 Good morning and welcome everyone to the 14th meeting of the 2019 of the Social Security Committee. Can I remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones and other devices, put them to silent mode so they don't disrupt the meeting. Mark Griffin, MSP, unfortunately, isn't able to join us this morning. He may be able to join us later on, but he's indicated he's unlikely to be able to do that. We moved to agenda item 1, which is a decision to take items in private. The committee has asked to agree to take item 3, consideration of evidence to be taken in private. Is the committee agreed to that? Excuse me. We now move to agenda item 2, which is welfare rights services. The committee will take evidence in the round table format on the provision and funding of welfare rights services. I got a general welcome and thanks to witnesses today, but rather than me introducing everyone, we'll get round table formats. If I don't, we'll just go round starting with myself, and we can all in to say who we are. Bob Doris MSP for Glasgow, Mary Helen Springburn and a convener of the Social Security Committee. Pauline McNeill MSP for Glasgow region and deputy convener. Can Carrick Evaluation Manager Improvement Service? Stephen McEvoy a welfare rights adviser of Enable Scotland. Craig Mason, senior manager of council advice services, Dundee City Council. Keith Brown, member of the committee and member for Club Manager and Dumblane and Wearing My Enable Time. Sean Robison, member of the committee and MSP for Dundee City East. Sandra McDermott, Head of Financial Inclusion and Improving the Cancer Journey in Glasgow City Council. Michelle Ballantyne, member of the South of Scotland. Kate Butten, member of the Scottish Public Health Network, which is part of NHS Scotland. Alasdair Allan, MSP for the Healing and In-Year of the Western Isles. Aliasdair Allan, director of customer journey at Citizens Advice Scotland. John McBeth, member of the committee and Lovian region MSP. I thank everyone for coming along, as I say. I might just open up a theme of questioning. We do want to explore the new help to claim contract that has been signed by Citizens Advice with the Department of Work and Pensions. I won't look a little bit more about what that involves, but I had raised concerns in Parliament last week that that new contract may signal a change in relationships between individual claimants and the DWP in as far as being able to protect their date of claim. Perhaps for clarity, if our witnesses are now watching, I should explain what that means. I am sure that Sandra McDermott from Glasgow will say a little bit more about that, but if someone was to walk into a local authority library in Glasgow and meet with a welfare officer, they would want to make a claim for universal credit. If that claim cannot be submitted on the day that they walk in for that support, their date of claim, their entitlement to claim benefit is protected from the day that they walk in the door. My understanding is that that was previously the situation for Glasgow, but that is now not the situation as of April 1 this year, which coincides with the new Citizens Advice Scotland contract with DWP. I also understand that Citizens Advice Scotland also does not have the entitlement to exercise protected date of claim. There may be ways around that, which we might hear about in a second, but they no longer have that entitlement. Indeed, my understanding is that the way that the money that was previously channeled from the DWP via local authorities, ironically, Citizens Advice workers could have the ability to have back-dated dates of claim for claimants because the money was channeled through local authorities who used to have that. If people are still following, all that means that Glasgow has told me that there could be up to 200 claimants each and every month who might lose out on moneys because they no longer have protected date of claim status, but they are still running welfare advice and support services in a network of libraries across the city. I am deeply concerned about that. I hope that, to be reassured today, I have had correspondence with the chief executive of Citizens Advice Scotland in relation to it. Hopefully, that can be fixed and fixed quickly to protect some of the most vulnerable people that we all represent. Sandra McDermid, can I take you first to outline what you understand the situation to be? Thanks, convener, and thanks for the opportunity to provide evidence to committee today, which will hopefully help to clarify the position from Glasgow's perspective and look forward to seeing if there is some development roundabout mitigation. Glasgow recognised the risk to Glaswegians of the universal credit coming into Glasgow, and, as a result of that, it invested £2 million. From that investment, we developed 19 universal credit hubs across the city to ensure that the real challenges of claiming universal credit where it has to be claimed online have to have the digital skills, the digital access to be able to do that, then we developed that. Most of the hubs are in the libraries, but we also put in the Glasgow libraries across the city, but we also put in dedicated support for our really vulnerable groups, such as rough sleepers, people that were homeless, people with a disability, lone parents, people from the Roma community and people with mental health problems, that would find it difficult to access that support, either to go into the library or to access the digital skills or to provide their evidence. Previously, convener, as you mentioned, through the funding for local authorities, when we were previously funded to provide some support for universal credit, was through an arrangement from the Secretary of State, which gave us then the converted powers through the Secretary of State to protect the date of claim. I suppose we were disappointed in the local authority to find out quite late in the day without any consultation that that funding was stopped on 31 March 2019 and that citizens advice would be funded to do that service. However, because of the change of funding that is now a grant to citizens advice to provide that, our understanding from colleagues in DWP is that there is no longer the ability, either from the local authority, because we are no longer funded to provide that service or to citizens advice to protect that date of claim. To give you an idea of the numbers, since we put in the new universal credit hubs for full roll-out in Glasgow, which was September 2019, the universal credit hubs have supported just under 3,500 people, but those people have had to visit the library on numerous occasions to finish the verification of their claim and to make sure that their claim is complete to allow that money then to start to be paid out. You are talking about those people who have had to go for repeat appointments because they can no longer protect their date of claim but have lost out in that money. That is where the numbers that you are saying cause us considerable concern of over 200 people who are going to lose out in that money constantly. As the roll-out grows, more and more people are likely to be affected. It is likely to be our most vulnerable citizens. The other key things that previously in the funding to local authorities, the other thing that local authorities were funded for, was personal budgeting services. If you are giving people a universal credit payment as a one-off payment, or as a full payment for all those six benefits that are contained within universal credit, it is recognised that people needed budgeting skills. Budgeting, personal budgeting and support is not contained within the funding that citizens vice have received and I will be able to give you some more detail about that. There is also no provision within the new funding to citizens vice for on-going maintenance of the claim. It is for help to claim for the first six weeks to make your first claim to universal credit, but what you have to do in claiming universal credit to maintain that claim and to keep your claim in payment without the risk of sanctions, you have to maintain a claimant commitment and a claimant journal online, so you have to constantly go in and update that journal to show DWP colleagues that you have been adhering to your claimant commitment, whether that is looking for employment, increasing your skills, whatever you have to do to maintain your claim, you also have to do your annual rent increase that has to be uploaded, has to be detailed in your claimant journal. If you do not have the ability to do that, you can lose out in much-needed funding. Those elements of it are no longer included in the funding that was given to citizen vice Scotland where it was previously given to local authorities. There is a real and genuine risk now and on-going, and I know that migration has been slowed down slightly, but people are actually coming on to universal credit through natural changing circumstances, which again is a real risk, which I will not go into at the moment until it comes to questions, because they do not get the transitional protections that they are afforded under the actual planned migration. However, convener, there is a real risk to the most vulnerable citizens in Glasgow by the new model with the inability to protect the date of claim, as well as some of the other things that I mentioned. I absolutely know that citizen vice will be concerned about that as we all seek to do the best that they can to mitigate. Just for a little bit of clarity, the funding that Glasgow City Council has in place for the current financial year, that network of hubs will be protected for the current financial year, even though DWP have terminated that relationship as of April 1. Is that correct? Yes. The £2 million was for last financial year for 2017-18, and it was reinvested again this year. There has been some reduction in funding to citizen vice bureaus, where it was recognised that there was a duplication of funding, because through any funding process or grant process, you cannot fund the same organisation to provide a similar or the same type of service. However, the majority of the investment goes on those vulnerable groups that I mentioned, and for the wider universal credit hubs. However, there has been a slight reduction to some of the citizen vice bureaus who are now providing under help to claim because it was a similar service to Glasgow City Council. I understand the concern that I would have, so I am a Mary Hill Springburn MSP. Someone walks into the library in Maryhill Road or at Springburn Shopping Centre or wherever in my constituency, they can meet a welfare rights adviser, they need to make a UC claim, they might not be able to submit it all on that day. Before April 1, their date of claim was protected, they were getting that money back day to day, they walked in the door, now that's not the case. That's a bad deal for my constituents, I suspect it may be the same in other local authorities. However, citizen vice have got this help to claim contract with DWP now. Can you give any reassurances? Are you concerned about this situation? Can you give reassurances about how this can be mitigated or offset all together? Does citizen vice have concerns about the fact that this contract does not include protected data claim? With hindsight, do you think that that should have been a deal breaker for citizen vice before they signed the contract in the first place? First, thank you very much for inviting me along. What I would like to do is put in context the protection of the date of claim and just overall what the help to claim service provides. First, if I take your date of claim protection as one of the concerns that you've raised, equally when we had signed the contract in the interim period where it was the implementation period between October and March, at very early stages we had communicated with the DWP about our position to be able to protect the date of claim. We were advised by the DWP that under the legal definition of being considered as a provider of services that we could not be considered to be able to protect the date of claim. That was obviously a significant concern for us and what we wanted to ensure was that people were not disadvantaged if they contacted the bureaus and they weren't able to protect the claim the same way that Sandra's explained in terms of the libraries. What did the DWP agree with us in terms of ensuring that there is mitigation in place and that nobody is disadvantaged? There were two things. One, the DWP and the local job centre's role in support that they are providing to citizens in terms of being able to submit their claim has not changed and obviously if somebody goes into a job centre they are able to submit the date of claim. In terms of a formal referral process that we did agree with the DWP, the DWP will only formally refer a claim to us for onward support until after the claim has been submitted, so that the date of claim would be protected. Apologies that you saw from my look that I wanted to ask a question but I really didn't want to interrupt you. Maybe how a job centre has been closed in my community. Yes, I understand that the date of claim is protected if you walk into a job centre but a lot of people and I would encourage them to walk into the job centre and absolutely jail and build up that relationship. A lot of people get quite intimidated and nervous about walking into a job centre and they are much more likely to walk into a library or community support hub and they do that and they had a protection at that point and that protection is now gone. I am not sure what you describe mitigates that situation. It is perhaps a work-around that existed before that protection was taken away. Please put more information on the record in relation to that but there was a disconnect between what you were saying there and what the reality would be on the ground. Was there another question? No, could you give a little bit more information around how citizens advice is seeking to mitigate the impact of the loss of protected date of claim? I think that if I start with what the citizens advice Scotland has been contracted in terms of the grant agreement to provide in terms of help to claim. For the help to claim, we have an expectation to be able to meet 20 per cent of the anticipated universal credit claimants. In terms of providing that support, all bureaus are providing face-to-face support and we also have multi-channel delivery. The multi-channel delivery is through eight regional bureaus across the country and in terms of participation within that, it is a total of 34 bureaus. That is allowing advisers to be able to provide advice by telephone and through web chat as well. In terms of going back to the date of claim, all advisers throughout the engagement process, it was clarified to them that we would not be in a position to protect the date of claim. Advisers understand the position that unless the date of claim is protected, the individual will have an adverse impact, so they are seeing clients as soon as possible to ensure that there is no adverse impact to individuals. Where they may not be able to see the individual that day, they are able to refer the individual to either one of our multi-channel services or still work with the local job centre to ensure that individual gets the support that they need that day and that there isn't an adverse impact on the date of claim. It seems a bit of a workaround, so if someone walks into one of the 34 or 38 networks across the country, plus those multi-channel platforms that you mentioned, can citizens advice guarantee that the same day they will also be formally contacted to department of work and pensions in job centre plus and therefore have their date of claim protected that day? If the individual could not be seen to submit the claim themselves through the assistance of the bureau, then they would contact the local job centre to ensure that they are seen and their date of claim is protected. So who would contact the job centre? The adviser in the citizens advice bureaus. Have they got a direct hotline and is there a memorandum of understanding somewhere that says that as long as they seek to contact the job centre that day, protected date of claim will be applied? It's within the referral process and yes, there are contact numbers for job centres throughout the country that all the advisers have access to that the DWP have provided to us. I know that it's relatively early days. Has there been any examples yet of a forum? Not because I think that it's 20 per cent was the figure that Glasgow had, 20 per cent of those who go to Glasgow City Council support can't submit the forum at the first time. Quite often that can be citizens advice workers who are giving that support, so that's a valid figure for citizens advice. For the 20 per cent of people who have contacted citizens advice since 1 April this year, have those 20 per cent of clients all had protected date of claim from their first contact with citizens advice? The date of claim would be from the date that the claim is submitted. If an individual has contacted the bureau, the bureau would assist the individual to submit the claim. In terms of early findings, I'm not aware of any clients who have contacted the bureau and have not had the assistance to be able to submit the claim to have the adverse impact that you talk about. I will let my deputy convener in just two seconds, Pauline. I will let my deputy convener in. I don't really want to pursue this much further, simply because I know that citizens advice want to help people, they want to get the claims in effectively and efficiently, but I am listening carefully to the words that you're using around the protections from the date of submission, but we know from Glasgow that 20 per cent don't submit at the contact citizens advice or Glasgow City Council, so it looks to me as if that protection has been lost. Any information that you can give to reassurers would be welcome, but I generally haven't heard anything that suggests that protection will endure via a workaround. I might be a question for Glasgow as well, but did citizens advice do any modelling workaround this before they signed the contract? Glasgow clearly very quickly pulled together some statistics to see what the financial risk was to clients for losing protected date of claim, and that's 200 clients every month. Did citizens advice do any work in relation to that? We've worked with the DWP in terms of ensuring that that situation doesn't arise, and in terms of on-going communication with the DWP, we are still discussing the matter of date of claim with them. I need to bounce into the really obvious question, and I should put on record first of all that I have a correspondence with your chief executive officer, Derek Mitchell, in relation to this, who confirms that, effectively, my reading of it—and I'll make this public information available in this letter—protected date of claim has been lost, but does then outline the various platforms by which you can get your protections, but not necessarily from the date you walk in the door anywhere. He then goes on to talk about significant issues with the universal credit that citizens advice continues to have. I'll pass that letter to our clerks and make it publicly available on our web page, if that's an appropriate thing to do. I suppose that my final question would be before I let the deputy convener in to explore some of that further, because I'm trying to be supportive in asking those questions, despite the deep concerns that I've got. Do you think that the only fix that really stacks up here is that the Secretary of State and the DWP quite simply reinstate or find a legal way of instating protected date of claim from the date any constituent, any claimant walks in the door to either citizens advice, Glasgow City Council or any of the advice providers around this table is that not the quick fix? That would be our ask, yes. That's really, really helpful, thank you for putting that on the record, deputy convener. It was really on that point, and I know that it was quite well ago that you mentioned it, but I just wanted to be clear. You said that it doesn't fulfil the legal definition, so prior to the contract, if the protected date of claim existed, it didn't fully understand why it doesn't now exist. Is a legal definition changed, or has it just applied differently? If it's being applied differently. So prior to you taking the contract then, so it's come about when you took the contract? After we took the contract, we were advised that we would not be in a position to protect the date of claim. Even though the law has not changed, is just applying the law differently? That's what the DWP have advised us, that in terms of the grant that we've been awarded, we are not in a position to be able to protect the date of claim. That seems pretty odd, that prior to you taking up the contract, if the protected date of claim existed, and then during the course of that, they've decided that the same law was going to apply it in a different way, so that it's not protected. Was that right? As far as I understand it, the DWP have advised us that when we asked— So they have bothered us, they're saying that they've wrongly applied the law this time then? I'm not in a position to comment on why they've advised us that we can't protect the date of claim, but it was a question that we asked, and it was after the grant award was given to us that we were advised that we wouldn't be able to protect the date of claim from when the client makes contact with us, and it is an issue that we will continue to proceed with. Thank you very much for putting that in the record. I've got a couple of bit to see, just wanting to make some supplementary comments on this discussion. I know that Shona Robison, the MSP, wants in to ask a question as well. I know that it's taking a little bit of time on this, but I think that by dereliction of duty on the social security committee, not to explore this and interrogate this one, we've got the opportunity. So apologies, we are taking a bit of time over this. I'll take my witnesses first and then I'll bring in Shona, if that's okay. Sandra McDermott. Okay, thanks, convener. It was just maybe in relation to the question from the deputy convener. DWP has actually given us a written statement, which I can provide to you, but what they're saying is regulation 10 of universal credit for the regulations 2013 state that the date of the universal credit claim can be the first date of notification by the customer. They need assistance to make claim where the person's helping them to make the claim is providing services to the secretary of state. I can give you a copy of that, and that's where the local authorities were previously funded through the secretary of state. They go on to say, however, help to claim is delivered under a grant agreement with citizens advice and DWP's position is therefore that regulation 10 does not apply. So the impact of that and citizens advice are not providing services to the secretary of state, the date of claim will remain the date the claim is fully submitted and not the date that help was requested from citizens advice. So they have to have their claim and all the evidence to support it, and that's where, for some of our really vulnerable customers, there's a delay and that's where they're losing out on much-needed money. I will listen to this. We'll think that this has been a sleight of hand by the secretary of state to erode rights of claimants. Do you leave that there, Stephen McEvoy? I actually think that the DWP's interpretation would be open to challenge. So if the DWP were to refuse one of my clients the back date in a circumstance like this, I would be looking to challenge that to the first-year tribunal. And if that was unsuccessful, we also have the upper tribunal as well, who can provide some clarity to definitions and regulations. So can't guarantee that such a challenge would be successful. But if one of my clients were to refuse a back date under that regulation, I would certainly be looking to appeal against that. In the secretary of state, I'm sure that when our committee discusses this after this evidence session, we can make representations to the secretary of state that this could be fixed quickly and as painlessly as possible if there's a political willingness to do it, but it's important to flush it out at this evidence session. Shona Robison. Yeah, it's very concerning. It sounds very much a contractual funding mechanism has been used to change what was done previously, and I definitely think that we should pursue it. I'm curious to know what the situation is in the rest of Scotland. Obviously, we have Craig here from Dundee, and this is a national contract, so presumably this has changed the situation for everybody. I'm assuming that there'll be a comparison to what went before, and different areas will have had different supports prior to this change, which might mean that it varies in terms of what clients experienced before and what they experience now, but it would just be helpful to understand beyond Glasgow what the situation is with the date of claim. Not to pick on anyone. Hold that thought, Craig, because Kate indicated that she wanted to come in as well, so we'll take Kate and then we'll take Craig. Thank you. It's really just from an NHS perspective to say that our concern is the impact on the most vulnerable people, people with mental health conditions, drug and alcohol problems, learning disabilities, who may really struggle to actually find their way to a CAB, and then when they get there, they may well then be referred on to a job centre and expected to get there within that same day. Particularly vulnerable people cannot cope in those sort of situations. We need to find a better way of doing this so that we actually have a welfare system and a social security system that enhances health and wellbeing and doesn't punish people who have ill health and disabilities. That's very helpful. I'm sure that the MSP rightly pointed out that this is a Scotland-wide potential concern. Craig, what is the experience in Dundee? I think that Dundee is quite an unusual situation in that the large majority of the universal credit support to claim work was being done in one central point. We only have one job centre now in the wellgate, which is coincidentally where the CAB is based, and it's coincidentally where the main library service to help people to claim is based as well. I suppose that Dundee has taken a very joint partnership approach in the past, and that is well known now as the main central point where to make a universal credit claim. I know personally that the CAB has probably tried to do a work around within Dundee by co-locating within the job centre, so that will lead to significant spearing up of the claims process for anyone who accesses the face-to-face service of the CAB, but it still begs the question about those in outlying areas of Dundee who wish to make a claim on one day and unfortunately can't submit all their evidence. OK. Any other comments from the issue yet? A quick supplementary question. To 20 per cent who don't submit the first time because of the complexities and the difficulties, you could envisage a situation. It may be people who are further away from the wellgate, but it could also be people who need more than one sit-down to go through some of that. Presumably, although the co-location is helpful, that is still going to affect their date of claim because it would not necessarily be submitted on that first occasion. Presumably, the same concerns. It is. It is only a part mitigation. Essentially, for the majority of clients making a claim for universal credit, chances are that there will be something missing or something that they have to phone a relative or whatever to actually get access to in order to make the claim properly. Yes, Alia. I am back on that in relation to the co-location. If they are co-located and providing advice within a job centre, then obviously they would be able to get assistance from the job centre staff who would be in a position to protect a date of claim. Even if they had all those complexities and didn't have all the information, the date of claim would be triggered because of the job centre location in that situation. Under the Secretary of State, the adviser in the job centre is that power? That was my understanding, Alia, that if you walk in, because I visited the spring burn job centre a few months ago, this is not about demonising job centres, the DWP or the DWP, so we are trying to work effectively in partnership with them. This feels like an erosion of service, but the spring burn job centre was very clear if you walk in there, the date you walk in that door and ask for help to submit a claim, you get that protection. The issue for my communities is that there are lots of points and areas and supports in my community where you can get that automatic instance support and guarantee that now no longer exists. For my view, it is an erosion and a diminiation of service, but we should be pretty clear for anyone listening to this. If you walk into your job centre and you get your protected date of claim, I think that it is really important that you put that on the record. I am just going to say that if there are no more questions on the date of claim, what I would like to do is just to give an overview of what the help to claim service is. Then we can go out to further questions and discussions. Absolutely. As I said before, the bureaus across the country are providing help to claim face-to-face. That is in all the local authorities. We have 59 bureaus across the country. They are providing advice not only through their main offices but outweaches as well, so we have 95 different locations from which help to claim is being delivered. In areas where a local CAB does not exist, it is the neighbouring citizens advice bureaus that are covering those areas. In a number of local authorities, there is co-location, as Craig had mentioned. In addition to that, we have got different routes that people can contact us now. To support the face-to-face, we have also got telephony as well as web chat. People obviously are able to get self-help through the public advice site, which has fairly comprehensive information. What we have done is to ensure that all bureaus have the technological infrastructure to allow them to support individuals, so they all have been given access to computers, tablets, public access and Wi-Fi. If individuals are just needing digital access, that is available to them as well. Obviously, with telephony and web chat, they have the infrastructure for that. As I said, we are expected to meet 20 per cent of the anticipated volumes. What we did in terms of working to look at what was the best way to deliver this is, as Sandra had mentioned, that this is about submitting the claim up to a person receiving their full final payment for the first claim that they have submitted. The reason that we chose to focus on that was to take a proactive approach of getting people at the early stage of submitting a claim so that we could get them to be in a position where they would not have any difficulties thereafter. In terms of the stages of being able to access support, the different routes that they have in terms of the multi-channel and face-to-face approaches are that there is no wrong door that people can access the service from. We are working very closely with local partnerships. In addition to the DWP, bureaus have fairly strong-rooted partnerships within their local authority areas, both within statutory and community services. At the first point, the individual's needs would be assessed to ensure that not only was the universal credit the right claim for them to be submitting, but what particular channel choice they would like to get advice on. Thereafter, it is helping them to submit the claim and then up until the first payment. It is about opening email accounts, helping them with opening a bank account, creating universal credit, filling in the application form and where there are particularly vulnerable clients. There is no change to what the DWP and local job centre's obligations are, so where we find that the individual needs a home visit or a telephone claim might be more appropriate for them, we would be arranging that for them. The issue of the time sensitivity of ensuring that claim has been submitted has been discussed in a fair bit of detail, but just to re-emphasise that advisers are fairly clear that the individual needs to have their claims submitted so that the process of their claim can start when the date of claim is protected. In terms of the personal budgeting support, which is not an aspect that is covered within the scope of the service, however, individuals are taken through what their payment will be, the frequency of that payment, how to manage their payments, what they can do if they are in any financial hardship, so being able to apply for alternative payment arrangements, being aware of the Scottish choices, if they need an advance payment or referral for any other financial support, they would also be supported in terms of the evidence that they need and be ready to go and attend the appointment that they have with the work coach and in terms of the verification of the identity. Trying to take as many proactive steps that you can to ensure that once the person has attended their appointment, the process in terms of them being able to get their payment on time is as smooth as possible. They are also prepared in terms of ensuring that we have talked about maintaining the journal and the commitments that they have to do, so really taking them fairly thoroughly what they need to do in terms of maintaining that journal and where it is identified that they will have support needs, ensuring that they are informing their work coaches of that, so that the commitments are manageable. Finally, we would support them with any other support needs that they have either through referral to the services that the bureaus might provide themselves and or I mentioned that they are fairly well integrated within their communities, so they have very good partnership relationships with any other services, so they would be referred onward with existing partnerships should that have been necessary. That is an overview of what the help-to-claim service provides. In terms of early indication of volumes and numbers, we are seeing that consistently increase week by week and we are also seeing that the channel choice is being used, so 57 per cent of the clients are coming to us via face to face, but we have got 40 per cent of clients that are accessing the service through telephone and web chat combined. In addition to the entitlement, the main issues that are coming up as expected is the claiming process, support with digital access and online, and advance payments. In terms of the different access points, we have seen that a lot of people need assistance with digital access and assistance. Understandably, those who need face-to-face appointments are where you would see the highest number of assistance in that area, whereas people who are calling on the helpline or using the web chat are not needing that as much. The largest area of support is in relation to submitting a claim followed by support to the first payment. We are seeing a lot of quick questions as well and quick questions through the telephony and web chat, which is understandable. Those quick questions are anything that somebody might need that they are submitting the claim themselves and are able to do so but are just looking for a little bit of reassurance that they are on the right path. I have given you quite a lot of time to flesh out what that looks like. I thought that it was important because the opening line of questioning was probing a little bit in relation to what could be an erosion of service. I am keen to open it out and maybe other witnesses could think about whether they think that this help-to-claim contract—I will take you for a supplementary, Jeremy, before—but what, like my brother, witnesses to think in their head about whether they think help-to-claim is filling a gap that did not previously exist? Does it duplicate other services? Is it complement other services? Are you co-ordinating around that? What are the relationships like? One of the other questions that we have is how that all fits together in a network of support across the country and where the gaps might still exist. In terms of the help to submit a form, what is the average time for someone who does not submit their form on the day to seek support from citizens advice? Do you have that? Not everyone will submit their form on the day that they seek to claim, so what is the average time it takes for someone who does not submit on the same day? Do you have that information? Is it one week? Is it two weeks? Not only six or seven weeks, this has been going. Do you have any emerging data on that, or could you provide data on that later? Perhaps. I do not have any data on that at the moment. What we have is on-going contact with our bureaus in terms of asking whether there are any issues in terms of submitting a claim, and there is not anything that has been reported back to us. I think that that is a statistic that would be quite helpful. As of the last full week of the service, what was the weekly numbers of people using the service? In the first week of accessing the help to claim, it was £249, and, in the last week, it was nearly £400, so it was £387. That is really helpful. I would like to broaden it out slightly, if that is your opinion. That is around the whole issue of, if the cluttered environment has lots of different benefits, and some of it has been funded through DWP, some of it has been funded through Scottish Government, some of it has been funded through local authorities. One of the things that, as the bill was going through a couple of years ago, the cabinet secretary made clear, is that Scottish Government only wanted to fund the benefits that we were responsible for, not for the other benefits. Clearly, for my visit to the West Lothian CAB, when somebody phones up and says, I want to make universal claim, the CAB person will also take them through all the other benefits that they might be entitled to as well, which is absolutely what should be happening. When I am going forward, and I suppose that I am looking forward slightly to the next few years as more benefits will be delivered here in Scotland, how do you work and how do you work out how much money we get from DWP to do this work and how much money we get from Scottish Government to do this work? Can you do that, or would it be better for the two Governments to come together and just joint fund the organisations to provide a holistic service? What I am concerned about is how do you get your funding to do PIP compared to universal credit, if that makes sense? Yes, Stephen. I think that it would be very difficult to advise in some kind of vacuum where we are only funded to do this work and we are only funded to do this work. To give somebody proper and full advice, you need to be assessed in the full picture of the person's circumstances, particularly with universal credit. There was a gateway introduced in January for people who have entitlement to the severe disability premium, and if those people are misadvised, because somebody might be failed to take into account the full picture, the long-term cost implication to that person can be quite significant. For advice agencies, I do not know if it matters so much where we get the money as long as we get it, and that there is no restriction on that money that impacts on our ability to be an impartial service. I think that the main thing for us would be that the money is available and that it is not so specific that it has to be weak and only deal with us and we can only deal with us, because I think that would just significantly increase the chance of poor advice and also reduce the chances that decisions would be challenged because it is not just a practical day-to-day. We have been discussing that regulation as to when a claim for universal credit might be accepted, and my opinion is that the DWP's definition might well be open to challenge. It is important that we have advice agencies that are able to do that kind of work, the challenging that might help people in the longer term, as well as the day-to-day helping people to make claims. I think that that is helpful. My concern is that the money that you need to work for is between two stores, and either the Scottish Government says that the UK responsibility or the UK Government says that. Have you done anything around a more holistic approach of two Governments trying to work together to fund organisations like yourself, or is that just a pipe dream? I think that it is difficult for us. The main thing for us is that we get the funding and that it does not impact in any way on our ability to provide an impartial service. Once we have that funding, I am fairly confident that we know how to deliver that service. I do not know from your point of view if it really matters where the funding would come from. I suppose that is an issue for the two Governments. I wonder if we can correct from the improvement service, might want to add something to resultate in the second, Alison? I think that it is important to recognise too that local authorities are one of the key funders of advice services, as well as Scottish and UK Governments. Advice is delivered in different ways at a local level. What happens in Dundee is very different from what happens in Glasgow or in Clactmannasher. That is how it should be. Local areas are best placed to determine the needs and priorities of local people. What would work more effectively if there was a more joined-up approach and how support for advice services was looked at in a much wider basis? I think that what has demonstrated is that there is a danger if you look at one element of advice and look at it at a national level, that local context and that ability to deal with things using local partnerships and local arrangements is lost. I suppose that what we would advocate is that we take a more holistic view of advice services, look at what works and align the funding to deliver services that best meet local needs in a way that local service users want and can take advantage of. There has been an argument for years that advice provision should be put on a statutory footing. If you look at the powers that ask for advice to be delivered by local authorities, it is a varied field with different legislative sources for different specific purposes. I would probably agree with Stephen and also Karen that you have to have the full picture. You cannot deal with one benefit in isolation of another. There needs to be some sort of at least quality assurance that the adviser that you are speaking to knows what they are talking about, and they are considering all your options at the same time. That is part and parcel of the reason for Scottish national standards for information and advice, which, when it came along initially, I welcomed fully because it gave you that quality assurance model that had been sorely lacking in previous years. I think that that is the benchmark that agencies should be looking to as a matter of course. It is a necessity in this day and age, given the complexity of the benefit system. We receive the vast majority of our funding as a local authority advice service from our local authority. However, that is based on the budgets that are tightening, and the level of that funding has certainly reduced in the past few years. I think that that is the picture generally across the board in Scotland. That is a worry. I think that the statutory footing might help in that regard. Sandra McDermott I think that that is a really interesting question. I have got some thoughts around it, but Glasgow City Council, we invest from our own core budget through our settlement from Scottish Government £3.4 million in financial inclusion services, which helps to fund citizens' vice bureaus, but also some other nine independent law centres in financial inclusion and money advice services. In the last four years, that service has supported over 106,000 people and brought in £140 million of additional financial gains, as well as managed in £104 million of debt. As I mentioned, we have also increased that amount of funding by £2 million a year to help with the mitigation of universal credit. I think that everybody around the table would probably agree that UK benefits and welfare reform changes has made a significant increase in the amount of demand for welfare support and welfare rights services. Sheffield Hallam University has just done a recent report on Glasgow. I know that they have done one previously, convener, but they have just published a recent report to say from 2010 up until 2020. By 2020, the Glasgow economy will have lost over £300 million as a result of welfare reform changes. We also have an in-house welfare rights service, such as Dundee, Richard Gath, which some of you might know, manages, and that is another investment of £2 million. I run a welfare benefit service for people with cancer and other long-term conditions to make sure that, as a result of their health condition, their inability to work, their inability to have more heating because of their housebound or travel expenses, that they are not even more disadvantaged as a result of their cancer and other long-term conditions. I think that you are absolutely right. I think that it is about partnership working that really makes it work, so whether it is with our colleagues in health, where it sits in the vice bureau, whether it is in-house local authority or other third sector or charitable organisations, it is about making sure that you have got the whole picture, as Craig said, that you are looking at through the lenses, putting the person and their family at the centre, what do they need the most and what is that support structure either within the local authority or within the other networks that can allow for a more seamless holistic service, as you had mentioned, to happen. We have got a really good example of that through the universal credit money. We have invested some funding into Glasgow disability alliance in Glasgow, and in the last six months, the universal credit went live. I think that you had mentioned, Stephen, about the transitional protection, so there is a real risk for universal credit. You can lose your disability transitional protection, your severe disability premium, by moving on to that. We have put in additional support, welfare rights support, into Glasgow disability alliance, who are working from the alliance, and they are going out and engaging with disability people and people with disabilities and families with a child or an adult with disabilities. They have supported hundreds of people, claiming £500 million in benefits and protection of those benefits, just in the last few months that they did not know they were entitled to. It is a really strong partnership as well, which has been a really good example. Obviously, we are working really closely with Scottish Social Security in Glasgow that are just along the road from us, the chambers on High Street, to make sure that when the new benefits are released, a really good example of that is the best start grant, but automating that with the Registrar of Scotland. When you have got to register your baby within 21 days, it is saying that if you are going to register the baby, you are on any of these qualifying benefits. The customer service adviser then fills in your application for best start grant, and by the time you leave after registering the baby's birth, the money is on your way to the bank account. Obviously, there are previous examples that I mentioned to the deputy convener about how we have automated in Glasgow the school clothing grant. I suppose that what I would like the committee to consider is maybe helping us as a local authority. We have got real aspirations about having a single financial assessment. I am not the best at IT, but I have got this vision that if you take a person or a family that claims for benefits through the local authority or through one of our partner organisations, there is some kind of algorithm that takes account of all the family circumstances, whether it is the household composition, your financial circumstances, your disability, your health. Something works out in the background. That is what you are entitled to. We give people what they are entitled to instead of having to jump through a number of hoops to get what they are entitled to. For Scotland and the devolved powers, that would be a huge leap forward. It would link to the new duty on elected members and ministers to be able to promote the uptake of benefits. If we could do that through something innovative, such as a single financial assessment, that would be a fantastic step forward. It is a really good question. I see lots of nodding heads from our witnesses when you said that, so we will take you up on that offer about how we can work with you as a committee and maybe discuss that at another time. I know that other MSPs want to, and I will take the witnesses that I have indicated that they want to speak some more on them to MSPs and for more questions, Kate Burton, to be followed by Craig. Just picking up on Sandra's point about partnership working, I think that within the NHS we have got welfare rights advisers embedded or integrated into GP practice and early years services, and that works incredibly well to meet the needs of people with mental health conditions, drug and alcohol problems, lone parents, etc. But what is absolutely crucial is that those welfare advisers can see the whole person and work with all that work and support that person with all the benefits that they are entitled to. Picking up on the question, I do have concerns with the new agency if those advisers are only able to support people with a few benefits but not able to see the whole person and be able to support them with all benefits that people are entitled to. I also think that it was a real strength in integrating with health services. As Sandra's example of the improving cancer journey explains, if you have a welfare rights adviser in a GP practice or with the maternity services, there's no stigma for those people in going along to the practice to see an adviser. They haven't got to go through a door which has above it. Have you got money worries, which your neighbours might see you going into? It also means that people are familiar with the appointment system in a GP practice because you make the appointment just as we would make the appointment if we were going to see a practice nurse. The patients seeing the advisers in the practice make the appointment with the receptionist, they wait to see the adviser in the GP or midwifery service waiting room. It's all very familiar to people, so it's about removing barriers to access. That's absolutely crucial when we look at these new and emerging partnerships as we go forward to deliver social security in Scotland. It is crucial that we don't have some advisers focused on one aspect of benefit, other advisers focused on some. It's too confusing for the individual. It's confusing for me. I, at the moment, don't have a mental health problem or a drug and alcohol problem. What it's like for people in those situations trying to navigate benefits must be horrific. Just to echo some of Sandra's points about a universal assessment, I came from a voluntary sector organisation in the late 90s and came to Dundee City Council at that time when they had three years into the introduction of charging for non-residential care, but it's part of the process of working out the individual charge of a household for the social work services that we're getting. There was a systematic approach to both looking at the income of the individual and maximising that income to best effect. I was blown away by it at the time. I think that this is part of what Sandra is suggesting, but on a much larger scale, making it simple to go to people before they have to apply for a particular benefit or entitlement. This has been happening in small pockets for years. West Lothian showed us an example where he interrogated housing benefit data in 2003 to offset some of the pain of having a rent increase, but, as a result of that, the financial gains for the individuals who had their data interrogated was much increased income for all the households that had a separate entitlement. This idea has been going on for years, and I think that it's a great opportunity to potentially hardwire it into a lot of the systems. The key to that is partnership working. I'm going to take Karen Carrick next, and I'm going to take several bits from MSPs. Alison Johnson is next on my list to come in in relation to this line of questions. Some of the customer journey research that we've done has evidence that people are more likely to use digital means of accessing advice services, and web chat is proving increasingly popular. Inverclyde Council is looking at providing web chat services to advice service customers, but it is also looking at establishing a benefits checker, like in title 2, on their website. There has been quite a lot of discussion with other local authorities about having the same kind of benefits checker on their website, so there would be local websites, but they would all have the same process used and the same methodology. I think that that would link quite well. It might be the starting point for taking up what Sandra is suggesting. There is a rudimentary partnership there that is working at looking at offering that kind of support. I am sorry to my MSPs. After that, I probably took too much time to start, so I apologise for that, but I apologise to MSPs. I am trying to give preference to witnesses. Steven McAvoy and then definitely Alison Johnson next after that. Digital has got a lot of benefits for people accessing advice, but we need to also be careful that that cannot be seen to be replacing good face-to-face advice. Just as an example of that, I had a client in December who, based on her particular circumstances, if she had made a claim at that point, she would have lost entitlement to the severe disability premium going forward, so I advised her future proof that, in January, that change was probably going to happen, and that if she had held off and had a short-term loss, in the longer term, if she made her claim after the gateway was applied, she would be far better off in the longer term. It is not a digital system that you are ever likely to create that will be able to giegiw that bespoke advice. I think that it is good that it can have a wide reach, and there might be people who would use it and benefit that might not have access to a face-to-face service, but we need to be careful that we still have a really, really good provision of face-to-face advice by experiencing people who can give you that full picture. Just also Craig mentioned putting advice on a statutory footing. The social security legislation in Scotland sort of does that because of the right to advocacy mentioned in there, but I think that we will still really, really define what we mean by advocacy, because to my mind, there can be a big difference between advocacy and the type of advice that I will provide for the right service. I will take you in earlier, but Alison Russell has been very patient, so to Alison just now, then we will take you back in earlier date. Thank you, convener. I am really pleased that we are having this discussion this morning, because we know how many, you know, the amount of entitlement that people do not benefit from is quite overwhelming, it is staggering, so we clearly need to make sure that people have got access to, you know, as Craig Mason has made the point, high-quality welfare rights advice. I mean, I find this an incredibly complex area, so you are talking about a lot of training and a lot of expertise, so I really appreciate that we are getting the benefit from you this morning. In the submission from the improvement service, you are noting that this kind of service is so effective, but investment in it is reducing. Local authority investment is mentioned at a time when demand is increasing. I know that we have this kind of statutory approach, but it seems to me that we do need to do more. Kate Burton was speaking about the value of embedding this kind of advice in a stigma-free environment. I think that that is really key, too. Apparently, a social return on investment estimate of co-location of advice workers in NHS primary care setting suggests that every £1 investment has a benefit of £39 when it comes to social and economic benefits. I would like to understand how much good can result from access to good advice, but how can we help better convince local and national government that this is something that we need to invest more in? If people are not getting access to cash, the costs are there in the long-term in regard to poor health and other outcomes. What can we do to make sure that local and national government understand that this is an area that needs greater investment? I am just wondering because you name-checked the improvement service submission, that is a really good excuse to bring Karen Carrick in. What is your perspective on those important comments from Alison? Obviously, the resources available to local government are shrinking, but budget cuts do not impact on services equally. Protected services suffer significantly less in terms of reduction in funding than unprotected services. Education cuts are minimal, but in relation to advice services, which is not a protected service because it does not have that kind of statutory footing. The cuts are much greater and are much deeper. It would be nice to think that there would be increased investment in advice services, but realistically, given the current position across all government, that is unlikely to happen. What local councils are doing and are thinking about is that we are unlikely to be able to increase resources in this vital service, so is there a way that we can deliver it differently? That is the approach that many are taking. What they are looking at is providing face-to-face services, which are essential, but making sure that it is people who most need face-to-face services, who are most vulnerable, that are able to access them in a way that is free from stigma and in a way that meets their needs through schools, through health centres and through libraries, looking at taking services out to people. At the same time as they are doing that, they are aware of the fact that the digital offer is much more cost-effective in the long run, and there are people who can access services digitally, so if they make that easier and available, then that is a way of saving some resources that can be used to target the face-to-face services that are most valuable. I feel like I have been on the committee now for some time, but I know that the deputy convener and I were very interested in the idea of a universal assessment to apply once access everything. If you have got that one-stop shop approach, you would imagine that we can use the welfare rights expertise that we have more efficiently instead of someone having to make lots of individual applications. That would surely be a really cost-effective approach. Why have we not made any progress on that as yet? Who is responsible to push that progress forward? We certainly have had discussions in the committee on that several times now. The committee was given a Scottish Government report published 2018 of research done in 2016 in relation to public and funding advice services. In one of the elements of that said, the literature indicates that it is for intelligent, strategic and longer term, funding decisions to be taken in relation to advice provision, emphasis placed on the need for greater evidence-based and outcomes-focused funding decisions that has been taken, and for more joining up in relation to funding decisions across public sectors to ensure quality and to avoid duplication. There is the Scottish Government publishing something in 2018 from research in 2016 that says in that publication talks about growing demand and shrinking funds for advice provision. There is one tier of government. You get the UK, you get the Scottish, you get local authorities, and you get the third independent sector. There is a call from the Scottish Government research saying that we need to do this in a much more co-ordinated fashion. Who is responsible to drive that? Joint responsibility can mean that no individual or nobody takes that absolute responsibility, so we would really appreciate a steer as a committee. I think that it is this committee's job to continue the work that we started that Alison mentioned. It begins by saying that I think that the work that Glasgow and other local authorities have done on automated benefits is absolutely cutting edge. I know that it is not the only local authority, but it is one that I am familiar with. I know that this is the way forward, and Alison Johnstone and I go way back to where Jean Freeman had sat in on a session with us. I know that Shirland Somerville has certainly been committed to the same principle. It seems to me that we need to keep this going. I will make mention of a letter that we received from Inverclyde Council that said that it is concerned that it will no longer go forward on their plans for automated benefits because of data protection. How many times have I heard that the Barriers in the Data Protection Act has caused for some of the good work? Have you looked at this? Is there any way around that? Perhaps you could give a view as to whether this committee could do more work on trying to push forward on other ways to automate benefits? I think that when I come along to speak to committee, I think that we recognised and I think that Jean Freeman at that point had asked the question about when it does move on to universal credit and you have no longer got the housing benefit data to automate the school clothing grant, because as you will remember that we were matching the data within housing benefit council tax to demonstrate the family composition and the eligibility criteria for school clothing grant and matching up the school records and CMOS, matching them together and giving that payment out automatically to people after demonstrating their entitlement without the need to fill in a forum that was deemed unnecessary by the working group. Since then, and I think that convener Richard Gass from Glasgow City Council has written to you on the matter, what we have done is looked at that again because housing benefit are now made up of one of the six benefits that make up universal credit. In longer term, we will not have access to the housing benefit data because it will be assumed into universal credit data that we are using council tax reduction data. Because council tax and the administration of council tax is part of the local authority and it is not deemed to be one of the benefits, we have had the authority to continue to use that benefit and it is detailed in the letter to your convener with the confidence that we are confident within Glasgow that we can continue to use that process using council tax data. That is very helpful information. I should save the public record. It will be circulated to members, but Alex Sharma, the UK minister with responsibility in this area, has written back to our committee to myself saying that they are going to enter into discussions with Inverclyde council to see if they can identify how to remove those barriers. That shows a willingness across every tier of government. Absolutely, why do that once with one local authority? It is about 1,000 conversations, but it is co-ordinating and structuring and making sure that when you get that win, it is replicated across the country. I think that we begin to work with you to see how we can do that. Before I bring more MSPs in any more comments in this area, there are no more comments other than MSPs putting their hands up. In the order on my list, I promise you, Shona Keith Brown was next on my list. It is a couple of points. For the improvement service, first of all, it is useful to bear in mind that we hear enough a lot on this committee from Glasgow and Edinburgh as the biggest councils, but areas such as my area and Clifmaninshire, which has worse child poverty stats than Glasgow, do not have the resources that a big council has to address some of those issues. My concern is about the lack of benefit take-up in areas such as South of Scotland and, also, Western Ellsby, which is similar to South of Scotland, with the wage levels being lowered in the rest of the country. It is just about the part that said in your report that there were, just for local authorities, 85 external and 32 internal money in welfare rights advice services receiving funding from local authorities. There is money that goes from the Scottish Government to citizens advice, and money goes from the UK Government. Although I agree, it would be great if everybody who is providing services can provide advice on all the different benefits, I am not sure that it is realistic to do that. I wonder whether some more efficiency is being put through the system. The reason why the report was commissioned in December was because of the new advice powers that the Scottish Government was taking on in consumer advice areas, which is a complete dog's breakfast when you look at the break-up of the Smith commission, so the Scottish Government has got the right to give advice but not to take any enforcement action. Given how complex it is in some of those things that come from different areas, what we are trying to do is protect the people who are most in need of that to get the right service. As has been said already, to maximise the benefit take-up. In generic terms, if we can get the hundreds of millions, even billions of pounds that are not claimed, that will benefit the entire economy, but more particularly will benefit individuals as well. Is there a view on what the best way is to simply keep providing more money to what is already there or to look afresh at how you provide those advice services? There is lots of vested interest in this area. How do you get beyond that to make sure that the person that needs it most gets the maximum take-up of benefit? What we would say is that it is best left to local partnerships, ideally community planning partnerships, which involve all sectors, to think about how best advice services can be provided in their area. That is the approach that we would take, because, as I have said, what local needs are very different in different communities. The danger of imposing something on a national basis is that those local needs are not fully recognised and met and delivered in a way that best suits local situations. We would suggest that there should be a more co-ordinated approach between all the public sector funders of advice services, whether it is setting up some sort of strategy at a national level that gives flexibility and creativity for being implemented at a local level. It gives the principles of a framework that people can operate, but it is important that the key partners have shared objectives and are seeking to deliver the same outcomes. Most importantly, they have agreed how they will work together to deliver it, because unfortunately at the moment that is not happening. The quality of advice that people can access is very variable in different areas too, so that is a factor that has to be considered. What we are suggesting is that there is really a review of how advice services are delivered, that there is a recognition, that there should be an improved digital offer, but also that, at a local level, that face-to-face is delivered through diverse providers, diverse channels and in different locations and using different models. I had a few points to add following on from Jeremy's initial comment, which was about a holistic service and joining up some of the benefits advice. Craig had mentioned the Scottish national standards, and the Scottish national standards bring together money, housing and welfare rights, recognising that quite often those matters are interlinked and one has an impact on the other. Our own research shows that, when somebody comes in to get advice, there are associated issues. If we take help to claim on its own, our initial findings are that there are four other advice issues that people are coming to get advice on, that they are able to get from within the holistic service that bureaus deliver. However, some of the other points that have been mentioned that I just wanted to tie in in terms of that, how do we work more in collaboration, how do we make sure that it is customer-focused and recognising that, when an individual is seeking advice, regardless of the reason and the circumstances, they are going to be vulnerable at one point or the other. That is the reason why they are seeking advice and their resilience in terms of being able to deal with that is impacted by other associated factors. Kate had mentioned about health settings and advice being provided within health settings. It is not only the comfort, but it is also, for example, in relation to disability benefits, where you are providing advice within the health context, you have a better opportunity to be able to get the evidence. We talked about whose responsibility it is in terms of the funding to the advice sector, but there needs to be a recognition of cost savings in terms of being able to get the advice at the early stage as to what it might cost public services in terms of not only mental health but housing and homelessness. Stephen had mentioned about advocacy support, and one of the bureaus has done a pilot about advocacy support and welfare benefits, and where advocacy support is available, what is the outcome in terms of the decision of the relevant benefit. We know, for example, that there are 68 per cent of refusals in terms of appeals. If advocacy support was available, how did that impact in terms of the outcome? The initial results, albeit that they were trialled in very small cases, are very encouraging. For example, in ESA cases, in 47 cases, where advocacy support was provided, there were only 11 per cent that resulted in refusals. If you take that cost benefit against if that went to appeals and how much that costs in terms of processing the appeal, in terms of the collaboration, there are also cost savings that can be done by the early intervention. I think that some of the points that have been made by colleagues, there is definitely a need to bring that consolidation into place. The last point that I just wanted to make was in relation to digital. I think that it is recognising a channel choice as opposed to a channel shift. There are definitely people who are more likely to, for example, there is an increase in web chat telephony, but that is not to diminish the importance of face-to-face. What we will be doing, particularly in relation to the help to claim, is looking at the customer journey of the channel choice, of how many people start with face-to-face and end up using multi-channel resources in terms of web chat and telephone, and vice versa. I think that it is looking at analysis. Can I just say that web chat concerns me, because I have used it. It glues the will to live. How slow it is? Does that mean the experience of web chat? Do you have a different system? Has your experience been in terms of the advisor advising? Yes. There are lots of pop-ups these days when you are online and they go, would you like to chat? Is it that kind of thing? Yes. The web chat services led us on. I think that the deputy views would try to pick a holiday or something like that. Yes, but it is the same system, isn't it? I have had similar experience to myself, but at the end of the day, if you have an individual that is on the other end and is answering that web chat, there is a different experience to if there is a bot that is answering the web chat. Our intention would be for the individual to be... That is actually, I know that the humor is part of it, but when I have used web chat for technical support for mobile phones or what have you, I have been through a web chat. Actually, you now just want to speak to the person on the telephone. Web chat is as good as far as it goes, but after that, as long as it is then directed towards speaking to an actual human being, as and when required, it is not just used to stop that human contact, which I think was the Stephen McEvoy kind of comment that you were making. Thank you for putting that on the record, Deputy convener. I think that we would have some other MSPs want to get into. We have been waiting patiently. Shona Robison, MSP. It was really just a thought from the conversation previously about how we can overcome some of the fragmented services, the ambition to work towards a single financial assessment. I wonder whether some of the data protection changes that have happened may make that more challenging. I am thinking back to the West Lothian example that was used about analysing and interrogating the housing benefit data, but that would be for another purpose. And I just wonder now whether or not they would be able to do such a thing. I just want to put that on the record so that we could perhaps go back to explore that in a little bit more detail, because I think that a single financial assessment would be fabulous. There is a need to deal with some of the very fragmented services, which is not the case everywhere, but I think that we would accept that there is an issue there. Data protection might be a significant issue. Just briefly on that point, just an observation about single financial assessments, and again to me it sounds a very attractive idea. I wonder whether people here could comment on the fact that perhaps rather than having a discussion about that in a vacuum, I believe that there are some of our European neighbouring countries who probably do something pretty close to that already. I just wondered if anyone had looked at what they do. I'm not aware of anything particular. I've asked my team to start doing some benchmark and to say before we start on a journey in Glasgow to try and develop something about a single financial assessment, your point exactly. Is anybody else doing it? Is anybody else doing it successfully, or what are the barriers to be that? I know that you'd asked the question previously, convener. If the committee was going to take a role in trying to drive forward looking at how we could use the devolved powers and the new Scottish Social Security in line with some of the other benefits, whether it's best at Ghanan or whether it's some of the other benefits like free school meals, school uniforms or actually welfare benefits, I would be happy to contribute to that discussion. If we asked other local authority colleagues or other partners to be involved in that, I think that it would be really good to get a really strong working group together to drive that forward. I think that it would be a real willingness, because a lot of the work that we are doing, albeit its fantastic work, about mitigating the impacts of welfare reform and universal credit, what welfare rights officers across the country are trying to do is to fix a broken system that doesn't work for vulnerable people. What we are trying to provide is a safety net for those people to get the advice and support that they need. I suppose that maybe Karen Carrick would agree that, even though local authorities try to produce reports and outcomes and impact reports of the impact of providing financial inclusion services, we probably do ourselves a disservice, because one of the key benefits to providing that, apart from the financial gains and sorting out debts and making sure that people have got money that they need to live on, is the prevention of homelessness work. By that early intervention, I will stop Sandra Lewis in her house, because she has had a cancer diagnosis or had a heart attack, or she is unable to work through mental health or addictions, is the work that we do. We have never really looked at what are the other benefits that are generated by having really good financial welfare benefit advice about prevention of homelessness and what is the cost avoidance to the public sector of having that or the fact that you have provided that really good holistic joined up service. Does it stop people's mental health getting worse? Does it improve their social isolation and get them out of the house and into the libraries to get that wider support? Just for interest in the committee, since we have set up the universal credit hubs, the visits to libraries in the last six months have went up by 69,000. As well as the other gains that we have got, the financial gains and the really good access to welfare benefits and digital skills, the access to libraries, everybody goes in the library, they are encouraged to join the library but also encouraged to join other community groups, they are being involved in whatever else is going on in their community as well as access and benefits and digital skills. That was one of the unintended consequences really of setting them up in the libraries, which has been really good. Maybe just one other point to make to the committee, which is maybe to give our colleagues in DWP some recognition for the good work that we have been doing in partnership with them. It was actually Kate that set up the meeting between us to look at what had been done elsewhere and, as a result of that, we have developed a safeguarding pilot in Glasgow, which is due to go live in the 1st of July. I am delighted and really it is only possible because of our colleagues in DWP working in partnership with us. What we are going to do is give advance notice to DWP that Sandra is really vulnerable, she is getting mental health, addiction problems or whatever that vulnerability is. She will not be able to maintain a 35-hour claimant commitment. What they will do is provide additional support, so they will put me on to the support element of universal credit so that I am not expected to meet a 35-hour claimant commitment that I am potentially going to fail and then end up being sanctioned. We are hoping that leader eradicate sanctions for that vulnerable group or drastically reduce them. It is just to give our DWP colleagues some credit for coming to the table and working with us in partnership in Glasgow. If that model is successful, we have made a commitment that will be rolled out across the rest of Scotland. We are learning from that. That is very helpful. The agenda item that our committee has once this public session has finished is to take stock of what we have heard today and work out what we want to do as a committee. I think that you have mentioned a few times Sandra about what assistance the committee can provide. What we have to think about is whether we probe and ask questions, whether we scrutinise or whether we see something more proactive about helping to push forward and help as a committee to develop and advance things or scrutinise other people to what extent they have improved the situation. If people want to decide on balance what the committee wants to do, I do want to let other witnesses in, but I am conscious that there is a line of questioning that we have alluded to, but we really should just get on the record whilst we are still in public session. I am going to make a couple of observations, which are really questions from our brief that we were to ask, but I do not want to ask them as formal questions. We have mentioned already about how the introduction of the new Scottish social security benefits might impact on welfare, advice and support, so we are keen to get things on the record in relation to that. We have spoken a little bit about what the collaboration might look like between Social Security Scotland and providers and welfare rights and advice. The idea of provision of pre-claims advice by Social Security Scotland might impact on existing welfare rights and advice providers, so I am not asking specific questions about that, but it was something that would be important for the committee, just if you have any thoughts in relation to that. Finally, and the one that we really should ask this morning is what witnesses expect to see in Scottish ministers' strategy to promote take-up in relation to provision of independent advice services, because they should have that strategy. We will have to scrutinise that as a committee, so that would be a forward scrutiny role that we would have. None of that is a specific question, but we are keen to get some comments or thoughts on the record from witnesses here this morning, Kate Burton. Thank you for picking up Sandra's point, but I will also quickly answer your point about take-up. When you have welfare advisers integrated into GP practices, they can actually access medical evidence. They can access the medical records of patients with appropriate consent in place, so it means that they can support patients to apply for benefits with the medical information that is needed. The advisers are able to draft medical statements for GPs to check, which means that patients get those benefits more quickly than they would if they had to go through a mandatory reconsideration or appeal process. Most of the benefits that people receive when they are seeing advisers in GP practices are health-related benefits. DLA and PIP are the two big ones. If you are thinking about a benefit take-up campaign, maybe think about targeting the advisers in GP practices or supporting more advisers in GP practices because that service can reach those people who are going to benefit. That will help when those new benefits are devolved because there will be more money in the financial envelope coming to Scotland. Picking up Sandra's point about unintended consequences of benefit advice and Alison Johnson's already mentioned it, the improvement service did the social return on investment on advice workers in GP practices, looking at two practices in Edinburgh and one in Dundee. They measured the impact, looked at the financial impact of advice on health and wellbeing, on GPs, on practices. We have started to gather some of that additional value. Sandra can talk better about it than I can. We have started to gather some of that evidence, because it is absolutely crucial that it is not just the financial advice that income makes a difference to people. Is that other stuff that having more money can bring to people's health and wellbeing? I would go back to the point about the new benefits need to reflect what the current system is. I do not think that there is any point in going off and inventing something completely different without thinking about how it integrates to what exists on the ground on the current basis. I know that discussions have taken place with local authorities about how best those services can be integrated and provided, and they are using that in the different models and localities that best meet their needs. On the take-up of independent advice, councils have a key role to play in that. There are lots of innovative ways that councils can promote using the websites that they have, which attract a lot of traffic. They are key partners in that process. If there is a greater connection between local and national government, that is a practical way that can be demonstrated. I think that everybody in this room accepts the benefits of people getting access to advice services, so I am not sure why. I say that this is an organisation that researches why we need to keep doing it. We know that it works and we know that there are benefits to it. I think that we probably have now reached the stage of making sure that people have access to those benefits. I would say that there is a key role for politicians in making sure that that happens and in the Scottish Government in showing leadership in terms of what we can achieve. Rather than me calling Stephen McEvoy, yes. On the impact that the devolution benefits will have at the front line, when you couple that with everything else that has happened, it is likely to be quite significant. I am quite sad that I counted it, but the chillpover reaction group produce a handbook every year, which advice workers will use, and comparing the version this year to last, it has actually increased by 90 pages. It is not an insignificant handbook already, so that shows you that, as universal credit is being ramped to it complexity, it is increasing in general. I think that it is important that there is a recognition that, as well as funding advice, we need to make sure that that funding is stable so that, for people who are experienced in advice, we can retain them. What you do not want to happen is for short-term funded projects to come to an end or get close to it, and you end up with experienced staff who are then leaving services. Once you lose that experience, it is very difficult to take somebody who is very, very new to advice and to train them to the level that you would have an experienced staff member. When I first started in advice, there were four or five main benefits. That situation has now exploded. You have got devolution, you have got all sorts of different things happening, so it is just more difficult to train people in advice. It is really, really important that we have stable funding so that we retain what we have. In my experience, there are two main reasons why somebody will contact an advice service. The first one is crisis. They have had a decision that they do not agree with, they have had a change in circumstances. At that point, most people will probably go to the well-known providers, the local authority, the citizens advice bureau, or something like that. Behind that, there are the people who get the more preventative work, which is, I think, where do you see more of the work where the services are a bit more bespoke, so maybe somebody based on a GP surgery or the GP has become culturally quite aware of making referrals. You do not have a direct problem, but have you had a benefit check and actually made sure that they are getting their benefits maximised before something goes wrong? I think that that is where you start to see a place for services like where, because we are working daily with professionals who work with people with disabilities, that becomes part of the culture to get that referral done before there is a crisis. That works really, really important because that can lead to massive financial gains for people, and it is important that we have both sides of that funded. We are getting towards the end of our time here because we want to discuss as a committee just how we take forward our approach to this work. Before I make this offer, are there any other MSPs who want to ask any questions at this stage, Keith Brown? Again, the improvement service, if there is any globally accepted figure for the percentage of take-up of available benefits across the whole piece in Scotland? We do not have that information. We collect data from local authority-funded services in relation to the number of benefit claims that advisers help to be lodged and the outcome of that, but we only started collecting that data last year. We are currently collecting it for this year, so we will be able to give you some information probably early autumn, but at this point in time we do not actually have that. I think that on pension credits it is about a 60 per cent take-up, which means a 40 per cent not take-up. That does not seem too out of the park for other benefits as well, or I suppose that it would vary between benefits right enough, but that is a huge amount of resources, is it not? We do not collect that kind of information. What we do is look at it through the lens of advice, so we can see what the successful benefits are in terms of different types of benefits. For instance, I know that some of the recent stuff that we have shows that some benefits have a 30 per cent success rate in terms of advice or support. Others it is up about 60 per cent and we are currently analysing why that might be the case, but in terms of take-up, we do not have that kind of information. I am going to ask you one follow-up question on that. The offer was, before we close this public session, if there is a suggestion that any witnesses want to make to committee or an observation that you want to make on any matter loosely related to the themes that we have been discussing, please take your opportunity to put it on the public record. We are going to go round the table, but we will start with you earlier, but the question that I was going to ask before we give you that opportunity, then we will close the session. If I was to ask just for a map of the country and money that has been invested in advice services, whether it is the UK Government, the Scottish Government, local authorities, and I get that sometimes the cash can flow between those three, the third and independent sector and how that varies by local authority and what the trends have been over time in the country. How easy is it to access that information? If it is in my brief, I apologise to Spice that it is in my brief and I have missed that, but I did not particularly see that because we will be interested in what the trends are, what the money spent is, what the best structures are and what the best outcomes are. The example that I would give is that Scottish welfare fund has underspent some local authorities and has massively overspent other local authorities. We really want to assess not just being counting the money in the system but what the best structures are, but it is quite good to get some data on that. I do not know the fact. That is something that we could help with. I think that that would be really helpful for the committee going forward if we were going to do something meaningful on it. We are about to end this evidence session. Thank you to everyone, but you have a final opportunity to make a question, an observation and a challenge back to the committee if you wish in the future work that we might do. We will start with you, Alia. First, I just wanted to pick up on the points that Stephen Ann and Kate had made in terms of the provision of advice in the health sector. There is fairly well-known research in terms of advice by prescription, and I think that that would be useful to look at, particularly in relation to benefits that have a health-related impact. We have worked very closely with the Scottish Government as well as the new social security agency in terms of gathering evidence and focus groups, and we welcomed that opportunity going forward so that a lot of the observations that have been made today can be materialised. Thank you very much, Kate. I do not like the word advice on prescription, because it is about integrating the advice workers into GP practices and early years services. They are seen as part of the primary care or health visiting and midwifery team, so there are no barriers there at all. That is what I would hope that the committee thinks about going forward, is how we can better integrate advice services in with health settings, particularly going forward with the new responsibilities for social security in Scotland, where there is a focus on ill health and disability-related benefits. At the moment, we have about 100 advice services that are integrated into GP practices and early years services across Scotland, but they are being done opportunistically and growing organically. I do not feel that there is any Government support for this. There is Government support for community link workers, for action 15 mental health workers or working in GP practices, and the big issues for them are actually income maximisation for their patients. We have not yet got welfare advisors in there from a Government perspective, so I would hope that the committee will look at that. I am not going to ask the question about integrity joint boards and how they work with all of that, but I will hold that thought, but it is really interesting and a challenge back to the committee, so that is very helpful, Kate Sandra. I thank the committee for allowing us to come and give evidence. I suppose that going back to the take-up for me again, it would be trying to streamline, automate and have that single financial assessment to strip out the unnecessary waste of completing multiple forms, capturing them at once and giving people what they are entitled to, would be my ask of the committee. Maybe one other specific point, for my role in improving the cancer journey and supporting people with long-term health conditions with the new devolved powers for personal independence payment. There is now a requirement for two visits. One, when you actually meet the person, you have to identify that they are going to make a claim for personal independence payment, apply for the application pack and then once the pack is received you have to go back and do another visit, which is stressful for the person with cancer or the long-term health condition that you are trying to support. At the time when welfare rights officer's time is invaluable because of the demand and increase in demand for services, they are having to go out for another appointment. Unfortunately, that same system has been replicated with the new Scottish Social Security Agency, so if there is anything that this committee could do to influence that, to have it once and done, to have the packs available, that we could do it when we first visit the person or they are first seen, whatever settings it is in, whether it is in a partner organisation, a health service or within the library, that would be hugely supportive. Maybe just one other final point to make, which is maybe a more general one, going back to the briefing, is if we could also keep mind in committee about the new child poverty act and one of the duties under the act. One of the key drivers of child poverty is to make sure that people can access income from welfare benefits and part of that is looking at automation. Again, it would be hugely influential and a huge driver to help us to reduce child poverty if this committee could influence that about the automation of benefits and to keep mind that in-work poverty is on the rise. In Glasgow, 62 per cent of people that are living in poverty come from a household that somebody is working. Whatever services are set up or developed in the future has to take cognisance of people that are working that still need that additional support or we are driving them into further poverty. Even though we know that people in the registered social landlord sector tend to be the ones that we provide that support around about quite rightly with welfare rights and housing support, can we not lose sight of people that live in the private rented sector that do not have that support? They do not have housing officers and welfare rights officers aligned to that. Glasgow has invested particularly to support people that live in the private rented sector in Glasgow, because we have 10,000 people in that sector that are relying on benefits and they do not have access to a dedicated welfare rights officer. We have put in some general support, but it is maybe just something else to keep cognising software as you are looking through your deliberations. That is very helpful. Alarm bells ring in my head when you mentioned the private rented sector, and that is the mid-market rent where people get income shocks and mid-market rents no longer affordable housing from them and how we support them. It is really, really helpful, but a specific request there in relation to new disability assistance replacing PIP, could you email me as a convener, the clerk, very specifically in relation to that? Absolutely, look to see how we can take that forward. That would be really, really welcome. Craig? On that score, I suppose, it is worth mentioning that I have spoken to our local relationship leads about a potential proposal in Dundee in relation to disability assistance. I have put a proposal paper to them to work with them in partnership. Essentially, when there are new advisers coming into post to give them a grounding, in what existing advice agencies do when they are working with people with disabled needs, essentially showing them how we make claims for the existing benefits, PIP and DLA, the needs of disabled people. Essentially, I think that there is something there in terms of both preparing those staff for the new disability assistance roll-out, but also as well as potentially a take-up campaign across the sector prior to disability assistance coming into play. What I asked the committee, and I think you mentioned it in terms of what structure potentially works best, and what it says today, I have given evidence about the different ways that we work in GP surgeries. For example, we cover 57,500 patients in Dundee in nine different locations. We also work in partnership with our voluntary sector partners through the big lottery fund Dundee money action project, which looks at long-term support for individuals rather than just firefighting on particular issues. We can work with an individual for six months to really look at improving their health, well-being and their confidence and reduce stress within their household. We have quite a good partnership working in Dundee, and perhaps what the committee might want to consider doing is potentially addressing a joint letter to the heads of NHS boards, the heads of integrated joint boards and the heads of community planning to really ask them how their advice sector agencies are working together and what kind of involvement they have in strategically planning those services in their area. I am working with a couple of the major agencies initially to try to put in place an advice strategy for Dundee. I know that that has been successful in North Larkshire, the work that John Campbell has done in pulling that together and commissioning services in that area. I think that there is an opportunity for all local authority areas or all NHS health board areas to really answer that question and potentially put in place an overarching plan for provision of advice going forward. I would just like to thank you for the opportunity to give evidence today. I am glad that you have the chance to put that on the record, because I understand that that is why we do this. Our lines of questioning go off in different directions. You do not always get the opportunity to see what you have came here to see, which is why we do this. Stephen McEvoy. My post is currently core funded by Enable Scotland after initially being funded by the Scottish Government via case to life. My summary point would be that, in any longer-term funding decisions, as well as funding the more mainstream and well-known providers, there is also a place for smaller bespoke services that work with particular client groups, not just in terms of the face-to-face advice provision, but we will respond to disability assistance consultation. We will be able to do that with a specific focus on the experience that we have had of supporting people learning disabilities through the claim process and how things could be improved. I think that that could potentially be lost in terms of the democratic process and making sure that we design the system right in the first place, so that various client groups who might otherwise be particularly vulnerable can have their voice heard through advice agencies that are there specifically to support them. Thank you very much, Karen Carrick. I do not envy you the next stage of the process. I think that it has taken so long because advice services and funding are a very complex landscape. It is so diverse and pulling things together is going to be very challenging, even in terms of the Scottish Government never mind looking at all the other sectors that are involved, too. I think that Craig has the right idea about some sort of strategy that can underpin going forward. We have all given you lots of different examples about things that are happening in individual areas. I think that it is always helpful to have that in terms of making decisions that reflect what works on the ground. The question is, what is the purpose of advice? Should it be universal or should it be targeted? What are we doing with it? Why are we doing it? How best can we ensure that advice services are delivered collectively across the whole of Scotland? I can end by giving you an example. At the moment, we collect data through the performance management framework. From that, we know that 14 per cent of service users are single adults under 65 per cent. We know, too, that 3 per cent of service users are pensioners living alone, but 14 per cent of the population are pensioners living alone. We know that pensioners are not accessing advice services as they are currently provided. We know that it is an effective delivery model in terms of single parents, because we know that 14 per cent of single parents are accessing advice services, yet they only make up 5 per cent of the population. We have that kind of data and information, and we are quite happy to share that, if that will assist the committee in its deliberations. I will collect all of you for taking the opportunities that you should do about how the committee makes shape while working forward. We do not feel overwhelmed because the benefit of the committee is that we can decide to focus on one or two things. We can never do everything, and we are absolutely clear about the responsibilities in government to champion that, but we are keen to scrutinise, but also offer assistance as we go along. I thank all of our witnesses again for your time here this morning. That does end agenda item 2. We will stay in contact with you when we take forward our future work in relation to this, but for the moment I will say thank you. We will move to agenda item 3, which we are previously going to take in private.