 Maen nhw chyfnodd iddyn nhw nes yw y ddechrau'r e centeredwyr yfyrdd yn Cymru i'r 2015 yw meddwl hefyd ond myfyrdiol o Paid favourite phoen yw teimlo edrych yn ffordd o'r rhaid i chi geilyddiaeth jangosol oherwydd a oedd ar y maen nhw. Felly, mai'n derbyg gyda'r eitem yr agendaid, yw Joe McAlpine yn yn ystyried i gynnig yr acroeddiol fel yr eitem maen nhw ydw i'r eitem yn eitem, mae'r eitem yn myfyrdiw yr eitem ar hyn oedd, First item of business is our second or eleventh in session on our women and welfare, or should I say, women in social security inquiry. I think we will change it officially after the discussion that we had at the last meeting. Today we are using round table format for our discussions. This is an approach that we have used before on the committee. I think the members think it works quite well. It allows us to benefit from an ability to keep the discussion fluid and it is a bit less stilted in a straightforward question and answer format. All I would ask is that if you want to ask a question or make a contribution, just indicate to me, talk through me, don't talk over one another and we'll just try and keep the thing moving as quickly as possible and get as much information as we can in the time that it's available to us. For the round table discussion this morning, I'm delighted to welcome Anna Richie-Allan, who's a project manager for Close the Gap. Jill Wood, policy manager at Engenda. Bill Scott, director of policy at Inclusion Scotland. Belinda Phipps, CEO of the Faucet Society. Nina Murray, women's policy development officer at the Scottish Refugee Council. Angela O'Hagan, convener of Scottish women's budget group. Suzanne Conlon, board of directors Scottish Women's Convention. Anne Henderson, assistant secretary at the STUC. Andrew Osga, policy worker at Scottish Women's Aid. Welcome to you all. I hope you feel that we get some benefit from the discussion this morning. In order to kick things off, I'm going to come straight to Jill Wood and ask her a question to get us into the discussion. Thank you very much to everyone for submissions and thanks particularly Jill for yours because 22 recommendations at the end of it, it's always useful to get some very clear and distinct suggestions as to what we can do, but it comes on at the back of your submission and just before you get to the conclusions and recommendations, you say in that a targeted policy response that aims to redress this gender discrimination and is aligned with Scottish Government action to tackle the drivers of women's inequality is sorely needed. So 22 recommendations to address a sorely needed gap to be closed. What would the priorities amongst that 22 be? Just where would we have to start to get some progress being made? Well, the first recommendations are split over existing Scottish Government policy and powers we already have over social security issues and then those that are to come with the devolution of further powers. At the moment, the first recommendation that we make, and I should say off the bat that this was a joint report that was written with closed the gap, Scottish Women's Aid, Scottish Refugee Council and the SCVO, most of whom are here today as well, but the first recommendation that we make is that the Scottish Government should develop a specific concrete action plan to tackle the impact of welfare reform on women, which we know a lot about now, and that that needs to be joined up with other areas that relate to gender equality and devolve policy areas that relate to gender equality. Primarily, for us, this is a gender equality issue, obviously in terms of the extremely disproportionate impact on women. The House of Commons library analysis puts that 85 per cent of all related cuts, but also in terms of the reasons for that figure in the first place, so the structural reasons that drive the fact that women are twice as dependent on social security as men are and the fact that unpaid women carers are twice as likely to give up paid work in order to care. If we want to do something different and gender the approach, then our response has to take stock of those dynamics about women's caring responsibilities, about the pay gap and link it to policy areas such as employability, social care, childcare and so on, because we are all aware that often Government responses can exist in their own areas. That fits quite neatly with current Scottish Government commitments to prioritise gender equality at the moment. The agenda works both ways. It needs to be gendered to have a more positive impact on women and to prevent further harm from them through these policies, but also the fact that if it is not gendered then the agenda stands to undermine other areas of Government work and, in fact, it can support that ambition to be better on gender, essentially. That first recommendation about developing a specific plan, because if the response is not targeted towards women, then a blanket approach. A lot of the work that the Scottish Government has done definitely has had a positive impact on women, but it has not targeted them particularly. A lot of colleagues here are representing particular groups of women, and that is another key point to make right from the start. Obviously, women are not one homogenous group of people, but lots of different groups—refugee women and disabled women—needs to have targeted responses as well. That was going to bring me on to my second point. If I can't appeal to Scotland in multiple impacts, do you want to give us an idea from the inclusion of Scotland's perspective of the disability community? Part of the problem is that so many of the cuts have been targeted at disabled people and their benefits, but disabled women are also impacted because they are carers, because they are lone parents, because they are black, because they are sexuality, etc. All of those factors as well. Disabled women are not just two factors—there are many factors to their lives. Cuts to child benefit, for example, are one of the biggest cuts that have hit disabled women. It is not a cut targeted at disabled people, but it is a cut that impacts disproportionately on them, because, again, women in general rely for far more of their income on benefits because they are less likely to be in work and less likely to be the only recipient of benefits in the household, but they are more likely to manage the budget in the household. It falls again on them to cope with the cuts that are falling on the household, whether it is a cut to child benefit or a cut to their partner's benefits. They are the one who is putting the position of coming up with the rent, coming up with the food to put on the table, etc. We know from many, many studies in the past that the purse holder is often the target of domestic abuse because they are held responsible for not being able to pay the rent, put the food on the table, etc. There are many, many impacts, and, certainly for disabled women, the multiple impact is even disproportionately greater in terms of the sheer scale of the income loss to those households. From the forces society, our interest is in women overall, although individual groups of women suffer different levels of disadvantage. Our big issue is that the benefit system full stop has been designed with a one-size-fits-all eye, and often with a male eye, with presumptions about the way that the world works. Fundamentally, what needs to happen is that the system needs to be designed through a female lens and checked through a male lens, but designed through a female lens. We know that women's lives, because of the way that they're brought up, the gender differentiated way that women are treated, it means that women are much more likely to be poor. So women, for example, make up two thirds of the low page. There is a pay gap, which increases women's poverty. Women are much more likely to have caring responsibilities. They're presumed to be, and quite often, are the primary carer of children. Yet the welfare system doesn't take that into account when it thinks about benefits. The forces society has recently conducted an investigation into jobseekers allowance, which is the intention is to get people back into work in the belief that working will alleviate poverty. When you look at that through a female eye, you can see that the jobseekers allowance creates all sorts of problems for women. If a woman is a primary carer, particularly if she's a lone parent, as over 90% of lone parents are women, she is at a very high risk of being sanctioned for failing to come to an appointment on time. If you talk to the women and we've heard many dreadful stories of women who fully wanted to be at their appointment but couldn't get there, no bus, it snowed. A small child had a hissy fit, needed to go to the lavatory, childcare arrangements broke down at the last minute, and there appears to be an application of sanctions without understanding of the lived experience of women who are by and large poorer and the primary carers of children. Fundamentally, if Scotland were able to do it, a redesign of the system taking a female point of view would be very helpful until we can get to the stage where our young boys and girls are brought up without this gender differentiation that pushes women into low-paid, lowly valued work and virtually being exclusive carers and boys away from doing any of the domestic support work. Until we change that, we have to design our system through a gendered lens. Anne, do you want to jump in at that point? I think just from the SCOT STUC's point of view, sorry, it would be quite interesting to draw out the contrast between the very inflexible nature of the benefit system and the fact, as you were referring to the previous meeting, that does not actually provide security the sort of contrast between the labour market, which is in our discussions about what would be a good workplace, a fair workplace, the discussions with the Scottish Government around a fair work convention, there are some real opportunities for looking at how we design jobs and workplace interventions and support for people in work in a better way, in a way that reflects their life cycle and the changes that take place in their lives and some of the points that Belinda mentioned there. It is running in contrast in Scotland, I think, that kind of approach, which we are very keen to support with the way that the benefit system operates, which is sanctions driven and punitive and does not deal with the realities of, in this case, women's lives. I think that there is quite a contradiction developing, which in terms of how it fits with other parts of Scottish Government's policy and other things that we can do in Scotland. We really need to try and explore it, and I hope that we will get into a wee bit of discussion about that today, because we are promoting flexible working practices, for instance, to try to assist parents, and in this case, women, staying in the labour market, yet the sanctions that apply if you miss an appointment while seeking work are just completely contradictory, so hopefully we can get into a bit of discussion about that today. One thing that we would like to point out is that, specifically in relation to employability and job seeking support services, which, as Anne had mentioned, as we look at women's participation in the labour market, women continue to have a very different experience to men. Generic employability programmes will only serve to replicate existing gendered patterns of skills acquisition and employment. What that means is that, because also Blinda and Anne mentioned the gender pay gap, of course, which has an impact on women's pay and therefore impacts on poverty and children's poverty as well. The pay gap affects women throughout their lifetimes, and it impacts also on their income in retirement. Until we address the causes of the pay gap, or the lack of flexible working, as Anne mentioned, and specifically in the context of employability programmes, occupational segregation, where women are clustered into low-paid, undervalued jobs, until employability programmes address occupational segregation until they take cognizance of the gender barriers to employment, then that is only serving to further entrench occupational segregation and widen the gender pay gap. Thank you for the reframing of the debate in terms of social security, because ultimately that is what we are talking about as well, is the protection and recognition of transition and life circumstances that colleagues have so clearly set out. To pick up on some of the points in the Scottish Women's Budget group submission, we put the biggest emphasis in some ways on the cross portfolio and cross disciplinary analysis that is needed from the committee and from the Scottish Government. Central to that are the budget and spending plans and how revenue is raised in Scotland and the economic strategy. The economic strategy is where colleagues have started to take some of the debate as well. In terms of the next steps for this committee, while the inquiry is very necessary and very welcome, the next steps are as important. When it comes to the scrutiny of public spending, the scrutiny of public authorities and the extent to which there is a robust gender analysis—and I think that there needs to be time and investment in improving gender analysis and gender awareness across public authorities. We see decisions repeatedly made in a way that completely ignores the conditions and circumstances that colleagues around the table have alluded to. That improvement in equality impacts assessment and the understanding of what constitutes gender awareness and the impact on women and men. Many of the measures that we are seeing are so gendered along the lines that Belinda and others have talked about, and that has an effect on women. It also has an effect on the whole recasting of gender relations, the transformative shifts that we are trying to see. As Anne has said, we have this contrast between what we are trying to do and where we are in Scotland in some of the discourse, some of what is talked about and some of the practical and policy realities. Within Scotland's economic strategy, when it talks about investment in infrastructure, we want to see the committee scrutinise and what the Scottish Government means by that investment in infrastructure. Does that include the care infrastructure that would support women and men's roles as carers, workers and parents? Is that the kind of economic growth that we are talking about that recognises the care economy, recognises the transitions of people's lives and the need for a social security system that is not so gender biased and so rigid in its administration of it, that it completely ignores the lived reality of people's lives where sanctions, as Belinda and others have said, cut right across the daily realities? We need to see that policy read across in social security in the further powers that are being devolved. What energy, in a sense, is being put in at this end in Scotland to remove some of those administrative barriers to making the system in the first instance more humane, but also to craft a different approach to social security and social investment and protection in Scotland? One of the things that we have found over the course of our deliberations is that the vast bulk of folk who come here, no matter their ability or disability, actually want to be in employment. A lot of them have barriers to getting into employment because, as Angela Constance just said, the system is far too rigid. I want to paint a wee picture, convener. Somebody who has a disabled child, who is in receipt of carers allowance, who would have childcare difficulties if they worked out with school time, told that if they earn over £110 they lose everything. It is desperate to work. Employers have flexibility to allow that to happen, but it is still all very difficult. In terms of being able to break even if they lose the benefit, they have to earn £27,000 a year. Somebody desperate to work, a system that is really impeding that, so that in Scotland we should have the ability to get rid of that rigidity, to apply common sense and actually help those folk back who want to go into work, back into work, and ensure that they do not lose anything because they want to go back into work. We did an analysis of the work programme last year because we were speaking at an employability conference and I worked out that, since the work programme started, a disabled person on it is four times as likely to be sanctioned as actually to be placed in what is called a positive outcome, in other words, work of any lengthy period whatsoever. You have a system that is punishing people rather than supporting them into work. Everything that disabled people said about the work programme from the outset is coming through. Cherrypicks works with those closest to the labour market when they are referred to get them into work because they are easier to get into work and those that have either never been in work or far from the labour market because they have acquired impairments or because they are women, are not given the tailored support that they actually need. There is a lot of time spent on pushing people towards work who cannot work, which is a waste of resources, rather than helping those who genuinely want to move into work and are capable of part-time work, probably with support, but are maybe not capable of a full-time job because of the nature of impairments. Somebody with MS or ME, for example, would be much more interested in part-time work because fatigue is a huge factor in their lives. They are often not able to work full-day and they cannot get that sort of support from the system as it exists because it only recognises that full-time work is valuable. Again, it punishes it with universal credit. It will begin to punish people who do not take additional steps to move from part-time work to full-time work. We need to redesign the system. The case that I would make is that the people who know best about how the system affects their lives are disabled women included who are in that system and they can make the recommendations. That is one of the things that we would urge the committee to do, which is urge the Scottish Government to work with people to genuinely co-produce the future benefit system in Scotland so that it takes into account all the needs, particularly childcare needs and, again, parents who disabled children face additional barriers on top of the normal childcare barriers to get the sort of childcare that fits the needs of their child who may not be able to go into just a conventional childcare centre. If it were possible for Scotland to redesign the system, that would be the optimum solution because we need to think more broadly about where we want to go for the future. If I had a magic wand and could give it to the Scottish Parliament, it would be fantastic if we could have a system that enabled people, both men and women, to earn a living wage working four days a week rather than five. The working week became four days a week because what that would do is simultaneously allow the benefits of the unpaid work that society needs in terms of caring for children, caring for other people and all the community activity to take place. If we had a magic wand, that would work for women, but I think it would also work for men. The alternative is to make less bad the system that we've already got. It is, unfortunately, rigid and complicated and has not been designed through a female eye, so that is by far the messier and more difficult situation. I would urge that Scotland thinks about integrating what it does in the way of benefits or social security with what it does in the way of supporting people into work and does it in recognition that people have lives outside work which involve unpaid work that society needs just as much as the paid work there is? I was just looking at the report that was published yesterday which some of the organisations who were involved in from Napier University were commissioned by the Scottish Government and there are some about tracking welfare reform and there are some very powerful testimonies in there which overlap with our concerns around women accessing the labour market, including, for example, the powerful description of the difficulty of getting ready to go to work or to attend a compulsory job interview having been up all night dealing with it and supporting a child with a disability in the home. I am sure that the committee will look at that report, but there is something in there that we cannot wait to try to sort out. While there are and the STC would support the devolution of further powers in this regard, there are also some steps that we need to find away as a society in Scotland of addressing right now that recognises those pressures and those lives that women are living. To come back to the evidence that was taken at the previous meeting around the value of unpaid work, in a way, we case study some of that up. If there is some other way that allowances can be devised or support can be given to that type of family situation that does not necessarily wait until we have additional powers, we need to look at those things. The second thing that I wanted to pick up on is around the living wage and that is something that the Fair Work Convention has made a commitment to promoting and extending the living wage. Obviously, we would be supportive of that, however. I would be concerned that it has become a kind of shorthand for an aspiration, which, to be honest, is not adequate in our view. If you match up what we would say was the value of care, the value of both child care and care for the elderly, the skills that are involved in giving really good quality care for everybody in our communities, the living wage is not high enough. It is not enough, to be honest. It links into the problems around segregation and occupational segregation. I want to see a campaign that says that care workers are worth a considerably larger amount. The independent review that has been published on the childcare workforce and the school care workforce gives us an opportunity to have a bit of that discussion as well. What are our national standards that we expect for payment around care? It is not enough to say that we value unpaid care. We need to begin to put some figures on that. I do not have the statistics here, but I know that the Scottish Government has done some of that. In a two-wage household, where both workers are on the living wage, the income drops because of the knock-on effect on working tax credit and child tax credit. We really need to look at the interrelationship between some of the headlines and what is happening in terms of household income, not just individual income. I will come back briefly to points that have been made about employment, support and the lack of flexibility and further powers. Specifically, one other thing that we mentioned in our report and recommendations is that, through whatever avenues that the committee might have to push for as much flexibility as possible for the clause in the Scotland Bill that sets out powers over employment support. As that goes through Parliament, that is something that we are looking at. Just to come in on some more examples of the inflexibility of the system and following up from what Jill was saying there about employment support, we are working with predominantly newly granted refugee women and also women arriving in the country through refugee family reunion. There are many barriers that women face that are similar to those that have been discussed already. Additionally, barriers that come from their prior experience before arriving in Scotland, experiences of trauma, health issues and persecution, but there are particular issues within the welfare system. Those women are coming into the system already at a disadvantage, not knowing very much about the system. It is a very complex system. Our evidence shows that they are facing financial hardship and issues around dependency. There are particular impacts on the groups of women around the system and how it is inflexible to their needs. For example, we are finding that over 90 per cent of our clients are being sanctioned in the first six months of being on welfare support. That suggests that the issues around their understanding of the system and their English language—we know that our client group, almost two thirds of them—have very basic levels of English. It certainly implies some issues around the complexity of the system and how that affects them and how they are being punished for that rather than supported at that early stage. We have examples of the refugee women's strategy group that we work with. We have been working with some Scottish Government funding to develop a tailored employment support programme for refugee women. They have developed the system themselves with the Glasgow Weasel Forum. They developed the programme with the Glasgow Weasel Forum and participated in it. It was evaluated and it found—developed a model of very targeted employment support that really worked for them. It was not about being put on to a general work programme that did not meet their specific needs. It was about them saying that this is what we need to help us into employment. As others have said, they really wanted to be in employment, but there were needs there that were not being met around English language, around IT literacy, around the timing and childcare available to participate in those programmes. Scotland could really do something if it had the powers to design more tailored employment support to meet the needs of those different groups of women. I think that would be really beneficial. That is interesting. Your comments on women refugees who have been sanctioned within six months because we have had communications with UK ministers and they insist that the sanctions regime is an issue of last resort. It is hard to imagine that someone has got into a position of last resort within six months of arriving in the country, but that is just another evidence of the contradiction between the position of the Government and the reality on the ground. Jo, what do you want to do? I think that just to re-registrate some of what Nina was saying and others have said about employability support. For women who have experienced domestic abuse, they find it really difficult to get back into work when they feel able to do so. There is very little support for them in relation to building their self-esteem and their confidence and understanding the impact that abuse has had on them. Two per cent of women, according to EHRC research, lose their jobs as a result of domestic abuse and often then struggle going through applications for employment support allowance, which does not recognise the impact of domestic abuse on their physical and mental health and also then going through jobseekers allowance, conditionality requirements and being sanctioned as a result of not being able to cope with them. We would certainly be making a plea for employability support programmes that can offer specialised support to women in that situation. Before I come to Margaret McDougall, I wanted to offer Suzanne the opportunity to come in at this point. We have found a lot of what is being said today. Women are telling us primarily about the system being very punitive. It is not supporting back-into-work a lot. Women are finding that the system is keeping them out of employment and it is keeping them back. They are, because a lot of the thresholds, particularly with tax credits, stop them going for promotions and access to employment. Therefore, they feel they are stuck in poverty. If they have the system supporting them out of it, they are keeping them there. One of the things that we are looking for is more support to get women back into employment education skills. In particular, we find the impact is even worse on rural women. Rural women are finding that it is so much harder for them because they do not have a lot of stuff on their doorstep. We have said a lot about transport and childcare. All those things make it so much harder for women living in rural communities to even get to job interviews on time. On the sanctions, I note in the submission from Inclusion Scotland that sanctions for lone parents on GISA have risen from under £200 per month prior to 2008 to £4,700 per month now, which is absolutely shocking. We still have ministers who are in denial around us. It is just unbelievable. My question was on jobseekers allowance and just how people are dealt with when they go along to the job centres, particularly people with mental health issues. That is something that is very often overlooked. Has anyone seen any evidence that mental health is actually taken into account? Do people who are working in those offices have any skills to recognise where people actually have mental health issues? I welcome comments. The evidence is that, if it is taken into account, it is taken into account in a very negative way. Of the disabled people who are being sanctioned, 60 per cent of those who are sanctioned have either mental health issues or learning difficulties or both. We are coming back to the same problem as refugee women. They may have an incomplete understanding of the conditions that are applied to them. They may agree to conditions that are completely unrealistic for them. They will have 30 job applications a week when it would take them hours to complete a single one. It takes me hours to complete a single job application if I less somebody will learn difficulties. It is all those sorts of things. Whether that is targeting or not, it is certainly a complete disregard for the barriers that they face in meeting the conditions for the received benefit. Women with mental health issues are being disproportionately affected by the sanctions regime. Women are telling us the same thing that I am often, when they go for assessments, that it is all based on physical issues. There is no real understanding of mental health and what is happening to them and the pushes for full-time work. When often women make mental health issues, maybe part-time work is made more suitable to them, taking a support them back into the workplace. We are finding a lot of issues. Can I make one more point on this? It is a really important one. We have just published a research report that very much echoes the Scottish Government's tracking study. One of the huge concerns that I have is that women who were victims of sexual abuse in the assessment system, which has just been said, were having to relive the trauma of their abuse because they were meeting a male assessor for the first time and being asked to recount the details of why they had post-traumatic stress syndrome. It is a completely different experience for women, how can we say that even to their GP, who she may have known for years and years and years, to disclose that. However, to be forced to disclose it in an interview with somebody that you have never met and go over the details of it and how it has affected your mental health, I think that it is appalling. We have to do it in the whole paper system that existed for disability living allowance. That would not have happened. Women would have been able to disclose, she would have got medical evidence to support her claim and the award would have been made. Now the concentration is on the physical effects rather than the mental health effects. One woman was actually visited at home on a Saturday night by a male assessor who spent 15 minutes hammering at her door and phoned the police. She left a note and said that she would come back on Tuesday and rather than face that, she dropped her claim. Those are the sort of issues. If we are going to design a more humane system, we have to take into account the mental health issues that affect people and really tailor the system to deal with them rather than force them to go through an assessment that is usually unnecessary to get benefits in need to live on. To quickly mention another specifically gendered element, which Bill, you have brought up at our last event about the fact that women have to, in order to be eligible for an ESA on grounds of mental health, are having to provide different forms of proof that they are eligible for it because they are women. Bill, you might know more about it. They have to provide different forms of proof. A woman at risk of self-harm or suicide has to have more wrong with that than a man in the same position. She has to provide, when they apply for ESA and they go to the assessment, the actual assessor's instructions, the regulations, the guidance that they are bound by, tells them that there has to be a higher level of risk for a woman than for a man. So, to get the employment support allowance, a woman has to be in greater danger of suicide than a man. I just find that, again, it is pure and outright discrimination and I am sure that it is challengeable, but somebody has to take a case before those regulations will be struck down. I think that, having heard that, one specific will take out of this this morning, and I will write to the UK Government and ask specifically to explain why that is the situation, because that is an appalling set of circumstances. Some specific examples might be helpful because, if you are female, the system does not work for you, but if you have anything else at all, whether you cannot speak English very well, whether you are disabled, whether you have mental health problems, whether you are a lone parent, there are some issues. So, here is an example that was sent to me this morning. A few years ago, my husband was made redundant when he had to claim job seekers. I had a baby and there was a foot of snow outside. Post delivery and buses were cancelled and I live in a rural area up a hill where nobody on our village road was able to get out that day. I phoned them to let them know I couldn't get into town with my baby to sign on that week, but I would come as soon as I could perhaps the following day. I called first thing that morning. They sanctioned my payment that week. I put in a challenge to get it reassessed. I didn't eat properly that week while still breastfeeding. I was so stressed. We coped. Then, when I was to launch my own business, I applied for a small start-up grant and I was refused because there had been a sanction. It was such a humiliating experience. It's well known that shame is a trauma and yet they do this to people. I don't think it's about saving money at all. It's an ideologically driven exercise which enslaves. Then, a caller to a gingerbread helpline, a single parent, had a five-year-old child and is being pressured by her work programme to look for full-time jobs and her provider didn't explain about the parent's flexibilities. They exist but they're not explained to people who might get them. A caller was required to attend two to three-hour sessions during the summer holidays. She was told not to bring her children, but there was no suitable childcare available. Another caller was told to pay for childcare himself during the summer holidays while on a work programme. He also was told he had to look for full-time work when his child turns 11. That's a lone parent and that's not correct. In the report, there are examples after examples of the unfair system being applied in a punitive way, or that the easements and flexibility in the system not being communicated or allowed to the person. When the person is sanctioned, the ability to appeal not being communicated clearly to the person. People are in a no-win situation and there are individual people with individual stories that the inquiry listened to over and over again which are heartbreaking. Those people that are articulated more able to handle it fully acknowledge they say, I was able to get this to happen. I was able to get my sanction overturned because I'm reasonably well educated, but Lord knows how anybody who is depressed or disabled or can't speak English does it. Those are the people who cannot speak up for themselves. They have no money. I just wanted to pick up on a couple of things. I've got a couple of reports that I'll pass on to the committee from different trade unions. The SUC has a number of different affiliated trade unions. The shop workers union, mainly with workers in the retail sector, produced a report looking at the impact of some of the changes over the last few years under the previous UK Government. One of the points that they pick up there is the recurring numbers of women who don't return to work after they've had a baby and the drop-off there. There is an issue in there both in terms of what workplace conditions have been negotiated for women to return to work, but also around the cross-over with real concerns about poverty then as a consequence because of the capping and freezing around benefits, impact on maternity benefits as well, but also around what I wanted to flag up was postnatal depression and a number of the conditions associated with mental health following the birth of a child for which the system and employers, in general, are really, really inadequately prepared to support and deal with. I do think that sometimes women don't return to work not because that's really the best choice but because there's not been the support in the system to phase a return, to mentor them when they go back to work or whatever, and there are a whole number of things that, again, we could do together as employers and trade union reps. The second point that I wanted to pick up on is some interesting work that Unite the Union has been doing around the mental health of the reps, trade union reps in the workplace, and I think there is an emerging real issue there as well. For us, in terms of collectively trying to best support people in staying in work or doing what's best for them at a particular time in their life but returning to the labour market, the role of trade union reps is very important and the anecdotal evidence and now some of the case studies is showing, as Unite have demonstrated, that the mental health of their own reps is really deteriorating. People are having to deal with horrendous case studies, really difficult situations. Many many advice workers are not experts in the complexities of the benefit system, the in-work allowances and the way everything overlaps with each other. It's difficult to get the appropriate signposting and the effort and trauma and pressure that is being experienced by trade union reps is also becoming an issue. I think again in terms of the Scotland that we want to be part of and the context set by our aspirations to work closely trade unions, to work with employers and respect that collective bargaining can really be an asset working with HR and working in a workplace. Then we need to look at that, so facility time is important, the support for reps is important, then we should see that as an investment in helping people manage and negotiate what is a very difficult economic situation at present. I can pass on some of those reports to the committee. I'll come to Angela and then come back to the deputy convener before we move too far away from the point that she wanted to make. I just wanted to link some of those points together to make the point really that what we're talking about is systemic failure, the systemic failure to prioritise equality and to prioritise dignity and decency, despite the legislative requirements to do that through the public sector equality duties, through the social work act and the duty on public authorities to ensure social welfare, through commitments to end child poverty and so on. I think what we're seeing is the cumulative effect on women's lives, the chaos that has been wreaked on people's lives by these reforms to welfare that are politically motivated to drive people out the system and to reduce welfare spend as a deficit reduction measure with no regard for the cost to people's lives and subsequently the cost to public services and that triple jeopardy that the faucet society identified of the cumulative impact of the loss of women's jobs, the impact of cuts, public spending cuts on women's lives and the withdrawal of public services and those political choices that at the UK level that I have seen by Professor Diane Ellson's reckoning and I know Diane was here with the committee last week. The political choice to remedy previous spending decisions, previous political decisions, by taking 82 per cent of public spending cuts as opposed to 18 per cent in income tax revenue. They are politically motivated choices and I think choices that we need to lay bare and consistent with that is the impact of the council tax freeze in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK, differently rolled out and differently mitigated in different places but nonetheless that's having an effect on the poorest amongst us and poor people's lives, their access to services and compounding again the cumulative effect of the systemic failure to recognise the differential impact within cuts to the benefits system as poor people rely most on public services that are being withdrawn and according to colleagues from the poverty alliance and child poverty action group the council tax freeze isn't actually reaching those with the lowest incomes so again that cumulative effect being compounded and I think in terms of actions again I would take the committee back to the budget and how are resources being allocated to mitigate and eliminate these excesses and the consequences of these political decisions. In plan F, the Scottish Women's Budget Group in UK, women's budget group set out a series of ways in which some of these decisions could be rectified and some of these are within the scope of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. Currently and with the further powers that are being discussed there is opportunity to reverse some of the cuts to public services, there is opportunity to address some of the administrative barriers that are causing the kind of chaos that we're hearing about. The equality pledge that the Scottish Government has made is a welcome step to putting business responsibility for workers' rights back in the frame in a sense so there are plenty of levers currently and more to come but they have to be seen across the piece I think is the biggest plea we would make through plan F and through using how public resources are allocated and the scrutiny that is applied back to public authorities around the decision making that they make. How do decisions like the one that Bill has just talked about in terms of the criteria for women to demonstrate the poor state of their mental health to be higher, those criteria to be set at a higher level than men and the public health directors have come out against that but that again needs to follow up. How did that systemic failure happen within a decision making process that results in that effect on individuals? Okay, thank you, Angela. I'll come to the clear for you to make the point. It was really when we were talking about what has happened so far in terms of reform of the social security system but we're neither in a static situation in terms of extra powers or in what's still to come and I would like to tease out what the impact I think the faucet society and close the gap both mentioned the effect of universal credit and loan parent families and also very concerned about the £3 billion cut to disability benefits still to come in the move from DLA to PIP and I wonder if we could tease out just what that transition is doing and what you expect the problems to be. I mean we expect half of current recipients of the higher rate mobility component of DLA to lose it on the transfer to personal independence payment because the new walking test is if you can walk 20 metres whereas the DLA test was if you can walk 50 metres safely, repeatedly etc. So, as you may have noticed, high profile cases already being reported, a Paralympian lost her mobility component when she was reassessed for the new benefit and as I said the DWP expects around 50% of current recipients of higher rate mobility to lose it and that has a particular impact on Scotland which is far more rural than the rest of the United Kingdom. We have people living a lot further from services, retail etc and the loss of the mobility component and probably in about a third of the cases their mobility vehicle will mean that they just cannot reach services on their own which is going to impose extra costs on them at a time when they have lost benefits. So, there is definitely going to be a very severe impact and one of the main problems is if there is a delay in the transfer of the benefits, we will have already lost a large part of the budget that we might want to use in a different way when we get control of DLA carers allowance etc. If most of the people have already been transferred across to the new benefit, then people are already lost and I do not think that the Scottish Government is going to be able to raise sufficient funds to put that right again. Whereas, if the transfer took place just now, we might be able to stop that loss to disable people's income. I took evidence just the other week from a woman who was in work who had the high mobility DLA who was very afraid that PIP would be withdrawn. I wonder if Inclusion Scotland or any other organisation have done any analysis into the net contribution to the public purse of folks who are in work who currently receive that higher level of mobility who may lose out, because in that case, convener, and I am sure of many others, that woman was a net contributor. Done by Disability Rights UK to investigate how many disabled people currently in work are likely to lose entitlement to benefits that help them to remain in work. The problem is that you cannot say with absolute certainty that you will lose your mobility component, you will also lose your job. However, it will probably be a contributing factor in some disabled people losing their jobs. I think that there have been estimates that I can look them out for you and send them on as to what the actual loss in terms of tax revenues is likely to be. I think that that would be extremely useful, thank you. It has already been mentioned that the vast majority of lone parents are women, and what we know is that the new income support rules require single mothers to take part in work-focused interviews when their youngest child is one, and women with children as young as three or four can be required to undertake mandatory work activity. Recipients of job-seekers allowance can be referred to job-centre plus staff to complete unpaid work placements of four weeks for up to 30 hours a week. The implications around childcare are quite clear there, and those who do not comply face sanctions. What we know about childcare is that it is massively expensive and prohibitively so for a lot of people, so that is in some ways one of the most immediate barriers to women accessing the labour market or going back into the labour market after having children. Lone parents are particularly impacted in that respect. If they do manage to secure childcare, although provision in itself is patchy, particularly for women with disabled children or women living in rural areas, they are likely to have to take part-time work in order to balance their paid work with the childcare responsibilities, but part-time work is largely concentrated in low-paid, undervalued jobs. That means that many women are working below their skill level and their potential, and that impacts on their pay, on their progression and on their income in retirement, but that also means that the women's skills are being underutilised, so the economic impact that has on local economies but also on Scotland's economy as well. I want to touch on a different point, but it is very well connected in relation to the benefits cap and whether any of the groups here have done any analysis on the impacts of the benefits cap, given that the talk is now to further reduce that. All the evidence that we have had thus far, if not absolutely pointedly, has suggested that we should have a human rights-based approach to how we develop or fix a broken system. I realised yesterday—there was a bit of news yesterday—that Lord Kerr in the Supreme Court has ordered a judicial review of the benefits cap and its impact on children. Given that 85 per cent of all the welfare cuts impact on women and the biggest majority of them will be the carers of those children, I am looking to see if there has been any work or analysis that is understanding to help us to understand that. I know that when it was picked out very early in the benefits cap that people suffer in domestic violence, who are in refugees—that was a huge impact in the managed change quite quickly—whether there has been any campaign and work or anything done to understand that. Whether, on top of all that, if I withdraw from the ECHR and the Human Rights Act, I will take away all that ability for people to have those challenges that Bill spoke about and for Lord Kerr to make his recommendation that it should be judicially reviewed because, in the rights of the child, it did not give adequate food, shelter, clothing, warrant or the basic necessities of life. That is a fundamental part of all that. We are talking about bits of the system that matter greatly, but the overall system and the ability to challenge that—when you have the ability to challenge it or you have got somebody to advocate on your behalf—is very detrimentally impacted upon. I know that that is a bit quite a lot of stuff in there, but it seems to tie up lots of points that people have made around the table this morning. We have the Scottish National Action Plan on human rights, and how we can work with that if we could have some sort of a devolution of human rights to ensure that we have a system that has a human rights approach? I do not know of any work yet, but I am sure that people will be beavering away on it. We know that netmums to the survey of 2,000 mothers have discovered that 1 in 5 mothers are going without meals in order that their children might eat. The benefits cap is not going to improve that situation at all. It has been done in terms of campaigns and our analysis to date on women generally, but Carers UK has statistics on the benefits cap, and thousands and thousands of carers are impacted. If I am remembering rightly, which seems like a really high figure, but it was an average of £105 per week for those that were affected by it. Obviously, the majority of unpaid carers are women as well, which links slightly to when you were speaking about childcare provision. I was thinking about care in previous sessions, and in a lot of the work that we have done on that, there are points that have been made about that. Of course, we have to get childcare right, but we are looking at it more broadly in terms of care provision. I want to make a very brief point. The concluding observations of the UN Committee on the Convention of Elimination with Discrimination Against Women has already highlighted its concerns around the UK Government's actions in relation to public spending cuts and the impact on women. From a human rights perspective, there is international attention on what is happening in the UK. I just wanted to come back to the references around childcare and the fact that the rights of the child and the entitlement of the child to good quality—not just a roof over their heads, but one of the drivers for investing in early years was around protecting and investing in the rights of the child. If we design a childcare system that has that at its heart and guarantees provision for children, including support for babies and children under the age of three, rather than focusing simply on three and four and up, it would alter the way that everybody interacted with the system, because the child would have the right to a place, care and early education and nurturing from an age that dealt with the rights of the child and protected the investment in the child, but also corresponded to the reality of the rest of the systems, which presumed that from the age of one maternity pay and all those other systems stopped. There is a gap in the system, but it is not meeting the rights of the child. When we are talking about international obligations, I think that there are some avenues there to be explored. To add to that, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women is about to publish her report later this month following her visit to the UK last year, and, certainly, welfare reform and the impact of public sector cuts and austerity on women was one of the issues that was raised by a number of organisations during her visit, so I am sure that it will feature in her report on how the UK are feeling to make its obligations to protect women. I will make a mountain time for us to reference it at some point and keep an eye on it. Bill? The bedroom tax is another area where human rights have been used. One rights for children, disabled children cannot be forced to share a room when on disabled child or another disabled child were a condition that might actually make them prone to broken bones and hyperactive child. A child with brittle bone disease should share the same room, but the bedroom tax cases for disabled adults are now not going to be heard by the Supreme Court until next January, which seems an enormous delay, given that the bedroom tax will then have been in place for nearly three years. Those cases were lodged quite early, so we have got a justice delayed that is justice denied. Although the human rights are there, I would say that the court system needs to speed itself up in terms of human lives. It is not an effective remedy if you cannot get justice for three years or six years or seven years in cases equal pay or some cases a lot longer than that. I very much agree with what Anjoid said earlier that there needs to be a systematic change. One of the things that we have been working on lately with the Scottish Government, civil servants and social security, is specifically on the Scottish welfare fund, where we already have powers over, not quite a benefit, but a hardship payment that is paid to people in crisis or in needy specific items. Some of the evidence that we gave here was quite negative about disabled people's experience of the Scottish welfare fund. The civil servants came to us and said, will you work with us to try and improve the delivery of the service? We have been working with people first, which is a learning disabled organisation, Highland users group, which is mental health service users, and the British Deaf Association, because they have some of the biggest problems in terms of engaging with the service that is currently there, to design a training package for local authority staff who deliver the service, and it actually brought disabled people and the practitioners together in one place, and I think managed to restore what should have been there from the outset, which is seeing the people in receipt of the service as human beings, with specific needs that need to be addressed. Out of that has come a training pack, information materials that are much more accessible and easy to read, BSL, et cetera, and a film that can be used in the future to train new staff coming in to deliver that service to everybody. I think that it will benefit everybody, it will not just benefit disabled users of that service. That was my colleagues Sue Kelly and Ian Sneddon that worked on that, and Dorothy Ogill from the Scottish Government Social Security Division. I just want you to throw in that there is some positive work going on that is an example of how you can co-produce the delivery of a service that actually takes into account what people's needs are and how best to meet that. We need a systemic approach, but we have made a start with the benefit that we have, which is a good thing. I will throw something in. Whenever I have been having discussions personally, or even when we have had formal sessions like this, there has obviously been discussions about looking forward to the delivery of Smith and the potential for new devolved powers to be used positively. When I have asked people to give us specific indications of the types of things they would want to see happening, one that has come up on more than one occasion, and the gender paper touches on this, is about reinstating benefits that have been taken away rather than creating new ones that we have never had before, and one that has cropped up has been maternity grants. I was wondering if people have got a view on that, or do you have specific ideas of gender-specific benefits that could be helpful? On maternity grants, one of my past roles was as chief exec of the NCT, which is the National Childbirth Trust. The maternity grant, which was a grant paid quite late on in pregnancy, is a lump sum. It depends on what you want to achieve by it, but one of the issues in pregnant women is making sure that they can feed themselves properly because if your diet is poor in pregnancy it increases your risk of having a premature baby, which is obviously devastating for the parents and expensive for the state. There is an argument that what is needed is a little amount every week that starts back in early pregnancy, and one of the suggestions that was made was rather than a maternity grant, which is useful as a lump sum for a single large item, a better way of doing it would be perhaps to think about starting child benefit in pregnancy. Once the woman goes to report her pregnancy to a midwife, child benefit starts perhaps at half the rate from early in pregnancy, allowing the woman sufficient weekly income to meet her nutritional needs. That would be perhaps a better way of doing it than copying the existing benefit, which was not put in with a great deal of thought that I might add. Although it was popular, it did not achieve the objective that it was set out to achieve. That is helpful. I might get the country wrong. I think that it was Finland that at the STC we were doing a training course with women in Scotland's economy a couple of weeks ago. One of the examples there was that there was a box, a maternity box, but not the small-scale type of intervention that we have here. After the baby is born, there is significant contribution from the state to prams, to clothes, to basic vouchers around provision. However, it was completely equal for all families. I think that that type of approach has real potential. There are things that could be done if we look at how we spend our budgets in Scotland, which might have, without bringing back a benefit, but we would get into some of the... Just recognising that bringing children into the world is an important contribution to society and, practically, there are ways of providing assistance. In a way that says that the whole of society welcomes this and we will support you. Here is some very practical, serious financial contribution. The issue of the cap on child benefit and some of these other things, the cap on maternity benefit that they are talking about, those are not obviously good things either and are going to reduce household income. I think our concern around continually reducing the household income, which is why I made that point earlier about where on paper it might look like there are two wages coming into the house. Bringing a baby into that situation, where the household income is reducing, will not necessarily, from the other evidence that we know, protect the health of the mother who will not necessarily feed herself properly during the first year of that child's life either because priority is given to the other things that need to be dealt with in the home. It is important that household income is raised and protected during that period in a way that also protects the mother's health. We were quite interested in that as a proposal, as an idea. I wanted to pick up on what you said about our report mentioning the reinstatement of benefits for certain groups. I think that we mentioned carers and parents. I think that the point there is really a broader one about compensation for what has been lost because obviously so much has been taken from women's income. It is a broader point about a gender budget analysis that looks at where the money has come from and looks at how to then remedy that or to redress it. One particular thing that springs to mind is carers allowance and the restrictions on there about full-time care. Obviously there are so many young women, older women that are providing part-time care, so flexibility within that model would be something that we could look at if possible. I also wanted to jump back to an issue that we have not really talked about today but came up quite a lot in the previous evidence session, which was about universal credit and the administration of it. Obviously it looks like we are going to get the power over administration of universal credit, so we could do something very different there about how it is paid, when and to whom, because Ann's point is about household really touches on intra-household dynamics and who controls the spend, so that is another very gendered, live issue. Not specific to universal credit but just picking up on that issue of dependency and dynamics within the household is something that we have found is really happening in the situation with refugee families and refugee women in particular, where there is a real dependency, whether that is on a partner for the household income or whether that is on discretionary sources of subsistence, such as the Scottish welfare fund that was mentioned by Bill or social work services payments for families with children. There is a specific issue for refugees around the allocation of national insurance numbers, which is causing significant delays in access to benefits payments, and refugees have 28 days to move on from home office provided asylum support to mainstream welfare. Data from our service evaluation that is going to be published in a couple of weeks is found that it actually takes between, on average, 42 and 50 days after refugees receive status to receive any benefits payments, so there is a big gap there. That is an administrative gap that is currently being plugged by discretionary forms of payment. When national insurance numbers are allocated, they are almost always allocated to the main asylum applicant, which is usually a male head of household. Often female spouses are not allocated a national insurance number until several weeks down the line, and 40 per cent of our clients require significant advocacy to even access a national insurance number from our service, so it is probably an underrepresentation of the issue. We have found that the benefits that are predominantly claimed by women among our clients are the ones that take the longest to be processed, so ESA, income support, child benefit and child tax credit are taking between 46 and 77 days on average to be received by people. Those are people who are women and families whose support will end after 28 days, so they are effectively being left destitute for a period of time. That is purely because of administrative delay, so there are issues there that really need to be addressed. At the moment, local authorities and the Scottish welfare fund are picking up the gap there, so something really needs to change there. For family reunion, the situation is particularly problematic around dependency because all the rights and entitlements to benefit come through the usually male refugee head of household and the female and children who are joining that person do not have any rights in their own names, so all the benefits, once they are processed, go through the male head of household, the sponsors, bank account and the women in the family do not have any access to financial independence in that scenario. I am sure that that is something that chimes with... I can see Jo's hand is up. I think that it is something that we would strongly urge the Scottish Government and its committee to consider when looking at the administration of universal credit. If Scotland does have the ability to change the payment system to not just to one person in the household, which will normally be the male head of household model, it is something that some researchers just recently done by our colleagues at Mimosaid England with the TUC asking women who are experiencing domestic abuse whether they would... The DWP offers the alternative payment arrangement for specific cases where there is domestic abuse, you can request a payment to be split. Women have said that they would in no way be able to do that because it would put them at greater risk if they were trying to assert their any control over the money that was coming into the house. It is important that the administration is split at the very beginning, not as a request process. Annabelle Ewing. We would support that from the STUC in terms of individualising entitlement right from the beginning. I just wanted to... There isn't time to discuss this in detail, but I can see its reference in some of the paperwork, is the issue of self-employment and the disproportionate and rapid increase there has been among self-employment amongst women, which we know isn't corresponding to a higher tax take, so it's probable that many of these women are struggling financially, or at least not in a very high-income situation. The interrelationship between that and an inflexible benefit system and some of the possible consequences around universal credit and the administration of the system need to be looked at. I think there's something that perhaps could be explored in more detail with a number of different organisations in the future, but the labour market statistics are showing that change and everybody's noticing the change, but we're not having a discussion about what that might mean for some of the policy initiatives that are coming forward. Annabelle Ewing. Just a very quick point to follow up on what Ann was saying about self-employed women. Although the numbers are growing, we know as well that women's experience of running their own business is that they face significant barriers. The reasons that they start their own businesses in the first place is often because they've been forced out of the labour market, because they haven't been able to access flexible working or they've had problems with childcare, or they haven't been able to get promoted because they have other responsibilities. Work done by women's enterprise Scotland in particular has identified that women experience significant problems trying to grow their business from a lack of gender-specific support and investment. They are concentrated among the lowest-paid, self-employed people. Just to reinforce and to add to the list, I think that the top of the list is to support comments made by colleagues about universal credit and the urgency with which the issues around payment and designated recipients have to be addressed. Other things to add to the list of recommendations, convener, would be comments already made about the level and direction of carers allowance. Using the future powers to remove employment tribunal fees, where we've seen a 91 per cent fall in sex discrimination cases, primarily pregnancy maternity-related discrimination. Again, the cumulative effects of women losing their jobs on pregnancy maternity-related having no access to justice and then coming headlong into the kinds of benefits system that we've been discussing today. Colleagues last week, particularly Herod Reid and Diane Ellison, talked about the impacts on levels of transfers and cash benefits through the change in the upgrading system. That needs to be looked at again, where we've seen a loss of income across the piece because of the change in the upgrading system. The final recommendation that colleagues have already touched on in terms of gender budget analysis and ensuring that that's part of the committee's, this committee and other committees scrutiny of draft spending plans and other revenue rating plans as well. Gender budget analysis applied across the piece going forward would be a strong recommendation. specifics. Just going to job seekers allowance. If the guidance on easements could be made regulations that would be helpful and the easement around domestic violence is too complicated and insufficient, if a sanction is applied it would be helpful if job seekers allowance wasn't lost completely because then the risk of you losing other benefits if you have no job seekers allowance and most of all making sure that what's available is communicated to the people applying for job seekers allowance so how the rules actually operate, how to appeal and what to do if you are sanctioned need to be communicated. If I had a magic wand maternity allowance is below the minimum wage and if Scotland could make maternity payments at least at the minimum wage that would be very helpful indeed. One additional recommendation from our perspective in this miscommission it talked about the executive devolution of asylum support to the Scottish Parliament and to Scotland so we would see that as an opportunity to create a system of support for people in the asylum process that doesn't have a gap between when they're granted refugee status that it doesn't have this unacceptable gap that causes people who have rights and entitlements to be destitute so if there was a support system implemented locally that could ensure end-to-end support for people who are entitled to that support then that would be a simple solution. As I just about all about support most of them we're speaking to are completely unaware of what's going to happen to them that still have any much unknown entity and I suppose it's about support through the system. Many of them only know the part of any system that they access and they don't know what we'll face in the future and I think it's mainly their support there at the heart of it because much of the detail most women don't know about and they are at the mercy of their advice that they have so it's mainly a good support system. A lot of what I was going to ask has been covered so I won't duplicate the process. I was very struck by a recurring theme in all the submissions about this whole issue of training and job centres about better availability of advice to claimants and the point you raised Bill which is the provision of a service appropriate to women in certain circumstances which I think made a very powerful or had a very powerful residence with us all. I'm just wondering I mean whether elements of benefit are welfare or reserved Westminster or whether they are devolved at the Scottish Parliament it seems to me that these issues cross borders wherever the provision is coming from and I just wondered if if there was a place for every job centre having to appoint if you like women dedicated officers someone appointed within the job centre to specifically deal with an issue that arises concerning a women claimant rather than perhaps what seems to be at the moment well you come in you need to see someone that's a professional see. Do you usually have a designated officer you know who looks after the claim throughout the time that after they've signed on for the first time after they've made their first claim but yeah I think there should be you know some allowance for people to be able to request you know seeing a woman worker rather than a male worker because of what we've already discussed you know mental health issues that might make dealing with a male with job centre worker quite difficult because you're having to disclose very personal details I think it's difficult to disclose it even to a woman but maybe slightly less fraught than otherwise but yeah I do agree that I think I also think there needs to be more training that's aimed at delivering a humane approach in dealing with people because I think that people in the system are not being treated as human beings they're being treated as other and you know anything that's done to them is is fair because you know that some of them are fraudulent claims you know so because there are less than 1% of people who are defrauding the system 99 990 out of 1000 are being treated as though they're attempting to defraud it when they are in fact genuine in their claims and we need to reverse that you know sure look after public funds but don't treat everybody as a criminal because a few people are I think I think that's one of the lessons and working with job centre staff there should be you know people from women's aid disabled people's organisations you know rape crisis etc working with staff to try and alert them to what some of the issues are that women are facing in the job market I would agree I think there's definitely room for training and awareness raising among job centre staff we've been actually been working with DWP to develop a refugee customer journey to provide a masterclass to frontline workers who are delivering service to refugees so that they better understand their needs and experiences and where they're coming from but I think there's only so much you can do through training and awareness and at the end of the day these problems systemic problems still exist because the system is punitive and it's not supporting women into work it's not supporting women who need that support through social security so yes definitely there's room for training but I don't think that's the answer yeah just very quickly obviously one of one of the trade unions the pcs which represents members who are employed through DWP and so on has the union pcs has raised repeated concerns with the UK government about the staffing levels and the cutbacks and the closures of some of the job centres and I think there is a real issue there about capacity that's not to say that obviously training training is important but there's an issue which has been well flagged up about the move to call centres the move away from face to face the move to having to apply online is in my view completely discriminatory for a whole range of reasons which which which we don't have time to go into just now but I just wanted to flag up that there are also workers trying to deliver a service without adequate resources and in a context where it's a punitive system so the when the redesign takes place and when we look at what could be done in in Scotland fairly quickly and there may be ways that we can look at staffing levels and additional supports around job centres additional maybe I don't in terms of the delivery and not moving immediately to everything having to be done online whatever the there are other ways that possibly we can bring in extra public resources and recognise that some of the cuts at local authority level have withdrawn some of the advocacy and some of the supports and some of the like library closures it's make it harder for people to access the internet and you know there's a whole number of issues there which are bound up but where we could possibly make some change when we look at the whole Scottish spend prior to to rolling out some of the changes that clear identified. Melinda, you wanted to make a point earlier on before you were able to make it. I think what everybody's asking for is that whilst there are things that we can do to make the current system less bad an ideal solution is a redesign that if Scotland could make that happen in Scotland which would enable everybody to have a life that involves work and earning enough money to live and covers their caring responsibilities and which is designed knowing that until things dramatically change in the world men and women have different lives and we need a system that does not unfairly penalise women or women with other disadvantages in the way that it does at the moment and I think our wish would be that Scotland would have the powers it needs to create that system as an example to show that it can be done. I'm happy to take final contributions I know you will have come here this morning hoping to make various points if you haven't got all the points that you wanted to get across to use your chance to do it. I've made all the points I want to make but I've got copies of the report that we've just published. It was only air weeks over the weekend for members of the committee and I think that will tell you a lot of the problems that people are facing in fairly hard way in detail. There are case studies but there's also been some quantitative work in it and I think it's fairly impressive piece of work and certainly I'll leave it here for members of the committee. Is there anyone else? One thing that hasn't been mentioned is around the English language requirement and you mentioned people for whom English isn't their first language and how they experience the system and I'd like to raise a few concerns about the English language requirement and it's again another example of inflexibility and learners are we've heard it's still to be seen how it's going to play out because it's quite new but we've had learners telling us that they've been told their own language assessments are confidential and they can't access them so they're going through a mandatory system where they're not able to access their own assessments. It's a provision that's only speaking and listening and if you're currently in ESO provision that's provided by a provider in Scotland or a college in Scotland you have to leave that, you have to withdraw yourself from that course to do the mandatory DWP provided provision and that's only speaking and listening it doesn't include reading and writing and there's a whole host of concerns around it and on the one hand it's a good thing that there's more access to ESO classes for people and that it's actually child friendly but on the other hand it's very inflexible and it doesn't suit women who prefer more flexible learning and community-based learning at all so there's some concerns about that and I think in terms of the ESOL the new ESOL strategy in Scotland what can Scotland do to try to influence that and ensure that the provision is better linked up and more holistic. Just briefly we haven't had the opportunity to touch on the impact of the cuts to EU migrants in Scotland particularly women experiencing domestic abuse who have no recourse to public funds in certain situations and where they have no entitlement to housing benefit and are unable to access refugee accommodation as a result. I know that a number of women's e-groups in Scotland have made submissions to the committee giving case studies on this and I would urge the committee to really have a look at what mitigating measures can be taken to protect and ensure women in that situation are protected. I'm sure we'll do that and have the report include that type of information. Is there anything else that people want to contribute? Obviously if you go away and you come across more information or there's something that you think that our report would benefit from including please let us know this isn't your only opportunity to inform us and guide us in the direction that we need to go so at any time any information emerges which you think our report could benefit from please let us have it. I think we had some very substantial and challenging information given to us this morning we will take forward and we're going to produce our report after the summer and have a debate in the parliament on it so hopefully you'll see some of those recommendations included and we'll take it forward in that way but on behalf of the committee thanks very much to you all for your contributions this morning. I certainly found it very informative and helpful so thank you for coming along. I'll suspend the meeting for a few minutes. The second panel is made up of organisations that have a particular interest in the impact on children and families so we welcome before us Mark Baill, our head of policy at Bernardus Scotland, Hannah McColloch policy and parliamentary officer at the child poverty action group in Scotland and Marion Davis head of policy and research one parent families in Scotland. Do you have any opening comments that you want to make? Have you prepared anything or discussed amongst yourselves how you're going to delete his offer? Would you prefer we just go to questions? I mean I suppose having listened to the first session I thought it was worth flagging up some of the specific reforms that are having such a big disproportionate impact on women and children in families specifically and it was research I think that was prepared for this committee that found that the average household in Scotland was losing something like 440 pounds a year as a result of welfare changes altogether but for a lone parent family that's closer to 1800 pounds which is huge from households that are traditionally low income anyway so the reforms that the IFS have said have made the biggest difference in terms of child poverty. The biggest difference is upgrading and changes to the way benefits have been upgraded from year to year and particularly child benefit. A family with two children has lost 1,100 pounds over the last four years in terms of a reduction in the way that child benefit is upgraded alone so that is very much something that I think needs to be addressed. Tax credits, the removal of the baby element of tax credits and changes to the way tax credits are being administered is particularly affecting low income families. There's been a more hard line approach taken by HMRC in terms of recovering overpayments of tax benefits that used to be a cap on how much money HMRC could take back that is now gone and overpayments are being taken back in huge chunks which is leaving families in a really difficult position. The benefit cap as well as you've already touched on and the residence test that's being applied to EEA nationals is having a disproportionate impact on women because if you now have to have a job or a genuine prospect of having a job within three months of being in the country rather than six months which means as women are less likely to be able to find employment quickly because of caring responsibilities they're losing access to a wide range of benefits and also because people seeking work are no longer entitled to housing benefit if they're EEA nationals. Women who leave relationships whether it's for domestic violence or other reasons and lose their rights reside can no longer access housing benefits. So that was just a rundown of the main specific reforms and the specific impact they're having on children with families. Mark? I think for Bonaros and I think probably like a lot of organisations we were aware that welfare changes were having a disproportionate effect on women but I was shocked that the figure was as high as 85% of the impact of welfare changes being on women and that means that in many ways when we talk about the impact of welfare changes on children as you would expect from Bonaros we're actually talking about the impact of welfare changes on women and children and the two go together and when we think about the child poverty strategy for example which is an area that Bonaros along with CPAC and One Parent family Scotland have been very involved in actually that that agenda statistic changes some of the way I think we have to think about about the child poverty strategy. If you look at the current Scottish child poverty strategy it does very clearly make the link between women and child poverty it highlights on on page eight of the 2014 to 2017 child poverty strategy that groups that face a significantly higher risk of poverty include single parents, families with three or four, more children, families containing a disabled person and we had particular evidence from Bill Scott earlier about the impact on families with disabled children. If you look at the most recent quarterly poverty briefing from the Scottish Government it highlights in particular when it's looking at severe poverty that that looking at groups at risk of severe and extreme poverty young mothers are twice have a 17% likelihood of being in severe or extreme poverty compared to all mothers on 8% it highlights the impact of being a lone parent of having a disability. So there are strong links between that are already quite clear between women and poverty but I just I don't think they're bought out nearly enough in current child poverty approaches in Scotland and Hannah outlined in in her evidence some of the things that have happened and which have had disproportionate impacts on women in particular tax credits and the impact on women with low incomes that we heard in the earlier group the impact of women being moved on to job seekers allowance when lone parents being moved on to job seekers allowance or predominantly women when their youngest child turns five. Looking forward in terms of some of the discussion of where the 12 billion pounds of welfare cuts might come from there's been a lot of emphasis on young people on moving 18 to 21 year olds on to youth allowances on restricting housing benefit access for young people the impact on those with larger families through things like the benefit cap and although it now seems less likely restricting child benefit to larger families. So taken as a whole I think when we think about child poverty and we should recognise much more explicitly that actually social security for women and child poverty go hand in hand because it isn't the children who are poor it's their parents who are poor the impact of welfare reform is hitting the mothers of those children disproportionately as we heard from engender and we know that the particular likelihood of lone parents being in poverty so I think we need a much more integrated approach between the child poverty conversation that doesn't take place in this committee that takes place predominantly in the health committee and the education and culture committee and the social security conversation that takes place here. Maureen, did you want to add in? Yes, we were very pleased when the committee decided to look at women in welfare because 92% of single parents are women and a lot of the impacts around women with children are impacting on single parents. In our submission we looked at income adequacy and as Hannah has said the impact of changes to benefits rates and the freezing of benefits. We also looked at the whole new regime the sanctions regime and that has had a big impact on single parents not only in terms of the impact of a reduction in benefit but also the impact on health and wellbeing which I can go into in more detail later but also thirdly in relation to employability and we felt that that was very important that welfare reform has had a major impact on single parents in terms of access to training and education so although we've been talking about benefits there is this broader broader brush kind of policy context. I was interested in Mark saying about young parents in the fact that they are flagged up as a group which really have suffered in terms of income but sometimes we forget like in the avalanche in a sense of so many benefit changes that young parents actually are paid less benefits than older parents and that's actually going to become worse because the age is going to move up to 25 so there's an issue around around the whole thing to do with with young parents as well. So just to echo what the other two have said really around single parents and the gender perspective we've always felt it's very very important to highlight that one of the reasons that single parents are in poverty is actually because the majority are women. Mark, you indicated or you used the figure of the £12 billion in pending cuts. There is speculation that child benefit is going to be one of the targets in terms of that. You just give us an idea of how that is going to impact on top of what's already happening if you've done any analysis of where these cuts fall, who's going to suffer most and how large is that impact going to be? It's very hard to at this stage understand what the picture is going to be because there's still a lack of clarity about how that 12 billion reduction in welfare spending is going to come about. Obviously there's a degree of optimism that you could achieve that 12 billion reduction in welfare spending because people move off welfare into employment but for many of the families that we work with, the support that they need, the reason why we're working with them is one of the reasons why they're not able to move into employment yet. It's a very unclear picture where those 12 billion pounds of cuts are going to come. Our concern has always been to highlight the potentially unintended consequences of those cuts that we know that if there was a move to reduce housing benefit for families with more than two children that would put those families at greater risk of falling into crisis and there would then be no more need for intervention by local authorities to support those families and potentially organisations like Bonados to support those families. So it's a very hard picture to work out. I was very struck by a on a related issue and by a recent report that came out from the End Youth Homelessness Coalition with research from Hayatwatt University which was looking at a similar issue around the impact of removing housing benefit from 18 to 21 year olds and while there is a potential net saving of around 130 million if you simply took all housing benefit away from that group, if you look more closely at those figures there would need to be some kind of exemption particularly given what we're discussing exemptions for lone parents and other families who had children but were aged under 21 while there's a recognition that it would make no sense to take housing benefit off those groups. If you go through the exemptions, if you add in a prediction of the impact of increased homelessness amongst young people if you took housing benefit away from those young people a saving that appears to be 130 million pounds because that's the cost of housing benefit to 18 to 21 year olds dwindles down to two or three million pounds and that's simply not worth doing if there was even a slightly higher rate of homelessness than those savings would disappear. So when we talk about welfare savings because of the need for necessary exemptions because of the impact on other services in this case it would be local authorities who were having to support families who individuals under 21 or other who declared as homeless those savings all disappear and that's where it's still very unclear how you would actually deliver those kind of savings in welfare without having a massive unintended consequences following on costs and cause misery and poverty to the people who currently rely on those benefits. I was just going to say specifically in relation to child benefit. I think that child benefit is a particularly important benefit for women and a particularly important benefit at the moment because it tends to be paid to the carer of the child in the household which tends to be the women so it's often paid directly to the women giving her control over it and particularly at the moment when we're seeing so many suspensions and sanctions and delays and these kind of things child benefit tends to remain constant so it's a guarantee of some income to households with children when difficulties lead to other benefits being suspended. The fact that it's universal or close to universal now means uptake is very high and I think in terms of where to invest money to ensure that the low income families are benefiting from our perspective child benefit is absolutely vital and so cuts there would be devastating for us and the proposed freeze for the next two years on child benefit will have an extremely detrimental impact. Marian, do you have a view on that? Yeah I mean we would be incredibly upset about child benefit you know being reduced or cut and as Hannah said in relation to to conditionality and sanctions that child benefit is the one constant and you know we've seen a massive increase in parents with children going to food banks in Glasgow it's you know an absolute explosion and you know our staff are dealing with that on a daily basis. We're meeting young pregnant women in Lanarkshire where we have a project who because they haven't eaten our staff have to take them to Tesco to get something to eat before we can even address any of the other issues that we should be looking at and the you know the GRF have got an annually uprated minimum income standard and what they've shown is that a single mother can now only afford 57% of that level and to make further cuts really would be devastating I think and I mean we said in our submission that we don't believe in forced devastation as a policy instrument and I think we're seeing some of that at the moment which you know has an impact on children and their families and it's very sad to see. Thank you convener one of the other things which we've heard a lot about over the past couple of weeks is the reduction in the household benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000 and we know from analysis that that will put tens of thousands more children into poverty. Can I ask the panel what they think the impacts of that will be on these kids? Do they think that this short-term gain will have a major effect on the public purse in the future and what do they expect to have to deal with in their organisations if that policy is implemented and if even more kids are pushing to poverty? The cases that we've seen where the benefits cap has been applied in Scotland at the moment it tends to be people with very high housing costs and as I say the cases that we've seen and I don't want to say that this is the only group affected but tends to be large families often lone parent families that are leaving a relationship maybe it's due to domestic violence in some cases not but are then in temporary accommodation which is very expensive which takes them over the benefit cap. So the money which is being paid for the housing is going directly to the landlord whoever they may be rather than to the family which many folk think actually happens so that housing cost the cost of that housing for large families in the main as you say doesn't go anywhere near that family anyway that money it goes directly to the landlord. Yes at the moment but I would say that with when the benefit cap is applied it is housing benefit at the moment that it's taken from and it will be the housing element of universal credit is my understanding. So in terms of what the impacts of a lower benefit cap would be my understanding is that at the moment the impact would be on landlords and local authorities in terms of making discretionary housing payments and the lower the cap the more families in a wider variety of families will be will be caught by this because at the moment it's largely the majority of cases in England where housing prices are higher obviously. Or in places like Aberdeen of course or here in Edinburgh. I spoke earlier about the need to have a more explicit link between the child poverty approach and women and social security. I think I'd also like to highlight the clear links we need to make between the Garefec approach to getting it right for every child and I think that's the main thrust of Kevin Stewart's point. I was talking recently to staff at a long standing service we have working with children who are at risk of being excluded from school and the reality is that the increasing driver for those children's behaviour at school is that the family is in financial crisis and that financial crisis comes when as a as a combination of the reduction in family income that's come from the benefit changes and then a sudden crisis when there's suddenly some unaffordable repairs that need to be done when a benefit sanction is applied when there's a delay to benefits and you can see the knock-on effect of that of those benefit changes and the impact of those benefit changes on the child's performance at school and we know the long-term negative impact that school exclusion has on children so there is a very clear link back in terms of the services we have which are not there as anti-poverty services they're there to tackle things like supporting children to stay in mainstream schools but they actually are coping with the consequences of welfare reform and if we want to Scotland where we do get it right for every child and where we actually look at what's in where we look at the national performance framework where we're talking about improving the life chances for children, young people and families at risk then there's a very clear link between some of the things that are putting families at risk like the impact of benefit caps, of benefit sanctions and work that we need to do to make sure that every child in Scotland has the best start in life. I suppose to touch on the case that went to the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and was actually taken by CPAG and of all two single mothers who went to the appeal court to say that the benefit cap discriminated against women, the appeal court found against that but what they did say was that the cap does discriminate against women but that this discrimination was not manifestly without reasonable foundation and was therefore lawful so although it discriminates against women it was lawful and the reason I mentioned that this particular decision was that in addition to that three of the judges said that although it was upheld as lawful there was criticism that it was not in line with the UN convention on the rights of the child which the UK government has signed up to and within which requires the Westminster government to comply with certain you know levels of support for children so I think the fact that that decision was made in relation to the benefit cap at that level you know is not really going in the right direction in relation to children's rights and children's wellbeing. Discriminatory practice, the removal of housing benefit, the proposed removal of housing benefit from young job seekers 18 to 21 year olds has there been any cases gone to court around about discrimination there because obviously in my mind that is also discriminatory in terms of an age do we know of any? Not where. But that's maybe something that will come and again as Christina said earlier it may make things much more difficult if human rights legislation is withdrawn in any way shape or form. If I could change tack a little bit convener in one parent families submission the state as they stand the draft clauses set out in the UK government's command paper appear to devolve the work programme to the Scottish government whilst maintaining the current sanctioning regime which underpins both the referrals to and the policing of the work programme by the DWP it is difficult to see how such arrangements can be described as devolution in any meaningful way. I wonder if you could comment on that because it seems a bit bizarre to me that this parliament may control the work programme but the DWP will still control sanctioning. One of the big changes around single parents has been the requirement to sign on when your child is five and then become part of the job sticker regime which means that you have to sort of sign on and look for work but also part of the new welfare to work regime they have the work programme and a high percentage of single parents who have signed on after a year then go on to the work programme which at the minute is held by private contractors and in Scotland that is working links and inges so in a sense single parents when they move into to that part of the pathway they become very difficult to contact and to keep in touch with it's very difficult to find out information about how things work within the work programme because in a sense it's a private sector sort of contract and there's business interests but what we have found through engagement with single parents is that the work programme itself is not well geared up to the needs of single parents that it's very work first and work focused and what sits behind that is the same conditionality regime that's in place for job seekers and it means that you know if a single parent doesn't comply with certain conditions then she may lose some of her benefit so we feel that that approach and we've talked about sanctions in our submission is not the correct one we would rather see lone parents supported along the employability pathway and into work through a supportive framework rather than being sanctioned and the last time we looked at sanctions was around about 9,000 single parents had been sanctioned in Scotland and we could only find that out through a freedom of information act request we do have another one in at the moment to try and update those figures and you know we feel that in terms of contributing to eradicating child poverty that particular policy is not at all helpful and after all welfare to work is not the broader context was not just to increase the movement into work it wasn't just about reducing the bill for the taxpayer it was also about contributing to reducing child poverty and we can see the trends is the opposite way you know cpg and then ohana'll probably mention that too is that the the movement is an increase in child poverty and so we would be concerned about the work programme being devolved without that part of it and being devolved along along with it so there's full full control over how that part of welfare to work pans out finally i recognize that all of your organizations have contributed greatly to our work here and to the reports that we have written can i ask in terms of your lobbying of the dwp and the west minister government are you continuously lobbying and do you feel that you're being listened to in any way shape or form um by the dwp in terms of the changes that they are about to to introduce mark um if i can tell what i hope is a positive story on this that um david mundell gave evidence to this committee some time ago and made a commitment to um meet with organizations working on child poverty in scotland including banardo scotland na i assume cpg and one parent family scotland we discussed with mr mundell the uk government's access all areas programme which is designed to ensure that the specific needs of young people who've left care anywhere in the uk if it applies to the dwp are taken into account in processes um we had a positive response from mr mundell and he looked at a dwp policy while there's a high level commitment at the dwp to the access all areas approach its implementation appears to be patchy and we look forward to working with um mr mundell now he has returned to the scotland office to follow up to make sure that access all areas is the approach that's taken not just at a strategic level but by every individual job centre plus so we get that kind of care flagging of young people which would particularly apply to sanctions and i'm i'm grateful to the committee for the fact that it's facilitated that that process with mr mundell but that that in a way leads on to to a point i wanted to make for kevin stewart's previous question that i think there's a there's um the legal framework around sanctions which was set by west minster but there's also the discretion that takes place at a job centre plus level and at an advisor level about how it's applied um access all areas is a good example of the way that discussion can be made for care leavers within the existing legal framework we would like to see much more discussion for individuals with dependent children particularly in the context we're talking today women with dependent children in decisions that are taken by advisors and is and in job centres that wouldn't necessarily require a change to the legal framework it wouldn't necessarily require a change to the legal responsibility what it would require will be a change in guidance approach and attitude at an advisor and a job centre plus level so there are things that can be done within the existing legal structure before we get into conversations about what future responsibility patterns might look like um i would say on a on a small scale we have had some success we do engage with the dwp in scotland through the customer user group and they have made small changes um but i would say on a on a larger scale when you consider that as an organisation our objective is the eradication of child poverty and the policies that are proposed um in relation to welfare benefits i mean we know that 100 000 more children will be living in poverty in scotland by 2020 than in 2012 as they're largely the result of welfare reform and that's before we take into the the new freezes on benefits that have been announced that the freeze on child benefit etc so that's an indication of how much i feel this was our findings are taken into account at the UK level i suppose in terms of engaging with dwp there's there's different levels um there's the legislative framework but then there's the operation of what's what's in place and um i think in terms of the legislative framework that's there but i think as others have touched on there are ways of implementing the legislation that can be done on a continuum in a sense and i think that we we put in our submission that there was an opportunity to develop a a sort of Scottish um good practice approach around the sanctioning regime because we have the legislation but then we've got the implementation and that can go along a continuum and it can actually change um from different geographical or different geographical areas and different offices so that um you can have some offices that you know have extremely high levels of of sanctioning and others that have lower levels and um i mean we've met um quite regularly with the partnership managers at job centre plus scotish wide and um we've tried to sort of do some work with them they've done some training with our staff to try and explain the legislation we've our staff have said back to them saying well that's the legislation but in practice actually on the ground that's not what's happening um so i think there are opportunities to look i think particularly around sanctioning to ensure that actually job centre staff are implementing what is actually in the legislation i mean there are for example lone parent flexibilities whereby job centre staff should be taking account of the fact that women with children should be allowed to take their child to school before they go to work that they should have the appropriate childcare to meet their needs to take up employment that they should be supported in place even when a single parent is on income support to take part in work related activity and you know that is all there within the legislation which it has to be said it has you know kind of has been pulled away in a sense under universal credit um that's you know kind of it's been minimised but at the minute um that legislation we're finding across the country um is not being applied um locally and because um you know we've got projects across scotland and um we've actually just done it we've done a survey um with single parents um across different local authorities um it's just an ongoing survey i think we're at about 150 single parents at the moment um but just looking at that 85 percent have said that um that welfare reform has had a negative impact now that's a really really high percentage and it gives it some credibility and that you're talking about orcney, shetland, the borders, you know Glasgow, Lanarkshire um across the board so um yeah thank you convener let's do that again clear much convener um Kevin touched on the question that i'd raised with the the panel earlier on um human rights and all of the issues around around that and uh can i thank one parent family scotland for drawing my attention because i was looking for this last night i couldn't find it and it's in your your notes i found it there international covenant on economic social and cultural rights their monitor actually reported and severely criticised the UK government for failure to meet the fundamental right to food a set out in article three and it's something it's just basic for us all basic need um and amongst the causes of increased hunger in the UK i identified the coalition at that point welfare reforms including sanctions is a impact on that now um one parent family scotland actually i'm hosting a reception for them tonight so um if you want to hear some testimony from some of the young parents that marian's been talking about please you'll be more than welcome to come along and their transform life's programme i would suggest that one parent family scotland does is is maybe a bit more fruitful than some of the work program work that i've seen young parents put on the question i really wanted to ask was about this issue around about child hunger and how you know we can make a difference in this and one of the things i'd asked a few weeks ago was whether you know organisations and lobbying groups would support you know quite a strong lobby that an accumulative impact assessment is done in all of these aspects to ensure that where there's the issues whether it's a woman a lone parent somebody with a disability you know children that have got challenges and disabilities themselves an accumulative impact assessment be done so that when universal credit is rolled out it's actually tailored towards the needs of that family and we're not looking at figures like this when the UK the UK one of the richest countries in the world has been criticised for their children being hungry in relation to the point on food poverty i'm not sure if you're aware of the research we did in food banks last year with tristle trust and oxfam which found that most families accessing food banks were doing so as a result of an income crisis and in most cases that was a result of an administrative problem with the benefit system suspension or delay with benefits or sanctions so we know that is one of the the main causes that is leading to children being being hungry i think it's worth noting i mean there are things i was involved in that research and speaking to families in scotland using food banks yes it's a result largely of UK policies but there are things that can still be done at Scottish Government level and at local level to avoid families having to use food banks the Scottish welfare fund is one of raising awareness of that fund because many of the families that we spoke to had didn't know it was it was there affordable transport to stop people being sanctioned in the first place transport was a really big issue for a lot of families so while keeping in mind that this is largely the result of sanctions delays etc i think there's also a need to keep the eye on the ball in terms of what we can do now because the Scottish Government and local authorities have that duty towards children and i think that i completely agree with with Hannah's analysis i think one of the challenges is that as we move to a new world of cpps of integrated health and social care bodies of integrated children services planning under the children and young people act 2014 that we make sure that addressing child poverty more broadly but things like food poverty child hunger as specific examples of that within all public bodies that are delivering services and the reality is that poverty the kinds of poverty we're seeing are changing it's not just the increase in numbers that that Hannah alluded to earlier the the prediction that child poverty will go up by 100 000 children in scotland it's that the nature of that poverty is changing too so it's not just a scale issue it's about the kinds of poverty it's about families who are not merely on a low income but are on no income because of benefit delays and sanctions and how how local authorities how the wider state relates to that supports those families supports those children looks quite different to previous approaches to poverty and that's going to be that's going to have to be factored in and we want to see understanding child poverty more broadly but also families in destitution more specifically a central element to future cpp plans uh indicated health and social care bodies plans and so on because the as as we discussed in our previous response to kevin stewart's question the long-term impact of that period of financial crisis can reverberate throughout a child's life if it leads to a school exclusion for example that's a long-term impact due to a very short term failure to meet the needs of a family in crisis you picked up in the school exclusion issue which is a really you know clear indication of where an accumulative impact assessment would maybe pick up some of that and you know how it knocks on to local authorities haven't they pick up you know the pieces on that but one of the the things that the anecdotal evidence that i've got is kids that are going to school hungry and they're not being able to function properly at school therefore not getting the best out of their education you know and the whole impact of that which would be a generational impact i wonder whether you've got any insight on that and i think there's something there's we've been reflecting within bonados on the new gear fit guidance which sets a set of eight indicators for wellbeing and if a child is assessed as having a wellbeing need um then the name the name person which every child in scotland will have will be expected to take action to address those that wellbeing need if a child is in poverty do they have a wellbeing need and if so what would the name person do to help address that wellbeing need that's 20 percent of children in scotland at the moment and a figure that's likely to rise in some areas of scotland that's likely to be a much higher figure what what will the how will the system cope when the primary thing that is undermining the wellbeing of the child under the terms of the the children young people scotland act is the fact that that child is growing up in chronic or acute poverty and so i think there's you have a mechanism there which is designed to do that kind of cumulative impact assessment on the things that are on but undermining the wellbeing of the child what's lacking at the moment is clarity when it is poverty that is undermining the wellbeing of the child what what the response is and and so we were certainly reflecting on that in terms of how gearfec which is an entirely laudable approach is going to work in practice but a child cannot have wellbeing if as you say that they they have an inadequate diet if they're hungry they don't have well being we would be very supportive of a cumulative impact assessment and i think a lot of organisations have requested that but i think westminster of yot not yet came up with a kind of process to be able to sort of do that in terms of like food and hunger in relation to very practical areas for example looking at breakfast clubs that's why in our submission to glass city council we put in a very strong support to the continuation of breakfast clubs and you know if there's changes or cuts to services that services like these are actually crucial and preventative as well in a sense and one part of Scotland has also for many years supported the three school meals campaign as well which also kind of coming in at it from another angle ensures that all children have a healthy high quality to meal no matter what the circumstances of their parents but in relation to i suppose cumulative assessment and narrowing that down a bit it was just to refer to the committee of the refer the committee to the working pensions committee report on sanctions beyond oakley and in that they said that they called for a comprehensive independent review of the sanctions regime and i think that that would be a great start because we may then identify the fact that and actually the working pensions committee had this in the report was that financial sanctions are not made any more successful than any other method of ensuring that welfare to work works and there's lots of international research around that and we touched on it in our submission that is not necessarily the most successful way of having a successful welfare to work strategy and if you want that welfare to work strategy to contribute to eradicating child poverty it certainly isn't the right strategy thank you thank you you've just been touching on the area that i kind of wanted to cover obviously we've taken quite a bit of evidence made a one-off evidence session on the effect of welfare reform on children's services and we're hearing that children's services budgets are overspent and we're it's reported that a lot of that to do with mental health issues as a result of either the sanctions regime or indeed inward poverty so when we talk about the savings to the overall savings to the benefits budget in terms of what's been proposed what we're getting as a picture of the societal cost been much bigger and the cumbersome societal cost being a much greater impact in the long term than the the one-off savings that we're getting so i wondered if you had any budgetary evidence or even any evidence of the impact on your individual organisations in terms of where you would have wanted to be in the work you would have been wanting to do now in terms of graphic in terms of tackling child poverty and really what the impact is on you and the capacity you have in the future to continue to pick up the societal cost of what's being brought on people yeah i absolutely agree with what you're saying in terms of the impact on firstly the child and the impact and the cost in terms of their life and also in terms of local services cpg has done research on the cost of child poverty and i'm struggling to remember the exact figure but it's something like 26 billion it's estimated to cost the UK economy each year in terms of lost economic activity health problems and welfare payments as a result of child poverty so we know we know that we and we're also seeing through the cases all the cases we not a lot of the cases you see through the early warning system it's extremely clear that the knock on impact is is immediate and large so with sanction cases we'll often see people having mental health problems and accessing having to access services because of that there are some cases where people have got into into trouble with the police because they have been desperate all these things have a huge cost in terms of public services and i think that would be a mapping of the true cost of one sanction would be a really interesting piece of work to do and i think it would sharpen the minds of service planners and people who are making budgeting decisions to see in front of them exactly how much they are saving by not investing in preventative services Hannah bought us on to the territory i wanted to mention that we've really welcomed the cross-party commitment to the Christie commission principles about preventative spend but what we see are local authorities who want to do that preventative spend work but can't because the crisis management that they're having to do is simply too expensive for them to properly invest in preventative spend and services that we have which are funded and supported by local authorities because they're part of a preventative effort actually the threshold for accessing those services is going up and up because the services that are for families in more serious crisis provided by the local authority are overflowing so we get the overspill of families who are in more severe crisis than our services supposed to be working with which meant that the families where a light touch early intervention preventative spend approach would be of most benefit don't get to our service and so that logic the logic of preventative spend starts to unravel when the level of crisis face goes up so significantly and that's a common report from our services that because we have long-standing services they know that the families that they're working with are not the families that they should be working with but the families that we're supporting are the ones who are in such a level of crisis that we can't turn them away because often they haven't got the support they need from the statutory, the centrally supported statutory services so it's a very difficult situation where that emphasis on preventative spend is being undermined by increasing levels of crisis and the Christie commission had fantastic statistics that I'm sure you're all very familiar with about the benefits of a preventative spend approach in terms of the long-term savings that that generates. Yeah, I guess there's been a fair bit of research on the impact of sanctions and cuts to benefit but perhaps not so much on the threat of sanctions and the impact on health and well-being and in terms of our survey that we've been doing we've obviously had the figure side of it but we've had a lot of parents who've sent in comments, things like really terrible it made my life very difficult for me in fact my health has suffered from the stress. Another parent all I know is I'm struggling really badly to get by and it's sometimes a desperate feeling to be told by the brew to pull your socks up and to be positive when it's hard to give your kids a decent life so that kind of thing has a severe impact on mental health and well-being and in a very sort of reverse logic kind of way reduces the chance of moving into employment because actually to move into work you know and we all know you know you have to have a level of confidence you have to be able to do well at a job interview you have to feel that you can cope with work and I think that some of the policies in place are actually detrimental to that mindset and are resulting in ill health actually and so therefore I think more research on all of that would be useful as well I think and would impact on this cumulative impact that maybe it's not so easy to measure or to see sort of on the surface. Margaret. Since 2012 the single parent has to claim GSE from when their youngest child turns five but I read with concern in I think it was single marine submission that in addition sanctions can now also be imposed on single mothers claiming in support income support when their youngest child is one year old I and you know mothers have to claim employment support allowance if you know if they're on income support or because of due ill health so I just wonder how widespread that is and you know it just seems unbelievable if a mother's to work you know they need child care so also just child care provision so I suppose my question is around how widespread this is around young mothers having to claim benefit or their benefit circumstances changing when their child is as young as one and also you know what are the child provision for women in this case? Yeah I think welfare reform has impacted on single parents with children under five as well and a lot of the focus has been around job seekers in the appearance through claiming job seekers allowance but when on income support the conditionality has racked up and there is a requirement to attend work-related interviews when the children are younger and then as the parent youngest child gets nearer three and four there's work-related activity which is now required in relation to claiming income support so in terms of sanctioning the sanctioning is not as severe as being on job seekers allowance in terms of the time span and the amount but for example if you miss an appointment to meet your advisor you can be sanctioned and we've had a lot of cases where single parents maybe haven't been able to attend an appointment because of lack of childcare or because perhaps the children have been unwell or they themselves have been unwell we've had cases of pregnant young women who because you still have to sign on until a certain point when you're nearer having your baby been unable to sign on on a particular day because they had really severe morning sickness and been sanctioned because of that so it definitely has become more stringent and the freedom of information act request that I mentioned earlier actually there were more single parents with children under five had been sanctioned and those who were on job seekers I think it's just over 5000 but I hope to have like updated figures on that so I think yes that is something that's not had such a high profile and I think it's indicative just of the trend in relation to welfare to work for single parents kind of in a way following the American model which is very much work first and not so much what we previously had which was more human capital looking at the person's potential skills and how they can move into a better paid employment so that's indicative of that sort of general framework of the way policies developed Mac did you want to I think the issue here is about the lack of integration between different systems and the example which we cited in our evidence was our services working with a mother with a four-year-old child the mother having had a history of severe substance misuse problems but Bernardo is working with her to move her towards more positive destinations but the panic and fear that that woman has because she knows that in as Mayan described in a few months time she's going to be moved on to JSA and she doesn't feel that she could cope with work and the blind imposition of the rules around the transition on to JSA could undermine all the work and all the investment that's been put into securing better opportunities for and obviously the destination we all hope is that she does move into to employment but the way that the systems interact that there's there's no conversation to make sure that we support this woman as an individual instead it's an adult support system that doesn't speak to the benefit system is I think at the heart of the problem okay Hannah did you want to come in not not particularly I mean was when Claire mentioned children's services and we did have evidence I from that a few weeks back and you know one of the things was that was said by a witness and not the assure particularly sticks in my mind because that's the area I live in and the witness said that destitution of families presenting to the local authority had increased by 500 percent which is you know totally shocking but saw as a result of the welfare reform and the changes to that you know and how do you turn that around and the pressure that that puts on the services within that council and also that they mention was of the pressure it puts on fostering care because you know the number of children being taken into care had increased hugely as well is that the same experience that you've had I think what you described yes is definitely a trend and I think what we've found is that because I think particularly single parents tell us that they you know they are very fearful in some cases of highlighting the difficulties they face because of this fear of their children being taken into care and so I think apart from you know the the evidence that we see on the surface there is actually I mean there's been kind of research done on on this in the past where women who are parents you know going out going without food themselves so that they can feed their children and you know the consequences on their health on the parents health you know being devastating but I think I think definitely that when we listen to everything around what's happening to to women and children single parents the knock-on effect is substantial in relation to services and I think our services as well and you know along with Bernadol is what we find as we're dealing with a crisis so many crises that the things that we're actually kind of funded to deliver in relation to supporting parents working on employability programmes if people are coming along and they really don't have the finances to sort of feed their children properly they're actually sort of giving them food bank vouchers to sort of sort that bit out first you're putting on pizza making classes on a Saturday morning for single dads in Edinburgh because they don't have the money to feed their children when they've got a contact time with them so it's really getting back to pretty basic kind of fundamental kind of level really and this is just the tip of the iceberg really because as universal credit rolls out this stringent regime is going to get worse and affect more people in work as well actually because there's going to be conditionality which we've not touched on because obviously that's the future but attached to that as well so I think the sanctions regime and the number of sanctions will increase because there'll be a requirement to work more hours or be sanctioned so it's going in a direction of more rather than less. I mean one of the examples we were given in the submissions was where a mother had gone along to sign on with her I think two or three children it was the summer holidays and she was sanctioned because the officer said oh you're not available for work because you have children there and she didn't have anyone to mind her children so she could sign on. Surely they should be addressing that as an issue that you know there should be child care made available for women who are trying to seat work and they're going on these training programmes. Is there is their child minding available for them? Do they get vouchers or you know is there any allowance made for that? I think in relation to the case you've described then yeah I mean I think it maybe perhaps leads back to the claimant commitment so I haven't touched on that but when someone signs on they sign a claimant commitment we've actually had someone sanctioned because she said she couldn't work in the evenings and she actually applied for a job in the evening and she actually got sanctioned because she had done something out with the claimant commitment so it could be the case that you've mentioned is that the person said one thing in their claimant commitment but done something different and it can actually be they've behaved in a very rational way in it to try and seat work but because the claimant commitment says something different it's like in a bureaucratic document but as far as childcare is concerned I think that in relation to welfare reform what we have is a very work first as I mentioned earlier context but without the infrastructure around about it to support that very work first approach and maybe in other European countries actually there is an expectation that single parents go back to work at just a similarly early age but what they do have in place is a childcare infrastructure which supports that so it's not just about the cost of childcare it's flexible childcare that's available on weekends or without the standard hours and you've got family friendly employment where you've got employers that accept a child's going to be off sick and maybe you need some time to deal with that in these other societies you've just got support for workers as parents you've got models which recognise that you know there's a combined role there worker parent or worker carer it seems to be in the UK it's a very work you know you're a worker and there's not much taken into account with the rest of the sport that's required I think it's worth highlighting again that there's a big difference between the legal framework and how that legal framework is applied and there's a big difference between having sanctions as the last resort and as the first option and and that doesn't that wouldn't require a change in legislation it would require a change in policy and approach and guidance I would say as well with people who are sanctioned wrongly or they aren't told that they have a say in what's in the claimant commitment or that they have a they should have an opportunity to give good reason for for not fulfilling one of the conditions access to information and advice and advocacy services can be absolutely vital for these people because when people do challenge decisions very often the decision is overturned and I think it's worth bringing it back again to what can be done now locally and in Scotland and I think information to access and advice in places where women and children are likely to be could make a huge difference we know healthier wealthier children for instance where low income families are referred through health workers to money advice have been very successful perhaps through schools and through nurseries as well because I think children services are aware of what is happening and it's not their role necessarily or it's not assumed that it's their role to do something to help parents on the lowest incomes but at the same time when you have these huge cuts and this huge increase in destitution but at the same time you have breakfast clubs being done away with which is an important source of childcare you have the cost of school transport being put up in some local authority areas children being asked for £15 towards school trips and this kind of thing I think it may be a small role but there is definitely a role to play for children services and children services planning in terms of maximising the incomes of families that have been sanctioned so through advocacy work and challenging sanctioned decisions and minimising the outgoings of low income families as well when they're in times of crisis whether that's costs associated to the school day or people being asked to get a taxi to a hospital appointment and then claim that money back but if you don't have that money in the first place then you just can't go so poverty proof things services that the low income families are using. At the moment in Scotland we've got the highest number of women ever in employment and we've got the number of children and households with no work at all at its lowest level ever which is encouraging in the sense that there is something positive happening but I was very struck by what Marion Davis was saying about the pattern of childcare provision because is it your impression that despite the very welcome improvements in the number of hours available to parents in the year that the current pattern of provision is still too rigid? I think it's obviously welcome any extensions that are in childcare and that's all moving in the right direction but I think the flexibility side of things is very important and I think to have the opportunity to have childcare to meet the needs of the labour market is something that probably we need to look a lot more at. I mean we have a programme called March and Start and that's actually with March and Spencer's who have identified blown parents as a target group and we put 320 single parents on this March and Start programme which is tailored for single parents their support with childcare the hours are within the school day but after that's finished when they go on to work for March and Spencer's what they then discover is even on a 16 hour contract that they have to be able to work half of that again sometimes that can be in the evening sometimes it's in a Saturday so the appropriate childcare to meet that need is very difficult to find and there are services around flexible childcare services childcare at home which do provide that kind of thing in which we need more of so if that's an answer to your question that's helpful thank you convener I don't know if either of the others have walked out to that I think the childcare concern that's most frequently raised as I understand it by the parents we work with is what Hannah touched on which was the breakfast club and the after school club to allow you to drop your children off early enough at school to then go on to work and leave work and be able to pick your children up after work which is difficult to combine with with school hours if you have no background childcare support out with those school hours helpful again to us this morning I thank your three witnesses for the question is that provisible it's a couple it's one for for Hannah McCullough given the evidence from the child poverty action group who's interested in the comment about the Scottish welfare fund and you wanted to see increased investment in that I mean have you any sense of of the increase that you'd want to see I think it's difficult to say at the moment and partly that is because even the money that has been made available to the Scottish welfare fund hasn't all been spent I mean so it's difficult because there seems to be an element of unmet need for the welfare fund isn't being recorded partly because people aren't aware necessarily that it's there also there seems to be some local authorities are only taking applications where they think there's a good chance of that application being successful so we don't have an accurate measure of that so it's very it would be very difficult to to put a figure on on that I think I think there's a need for research into that because ideally there would be more investment and less rigid eligibility criteria because at the moment many of the families who are affected by welfare reform wouldn't be entitled to a Scottish welfare fund payment anyway particularly if they've been sanctioned so I can't give a straight answer to that myself I'm finally convener for Mr Ballard did I understand you correctly Mr Ballard when you were saying that the sort of changes you anticipate could be made now by DWP are matters of practice and protocol is that correct particularly in relation to the sanctions regime and the application I think my point was that there's an urgency to getting changes and there are some very immediate changes that we could make to as you say to practice and policy that would have a massive impact I think there's a much wider question of how we have an integration between things like the geifech approach cpp's child poverty more generally and the social security system but there are things that could be done quite immediately now that would help a large number of families thank you very much indeed yeah so again thank you very much to the panel for adding to the information that we've received this morning I think we've had a couple of useful sessions given us a lot of information a lot of food for thought and as I said to the earlier group if you have more information that becomes available to you and you want to feed it to as please do the more information we have the more substantial our report will be and hopefully we'll challenge the system in a way that you would want us to do so the more information you give us the better but thank you very much for your contributions this morning thank you I'll close the meeting by pointing out that our next meeting is on the 9th of June and we expect to be meeting the cabinet secretary Alec Neill and we will report back on the committee members recent trips to local CAB officers and our Craig Miller parliament day okay I'll close the meeting at that but can I ask colleagues to hang back if they can