be a disallowed at review. We assume that that will fall to 5 per cent, partly because it is just the way that the award review process is changing so that people are not automatically disallowed if they do not respond to a letter so that it is a more collaborative approach to the review process. Obviously, that has an effect on how many people stay on the payment and how many people have an increase or decrease at award review as well. I hope that that answers the question. That is very helpful and interesting. Just to be clear, are you assuming that the assessment process for ADP is going to be more accurate and, therefore, result in fewer reviews going forward? The reviews will still take place because people's rewards will have a set amount of time. It is more the appeals process that we assume will be slightly different. Fewer people will have to go to an appeal to not have their award disallowed. At the moment, quite a lot of people are disallowed and then they appeal it, and then they are successful at appeals. We assume that some of that applies earlier in the system. Thank you very much indeed. Miles Braggs, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us today. I wanted to ask two questions with regards to the forecasting that has been put forward and, specifically, you have outlined an estimated £1 billion in additional expenditure. I wanted to ask from your experience what steps are ministers taking to look at how they will control those pressures in the future going forward. Dean Susan. We do not assess exactly what you are asking. We do not assess what steps ministers might be taking, but what we do is highlight the fact that consideration will need to be taken in terms of the disparity between the amount of money that will be required to deliver the social security benefits and the amount of money that may be coming in to be available for those benefits. We simply highlight that. We do that in our report. We have done it in the media release today and previously, but it is up to ministers to consider how they fund the social security payments that are promised and are available in the way that they want them to be by looking at the entire budget. We do not assess that. Sorry not to give you a fuller answer, possibly, but— Miles Brace? Miles Brace, thank you. That is okay. I suppose that I was approaching this question from the fact that we have such a new system with Social Security Scotland, and making sure that we make that affordable system, but that resources are being monitored, that costs are being properly maintained. Turning that question on its head, what learnings do you think that ministers will have to do and have around how best to meet that? Given that it is significant, when you look at the overall Scottish Parliament budget, significant additional money that we will have to find, where would you think that that would come from? Dean Susan.  I would, again, refrain from giving that answer, mainly because that begins to get us closer to our policy area and our job is to assess or comment on policy. It is to look at the cost of that for the budget. You asked what lessons would be learned. Let me take that question and perhaps turn it slightly on its head. Often lessons learned come after the fact or after a problem. I think that what you have here is a Government and hopefully a Parliament fully that understands that there is a challenge ahead in order to meet the costs of the Social Security programme and that they are looking ahead against the legal requirement that you have to have a balanced budget each year, looking ahead to see where those bannies will come from or what are the priorities, because there are lots of things that the budget will propose to spend money on, so it needs to spend a little less in one place in order to spend a little more. Lesson learned, but it is possibly lessons along the way. That issue is on the table and I anticipate it now. I cannot tell you how we think ministers will or indeed ought to address that. Thank you for that. I wanted to ask in terms of your experience of not just this budget but across the whole portfolio of policies that we have in the Parliament. What would you like to see, specifically for this committee around social security, to improve the processes that we have in place to follow resources? I think that, from my time in the health and sport committee, whenever we did budget scrutiny, it was incredibly difficult to follow a taxpayer payment through the NHS. I just wondered from your experience if there are any learnings that you would like to put on record around that. I turn to Alasdair Clare, if you have a way to respond to that.  No, I do not think that I have any wisdom to offer Mr Briggs on that specific question, but on the earlier issue of lessons to be learned, like Susan, I am not going to start advising ministers on how they should answer the quite proper questions that you have raised, but there is one important lesson from our analysis, which is that when we are looking at the social security budget, we are looking not just at a large sum of money but at long-term commitments. Once people become eligible, for example, for adult disability payment, they are likely to remain eligible for a long period of time. It is not open to the Government to control the budget by rationing access to it. Access is determined by the criteria, and perhaps the most important lesson for ministers about the budget is that commitments that are entered into are for the long-run and need to be considered in a long-term way, which is the reason why we have put so much emphasis in our current report on the long-run forecast. Thank you very much indeed. Does that conclude your questions? Thank you from Evelyn Tweed, please. Thank you convener and good morning panel. Does the Scottish First School commission expect the £20 Scottish child payment to make a big difference to the people applying? Dame Susan? Again, you are asking for possibly a judgment, which is a non-forecasting judgment here. One has to assume that more money available, if used in the right way, should make a difference. There is a logic in that, but where we have considered the impact of the doubling of the amount is that we think that it may attract possibly more people who are already eligible to go and apply for the benefit because it appears to them to be more worthwhile. When we look at the doubling, that is the way that we look at it. Will it have an impact on eligibility, which is one of our key factors in doing our forecasts on the social security benefits? Is there anything else to say about that? I suppose that, in combination with the response from people applying, because if the money is available and people are eligible, they should be claiming it, we think that there will be around 15,000 extra children applying because of the higher payment. That is a combination because of people, as Susan has said, taking it up or becoming eligible. Thank you very much indeed. That is helpful to know. Evelyn Tweed? Thanks, convener. What are your views on the fiscal framework and how it works or does not work for Scotland? It is an important question to raise. The fiscal framework, as has been planned from the beginning, is due to be reviewed in 2022, so shortly there will be that review. That review will take place between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, so the fiscal commission will not be directly involved in the review if that might be a little bit like marking one's own homework to some extent. If there are changes to the fiscal framework, when they are agreed and announced, we will definitely take a look at those and try to explain through an occasional paper or reports or whatever what the impact of those changes might be. I hold back from giving an opinion of what we think about that, because it is not just outside our purview, but it would be inappropriate for us to share views, particularly at the stage that it has not even begun, but it is a matter for discussion and debate between the two Governments. Thank you. Evelyn Tweed, do you have a further question before I bring in Marie McNair? No, that is me, convener. Thank you. Thank you. Marie McNair, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. You estimate that the cost of adult disability payment will be higher than put by some margin. How much of that is due to a more compassionate approach by promoting take-up and dealing with claims? Dame Susan? Yes. Again, there are a number of factors. Social Security Scotland has, in its primary vision, wanting to increase take-up or availability of these benefits to more people who are eligible and who want them. That is their stated objective. In order to do that, they are applying several factors, some of which we mentioned before, related to ADP. It is believed that the combination of those factors will lead to more people being involved. It is around promotion and encouraging people, making the application process easier, if you will, or more accessible for people. I think that there is a removal of face-to-face physical assessments, which may make it just easier for people who cannot come out and do face-to-face assessments all that easily. There is also a lengthening of the time between award reviews. This is an award that is for the long term, as has been pointed out by my colleagues. Obviously, it needs to be reviewed to see if circumstances have changed for the individual. By lengthening the time between the award reviews, it may feel more worthwhile for an individual to go through the application process. There have been some changes to the definition of terminal illness. A number of those would serve to open up and make the payments feel more likely and more accessible to potential applicants for it. You have predicted that an increase in people who are motivated to claim ADP will see an increase in claims for carers allowance and carers allowance supplement. Is that a direct clarification between two or more, or do you think that the memories of the barriers to claiming carers allowance will still tear them to a certain extent? Another good question, could I put me on mute because of the phone and turn to Claire? Thank you, Susan. That is right. We assume that there will be an increase in carers allowance spending. The basis for that estimate is the current ratio that we see between the number of claims that you have for PIP and the number of people receiving carers allowance. We are assuming that it is a similar situation. We have not yet included any Scottish replacement for the new Scottish carers assistance in our forecast because the Government has not yet published the firm plans of those changes. It is based on the existing system and the existing ratios that we see between PIP and carers allowance. Thank you, Claire. Marie McNair, do you have a further question before I bring in Jeremy Balfour, who indicated that he had some questions in the same... Not for the same, chair. Thank you. Thank you very much. Jeremy Balfour, do you have any further questions? No, convener. I think that everything has now been covered by the other members. Lovely. Thank you very much indeed. If there are no further questions for the panel, and nobody has indicated in the chat box that they wish to come in, I do not know if colleagues on the panel have anything further that they wish to add, James Susan. You have asked some very pertinent questions, and we just wish you good luck with your deliberations. Thank you very much. In the meantime, I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and thank you very much for your time this morning. It has been very helpful and insightful for us doing our work. I very much appreciate your time this morning, and as I say, I wish you all a very safe, merry Christmas and all the best for 2022 as well. I will briefly suspend while we switch over from panel 1 to panel 2. Thank you very much indeed. Welcome back. We will now hear from our second panel, so I welcome Sarah Cowan, who is the co-ordinator of Scottish Women's Budget Group. Good morning, Sarah, and welcome to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. I very much appreciate your time this morning. Again, I ask both the committee and the committee members to please type R in the chat function if you would like to come in, either with a supplementary question or answer. It would be greatly appreciated. I return to inviting colleagues to ask their questions in turn and start again with Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you and good morning, Sarah. Thank you very much for the information that you have given us in advance today and for coming along. I have a few questions around particularly social care and women's responsibilities for work, including unpaid work. As was identified as a risk in the budget, women's responsibilities for paid and unpaid work, particularly, were considered a risk. Do you think that the budget goes far enough, particularly in terms of social care, and has enough support to lift women out of poverty at this time, on the basis of that? Do you think that it does enough to address the increased structural inequality that was seen as a risk as a result of that, and also to disabled people and women as well? Thank you to the committee for inviting the Scottish Women's Budget Group to give evidence today. I will take that question in a couple of parts. I think that we saw in the budget some elements to move towards challenging some of the structural inequalities that exist for women with some more investment in social care and elements such as the increase in the minimum wage floor for social care staff, who the vast majority of whom are women, are important steps, but they really have to be viewed as first steps. There have been years of underfunding and undervaluation of social care overall and those who work within social care, as well as unpaid carers. There will need to be huge amounts of investment to return and bring the correct level of value to that sector. As was indicated in the question, if we focus on unpaid carers, there was not very much in the budget for unpaid carers, to be honest. There was a commitment of £5 million to provide rights to respite for unpaid carers, but that is unlikely to go far enough with so many unpaid carers having experienced little opportunity to take any kind of break over the course of the pandemic, with many respite services closed, at least in the first parts of the pandemic, and other fears and concerns about how to be able to access services, as the pandemic continues. We did not see much in the way of increasing the remit of carers allowance and carers allowance support, so we would like to see that kind of benefit going further to support unpaid carers and protect unpaid carers from poverty, to increase the value of that payment, but also, crucially, the eligibility to carers allowance to provide the support that is needed to protect carers. What is needed is ensuring that the services are there to support unpaid carers in the work that they do. The reopening of services at local levels, respite services, is going to be crucial over the next period. As we are looking at uncertainty with the impact of Omicron, there is a continued uncertainty about how that will come across. More could be done in answer to the top of the question to support unpaid carers. The long-term undervaluing of social care needs to be continued support and to be taken to ensure that that is rectified. On a similar track, I was really interested to read in the submission the link that you make between social care and the climate and green jobs and the fact that you ultimately consider social care effectively as a way to create green jobs. It is something that I believe absolutely passionately, and I have often said that there is a T sector here that could be a massive help to our economy, particularly as we move forward to a green economy. Do you say a little bit more about how you believe that the Government could combine the agenda of addressing some of the financial and recruitment issues in social care, at the same time as looking at the broader climate and climate justice solutions? What is crucial as we consider just transition is that we look at that as a feminist just transition so that we are able to move towards a net zero economy that really can tackle inequalities. That means that what we heard within a lot of the announcements on the just transition and net zero commitments were commitments to decarbonising activities, to support lived environments and to make changes within industry. What is important, as you have indicated from the note, is that we expand the view of what we need within a just transition and what would bring that to be a feminist just transition. There is a real risk that just transition could, at best, just maintain existing labour market inequalities that we have where we have an energy sector that is often highly paid, male-dominated sector and moves that sector into a decarbonised energy sector that, again, remains highly paid but male-dominated. Finding access routes to challenge the labour market inequality is to look for opportunities for women and other marginalized groups to get into this sector. There are opportunities for that sort of thing within the green jobs fund. Expanding what we think of as the just transition is also a crucial part of that. Expanding what we think of as infrastructure investment, including thinking about social infrastructure, and that means infrastructure within the care economy. As part of an important investment, and not just a cost to the economy but investing in social care as a move towards a green economy, will bring returns for both economy and society. If we view care jobs as green jobs and other jobs that are low carbon impact but high social good as part of that move to green jobs, we should try to link up the thinking that is going on with the establishment of the national care service and the move to just transition. That is an important element of seeing how the economy can work better for women. Thank you, Sarah. Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you. That was really helpful. I have no further questions. Thank you. Before I bring in Evelyn Tweed up, I just wanted to bring you back to the points that were being made there around unpaid carers and the support available to them. To what extent do you think that the £5 million will help in terms of respite for unpaid carers? You have said that it is not enough, but could you quantify how supportive that will be and how much more you think would have been needed in order to help to fill up what has clearly been a very challenging time for unpaid carers through the pandemic? It is really challenging to quantify that. It is looking at the fact that we see from service conducted by Care Scotland that so many unpaid carers have been unable to take any respite, either because of closures or because of health concerns. That means that there has been a pent-up need. There is likely to be a need for a period where more respite than usual will be needed because there has been a slack of access. At an on-going level, we continue to ensure that respite is available. In addition to that, we need to recognise that there is now a lot more unpaid carers than there was before the pandemic. We need to look at pre-pandemic levels of respite and assume that it is going to be a higher level than that due to the increase in unpaid care that has been taking place. I am sorry that I am unable to quantify the level of need, but I could look into that and see if there is information back to you. That would be helpful, because we all understand and appreciate the difficulties that carers have been going through during the pandemic. We have previously taken evidence on that as we took the carers allowance supplement bill through the committee and supported it through Parliament. I absolutely take your points around the fact that there are a larger number of unpaid carers that have emerged during the pandemic. That point appears to have been recognised by the Scottish Government, but to what extent it is going to meet demand is where we would be interested in finding out more. Any supplementary information that you have there, Sarah, would be very gratefully received. I can see that Miles Briggs is looking to come in at that point. Thank you, convener. It was just to follow on from some of those questions. It may be something that you cannot answer necessarily today, Sarah, but I would be interested to know if you have seen any data around different councils, for example, which have suspended care packages. I know that here in Edinburgh we have seen a lot of pressure from that during the pandemic and not the restoring of care packages. Have you had any examples of that, which has obviously forced more people to end up leaving their work to take up that full-time unpaid carer role? Thank you. That is again something that I can come back to with more detail after today. Last year, at the start of the pandemic, the Glasgow Disability Alliance did some really good research into the suspension of care services and the impact that that was having for people. There is a report called Supercharged from them that I would encourage members to read if you have not already. However, the second element around restoring care packages is something that, for data levels, I can get back to. I would say that we hear from unpaid carers within our membership a lot of frustration about the ongoing challenges in accessing both social care support and some health support with the ongoing impact of the pandemic. We have all got used to things being different and more processes and steps being able to access different kinds of services, but that has added to their existing unpaid work and is moving through those new and different steps. We hear frustration about the impact that that is having on them while there remains what feels to them a lack of on-going support. The wider investment in social care is also crucial for unpaid carers, because, as services are invested in, there can be more support there, but that will be a longer-term process. Some kind of support can help people in the short term as well after so long in the pandemic is what is being called for. Before I bring in Evelyn Tweed, I want to go back again to the carers allowance supplement. Obviously, women sadly continue to bear the greatest responsibility in providing unpaid care. To what extent has that been supported by the doubling of the carers allowance supplement this month? Have you seen that impact on the ground? Is that beneficial? Is it something that you would like to see reviewed going forward? It is probably too early to say where the impact is on that. We know that women make up the majority of the claimants for carers allowance and the carers allowance supplement. I think that it is 69 per cent of claimants. Any changes to that allowance will have a disproportionate impact for women and are really important changes to make. For wider longer-term reviews, what needs to be considered is how we can ensure that there is a minimum income standard for people in receipt of that benefit and to ensure that the allowance and supplements can protect carers from poverty. We see carers living in poverty because of the circumstances around them. Any future review focusing on that element and ensuring that there is a minimum income standard would be great. Thank you very much. Evelin Tweed, with your set of questions, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Sarah. It's nice to see you here today and thank you for your submission so far. I have a more general question, Sarah. It's to get your views around budget decisions and what you feel will have the greatest impact on reducing inequality and promoting social justice. I think that what is crucial, and hopefully you will have seen from the advance submission that we made, is that in any budget decision, they are made based on information and analysis around how to tackle inequality. For us, that means integrating intersectional gender budget analysis into the budgetary process and into the review process between draft budget and finalised budget. That process is crucial to ensuring that decisions that are made will work towards building a more equal society. The principle aim of gender budgeting is to integrate that intersectional gender analysis into economic policy and, through the process, raise awareness of the different impacts that decisions will have on women and men and different groups within women of publicly funded policies and programmes and challenge the assumption that budget decisions can be genderblind.  Child poverty and women's poverty are intertwined, and the majority of those in receipt of Scottish child payment are women. The statistics from Social Security Scotland show that 80 per cent of those in receipt of Scottish child payment are women. Those kinds of decisions will have really important impacts on the people who are in receipt of them. For us, coming back to the first set of questions, the value that you place on care is also really crucial for how we build an economy that creates more fairness within it and works towards equality. The value and the investment in the care and caring economy is an important element of how we reduce inequalities. Thank you, everyone, to read. Thanks, convener. Sarah, do you think that the budget decisions and how they play out can be quantified? Yes. What is important is the data that we have around the budget decisions, ensuring that there is disaggregated data available for us to look at and analyse how the decisions are impacting on people's lives. Beyond that, we also have more intersectional data, and that can be where there is a real gap in understanding how decisions impact on people differently and people's different live realities and recognising that many people will have a variety of characteristics that we do not necessarily have data on to be able to get as much information as we could for that quantification of how the impacts are happening. The more data that we can gather and the more we can bring in the intersectional nature of that data, the better analysis can be done that can then quantify the impact of the budget decisions. That is me for now, convener. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you very much indeed. I would like to bring in Marie McNair for her set of questions. I want to remind colleagues that, if anybody wishes to come in at any stage, please type R in the chat function. Thank you, convener, and good morning, Sarah. Is there any current spending in the budget that you think should be transferred into areas that you want more money to spend on? An area that we would often encourage being re-looked at would be the consideration around capital investment and what is often termed a hard hat project, to consider how that investment is going to impact the economy and whether that investment is having the strongest impact it can have for people of Scotland. Looking into that area is one option, but it is also about, as I was highlighting when we were discussing the just transition piece, considering how things can seem, like a certain area, with just transition and often focusing on the infrastructure-type project. It can be broader than that and the bringing together of areas so that there is better integration in the decision maker. What do you think should take centre stage from what is proposed at a time of ever emerging Covid pressures on the budget? If it has not come across already, I think that care needs to be centre stage and all forms of care. We have talked more about social care and the importance of social care to people and the importance that it can have to our economy. Often, when care is talked about, it is talked about as a cost to the economy, but it is important to see that it is an investment. It brings economic returns and social returns in how that is invested. There is also childcare and investment in childcare. It is important that the Scottish Government continues investment in the expansion of childcare and will welcome the announcements around expanding that to two-year-olds from low-income families. The faster that roll-out to reaching more children can take place is really important and will be important towards reaching child poverty targets as well. Before I bring in Pam Duncan-Glancy, you touched on child poverty targets, which are a key theme for the early work of the committee, particularly in scrutinising the Scottish Government's budget. You have already mentioned in your submission this morning how intrinsically linked women and child poverty rates are. The fact that single parents are most likely to be women and women's work is most likely to be in part-time or low-income roles. To what extent have the changes to universal credit? That is the investment in work allowances, which is obviously very welcome, but also the £20 per week cut to the standard allowance. To what extent are those changes having an impact or do you expect on child poverty rates in Scotland? What is important is being able to support people's incomes. Cutting benefits are obviously not doing the exact opposite of that, and we expect to see that having an impact on women and child poverty rates. The modelling is conducted by others that demonstrate where they expect to see the impact happening and the rise in poverty because of the cut to universal credit. We know from previous longer-term analysis that when benefits are cut and frozen, the impact of austerity measures on benefits had a greater impact on women, and particularly on women from ethnic minority communities and disabled women. Any change to the benefits system is likely to have a disproportionate impact on women and the cut to universal credit. I do not see it being any different. There are a couple of areas that I just wanted to explore a bit further, if that is okay. My first point is about the evidence that was given alongside the budget of the impact on inequalities and that the top-line information was given across portfolio areas, but we probably need a bit more detail in terms of the specific inequalities. Do you give us some idea of how that could be improved so that we can continue to improve in this area going forward? I have one of the questions on a slightly different topic if I can come back in after. To premise what I am about to say, the Equality and Fair Scotland budget statement is a really important statement of intent that we have coming out of alongside the budget. It is really important to see that commitment to equalities through that publication. However, as you have mentioned, it is very top-line in what was published this year. What is important to consider is that the statement is the final product of the analysis that has gone into the budget, and it can only ever be as good as this analysis. A lot of the focus has to be on improving the quality of the analysis and assessment processes to achieve improved policy outcomes in people's lives, which can then be reported through the EFSBS, rather than potentially being some retrospective reporting fitting inequalities and budget policies. Maybe it is best to take an example of where there could be improvements. In the transport portfolio in the annex to the statement, there is a really good analysis of how public transport affects men and women differently, and spending public transport affects men and women differently with more women using bus services. However, bus services are often designed in such a way that they work for people who work in full-time, nine-to-five going from outside town into city centres. The analysis recognises the importance of bus services for women, but also that the current services are not working. However, in dealing with that inequality, the only mention is that the on-going subsidies to bus transport will have an improved impact on women. It would be good in that circumstance to see more detail about how the bus subsidy can help to bring more services that do work for women and recognise more of the part-time work and the cross-time journeys that women are more likely to take due to caring responsibilities. More detail on how that budget allocation is tackling the inequality that they have identified. Without that information, I assume that there are no other pieces going alongside it. Other information that could be provided to help transparency around the decision-making is that there could be more of the equality impact assessment that is published. Some portfolios have put a good amount of links within their sections. The Covid recovery portfolio, for example, has put multiple links to different equality impact assessments that they have used. It would be good to see that across all portfolios so that there is an ease of access to the information and the decision-making analysis that they have taken and the decisions that they have come to. Without that, the question of whether that analysis is taken place is another important practical step. The Equality and Budget Advisory Group has made a set of recommendations to Government and Parliament about how to improve equality's analysis within the budget process and moving forward with recommendations that include improving building capacity to deliver the analysis and concrete steps such as training that could be provided in the regularity of that training, also communications around analysis work and clear leadership in order to deliver it. The Scottish Government has said that it will respond to those recommendations in spring 2022, so that response is crucial on how we ensure that the analysis going into the budget can then be correctly reflected in the final statements and documentation that comes out. Thank you, Sarah. Pam Duncan-Glancy? Thank you. That was really helpful. The example from the transport portfolio and the Covid recovery one is really useful for us, so we can look into that in more detail. I think that it is really helpful. It is almost a completely different subject, but it is obviously still on the budget and still on the feminist analysis of it. In your deliberations and your looking at what came out, what is your assessment of the impact that we may be able to have on violence against women and, in particular, violence against women services as part of the response to addressing some of the structural inequalities that drive violence against women as well as make it worse? What is difficult when it comes to tackling violence against women is viewing it as looking at investment on a year-on-year level and what the budget is investing in a year-on-year level. Services that are delivering to support women who have experienced violence and prevention need long-term reassurance around funding. It is a bit beyond the budget, but looking more at the resource spending review and giving those services confidence that they will have longer-term funding will be an important element. The on-going funding in the budget continues to support services, but we would really like to see that more long-term funding. Without long-term funding, it takes time away from delivering services to working out where the next year's funding is coming from. It also provides uncertainty to the services, which is not what you want when you are working with such a vulnerable group of people. You want to know that your focus can be on providing the support that is needed. It would be a call going forward that I would say is important to look at, and that is how we can ensure that long-term support and confidence are given to those services. An issue that we plan to return to early in the new year, you will be comforted to note. Thank you very much indeed for that. I have a question now from Jeremy Balfour. If I can pick up three questions and pick up on the final point that you just made, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance seemed to indicate that we would be moving to a three-year funding for the third sector. Have you had any indication at a level of what conversations have taken place on that? Have you received any communication from the Scottish Government on that? I wonder whether it has gone down to a level of local groups yet. We have not received any communication directly on the announcement that was in the budget, although I recognise that we have recently received a three-year funding from the Scottish Government on Equality and Human Rights Fund. That provides us as a group, and I know many others in the third sector with that three-year funding within the framework of equalities. The network and groups such as SCVO will probably be first to receive those kind of communications, and it will come out through those networks to their membership and other community groups. As I was saying in the last answer, it is related to balance against women's services, but more widely for the third sector, it is for the confidence that multi-year funding can provide to focus on what you are doing rather than having to focus on where the next funding comes from. That is really important. Jerry Balfour. My second question goes back to previous questions from other panellists. I think that we all recognise that there are now a lot more unpaid carers, particularly women. Do you have any idea of the number of people out there that we do not know about? Secondly, how would you envisage either the Scottish Government or the committee to find that information out? Obviously, if we want people to get the appropriate benefits that they do, how do we identify those individuals? Are we talking about hundreds of thousands? What scale are we talking about? Have you any concept of that? Sarah Kelly. Carers Scotland has highlighted the increase in unpaid carers. The numbers go up to 1.1 million unpaid carers, but when we move down to considering those who are moving in receipt of carers allowance, the numbers are significantly lower than that, partly because of the tight eligibility around carers allowance. If the committee is looking at that further, who is eligible to consider eligibility to carers allowance? Not necessarily all unpaid carers would be seeking to access that support, but at the moment there are very tight constraints around that, which also causes challenges for unpaid carers who want to be in part-time work and provide care. That would be the starting point for my point of view, to consider who is eligible for that support and how that part could be extended. As you said, knowing about unpaid carers that we do not know about is very challenging, but the more local services are available to provide support to people who are receiving support, as well as those who are providing care. People can have confidence in those services that they will be reliable and provide the support that they need. The more that support is available locally, the more people will come forward to access it. That will be another way where budgets then can, at the local level, support unpaid carers to reach out for support. Thank you very much. Jeremy Balford, do you have a further question or is that? Yes, I have one more question, but can I follow up that one before I go to my final question? Is it the number of hours that you have to care for somebody that is the biggest hurdle or what for you is the biggest hurdle that is stopping more people applying for carers allowance? It is the carers allowance eligibility criteria. The criteria around how many hours of part-time work you are able to do while also being able to access the allowance. I think that the hurdle is less about people choosing to apply for the allowance and more about access to it and eligibility to it. It is a consideration of that and also ensuring that people know what allowance is and that extra support is available. Especially with the large increase in unpaid carers, there may be people who do not know what is available. Increasing information about what is available will be important. If you could change the budget in one way to make it better from what you have told us so far, what would be the one change that you would make? Where would you move the money around that would make the biggest difference to the people that you are working with? I think that there is more investment in care. We have seen the discussion around the national care service as companies are moving forward and there is commitment to increasing the spend on social care through the course of this Parliament. I think that the faster that can come, the better. If that relates, ensuring that local government is funded to provide those kind of local services, we know that women are more likely to rely on local services that are delivered by local government. Ensuring that they have the tools to provide those public services where they are needed. That brings to a close the questions from my colleagues. That has been an incredibly informative session. I really appreciate your time this morning. I thank you for spending so much time with us this morning. I wish you a merry Christmas and all the best for 2022, when we will no doubt be back in touch again. That brings to a conclusion the public part of this morning's meeting. The committee will next meet on Thursday 13 January, when we will hear from the cabinet secretary for social justice housing and local government again on the budget. While I am moving to suspend the meeting and move to private session, I just want to wish everybody who has been watching a very merry Christmas. I thank everybody for supporting the committee this year, the clerks, broadcasting, Spice and all the people who have come to give evidence. I very much appreciate it again. I wish you all a very merry Christmas, a safe Christmas and all the best for 2022. I suspend the meeting, move to private session and invite colleagues on the committee to join the private session via the link provided.