Good morning and welcome to the 17th meeting of the welfare and informed committee for 2015. Can I remind members to ensure that the mobile phones and other electronic devices are switched to airplane mode or silent as they can interfere with broadcasting? We have apologies today from our convener Hugh Henry and also apologies from John Lamont and Neil Findlay. We welcome John Substitute, Alex Johnson to committee and Neil Substitute, Neil Bibby. The first agenda item is a change to published agenda. The first item of business is a declaration of interest. I invite Neil Bibby to declare any interests that are relevant to the committee's remit. No relevant interests to declare. Welcome the members to committee this morning. Item 2 is a decision on taking business in private. The second item of today's business is a decision on taking item 4, discussion of our post-Christmas work programme in private. It appears as item 3 in the published agenda. I have that agreement from the members. Thank you very much. I move to item 3 on the agenda, which is oral evidence session on the future delivery of social security in Scotland. Today's session will focus on the housing element of universal credit, discussion of housing benefits, top-ups and new benefits. Today, we will have two panels. The first panel will contain housing sector representatives. I welcome for us today Mandy Morrison, operations manager with quarriers, Alan Gunn, the head of revenues and business support for Highland Council, Jeremy Hewer, policy adviser of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Ashley Campbell, policy manager of the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and Jules Oldham, who is representing homeless action Scotland. We have apologies from Julie Hunter, housing strategy manager of North Lanarkshire Council. I am going to have an hour or so for the first panel and I am going to kick off question today by just asking about one of the major changes of universal credit, which is the element of moving to monthly payments. If I could just open that as a sort of opening question to the panel about how they think the change to monthly payments will impact on delivery of service. Highland Council went live with universal credit in November 13 for singles, couples in June 14 and February 14 for families. In terms of impact, in terms of financial, just now there is about 90 per cent of council properties that are with UC and payment are in other years. 90 per cent is a significant number, although when you consider there are about 170 odd cases with UC against a council house stock of about 13,000. In terms of materiality, it is not a significant sum, but in terms of the 90 per cent it is quite a significant sum, and I think that that is generally attributable to the move to paying people less frequently, you know, every month. I think that some of the claimant feedback that we found as part of the rollout across Highland is that the customers have found the move not just to monthly, but combined with paying direct to the claimants as well. It has been quite a change for them, whereas before it was paid fortnightly to the landlords, it has moved very swiftly to paying monthly to the claimants. I think that it is a combination of a few of those things that have contributed to some of the rears that we are seeing. In terms of the profile and trend, the rent of the years with cases has been about 89 per cent at the end of June, 90 per cent at the end of September, and it was about 88 per cent at the end of April, so there has not been that much change who seem to be sitting around the 90 per cent mark. I would also say in terms of some of the local housing associations such as Albin and Highland that the rent of the years figure is about 88 per cent for UC claimants, whereas for housing benefit claimants it is about 43 per cent that is paid fortnightly with GSA. Ms Morrison? With regard to our family support services, a lot of the families we work with, the people are in work, but generally it is low-paid and skilled work and they are used to getting paid weekly or fortnightly, so while the rationale for universal credit is about getting people into the habit of budgeting, as they would do with a salary, it does not fit for the people that we are supporting. We also need to take into account that some people are going from weekly payments to monthly, so that is a huge jump overall. We are very much of the thought that there should be equal choice between whether it suits somebody's lifestyle and needs and vulnerabilities, whether they have a fortnightly payment or monthly payment and for those to be equally weighted, so that everything else that we are talking about within certainly social sector is all about being person-centred, and that seems to be one thing that does not sit within that. Given the choice and no waiting for one way or the other, that would be our preference. A couple of points on the administrative side. A problem that housing associations are encountering with universal credit is the fact that the assessment date for each claimant can vary from day to day and the payment date, so you have a situation where they have to, if they are going to have a large number of tenants on universal credit, they will be having to know which particular day and the transactions that that causes. The other issue is the discretionary housing payments, which are being used at the moment to mitigate the bedroom tax. Discussionary housing payments are paid on a set date, usually on a four-weekly basis. Housing associations, if you like, hit with a double whammy if they are supporting tenants and engaging with them on the date that their universal credit payment comes in. They are having to then approach their tenants again, perhaps the next week or two weeks later, just to engage with them about the discretionary housing payments. It creates a huge administrative problem for them. I think also in terms of the question, the debate about the frequency of payments. We hope that one of the things that will come out of the Scotland bill will be the option for more frequent payments, but the real problem is the initial waiting period, which will still be up to six weeks, by which time, particularly for those families that are on the financial edge, that is when the damage will be done. They will have to cope with the seven-day waiting period, where they will have to find the rent from their own resources added to the assessment period and the administrative period, adding up to, as I said, six weeks. The information that we have from our members reflects a lot of what Jeremy has said just now in terms of the complexity of the situation. As Jeremy pointed out, people can have the anniversary of their claim on any day of the month. If you add to that the option for people to choose fortnightly payments or monthly payments, it is adding another layer of complexity. While that was pointed out by some of our members, they said that, while it would be complex, it would be manageable, but a lot of thought would need to go into the management process, the IT system and just really being on top of the ball and keeping up with their tenants and really trying to intervene at the earliest possible point if they were getting into trouble with arrears. While saying that, most of our members did feel that tenants should be given the choice, they felt that a lot of their tenants would manage a lot easier with more frequent payments and that that would help them to keep their rent arrears under control. Again, a significant concern for us is the waiting period, and that six-week lead-in time is going to set people up with arrears from the start. It is going to mean that they are going to struggle even more with difficult financial dilemmas from the very start of their claim. Do they try and pay off their rent arrears? Do they pay for food? Do they pay for bills? It is going to make people who are in a difficult situation already that it is going to increase their stress and the dilemmas for them and for their landlords and how they deal with it. Thank you, convener. At the very early stages of all of this, there were some housing associations where direct payments took place, including Dunedin Canmore in Edinburgh. The committee at that point went out to speak to people who were going to go through those changes. During our visit there, we spoke to a guy who quite freely admitted that he had a major alcohol problem. He had stayed sober to speak to the committee. He was brutally honest about his situation and said basically that if he got that money he would drink it within a day or two and end up evicted quite quickly, which would obviously cause problems not only for him but also for the housing provider too. What do you think about this kind of situation where people with addictions or other problems, whether that be alcohol or drugs or gambling or whatever it may be, may find some real difficulties here and find themselves without a roof over their heads? What have you fed in to the UK Government about such situations? I'm going to start with Mr Hewer, convener. Under the universal credit rules for alternative payment arrangements, there are two instances where they are used. One is where the arrears have accumulated of up to eight weeks. Therefore, alternative payment arrangements can be set up for the housing association. The other instance is where there are distinct vulnerabilities, as you've described, if somebody has got particular vulnerabilities and it may be wise to have alternative payment arrangements set up from the start. That's perfectly possible. The problem is how the decision is made. Because the decision lies with the decision maker and the DWP, it's a bureaucratic process, and the decision maker, just because of the way it is set up, doesn't know that person personally. What we're hoping to get from the Government is that there is some talk about having trusted partner status, where an organisation such as a housing association who may have direct first-hand intelligence on the particular claimant can say that this particular tenant needs to have an alternative payment arrangement set up from the start, and the DWP will say fair enough that it will accept your decision without question, subject to review. There will be periodic reviews to see whether that person can go on to manage their own payments. I would echo what Jeremy said about the trusted partner status that provides quite a good solution, because we certainly have concerns around the knowledge from the decision maker side of things. You can't be somebody who is knowledgeable about every element of addiction, mental health etc. If there are actual organisations with those expertise, why are we not using those who are actually working side by side with people as well? It seems a bit of a wasted resource not to tap into. I would probably reflect those views again about the organisations that have built up relationships with those people and are best placed to decide with them what is best for them payment wise. The recommendation that we put forward in our written evidence was that where there is a known vulnerability or where we know that somebody may have difficulty in managing their money, the payments should go directly to the landlord in those cases. We felt that in all other cases tenants should be able to make the choice as to whether they want to receive the payments directly or they want them to go to their landlord, even if they ultimately decide to have the payments made directly to their landlord, they are exercising some choice in the matter and taking response for their finances that way. Again, even in those circumstances, if the tenant decides to have the payments made directly to themselves and then they fall into trouble, if they fall into arrears, he would have the alternative payment to fall back on as protection for the landlord. I agree with that, particularly in terms of mental wellbeing, where somebody might not have a mental health diagnosis but there might be other issues like depression that other providers are not aware of. The person providing support, whether that is a third sector organisation or whether it is the housing provider, might be aware of and we will share that. I think that there might be issues of confidentiality in that and how much the person might want that information being shared with the DWP as well, because I think that people's experience of the job centre plus of the DWP may not be experienced as a support of mechanism for them. It might be seem punitive at times. In terms of administration, I think that whilst the APA is a function to pay direct to the landlord, I think that a fear that I do have certainly is DWP's capacity to operate APAs on a substantial basis. I think that there will be an IT overhead. In terms of financial benefit, not just to the claimant or the customer but also to the cash flow of the businesses, for future investment etc, there needs to be that guaranteed income wherever possible where it is appropriate to do that. I do fear that whilst the APAs are a function that can actually work just now, I do fear that if it was to be rolled out significantly across Highland or across Scotland for that matter, I am not sure if the current system would actually manage it. I think that it would lead to quite significant delays in some payments. It leads me to the question whereby you are in the process of roll-out. You have already told us that 90 per cent of folk are in arrears already. How many of those folks have had the ability to have direct housing payments to you rather than to themselves as part of their UC? The AP process had some challenging issues in the first opening year, 18 months. Since February-March, things have settled down and it is certainly much, much better. Over 100 APAs requests have been received and administered through it, so that has helped to minimise certainly the arrears. About 75 per cent of the APA requests have been accepted, so it is not a given that you will get the APA accepted. There can be various reasons for it, including there can be a gap between the APA being requested. For instance, the tenant may move property. If the tenant has not made property, the chances are that the APA would get paid to the new landlord, rather than the existing landlord, of where the arrears is in relation to. When APA payments are made at the end of the month, it is the landlord that you are with at that time that receives that payment, even though it might have been a different landlord in the two or three weeks leading up to the end of that month. It is a huge amount of pitfalls and I am even trying to get to the point of making sure that, if there is an exemption and it is paid directly to the landlord, you have still got complications there if there is any change in circumstance. I want to move on because you touched on this, Mr Gunn. Basically, this is for Mr Gunn and Mr Hewer, convener. We have heard previously about cash flow difficulties that councils and housing associations may face, which puts some real strain on long-term planning, particularly in terms of making decisions about refurbishment or new build. That would affect, I think, smaller housing associations, much more than larger organisations. Could you maybe tell us what difficulties you could possibly foresee if there is a huge build-up of non-payment arrears? Within Highland Council, the current rent of your figure is just £1.5 million, for the UC cases, given that it is only £106,000. In terms of materiality, it is not material just now, so in terms of requiring that money to have capital builds, it is not just now preventing us from building council properties, because the roll-out of UC, the take-up, is still relatively low. We have about 1,200 existing UC claimants, whereas we have about 14,000 housing benefit claimants and 18,000 council tax reduction. We have been live for nearly two years, but the take-up is still low because of the strict criterion. However, if you were to extrapolate that over a period of time, if, for instance, the 60 per cent of cases that are known pensioners did move on to UC, the reality would be that this would be a cash flow problem for Highland Council, and that would then present problems, because it would ultimately have less capital available to build some of your council properties. It is a financial fact that, at the end of the day, we would have less money coming into the organisation, and we would need to make decisions to address that. Do you foresee difficulties in terms of new build and refurbishment of existing homes? Because the reality is that you would have less income in any other business, public or private sector, there is less income coming into the business, so something would have to stop or be reduced or a combination of both. I think that the point is that about 61 per cent of housing association income is from housing benefit. Two thirds of that would be from working-age households. The first effect that housing associations would see is in terms of their ability to borrow at competitive rates from lending houses. One of the things that they have found is that when calculating the covenants, it is based on an assumption of an income stream. Obviously, if that income stream is undermined, banks will come back and want to renegotiate the covenants, and in future borrowing would be more expensive. The other thing is that you alluded to the direct payment demonstration projects that Dunedin Camel was involved with. I think that their payment rate ultimately was about 94 per cent, as opposed to what they would have expected, which was about 99 per cent with the old system. That may not sound a lot, but that five per cent differential could be the difference between holding your head above water and going under. We are not going to have control of the element of social security. Obviously, it will have a direct impact on the devolved issue of housing and the possibility of expanding the social housing stock. Would that be a fair comment? I would say that universal credit is a reserve power. If that is rolled out across Scotland, we could see a major impact on our ability to build new social housing. It could be a factor. It is hard to say to look in the future, because it has to be said that the DWP has amended some of its procedures for when they have been found not to work the way that they thought. However, there is that concern that we would adversely affect our ability to build. I will mention the theme of housing, given that the figures that I gave were mainstream housing. 106,000 for temporary accommodation is much more challenging as well. While we are on the theme of housing in the cash flow, temporary accommodation is particularly challenging in Highland. We have about 100 properties under the HRA, and we have about 200 in the private sector, as well as a framework for B and B to try to handle homelessness. However, there is no doubt that the cash flow for temporary accommodation is even more challenging. For instance, there is only about 10 accounts where there is a rears of temporary accommodation. However, the average rent of the years for temporary accommodation is about £1400 an account, whereas for a UC it is only £700 an account. The issue of social housing is challenging, but there is a link directly or otherwise into the provision of temporary accommodation and what the council must do. What is also added in Highland is that our weekly charges for temporary accommodation are nothing as high as other parts of Scotland for various reasons, such as the Dundee's and the central belt for temporary accommodation prices are significantly higher per week than we have in Highland. It is just to follow on some of the points that my colleague Kevin Stewart has picked up with you. It is mainly to move it on a wee bit and ask that, in any of the pilot areas, if there has been any study done of the impact on people affected by sanctions and whether that has then had a knock-on effect for the ability to remain in their home, and how that impacts on councils that provide housing and private landlords and housing associations to provide the right support for that person, but also having to follow the rules as far as it may begin in the road of eviction. I would say that, in a recent submission that we made to the welfare and reform committee, I think that it was in response to the right honourable David Mundell's question mark about the use of food banks. We found that, from the survey that we did of members from the returns, that the vast majority of food bank referrals that housing associations were aware of were usually down to either benefit delays or benefit sanctions. Now, housing associations are not in the business of wanting to evict people. They will do what they can to maintain the tendency. If you like, what is happening at the moment is that housing associations are bearing the brunt of increased arrears and trying to mitigate it however they can, eventually, get alternative payment arrangements or try to get them where they come up. However, it is very much, as I said, the administrative hassle. Even if everything was working, absolutely tickety-boo and people were paying their things, the additional administrative burden on housing associations has been quite considerable. The other thing is is the unconnectedness of the system because I was at a recent meeting in Glasgow and I raised the issue about council tax reduction. It was admitted that there was a concern that people on, whereas before, I think, with housing benefit because it was done by the same section of the local authority. If they knew that somebody was on housing benefit, I do not know the exact administrative things, but it must have sort of let a light that said, aha, that person needs a council tax reduction as well. With universal credit, there is not that connect. They were anticipating, I think, that they expected that it was early days about 200 housing cases for council tax reduction. I think that they had 120. The missing may catch up, but there are always those that don't. I mean, we found with discretionary housing payments, for example, that there hasn't been 100 per cent take-up because, for one reason or another, despite the best efforts of housing associations to engage with their tenants, some tenants have opted not to take discretionary housing payments. In answer to your question, I don't think that we've seen an increase in evictions, but at the moment that's because, if you like, housing associations are taking the strain. Whether they will be able to do that as the years go on, I'm not so sure. Ms Oldham, can I maybe ask you to think about, because I know that you specifically at the end when people actually become homeless and you're spotting them either at the start of that process or where there may be, you know, quite far forward. I think maybe, like you, when people come to me, they're usually at crisis point. And whether you have seen any of that transfer over from people that have been involved in this new system to the type of work that you're having to undertake for people every day? Well, just to explain where the national membership organisations, everybody sort of feeds into us rather than being front line. But certainly one of the issues seems to be where the system wasn't working properly to start with. And so people, the housing element of the benefits where some say was being sanctioned wasn't kind of actually still taking place. Now that that's clear that the housing element should still be being paid, there's less of an issue. But the fact that it's gone on for so long, with it not being paid, where that kind of strange situation where there's a bit of an urban myth going around, where not everybody's of the understanding about what their rights and things are. And so if the housing element isn't being paid, there's still somebody of the belief that that actually that's what should be happening. So it's more around that that we've heard and seen of the issues. But certainly, yes, sanctions is a huge issue overall, outwith even just the housing side of things. Yeah, as Jeremy said, food banks and people actually needing to use every resource around about them is huge. It's a major issue which then has a knock-on effect to people's mental health, criminal, if you've not got food and the only way you can actually feed your children is to go shoplifting. The reality is that's what you're going to do, etc. So, yeah, it's more than knock-on effects from that, that's huge. Yeah, I spent a wee bit of time at the Hamilton District Food Bank in Saturday packing some bags for people and having some conversations, and you find out the reasons why people actually end up there are just horrifying that people get to that stage. Is any other panel got something to say about sanctions, Mr Gunn? Do you get similar to Jeremy at Highland in terms of evictions? There's nothing to suggest at all that increase in evictions because of sanctions. I mean, on the contrary, we'd be looking to use Scottish welfare fund, discussing housing payments to mitigate that financial impact on the tenants or the claimants. I think that this is also about, for me, a bit of availability of information. For instance, for sanctions, per job centre for each of the six in Highland, I can per month see how many have been sanctioned within each job centre for GSA, and it's ranging between three to five per cent. For love nor money, can I see data for sanctions referring to universal credit? That data is not made available. So, you can draw your own conclusions for that in terms of that data, but I think that this is a bit of an openness that we need because at the end of the day, whether it's the customer being served by the DWP or customer being served by the Scottish Government or by local authorities, it's the same one customer at the end of the day. I mean, to have the most joined-up approach for their benefit, and part of that is about transparency, about information and how well they're actually delivering these services. You know, part of the significant issue here is that, obviously, sanctions and conditionality are being reserved to the UK Government, which limits what the Scottish Government can do around that, and there obviously also remains eligibility criteria around discretionary housing payments and what they can be used for. I think that there remains issues around the payment of DHP to people who have been sanctioned, and the fact that a DHP cannot be awarded to directly mitigate a sanction. So, again, we're limited in how we can help these people. Obviously, there is indirect support and there's voluntary support, there are food banks, but those are not the best ways to ensure that people get the help that they need. Ms Morrison? Just to say, we do deliver front-line homelessness services to young people, and doing us a brief consultation with the young people, 38 per cent of the young people in our Glasgow homelessness services had experienced a sanction, and the use of sanctions is 38 per cent. I mean, if you think about it, if it's young people that have experienced trauma that have got the additional vulnerabilities in terms of substance use mental wellbeing and have maybe also been through the care system, if they're late for an appointment or if they forget something, then a lot of this is a cognitive function and it's affected by trauma in terms of memory. So, a lot of these young people are experiencing a high rate of sanctions, and a lot of our services now have got links with food banks, where our services are distributing the food vouchers, and I think that, in line with the other people, it's not necessarily a rise in homelessness at this moment in time, but I think that it is a rise in probably an additional strain on the use of food banks. That sort of leads me in quite nicely to my second part of my question, convener, if you'll indulge me. It's about the impact of people with any illness, and you're talking about young people that have faced trauma, that maybe have some trauma-related illness. It's attached to that, whether it's physical or it's a mental health issue, but also people who have a progressive disability, who have been receiving benefits that's allowed them to stay in work, like DLA and PIP and stuff like that, but their illness has got progressive, therefore they have to move out of the workplace and on to other sort of support benefits, and also people who have been determined as terminally ill. Right now, we've got a system that's not perfect, and I know that, and I know absolutely that it's not perfect. I think that the Child Poverty Action Group described the disability element of all of this as incoherent, which is a word that most of you have used this morning, that it's piecemeal, that it's not joined up and that it creates more problems than it fixes. I'm wondering what your experience is and whether any work has been done to mitigate that impact on people, because when you've got somebody moving from one part of the system into another part of the system, that seems to be a real vulnerability, that transition period, and if you've got either a progressive illness or a terminal illness or something that's not going to get better, how much more difficult that is. I'm really hoping that I can tease some of the issues that you have faced, but also maybe some of the ways that you've got to resolve that. Ultimately, what we're looking at here is a social security system for Scotland, and if we don't identify the problems and we don't learn lessons from some of the resolutions that you and the front line have put in place, we can't recreate the system that we want to see, so I'm hoping that you're going to help me with all of that. I think that in terms of UC, unlike the GSA, where there was an implicit consent for benefit advisors to speak directly to DWP about customers, under UC, that data sharing is not yet live. Data sharing is progressing. Jeremy and others may have views in terms of the data sharing to social landlords, but it's certainly to support service providers for people on UC or coming off UC or other benefits. That sharing is more limited, so it tends to be that we find out things rather than being advised of those changes. For me, that's one of the key things for certain local authorities and housing associations to do, is to have a support framework in place, whether it's through money advice, assistance advice bureau and various other voluntary organisations. Within Highland, for instance, it's very much an in-house team, as was supported by CAB and other third sector. We spend upwards of £1.8 million a year on costs to support those very individuals. We've also got housing management officers that are aware of tenants and try to get to know at a local level tenants' circumstances of changing. They won't know everything, but if they can have some kind of idea of movement safe from work to out of work, then the sooner you catch that and speak to the tenants, the better, because it just takes a few weeks and our ears get to stage that they just can't take themselves out of that hole. Timing is everything, but as is the support framework. Reality is that that costs a bit of money and investment, but at the end of the day, if that helps to minimise the rears and helps to increase income and capital funding, there's definitely direct benefits at the end of the day. We've certainly been trying to work closely with the job centres and the DWP to improve the knowledge of homelessness and vulnerabilities. It goes back to what I said about the decision makers. They're expected to be the font of all knowledge that an expert of everything, when you couldn't be. It's just not possible. That's the same with the personal advisers, to an even greater extent, because they're the first person that somebody meets with. We're trying to play a part to improve their knowledge, but, in addition to that, we'd like to see them being a bit more of a dialogue between, for instance, somebody that's working with couriers. The person that they're working with has heard that they're going to receive a sanction, while surely a call from the support worker that they're working with to say, actually, do we know X, Y and Z, and that can be stopped at that point, rather than administration being wasted, etc.  Absolutely, yes, that's the other kind of flaw in the, one of the other flaws in the plan, but we'd certainly like to see a lot more communication, in particular, where there's support organisations in place, and there's a lot of people with some sort of support framework. So, again, it's back to there being use of the organisations who do have the expertise. It's a real wasted resource, and why there's not that dialogue happening more. I would like to see that happen. There have been some positive initiatives. In the Highland, for example, the job centre will now allow a support worker to accompany a claimant when having the interview. That's obviously got benefits, because certainly in terms of the claimant commitment, perhaps a more reasonable, a more rational claimant commitment can be created. Against that, though, there is concerns, particularly on things like the work capability assessment and PIP assessments, that the system has not been set up, is not working as well as it should. You mentioned claimants who may have a degenerative condition, but they still have to go through the same thing. The fact that they have to go through a reassessment creates anxiety in them. It doesn't help them in the least. I think that perhaps understanding of mental health issues in the assessment process is not what it should be, and quite often appointments are missed because of the mental health. The actual idea of missing an interview is not really a willful act of an elect. It's part of their condition that means that they don't. Housing associations have obviously invested in support work, and they try to intervene where they can. For example, Dunedin Canmore recently had a case where somebody in Edinburgh was invited to go for a PIP assessment in North Berwick. They said, no, we want to have a PIP assessment close to that person because of their disability. The assessment process, we have long argued that you really need to do an assessment based on the day-to-day abilities of the person and not do it in an isolated instance. You hear whether there are apocryphal stories or not or isolated ones of the assessors observing people from a distance with binoculars to see whether they are really disabled or not as they come towards their assessment. There are systems issues, which there always will be. Somebody in Link Housing Association told us that assessments that were available in Stirling that were provided by Solis were not on the ATOS computer system, and therefore they weren't being offered to people living in that area. Those things can be overcome. There needs to be and there have been lots of submissions to the committee and other committees about the need for perhaps a more thought-through way of assessing people who have either illness or disability. References to transitions might be worth while bearing in mind children with disabilities transitioning to adult services. The additional impact of the SDS and families. When you have a child who is moving into adult services benefits can play a big role in that and it can be incredibly daunting even with the supports that the child gets. I am still saying child because there can be people at 16, 17 who have not to go into this adult world. I think that that probably needs some thought. I do not know the answers to it. I have Mr Johnson waiting to come in, but John, do you want a quick supplementary or do you want to come in general after Alec? If I could have a supplementary, it was actually the point that Ashley Campbell made about the discretionary housing payments that were supposed to be getting power over, but as you quite correctly pointed out that we are not allowed to use them if someone has been sanctioned and lost their housing benefit, except in exceptional circumstances. That is obvious that there has been a subject to quite a lot of debate in the House of Commons on the Scotland Bill going through Parliament. I know that Labour and the SNP have tabled amendments asking for that to be looked at again so that you could pay discretionary housing payments to someone even if they had lost their entitlement to housing benefits. Up until now, those amendments have not been accepted. I wonder what your view on that was. It is something that we have raised concerns about before. Obviously, the limitations around discretionary housing payments are members who have asked that it could be more flexible, that the Scottish Government obviously explores every possibility for that, but currently, under the wording of the Scotland Bill, you are limited. I have always found that there is a bit of a conflict in relation to sanctions and mitigating sanctions, even in terms of elements of support for people trying to get back into work, which are being devolved to the Scottish Government, but sanctions and conditionality remain reserved. That sets us up with a system in which the Scottish Government might want to take a more supportive or proactive role in trying to help people to get back into work, a more carrot-driven method of helping people back into work, but the UK Government still holds the stick of sanctions. How do we really create a social security system that supports people when we still have that looming over our heads? I want to say that the SFJ will reserve judgment until it sees what comes out in the third reading of the Scotland Bill, but what I would say about discretionary housing payments, our main criticism is that it is an expedient. It was always seen as a temporary measure, and it is not right to use in the long-term discretionary housing payments for mitigation of the bedroom tax, particularly when we are going to be faced with an upsurge in the number of people that are affected by the benefit cap with a reduction of the benefit cap from 26,000 to 20,000, and you are going to see a lot more families, I suspect, even those in standard housing association accommodation may be affected by the bedroom cap. Obviously discretionary housing payments are there to ease the transition. There are various things in discretionary housing payments. I think that the perhaps addressing effect rather than the cause and a perfect system in the amount of DHPs that are needed should be less than what they are because the system should be fundamentally correct in the first place in my take. I think that there is a diminutive overhead to discretionary housing payments. For instance, Scots authorities get about £1.5 million a year to process DHPs to fully mitigate the bedroom tax. If you just stop the 14 or 25 per cent penalty for bedroom tax at source, you wouldn't need that 1.5 administration overhead, as well as delays, etc. You would guarantee 100 per cent take-up and full mitigation of it. There is an administrative overhead to DHPs, but people also have to claim them. In reality, it is certainly some of the more vulnerable clients who tend not to claim everything that is entitled either because of ignorance or just because of their lifestyles. Last but by no means least, some people have to generally hear earlier comment about that they have to qualify for housing benefit, for instance, that they qualify for a DHP. In some cases in Highland, we even had three or four cases in June this year where the claimants and partners are on income support, but their son or daughter has started work and is getting about £12,000 a year gross. As a result, because of the non-debt deduction, they qualify for no housing benefit and, therefore, they qualify for no discretionary housing payment. However, the claimants and partners' circumstances are exactly the same. They have not changed. It is the other people in the household. There are a lot of pitfalls to discretionary housing payments. I think that they are invaluable, as a means to an end, to address some of the issues in the system. As part of reviewing any social security system, there should be a less reliance on DHPs this year than we were seeing and getting the system right in the first place. More should have been devolved to Scotland so that we do not have to have this kerfuffle about DHPs. That would be helpful. We also have a big concern over the actual purpose of DHP being lost, with 7 per cent being used for what used to be used for. One of the big things in homelessness was two-homes payment. That is where somebody heard that they were offered a tenancy and were moving from temporary or supported accommodation. Those monies were provided to enable the tenancy that they were moving into to be paid for, and they are not to have to do that from one day to the next. It is totally unrealistic to have somebody to move from a tenancy, as they are having to do now, and sort out electricity, furniture, everything that they have to do to move house within a day, possibly two days, but not any more than that. Even the two weeks is quite a short length of time, but that was able to happen with the two-homes payments, and things like that have been lost completely. We will be having an impact on tenancy sustainment, because if you have not got the time to start out and get your tenancy right from point one, then you are much more likely to fail further down the line. The money that is spent on that would have been very small in the scheme of things, but the impact is huge. Most councils from our understanding have chosen for that to be one of the areas that they are not using DHP for. That is a huge concern to us. Imagine moving house in a day. Oh, sorry, Ms Gamble, then we will come to Mr Johnson. Just to add that we would echo a lot of those points as well. Discretionary housing payments were never meant to be used to mitigate long-term issues such as the bedroom tax. In our written submission, we suggested that, with the powers over the variation of the housing element within universal credit, if the Scottish Government decides to mitigate the bedroom tax long-term, that would be a far better way to do it. People do not have to apply for a different benefit. There are no breaks in the claim as such. It leaves what is left in the discretionary housing payment pot for those other uses. It is more transparent in that way. We recognise that the money that was put into the DHP pot to deal with bedroom tax would be taken out, but at least what is left is then for the original purpose. It is a lot more clear what the DHP would be used for. It is interesting to note on that issue that David Mundell made it very clear some time ago that he thought that DHP was not the only option to deal with mitigation of a lender occupancy charge and perhaps not the best option. I think that he has been proved correct with the situation that we find ourselves in. However, the issue that I wanted to raise takes us back to one of the basics about funding and housing. Over many years now, we have seen the bulk of Government contribution towards housing costs move away from bricks and mortar and into the support of costs for individual housing. We have become very reliant on housing benefit as the key foundation of that. We have heard how it supports the cash flow of large landlords and it also supports capital investment to a significant extent. I am sure that that is not your preferred option for funding the construction of houses, but it has been a good or a bad thing that we have moved away from funding the construction of houses to simply funding housing costs in a large scale? I think that there has been a very interesting report by Shelter that came out, as you said, perhaps in the 70s where the proportion of money into subsidising the construction of houses and the support for rent maintenance has changed over the years. Ideally, we would obviously like to see more investment in housing. If you reverse that trend, it will be quite complex. The point to make out is that, if you like, the subsidy that housing associations get to build housing at the moment comes from the Scottish Government. The subsidy that housing associations get from rent maintenance comes from the Westminster Government. Therefore, Westminster, despite housing being, if you like, a devolved matter, there is a degree of control over housing from Westminster. When we see proposals such as the removal of automatic entitlement of housing benefit for those under 22, where we see the change to the benefit cap, where we see other aspects, including the local housing allowance. Obviously, housing is a very difficult issue in the sense that you are trying to, if you like, have a UK-wide policy on income maintenance. If you like, you are trying to have a level playing field, which is what the benefit system gives, at least until very recently, across the UK. However, you have housing costs, which have a huge variation across Scotland. It is a hard job. The whole subject of a debate, which is probably not suitable for here, is issues such as rent control, the effect of right to buy. All those issues will affect the ability of housing associations to provide housing. However, during the course of the current Government, we have seen significant downward pressure on the amount of money that the Scottish Government has put towards the construction of social housing. You have become progressively more reliant on that income stream that is coming through housing benefit from Westminster. Over the past four and a bit years, we have seen that balance skewed further. Will that be the case? I would not say so. If you compare the rise in housing association rents compared to the private sector landlord, you would find that housing association rents have broadly maintained a fairly steady trajectory along the lines of inflation, whereas private sector rents have been considerably more than the rate of inflation. You did see the Hague grant severely depressed for a number of years. You did see the Hague grant, the housing association grant, significantly depressed for a number of years. That was a significant downward pressure on the money that is available for construction. Surely that made you more reliant on the flow of income from housing benefit to support capital investment. Housing benefit does not support capital investment? You need a steady flow of housing benefit in order to support your own going capital investment. Indeed, we need an income stream in order to pay our debts. I am simply suggesting that you have become reliant on that income stream for a lot of things that were once supported by other means through Government. No, I do not think that that is quite the case. Do you think that it is ironic that we have a Government in Scotland that is pushing very hard to maximise the use of that income stream that is coming from the DWP and Westminster when there is an opposite pressure south of the border that could result in us becoming disproportionately reliant in Scotland on a source of funding that comes from outside Scotland? I do not think that I have qualified to comment on what might be happening south of the border. I can have a similar theme, but without prejudice, rents are going up for people. It is a huge factor in people's monthly outgoings. What is being done or what more could be done to produce the rental increases that people are seeing? Clearly, that has an knock-on impact on the level of money that is required for housing benefit. You mentioned that housing associations had put up rents less than private sector. I wonder if you have any more figures to hand about rent increases in the housing association, perhaps Highland Council could tell us, as well, that deliver rents in Highland? I have not got figures immediately to hand, but I would be more than happy to provide them to the committee if that is what they would like. Anything that increases the administrative burden on housing associations is obviously going to have a knock-on effect on all rents. Again, with universal credit, for example, whereas before, with the housing benefit, there was usually a transfer every four weeks or so from the local authority in terms of the housing benefit payments to the association. If only bank transaction charges were a fairly cheap way of accruing the money, if you then got hundreds of tenants each making individual payments, you would have the transaction charges that your bank levies on each of those individual payments, but you would also have the challenge of ensuring that your rent accounts are reconciled. That is one of the other issues to do with universal credit and discretionary housing payments, which is that universal credit is paid on a monthly basis. Discretionary housing payments are paid on a four-weekly basis, so you have to find out whether you have got your exact amount of money in them. The other thing that I have not mentioned, which is of very much concern to housing associations, is the changes in the rules about eligibility of housing costs under universal credit compared to housing benefit. In particular, service charges for adaptations for people with disabilities, things like automatic door closers, track and voice systems, closing mat toilets and things like that. Those maintenance charges are eligible under housing benefit rules. They are not going to be eligible under universal credit housing cost rules. From a personal point of view, that seems to be self-defeating. For a disabled tenant, a track and voice system is as essential as a gas central heating system is for any other tenant. The maintenance charges for the gas central heating system is questioning whether that is an eligible service charge or not. It is self-defeating, because if housing associations are not providing adapted housing, what is the alternative? Is care home a hospital? Are those any cheaper? Is that a better use of public money? I do not think so. On the specific figures for the current year, what I do know about looking ahead, what I would say is that the local housing allowance rates are going to be frozen or minimised to 1 per cent over the next three to four years. That, in itself, is a controlling mechanism on the amount of housing benefit that can get paid. In terms of the early comment about construction, in the local authorities, there are slight different housing associations where we have a ring-fenced housing revenue account, which the rental income provides a sizeable source of that income. What councils can also do is utilise other powers that we have already got, such as through council tax, the additional discounts that we have done, which have created things such as land banking funds and so on. From April, similar to some other councils, we have introduced the charge for council tax for long-time mentees up to 200 per cent. We are using that income to fund some one-off or much-needed constructions. Realities of the rental market are very different across all of Scotland. The pressures in Highland are very different to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and that is reflectism rent, reflectism collection rates and so on. However, there are some things available, albeit limited, that councils can do through the council tax, for instance. The early comment, certainly within the HRA, is that housing benefit is an important cash flow, but it is also important for tenants to help them to pay their rent. That is what we should not lose sight of here at the end of the day. It is trying to support the tenants who are ultimately our customers at the end of the day. I am just finally going to bring in Mr Stewart to finish off. It is a slightly different topic, convener, because we have concentrated very much on the housing element, but other parts of submissions have other things in them. It is the quarrier submission that I am looking at in particular, where you state that the reality, however, is that people with a disability have been subject to a disproportionate amount of cuts in their benefits, which is undermining their human rights and preventing them from participating fully in society. How is the UK Government's current social security system preaching people's human rights, Ms Morrison? To be honest, I am from the children and families section. I do not work directly with the disabilities, so I do not feel as if I have the knowledge to comment on that. I can speak to our policy officer and ask him to get back to you about that. I think that that would be extremely useful, because a lot of folk are saying that they feel that folks' human rights are being breached. I do not disagree with that, I have to say, in a lot of cases. It would be very interesting for us as a committee to have examples of where organisations think that folks' human rights are at risk because of the social security changes. I have had another couple of members indicate that they want to come in, so I will go to Ms McElvie first. I can be a really quick supplementary, but I also chair the European and External Relations Committee. I have just launched a call for evidence on the impact on Scotland of a repeal of the Human Rights Act, so if you have anything that can help us in our deliberations, that would be extremely helpful. Sorry for the plug, convener. Very quickly, my supplementary is on the very mischievous question from my colleague Mr Johnson on capital budgets and the impact of capital budgets. It was really just to clear up whether it is council, because I understand the difference between housing association grant and how council may be used different methods of raising funds for capital investment. If, over the past few years, you have seen the disproportionate impact on capital budgets, the cuts to capital budgets from subsequent, whether it was the coalition Government or the new majority Government at Westminster, has a direct impact on your ability to build houses? Within Highland, in terms of capital, I would say that the answer would be no, but the potential is most there. If UC was rolled out in its current format, the impact on cash flow would be material. It is more the potential, rather than the actual, to date. It would be my take on it. Sorry, convener. You cannot repeat the question. It was mainly the fact that, over the past few years, the Scottish Government has been hit by up to, in some cases, 38 per cent cuts in their capital budgets, and whether that is what has had the impact on the ability for housing associations and other organisations to actually build homes. I think that, obviously, that did have an effect. I think that, a few years ago, when the hagg allowances were reduced and it was found that a lot of housing associations actually sort of curtailed their development programmes, those hagg figures have been revised now, so that we are seeing a pickup in new build from housing associations, which is very welcome. The Scottish Federation Housing Association is pioneering a financing scheme for small associations to club together in order to be able to build. We will try, obviously, to build our best and associations are fairly adroit to sort of, if there is an opening or a gap, which will enable them to build. I am sure that I will. I want to ask earlier. From April 2017, those out of work aged 18 to 21, making new claims under universal credit, will not get the housing element of universal credit. Obviously, that is not something that we can mitigate because the powers are not being devolved to us. What concerns did you have about that and whether you had made any planning for it? I know that the Scottish Government is co-ordinating negotiations with the DWP about the exceptions to the rule on the exceptions to the 18 to 21-year-old. Obviously, that is not quite the case in Scotland, because Tennessee is occasionally given to 16-year-olds. We are trying to protect those who are certainly the most vulnerable to make them exempt, such as those who are coming out of care, for example those with children or expecting a child to be exempt from that, where there has been an irretrievable breakdown. However, it is a very complex area, and the list of exceptions that are being proposed are quite comprehensive. I suppose that the cynic might say, well, who is left, who is going to be hit with a charge, but we will have to see. However, the concern is—and it has been raised before—about discretionary housing payments. You can only have discretionary housing payments if you have an entitlement to housing benefit. Those under 22 who are hit by—who do not have entitlement to housing benefit will not have entitlement to discretionary housing payment. I think that, if you like, it is known in policy circles as the nudge philosophy. The idea is to nudge those to go back and live with their parents, whether that is a practical proposition that remains to be seen. I think that there are going to be some people that are going to be heard. A lot of what Jeremy said, but really just to really push the 16 and 17-year-olds being a real concern area, and it seems to be something that seems to have kind of missed a lot of attention. There we're really talking the extreme most vulnerable cases, not huge numbers, but we've got to get that right for 16, 17-year-olds. Probably more than one answer as well, whether they're chosen to be looked at through the same system as through care, or a whole new kind of exemptions that suit them within Scotland, but not one answer for everyone, I suggest. I think that it's probably relevant to Mr Gunn more than anyone, but if anyone else wants to contribute, please indicate to me. It's to do with some of the evidence that we took with our visit to Highland Council. It's the idea of the scalability of the manual interventions involved, and the issue of the data sharing in particular, because we also took evidence to find out that support couldn't be given to people directly from front desks because they didn't have access to the universal credit elements of people's claims, so even for claimants it was very, very difficult because they couldn't get that front desk support any more. If those issues aren't resolved, can you give an indication of what you think the impact would be on rolling out universal credit without fixing those issues? In terms of financial impact, I wouldn't like to put a figure on that across Scotland. As a model, the work coaches in DWP Highland have to give credit to them. They're very good individuals, very dedicated to what they do. There's absolutely no doubt, but when a customer comes in and they're trying to get a job but they've also got universal credit, the work coaches quite often don't have access to the universal credit screen, so they can't answer the questions even if they needed to, so they're having to speak to the service centre for that. We've certainly taken the steps of having our own staff working closely with DWP in the same offices, so we can catch those customers and help them at the end of the day in terms of that various support model. From that point of view, we are more expert on financial advice, whereas DWP's main drive is employability. We're speaking to the same customer, but from different perspectives, we're trying to join them up the best we can. Without that, the reality is that benefits could go on claim, changes could go on reported, and that would impact on the entitlement and take-up or lack of across Highland and Scotland. To put a figure on it, I wouldn't like to say, but the reality would be that if universal credit is not being claimed by those entitled to it, the chances are that they won't be able to pay their kind for tax or their other bills at the end of the day. A very, very quick supplementary, Mr Johnson. Ops, it's a different subject entirely and we can keep this short. After a sticky start, councils did extremely well at administering the welfare fund. If we're going forward with the prospect of developing new benefits in new areas that are devolved, do you see councils as being a suitable level at which other benefits could be administered? A very quick answer, please. Yes. I think that services delivered at a local level is absolutely a must. I think that the reality of a combination of some stuff delivered at a national level and some stuff delivered at a local level I think generally may be the best outcome, but without doing much more detailed options, appraisal, I couldn't say one or the other. I think, though, but local authorities, we administer EMA on behalf of the Scottish Government and generally do that because we work into a set of rules. Shun costs were worryingly high with what's been devolved so far as a proportion of the total. If you had more, a greater range of responsibilities, would that give us an opportunity to push down administrative costs within the council? Yes, it would. With respect to what we would also say within Highland Council, what we have done is we've collocated and made generic our Scottish welfare fund team with our housing benefit team with our council tax reduction team, so we already get the economy use of scale. I would challenge whether it is costing Highland in relation to a lot of money to process Scottish welfare fund because, in my view, it's not, but what we are doing is crisis grants are paid 100 per cent within a day and community here grants 100 per cent within three days. I would challenge whether we are delivering quite an efficient service and certainly the performance metric would suggest similar to EMA. We are actually making quite a good job of it, so I think that the potential is there for local authorities to do more. Thank you very much, convener. Final word, Mr Hew. Just on the question of scalability, I would commend to the committee, the report of the public accounts committee in the last Parliament, about the expressed a number of concerns about both the live system and the digital system. I'd also point out that, obviously, come April next year, we're going to have very, very many more people on universal credit. One of the issues is the adjustment of housing costs with rent reviews that usually happen in April. That's going to be, we've been advised by the DWP, the bulk data sharing has had to be put set aside and that is going to be, so obviously there's going to be a manual process and I think that will be a considerable headache for all the concerned. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I thank you all for your participation this morning. I'm going to suspend for five minutes and allow the panels to swap over. Thank you. Welcome back. I welcome to the committee to give evidence to Mark Ballard, head of policy for Nardos Scotland, Maggie Kelly, consultant policy adviser of One Pound family Scotland, John Dickie, director of child poverty action group in Scotland, Keith Driverer, policy manager, citizens advice Scotland, Peter Kelly, director of the poverty alliance, and Alison McLaughlin, money advisor, children first. You're very welcome to the committee this morning. Can I open up the questions to committee members? Any opening gambits? We just had a discussion about, obviously, focus today on universal credit and impact. The opening gambit to the last panel was about the change to monthly payments and just generally what the implications of that could be in terms of delivery of service. I'm Keith Driverer. Thank you. The committee may be aware that the citizens advice Scotland undertook a survey of 600 benefit claimants at the start of August to ask them how they currently budget and how they might be affected by the terms of universal credit. We asked them how they currently budget. About 26 per cent said weekly, 22 per cent said fortnightly, and 24 per cent said monthly. There's a very widespread of how people budget, and most people plan that way because that's when their money comes in. We found that about a third of claimants were already struggling to make it to the next payments and having to borrow money or get a crisis grant. We asked them how they cope with a monthly payment, and almost half of those who are currently claiming benefits that will become universal credit indicated that they would struggle to reach the end of the month and we're worried about the implications of that. It's worth saying that a fifth said that they'd have no problem with that, so there was this about 45 per cent of benefit claimants that said that they would struggle with a monthly payment. To add to what Keith is saying, we're certainly getting evidence from families that we spoke to using Food Bank where even two weekly payments were causing the problems and that even budgeting over a two-week period on a very low income was a key issue for them in terms of them ending up having to use a Food Bank. The new powers over the payment of universal credit, I think we're very much keen to see those used to give claimants choice and give them the option of a greater frequency of payment and move to a choice of at least a two-week payment. One of the things that we flagged up in our evidence was that that raised an issue given that the monthly waiting period before universal credit payment is made remains reserved, so you would potentially find yourself in a situation where you have to wait a month, it's paid a month in a rears, you wait that month and then you only get a two-week payment. I think that we need to be accompanied by a commitment to give choice for more frequent payments. We need to be accompanied by looking at the use of discretionary payments and the powers to make discretionary payments to top up that or to make a discretionary payment to ensure that, in that first payment, they get enough to cover the month. Really, just to echo some of the previous comments, quite a number of our clients have raised serious concerns about being able to budget if they're going to be having automatic monthly payments, although, as Keith has pointed out, some people have said that they would prefer that, but I think that probably the broader concern has been that it will cause serious problems. I suppose that what we would like to see is more choice for lone parents to actually be able to decide when their payments are going to be made, if a monthly payment would suit them better than they should be able to claim that way and, if not, maybe a two-week payment would be more suitable for them. I think that the main thing to remember about this is that people surely it's just a few weeks. The amount of money that people are struggling to live on is so tiny that there is really a need to have shorter periods for people. I think that that's the key thing to remember about it. I also think that the issue about the waiting period for universal credit is something that we need to consider. As John said, maybe look at having some sort of policy or agreement about some sort of discretionary payments if you have a shorter period and you're going to have to wait for over a month for your first payment. Just very briefly to follow up on what the others have said, we'll be publishing some work later this month looking at the impact of welfare reform in Glasgow and some of that work has been engaging with advisers and the advisers certainly have echoed the concerns that we've just heard about moving to four-weekly payments and monthly payments. One of the other things to say is that why some of the rationale for moving to that approach is to mirror what we think goes on in the labour market and the fact that many most people get paid on a four-weekly basis or a monthly basis. I think that we need to remember that for a fairly significant minority of people, they're still paid fortnightly or in some cases weekly and particularly people who are in lower paid work. That sense of work we're moving towards a system that's widely understood and that people are able to budget that way generally. I don't think that it necessarily holds true, particularly when people are moving in and out of work, which, as we know at the lower end of the labour market, is often the case. I'd like to echo the remarks that have been made earlier. From a Bonardo's point of view, I highlight the fact that, through the Children and Young People Scotland Act, we've developed a new architecture for supporting vulnerable families and families with a particular need. The very positive emphasis in that act was bringing all the agencies that are working with the vulnerable family together so that we can make sure that we get the maximum benefit by integrating what the local authorities are doing to support a family, where health is supporting a family, where schools or other agencies are supporting a family. The concern that we hear a lot from our staff is that the missing element of that jigsaw is the welfare system. The thing that is pushing some of those families that Keith talked about into crisis could be a shift from fortnightly payments to monthly payments. The difficulty of budgeting then has an impact on the ability of all those other services to effectively support a family. It's very difficult to support a family when you're trying to deal with an issue about a child's behaviour at school if it actually roots back into the fact that the family is struggling to budget and that poor behaviour at school comes at the end of every month. You know why that is because the family is struggling with budget issues. In terms of the wider conversation about what future opportunities look like, the ability to have a better relationship between that new architecture for supporting families and any future welfare system. The conversation that Maggie Kelly talked about in terms of flexibility can happen so that those discretionary payments, those shifts in potentially from monthly payments to fortnightly or even weekly payments can be informed by other conversations that are happening about effectively supporting vulnerable families or families in crisis. I think that that will be really important. Mr Driver, do you want to back in? I just wanted to quickly add another question in the survey that we asked. We asked claimants when they would prefer to receive payments. We asked them whether weekly, fortnightly or monthly. 55 per cent said weekly, 32 per cent said fortnightly and 13 per cent said monthly. I don't think that that means that we shouldn't go with monthly. I think that it says that maybe we should give people the choice. Another finding that we had is that people who had control and choice over their budgets tend to the budget better. If you give people the choice of when they get paid, that will improve their ability to make their budget last. We would certainly agree with that. Our experience in working with families is that they are very adept at managing their budgets. In terms of receiving benefits at the moment, what families tend to do is stagger them so that they can manage their money better. Child benefit, for instance, may be paid weekly and can support fortnightly. Child tax credits for weekly, therefore they know when I'm going to get a big pay or when I've got a longer week because I've got less money. Our concern is that with the change over, there will be a delay in those benefits being paid. As was mentioned, difficulties in accessing crisis payments. Before I open up to committee, you talked about the disconnect between what the Scottish Government has tried to do in terms of the Children and Young People's Bill for families. We've just heard the previous evidence session about a discussion about the housing element support being taken away from what's 18 to 21-year-olds, but in Scotland we do have tenancies for 16-year-olds and onwards. In terms of all the work that was done in supporting care leavers and the work that was done to ensure that they had support services from councils, how do you see that the change in the housing element might affect the ability of people who are leaving care to move on to successful tenancies? As was highlighted earlier, there is an on-going conversation about what exemptions will be in place for 18 to 21-year-olds. We would, as Bonados, hope that that is as wide a group of exemptions as possible, particularly to address the needs of groups such care leavers. One of the things that I know as being explored coming out of the Children and Young People's Scotland act is whether Scotland needs to widen the definition of who is eligible for support as a care leaver. That was a commitment that Aileen Campbell made to the committee at stage 2 that that would be explored. We could then end up in a situation where Scotland has a broader definition of eligibility for support as a care leaver, and it's not then clear how that would route back into any Westminster definition of care leaver for the purpose of an exemption to the general removal of housing benefit for 18 to 21-year-olds. We have a concern about the mismatch. Obviously, our position is that we would like to see as many young people as possible who have been through the care system potentially eligible for support as care leavers, but we are then concerned that we could end up with two classes of care leaver—one care leaver who was eligible for support from corporate parents and local authorities, but not housing support through welfare payments and another group who were eligible for housing support. There is a big concern there about how that will play out in practice. Equally, as the convener highlighted, 16 and 17-year-olds in Scotland are treated as children under the Terms of the Children and Young People Scotland Act. If they have a welfare need, they should have a name person—they will have a name person. If they have a wellbeing need, then the name person has a responsibility to act and potentially move to a child's plan and targeted intervention. It's not clear what would happen if the wellbeing need arises from a lack of financial support coming from the UK welfare system and how those systems will interact. Our concern is that the positive elements of the Children and Young People Scotland Act and that holistic model of support misses the crucial piece of the jigsaw if welfare payments aren't part of that conversation about how we address the wellbeing of 16 and 17-year-olds. Does anyone else want to come in on that particular point? I am going to open up to the committee, Ms McElvie. Thank you very much, convener. That leads on very well for Mark Ballard's comments there. From my point of view, there is a briefing that I have got. I do hang on to all those briefings, John, especially the ones for child poverty action group that you produced in June. It was revised in June. You broke down the Scotland Act and all its clauses, the additional powers and all its clauses and the impact that it has on people. My question is about the thread that I see running through your reports and everybody's reports. It leads into what Mark Ballard just said in his final remarks here, about how incoherent the whole thing is.  If you are a woman, which is something that we have taken a keen interest in in this committee and the impact that it has, you have layers and layers and layers of incoherence in this whole system. For us, looking at a future social security system for Scotland, how on earth do we make that work? It is becoming absolutely obvious that there has been no real thought put into the impact of a picking-mix style of powers and how that has an impact on your ability to do your job and our ability to create a system that is actually a true social security system. Can you help? Given the situation that we are in, we are trying to look at what powers are being devolved to the Scottish Parliament and what can be done within those powers and how they link to the bulk of those security powers that will remain reserved to Westminster. Key to that will be the intergovernmental working relations between the two Governments, a commitment to make that work with the interests of claimants at the forefront of thinking through, and not just looking at what works for the two Governments, but making sure that we are bringing in and thinking about that from the perspective of individuals and families who rely on social security, whether they are in work or out of work, and making sure that we get systems in place that work. We have flagged up. In the existing system, one of the key things that impacts on families is the problems with mal-administration, delays and benefit payments, with interactions between payments from different levels of government, whether it is housing benefit administered at the local authority level, UK Government social security payments. We have recently published a report that has looked at the whole kinship care issue. That is a key example of how it is important to think about this from the point of view of the kinship carer. Not just a policy intent does not translate into additional support for individuals and families more generally, but it needs to be thought through as to what will be the impact from additional support through a Scottish benefit and what will be the impact of that in terms of UK social security support. Those things need to be thought through very carefully and at the heart of that needs to be thinking about what will be the administrative infrastructure for delivering the Scottish bits of the social security system. However, I do not want that to attract from what we have said all through. There are very real opportunities in those powers that are being devolved to the Scottish Parliament. I hope that today's session might tease out how crucial social security is to reducing child poverty, to improving the wellbeing of children, to improving outcomes for children and that we think about how we use the powers that are being devolved in a way that contributes to the national ambitions that there are around those issues. As I was thinking about how important social security is, I will demonstrate in three ways. We have had some work done for us by the Institute of Social and Economic Research, looking at the role that tax and benefit income transfers play in reducing child poverty across Europe. What is absolutely clear from that is that in just about all countries in Europe, child poverty is far higher. If you imagine what the levels of child poverty would be before tax and benefit transfers in the role of social security plays, it would be far higher. It has reduced significance across Europe. Social security plays a core role, not the only role but a key role in reducing the levels of child poverty. We need to think about how we use those powers that are coming to Scotland in order to make as bigger contribution as we possibly can to preventing and reducing the levels of child poverty. Real progress has been made in the past in reducing the levels of child poverty, so investment in child benefit and investment in tax credits all had a significant impact on reducing the numbers of children living in poverty in Scotland across the UK. We know that investing in social security where we can makes a big contribution to reducing child poverty and improving and alongside the evidence shows improving children's wellbeing. Of course, we have all the evidence now of what the impact is of cutting levels of benefits and social security support for families in terms of the impact on their wellbeing, the forecast increases in child poverty. It is about trying to work out how we can now use what powers we have to make a contribution. I think that there are within the limits, given that there is only a small amount of the social security system that has been devolved. Through talking about top-ups, talking about the administration of universal credit, talking about the housing element within universal credit and making a big difference to children and families and making sure that they have the financial support that they need to protect their children from poverty. Maggie, I wonder if you can come in here, but I will ask a resupplementary to focus on that a bit more. Over the past few days, we have heard lots of pronouncements from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on how they want to make work pay. They are using a fake living wage, because it does not meet any of the Resolution Foundation criteria for being an actual living wage of £7.20 is the mark to do that, to lift people out of poverty. However, when you attach that to cuts to tax credits, when you look at what people would earn from that, it works out of an extra £7 per pound. That is all that they make from it. For most families, it is about £2,000 a year on average cut to household incomes. I know that there is a real serious impact on loan parents. We have spoken to some loan parents on the committee and how that has affected them. I am very involved in your organisation locally, where I am, in the transforming lives programme that they do. When I speak to some of the young mums and dads, they are experiencing the real fear that they are now experiencing, because they feel that if they are working part-time and looking after the kids, if they are then in a disproportionate impact on tax credits, the impact that that has on the overall family budget and the ability of the family to stay together. I would like to flag up some figures about loan parents, particularly in relation to your comments. The combined effect of the budget will lead to particularly large losses for loan parents. They have already been the household type, which has been the hardest hit by previous tax and benefit changes. The IFSS estimates that single-parent working for 20 hours a week on the minimum wage with two children under five will lose £1,709 a year by 2019. That shows very clearly the impact of the so-called living wage increases and the cuts to welfare at the same time. I think that your point is absolutely right. I think that that raises an additional concern about the cuts. There are two prongs to it. There is the need to support people who are not in work, but there is the rising issue of in-work poverty. Those figures clearly show that the current cuts and the budget overall will push more working loan parents into poverty. When we consider what we can do with the powers here, we have to think about those two things. We have to think about parents and children and carers who, for whatever reason, their children are very young or are looking after disabled children or family members—what we can do to support them. However, we also need to arrange the top-ups or additional benefits or whatever we want to do. We need to take into account how that supports people and provides incentives to stay in work, because that is not working at all for loan parents. There is a desperate situation. I just want to give a quick example. We recently did a survey of loan parents about the impact of welfare reform. It is not published yet, but I have some initial comments and data. This is just a real-life example to go with those figures from the IFS. Here is a woman who says, I have a wage increase in April, but my tax credits have dropped. I am now £70 a month worse off. I have no money towards my childcare. I have zero working tax credits, and now it is eating into my child tax credit. I have no housing benefit, even though I am in a private rented house. I am paying double what I might be if I was in a social housing. Half my wages go on rent. I cannot manage that. Those are cuts that are in place just now. That is even before we talk about the forthcoming cuts in the budget that I have just talked about. We need to think about those issues. I think that that is the key point that I want to make. We need to look at where incentives make work pay and support people who are not working for whatever reason. I want to come in on that, because Bonaros and One Parent Family Scotland have been working together on some particular elements of the changes, in particular the extension of conditionality for parents with a youngest child aged three and four. At the moment, parents with a child under five do not have to do compulsory job search. That will change in their welfare form and work bill and parents with a child aged three and four will have to sign a claimant commitment and do compulsory job search and face sanctions if they fail to meet the terms of their claimant commitments. Many of the parents that we work with, many of the lone parents in particular that One Parent Family Scotland work with, want to move into work and want a well-paid job that they can combine with their caring responsibilities. The buyer is not a lack of willingness on their part, it is the lack of appropriate jobs that they can combine effectively with their caring commitments. Our concern is that extending conditionality to parents with a youngest child aged three and four will inevitably lead to more of those parents facing benefit sanctions, because they cannot find the work, because childcare is not available or childcare is not in the right place that enables them to combine the work that they might be able to find with their caring responsibilities. They will therefore face sanctions. That is another example where the Scottish Government early years strategy, which is about supporting young children, making sure that every child gets the best possible start in life, could potentially be undermined if we have more and more parents, particularly lone parents, with a child aged three and four facing benefit sanctions. We know that the impact, particularly on young children, that echoes throughout the rest of their life is huge. That is the entire focus of the early year strategy to build wellbeing and build resilience for particularly for young children. There is a particular concern there, again, about the interaction between something that is going through Westminster policy and changes to UK legislation and the early year strategy in Scotland. I know that there are plenty of examples from families' banados, children first work with and one-parent families Scotland work with of the existing impact of benefit sanctions when a parent has a child over five. The committee can probably imagine what the impact would be if that regime was extended to parents with a child aged three and four. I probably could have loads and loads of questions on that, but I have only got one very final quick thing. I have looked at some of the evidence and there are a couple of case studies. It is a big submission. It is for the child poverty action group again, John, and it is a couple of case studies. The theme is mainly how a food bank is becoming a normalised part of a support structure for some families, rather than being an exception. Can you confirm that my thoughts are correct on that? There is a case study there. It is a women worried about the additional costs of the school holidays because the kids get a breakfast club voucher and a lunch voucher and say that there is only one food bank in that area. That fact that we are thinking about to the summer holidays means that a food bank becomes a normal part of the support structure rather than something that should be an exception. It should be an exception. It should not need to happen at all. We should have a social security system that protects families when they hit hard times, whether they are sick, disabled, facing unemployment, and meets the additional costs of children when they are not able to work as many hours as they might otherwise be able to. It is an indictment of the failing in our current social security system that we are seeing the explosion in the use of food banks. We include that case study as an example of where that family is getting all the benefits and tax credits that they are entitled to. They are getting all the financial support. That was not an issue. There was no benefit delay. There was no sanction. There was no maladministration. Still, that person is struggling. That comes down to the school holidays. Exactly. The take away from the support that is available during the school term. Absolutely. On the other hand, we are also seeing a whole lot of families in Marx flagged this up, who are facing even more acute income crisis, who actually find themselves with no financial support. Again, that being a key trigger for use of food banks. I think that our aim in terms of thinking about the future of social security in Scotland, our aim should be, well, how do we, within the limited powers that are coming to Scotland in relation to so scooty, use those powers with the ambition of making it that no family in Scotland would need to use a food bank? That should be the minimum ambition, naturally. That is what we are aiming to do. I want to quickly follow up on the question of food banks. We have been doing work now for around about a year following the publication of some research that we did last year, published in January and February. There is no doubt that there is a relationship between increased use of emergency food aid and the kinds of issues that John was talking about. I think that we also need to remember that the problems of food insecurity are more widespread than the numbers of people turning up at food banks would suggest. I think that we need to bear that in mind. Your original question to John a minute ago was about coherence of the system. John's response, which we need to hold on to this, was about the intergovernmental working, but also the working at local level and Scottish level for the future welfare system. John's other point is about how we make the future powers work to tackle poverty. We need to look at how we spend our resources in our welfare systems and how we make use of the additional powers to address some of those problems. Fundamentally, that is about inadequate incomes, that is why people are going to food banks. That is why, with small changes in people's situations, they find themselves below the bread line. Just to add a figure, our latest statistics say that one in every 31 citizens of us, pure clients, needed food culture, and that is up from 1 in 50 last year. We are talking about how small changes can impact on those people. Small changes are the other way around and can improve people's lives. I think that there is opportunity within the powers that are coming to Scotland to make those small changes, whether it is administratively or in terms of the amount of income that people have that will help to keep people away from needing a food parcel. Both Mark Ballard and Maggie Kelly illustrated changes at a UK level that are having an impact on families and increasing child poverty. Mark Ballard gave the example of the parents of three to four-year-olds facing sanctions. Maggie talked about changes to tax credits. Both sanctions and tax credits are reserved to UK levels, and we are not going to get any power over them at all. We have already heard about the Scotland Bill. We have taken evidence on attempts and the clauses that deal with where we can mitigate. There has been a lot of talk about top-ups and mitigation of those reserved benefits. What is coming out from Westminster is that we are restricted in what we can do to mitigate those benefits. I know that Carer Scotland and Inclusion Scotland have both suggested that the Scotland Bill will further restrict our ability to pay from the Scottish welfare fund, for example, if someone is being sanctioned. That is not enough for us on its own to pay out from the Scottish welfare fund. We have taken evidence this morning on discretionary housing payments and how we are restricted in what we can do with them. I wondered whether you could comment on the fact that there has been a lot of talk about top-ups and new benefits. When it comes to those serious changes being made at a UK level, we are quite restricted in what we can do with the new powers. I agree more that, with regard to sanctions, that is a huge stumbling block for us in trying to put together a coherent system, as we heard earlier. As long as we have the current sanctioning regime, that is very problematic. Having said that, we have to kind of try to think creatively about what we can do to deal with the situation of sanctions. In terms of improving people's basic level of entitlement, I think that that goes a long way to preventing people from falling into such a serious crisis if they get sanctions. The idea of being able to use top-ups, for example, on reserved benefits cushions, is a very important measure to tackle poverty, particularly child poverty in general. We should definitely be looking at how to do that, what benefits we might want to top up. I suggest that we should definitely look at topping up child benefits. We should look at the rate of benefits and making sure that it keeps up with inflation, because that is the basic problem. The cost of living is going up and benefits are not being uprated in line with inflation or, in many cases, particularly children's benefits have been frozen for a number of years at a low level. You think that we can do that. In practical terms, how can we top up child benefit? We have to wait and see what the final result of the bill is, and we are still talking about something that is in the making. I cannot give you 100 per cent exactly how we are going to do it, because we do not have the powers in front of us to look at the detail. I think that we would definitely be right to start looking at the powers overall and look at potentially a more progressive taxation system, which would fund some of those top-ups. It would be definitely worth looking at, because, although sanctions are something that we are, to some extent, stuck with, providing a better cushion for people overall and tackling poverty in general for people—in particular, obviously, lone parents and children—is something that we should be focusing on. I am not going to talk about the detail of the bill in particular, but there are powers there that say that we should be able to top up reserved benefits, and there are powers there within the universal credit section, which says that we should be able to look at, for example, the local housing allowance. The example that I gave of the women earlier on who was saying, half my wages are going on rent—that is a case study that I gave. That is a typical example of somebody who could benefit from assistance within the universal credit housing element. There will be some, as my understanding is. There are powers over the housing element, but we have only got powers over discretionary housing payments. We have already heard how we can only use them when somebody loses their housing benefit and lose their entitlement to discretionary housing payments. I can have admired my optimism in a sense, but I am afraid that the evidence that we have received at this committee does not tend to back it up. I want to say something about the issue of sanctions in particular. You are absolutely right that there is a huge stumbling rock and that it is a problematic situation as far as Scotland is concerned. What do we do about that? I want to flag up the fact that one of the powers that has come into Scotland is over the work programme. Obviously, that is very problematic if Scotland is in charge of the work programme and we have still got sanctioning. We really need to look carefully at what we can do within those powers over the work programme to minimise the use of sanctions as far as we possibly can. You are shaking your head, but what we need to consider is that we have powers in Scotland to run that programme. We are in a position to start training people. One of the issues for lone parents in terms of sanctioning is that the lone parents regulations around discretion are not used at all. One of the first things that we can do is to set up training for those people who are required to refer people's sanctioning to get them to implement the regulations properly. That is not even being done. That is just one example. There are quite a few more that I could talk about, but that is just an example of how we could dramatically reduce the number of lone parents that are being sanctioned through that particular programme. We are actually only seeing a tiny amount at the moment of the effect of universal credit, even in the pilot areas. I have covered Dumfries, and I have been told that Dumfries is a pilot, but I have been done it in a very, very incremental way. We are not actually seeing the effects of universal credit, even in the pilot areas. We all know that universal credit contains a much higher level of conditionality. When it is fully rolled out, the conditionality will be more than we have ever seen before, which means more sanctions than we have ever seen before. I cannot see how that is mitigated by the example that you give, which will maybe, under certain circumstances, help some people, but it is completely outweighed when universal credit is rolled out across the country. I agree that the bill that we are looking at in the Parliament is horrendous, and Mark has already talked about the issue for lone parents with three-year-old children. That is a disaster in the making, really, if we look at the impact already on lone parents. I suppose that all I am saying is that I am not at all being optimistic about this. What I am saying is that we should use the powers that we have, and consider in detail what we could do. One of the things that we could do, for example, is train people up to actually abide by the law as it stands, for example. Another thing that we should do is we should be training them up to consider whether or not they are meeting human rights requirements in international law. That is something that we could be saying to providers when we take over the work programme. This is what we want you to do. You want to abide by these regulations. To my mind, if you look at those regulations, it says that the wellbeing of the child should not be impacted negatively. To my mind, that would lead me to the conclusion that that family should not be sanctioned. I do not see why we cannot do that. I think that there is a lot more to be considered about it, but I am just throwing it in as a practical suggestion about one way that we could really challenge the UK Government on sanctions in terms of saying, well, actually, there are other sorts of legislation that we should be looking at, and we are determined in Scotland to really look at those in detail and enforce them here in so far as we are able to, obviously. I take your point that we do not have carte blanche control of the whole situation, but I think that we should make a stand on those issues. I echo that. We would never underestimate the scale of the damage that has been done to families in Scotland by the current approach to social security, the cuts that are so-called reforms, but essentially the cuts to the value of benefits and tax credits that are going to be wrapped up into the new universal credit to additional conditionality and sanctions, the damage that that is doing. At the same time, I would not want that to blind us to what the opportunities that are presented to us through the Scotland bill, even as it is currently drafted, and you mentioned top-up benefits, and the housing element of universal credit. Within the housing element of universal credit, as we understand it, the powers that the Scottish Parliament could make a real meaningful difference should allow us to properly abolish the bedroom tax by getting rid of the under-occupancy charge. The control over local housing allowances could be used to—which are used to calculate housing benefit in the private rented sector—could be adjusted to reflect real rents in the private sector, as opposed to the situation that we have currently, where there has been a break between what eligible rents are for housing benefit in the private rented sector and actual increases in levels of rent in the rental market. We have seen a switch to CPI upgrading a 1 per cent cap on upgrading and now proposed freeze on upgrading of local housing allowances. My understanding is that that will now be within the competence of the Scottish Parliament, which can take a different approach and ensure that eligible rents within universal credit reflect actual rents in the private rented sector. Another example that we have identified where some improvement could be made is where there has been a lot of focus on the social rented sector—quite understandably, but in the private rented sector, there is the equivalent of the bedroom tax there anyway, which means that you are only eligible for rooms that you are deemed as eligible for, not the number of rooms that you need. For example, parents with shared care are only getting enough housing benefit to cover the costs of a one-bedroom flat, where they actually need a two-bedroom flat in order to have a room free for a child half the week. Again, our understanding is that, within the control over the housing element of universal credit, that can be addressed here in Scotland. In the overall scale of things, those things may not seem minor, but they could be really important and make a real difference to individual families and help to contribute to ensuring that the support with the costs of housing is better meet the needs of families in Scotland and to contribute to reducing child poverty, because housing costs have a major impact on what is left for families to pay for the other essentials on a day-to-day basis. On top-ups, the detail of this but my understanding of the Scotland Bill is that it will give the Scottish Parliament the confidence to legislate for additional payments to, for example, all families in receipt of child benefit, so an additional payment perhaps to reflect inflation and the real rising costs of bringing up a child in Scotland and to make what will be difficult decisions, given that looking at the overall Scottish budget, looking at the overall revenue-raising powers that the Parliament has and saying, yes, we will use those powers to prioritise children and families and to help to contribute to that goal that is shared widely across the Parliament of improving children's outcomes and of reducing child poverty. Without taking away anything from the scale of the damage that has been done, there are real opportunities here that we do not want to lose sight of. I hope that we would see the Parliament use those powers that come to make the biggest possible impact on the lives of children and families here in Scotland. I think that it is worth flagging up that some mitigation has already happened, even without the Scotland Bill. We have had the Scottish welfare fund where the Scottish Government has topped up the funding to make sure that it reaches enough people. The council tax reduction scheme where, again, the Scottish Government has topped up the funding, and I know that in England that was not done, and that had a big impact on vulnerable people in England. The Scottish Government provided mitigation funding for advice through Sins of Vice Bureau that allowed us to give advice on 50,000 more issues than we would have done otherwise, and that enabled us to climb financial gain of around £17.5 million for those people. The Scottish Government's bedroom tax was also able to use what was effectively a top-up or discretionary fund to mitigate the worst of the impact for vulnerable people. It is worth flagging up as well that universal credit will impact on at least 700,000 households will be on universal credit by 2019, and that is 700,000 people that could be benefited from if the Scottish Government uses its powers over payment frequency to allow them to budget better. On disabled people and carers, there are over 200,000 people that claim DLA in Scotland. If the Scottish Government gets their designs right for disability benefits, then it is 200,000 people that could be benefited. There is plenty of opportunity within the powers that we have and in the Scotland Bill. It is important that the Scottish Government is right to make sure that the Scottish Government is not inhibited in what it can do. I emphasise again the point that John Dickie made earlier about the importance of intergovernmental relationships in making this work. Westminster is taking a decision to partially devolve some elements of welfare to the Scottish Parliament. That will require them to develop a new relationship. Maggie Tekely talked about the implications of devolving responsibility for employment training programmes and how that will require new relationships. The UK Prime Minister has talked about plans for new forms of support for young people, where young people will, after a period of six months, be offered either a community job or a training or college place. If that is going to happen in Scotland, it will require a new relationship with the Scottish Government since colleges are the responsibility of the Scottish Government, not the responsibility of Westminster. They will have to be new relationships. That might be optimistic, but on the question of sanctions, there is a difference between sanctions legislation and sanctions as they are applied in practice. There is discretion about how you apply sanctions, and I would hope that part of that new relationship that Westminster has chosen to have through partially devolving responsibility for welfare would open up an opportunity for a conversation, not about the legal structure for sanctions, which would be common across the UK, but a conversation about how, in practice, on a day-to-day basis, those legal regulations are applied in Scotland. Thank you, convener. Much of the discussion that we have had this morning has been round about areas that will remain reserved to Westminster in terms of universal credit, in terms of conditionality, in terms of tax credits and the disaster that is about to happen there, affecting 200,000 families in Scotland, 346,000 children, more children going into poverty. We have heard from Mr Dribra about what has already been achieved here in terms of mitigation, with the Scottish welfare fund, the council tax reduction and the bedroom tax. What we are talking about in some of the other areas today seems to me just like more mitigation in some regards, and not the ambition to create a social security system that actually works for all, which provides a real safety net for all, because we are only getting part of those things devolved. Even then, we are going to have a veto over us in terms of certain things that we will not be allowed to do. My question is quite simply this. Does the Scotland Bill give the Scottish Government and this Parliament enough powers to have an effective and fair social security system? We can start with Mr Ballars, please. Barnardo's concern is rooted back to the points that Christina McKelvie made, that the important thing for the children, young people and families that we work with is a coherent system. It is coherent that matters. That is why we welcomed the fact that employability was coming to the Scottish Parliament. Our submission to the Smith commission highlighted that the point for us was that it should be coherent. A case could be made for responsibility for colleges and training going to Westminster. For Barnardo's concern for families, the important thing is that we have a system that is as coherent as possible from the point of view of the children, families and young people who need that system. Therefore, we would support anything that brings greater coherence. That should be the bottom line. If we want a welfare system that works for those who need it, it needs to avoid, as far as possible, the complications that come when you have different parliaments responsible for different elements. Coherence is what we need. Our concern about the partial devolution is that it has the potential to increase incoherence for some of the reasons that Maggie Kelly described earlier, where we get an interface between a work programme and a sanctions regime that does not work effectively in anybody's terms, whether it is the interests of the policy direction that is being taken by Westminster or the policy direction that is being taken by the Scottish Parliament. That is why the key issue for us has always been in the constitutional position that we do not take a position on the constitutional questions. What we look for and what we hope for is a system that is coherent from the point of view of those who need it, and that should be our bottom line. If it is incoherent, then it is going to be ineffective, is it not? There is more danger that it is going to be ineffective, but, as I highlighted earlier, given that our challenge would be if Westminster has taken a decision to partially devolve some areas, how we are going to put in place the intergovernmental frameworks and the new ways of working that will minimise the impact on vulnerable children and families of any incoherence. The challenge comes back to us, to what is in the interests of vulnerable children and families. If a decision is taken about a particular structure of powers, how are those parliaments going to interact effectively in the interests of delivering something that looks as coherent as possible from the point of view of vulnerable children and families? Parliaments can co-operate, the DWP can co-operate even more effectively with that new architecture that I talked about and the Children and Young People Scotland Act, even if it is not a legal duty. There is nothing to stop people working together more effectively if they share an ethos of supporting those in need. Let's hope that some of the wrangling does not go on as long as it normally does in those circumstances. You have got some optimism that, unfortunately, I do not entirely share, Mr Ballard. Ms McLaughlin, do you think that, with the powers that we are getting, we can create an effective and fair social security system in Scotland? Children first would not be able to make any comment on the actual framework or the powers that are devolved, but we would echo that. We would hope for a bottom-up approach, which takes into account the hidden vulnerabilities of families, the barriers that families face and the different structures of families. John mentioned where there is shared care. We have concerns over kinship care and single-parent families. We are hoping for a different approach rather than when we are talking about mitigation and how we can protect ourselves a more focus on person-centred, a holistic approach, a focus on wellbeing and how we can support that. To have that kind of person-centred approach, if you do not control all aspects of the effects that various things are having in that person's life? No, of course, but what we would be looking for is that we are at least recognising the difficulties that our families are facing and the knock-on effects that it has. It is not just a lack of money, a lack of food, it is on-going trauma, how this can impact on children. We are hoping to build resilience within families and to look beyond just what does the money mean, what does not have food mean, how does this affect attachment? What are the knock-on effects for other costs such as health and social care? It is difficult to build resilience in a group if they have not got the cash in their pocket or they have not got grub in their bellies, I would say. No, and that is certainly agree with that. Maggie mentioned creative approaches. We would hope that we are administrating clearer systems. It is easier for families to navigate, clear their language. It is an easier system for people to interact with and train, as was mentioned. Again, the language that we use, the approach that we are allowed to take, would go some way to overcoming the protectors of the public purse. We would hope that that would build capacity within families. Mr Dickey, an effective and fair social security system, can we do it with this division of power? I think with the right political will from both Governments and the right approach to social security. Yes, the reality is that social security is now, in terms of what is on the table for devolution, will become a shared responsibility between the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament. As I have said before, it is a limited scope within what is being devolved to Scotland. However, I would hope that, with the new powers around those bits of social security that are being devolved, the Scottish Parliament can take a lead and demonstrate what is possible when we take a different, more principled approach to social security reform and that some of the values and principles that have been agreed by many people, including through the Scottish campaign on welfare reform. Many of us have been members of that. A set of principles that benefit should be adequate to prevent people from falling into poverty and that the social security system should treat people with dignity and respect, that the system should be simplified through more use of universal and non-means-tested benefits and that there should be additional investment to ensure that people are able to participate in social security and allow people to participate fully in society. It is going to be limited what is possible within Scotland and within the Scottish Parliament, but there are opportunities to demonstrate the ambition for a social security system that would be in line with those principles, at least within those elements of social security that are being devolved. It will rely, as we have already said, on the importance of working relationships with the UK Government to ensure that the mechanisms and the administrative infrastructure for delivering those bits of social security that are devolved to Scotland are got right so that people are able to access the support that they are entitled to wherever, whichever level of government local, Scottish or UK Government is responsible for that financial support. You talked about a shared power. Do you think that it is right that one of the partners should have the right of veto over the other if it is shared powers? This is a shared space. I am not sure about the language of vetoes. Clearly, decisions will need to be made so that the system operates where, for example, universal credit remains a reserve benefit by housing elements of universal credit. There will be devolved powers around the Westminster. Governments need to come to agreement on how that is going to work in the interests of families in Scotland. I am talking about the Westminster's right of veto over decisions that we take about top-up benefits. Do you think that Westminster should have a power of veto over us in that regard? As I understand it, the Scottish Parliament should have the power to make additional payments to top up reserved benefits. The mechanism of that will need to be agreed with the UK Government. It certainly should not be vetoed. With the agreement of the secretary of state, it says in the bill who I would say that is a power of veto. Do you think that that should be a power of veto? I would hope that it is not seen as a power, I would hope that it is not used as a power of veto but rather used as a mechanism for ensuring administrative infrastructures in place to allow the Scottish Parliament to make a top-up payment, for example, to child benefit. If I could just get the other three very quickly. Yes, I know that Mr Kelly wants to come up in particular. Give me a view on an effective and fair social security system. Can we do that with the vast bulk of those powers being retained in London? Just briefly, following on from what John John said, OPFS is a member of the Scottish campaign on welfare reform. I think that you have heard from John that what we want to see is those key principles to be the foundation for any welfare benefits system that we have here in Scotland. I think that it is clear that, listening to our discussion this morning, the devolution has got lots of ragged edges between various parts of it that creates potential holes that people can fall through, and there is clearly, to my mind, a major issue around the whole issue of passporting where you have one benefit, which is a reserved benefit, and the other one is a devolved benefit. Clearly, passporting already causes quite a lot of problems for people and there will need to be lots more of it now that we have the newly devolved powers. Mark and others comment about the need for a better working relationship between Governments to become even more important because of the passporting issue among many issues, but that is particularly worrying for me. There is the issue of it being piecemeal and people falling down the cracks in the middle, but one of the key things that we say as scourers is that we want benefits to be simplified, and many of the cuts that we have seen introduced are complicating things further, and so is conditionality in my mind. It is a hugely complicated thing, but we are, with some of the powers that we have, able to perhaps simplify some of the things. Rather than thinking about discretionary housing payments, I think that we should be talking about introducing measures to abandon the bedroom tax in Scotland. That would be a much simpler and better system than what we have at the moment. I know that you are saying that my understanding of the bill is that there is a power to do that at the moment, but anyway. I do not dispute that. We can abolish the bedroom tax with the power that we get, but the fact is that the Secretary of State still has the right of veto over various things. I take your point about that, but setting that aside for a minute. I suppose that the example that I am giving is that one of the powers is notwithstanding the veto issue where we can simplify the benefits system. Instead of people needing to make an actual claim for a discretionary housing payment, lots of people do not manage to do that for various reasons. There might be a crisis and so on and so forth. That is a temporary mitigation. That is something that could be a permanent part of a more simplified and a better benefit system, which is about rights rather than discretionary handouts. It is something that we should be looking at as far as possible. We are looking at making sure that people have basic entitlements, not looking at discretionary payments. However, I agree that the issue about whether there is a veto—obviously, we could discuss that quite a lot. I think that Smith did not say that there ought to be a veto as far as I know. I think that that would not be a very helpful way. I put it off the two Governments proceeding. That is probably all that I am going to say about that. The only other thing that I suppose that I would like to reiterate my point about sanctions is that we should not just sit—oh, I am sorry—and we are running out of time. I will talk to another member who wants to send in Mr Kelly and Mr Driver. I am sure that he wants to respond to Mr Stewart as well. I am sorry about that. That is no problem. You asked a very direct question, Mr Stewart, about can the powers that are coming create an effective and fair framework for social security in Scotland and to tackle poverty? As you have heard, almost all of us put in evidence to the Smith commission, which was based on a coherent approach. We had said that the powers over social security, over welfare that should be devolved to Scotland should be coherent. We said no matter what. We did not take the approach that some organisations did and said all welfare. Whatever the package, it needs to be coherent. For working-age benefits, then it should be all working-age benefits. That is not what we have. The powers that we have, ironically, make things more difficult. As Maggie said, to have a simplified system is what most of our goal would be. It was the goal that was set out when universal credit was first mooted. That was a new benefit that would harmonise other benefits that would be a simplified system for people to move through far more easily. Ironically, by the way that we will divide up powers, it will make things more complex. It is the kind of discussion that we are having here. We are talking about how things will interact and how people will see their way through that system. That needs to be our focus. How do we work with the powers that we have to make sure that people's experience of the new powers, of the new benefits, whatever we choose to do with them, is as seamless as possible? There are two key points about people's experience of the social security system. One is about, as you said, the money that they have in their pocket. What can they do with that? Is it an adequate income or is it not? We have some, potentially some, limited powers through further devolution to address some of those issues. I think that we need to look seriously at the issues around child benefit and topping up child benefit. I know that we have not quite answered the question today. I know that Paul Spicker has produced some interesting information on how we could potentially use the topping up powers around child benefit. I think that we need to look at that, seriously. However, the other question is about the income dimension. There is also people's experience of their interaction with the welfare system and the social security system on a day-to-day basis. That is certainly something that all of us hear back all the time. People do not just talk to us about their low income. They talk about the consequences of it, but they talk about their interaction with the services. Through the use of new powers, we can start to change. Keith had said earlier about small changes that can improve people's lives. Those are small changes that people talk to us about all the time about being treated with dignity and respect, whatever the services that they are receiving. That is something that, going forward from this inquiry, we need to have quite clearly in the use of new powers and a future social security bill in Scotland, we need to be clear that people are being treated with dignity and respect, whatever benefits they are receiving. Can I just say that, in terms of dignity and respect, an amendment from myself and the Scottish welfare fund bill, I hope that there will be a trailblazer that will remain in all of our social security bills that we have. My fear is that, while we treat folk with dignity and respect, while we are dealing with Scottish aspects, that may not be the case when folks are dealing with the DWP and the reserve powers. My short answer would be yes, but it depends on a number of different factors, such as the UK Government and Scottish Government being able to work together and improve the administration of the system to treat each other as partners in that shared space. It depends on how the Scottish Government uses its powers to make sure that it is using its powers to the maximum benefit of the claimants that are going to be affected. It depends as well on treating social security as not just benefits, but on the overall welfare of an individual or families. It includes things such as social care costs and social housing, so it is to make sure that the powers that the Scottish Government is going to have work alongside the housing powers that it has, alongside social care and health powers that it has, because if you are a vulnerable person, it does not matter who helps you, it matters that you are helped. It is contingent on the Scottish Government to make sure that it fits in with the overall powers that it currently has. It was mentioned earlier in the case study of families struggling during school holidays. Renfrewshire Council has initiated a scheme where they will provide school meals to those in poverty during school holidays. It is one of the things that the panel would welcome. Maggie Kelly mentioned the issue of progressive taxation. Obviously, if we are talking about coherence, the tax and the benefits of the system are linked with powers over income tax being devolved. Would your organisation support redistribution through the tax system and a more progressive taxation system, for example raising the top rate of tax to fund initiatives that would help people whether that would be an education or other initiatives? I probably cannot comment on a specific proposal around more progressive taxation, but I certainly can say that I think that in terms of the new powers that are coming to Scottish Parliament, I think that when we are considering welfare and indeed other measures around education, training and so on and so forth, as you know, OPFS are very much involved in employability. We need to consider the package overall and that includes taxation and that we need to consider the long-term impacts of poverty on children and families. We have been focusing quite rightly on individuals and the impact on them, but we also need to think about the costs of poverty. If we do not spend the money on supporting families in crisis on low incomes, we have costs of homelessness, we have NHS bills go up because of crisis due to ill health and all those sorts of things. I suppose that my plea is that we need to consider the powers overall, including taxation, but with a view to thinking about the overall cost of poverty society as well as to the individual, and that is something that we are very much concerned about. I think that all I can say about the need for progressive taxation is to support individuals, but also to make all the other policies that we have around homelessness, around housing, around healthcare and particularly for children getting it right for every child early intervention. Those things do not work, as Mark Scott said earlier, if people have not got food to put on the table, so we need to look at it in the round. I would say that a better social security system does not need to be a more generous one, because you do not need to spend more money on it. You have to make sure that you are spending in the right places and that you are making sure that the people who require a support get that support and that you improve the administration, because I think that a lot of the costs that are involved for the system and for individuals are for the administration. If you improve that, you could actually have a much better system without needing more taxation. However, I would echo that you need to look at it in the round to make sure that funding goes into the right places. In terms of your points on school meals and school holidays, I think that that is a good example of where people are okay, at least most of the year, but then there are gaps in the system. That is an example of what the Scottish Government could look at in terms of putting funding where the crisis points, the pinch points, where there are gaps, and that is the kind of things that top-ups or discretionary payments can be used for. Neil Bibby gave one really good example, but there i