 Mae gynnig rydwg am ddod hyn y 12 mddolol Llywodraeth Cymru. Felly gwag i ddweithio wneud i ddylech yn mobiol swyddoedd, rydych chi yn dweud rydych chi oherwydd y sylfawr. Yn rywun nhw mae gwylwng March Griffin. Rhyw unrhyw ym melynyddgyn, rydw i ym melynyddgyn ym 1, edrych yn Ffaisiau Cyngor Llywodraeth Mor Echo, fees ynglyn â arddug yna 2017. Felly mae'n golygu i willeg ym 9. I welcome Ben Hayes, head of policy, council tax reduction scheme and Robin Haynes, no relation I believe, head of council tax Scottish Government and I believe you want to make an opening remarks. I just want to make a few remarks about the instruments and what they do. They do three things all together. Firstly, they mean that bereavement support payment is disregarded when a local authority is calculating someone's level of council tax reduction and it does that on the same basis as happens in housing benefit. Secondly, the UK Government has abolished the work-related activity component within the employment support allowance and these regulations make some changes to the council tax reduction scheme so that those who would have received the work-related activity component in the ESA will continue to receive the relevant premium within the CTR scheme. The third change that these regulations make is to make sure that any income from the charitable funds that were set up after the terrorist attacks in Manchester and London earlier this year is disregarded when a local authority is calculating someone's level of council tax reduction. We appreciate it's not ideal to be making these changes to the scheme in mid-year. However, given the nature of the issues involved, it was really unavoidable in this case and we've kept local authorities, COSLA and those who write the software that processes council tax reduction applications up to speed and they're aware of those changes and when they're coming into force. Thank you very much. I'm intrigued when I read the papers about the schemes about the terrorist attacks. Do we have anyone here in Scotland that would be affected by that, the fund from there? There may be some people affected by the fund. It's difficult to know whether those individuals will be getting a council tax reduction and therefore how it works, but also if anybody south of the border was to move into Scotland, they would obviously be having that income, so it was important to make sure that it was covered off. We certainly know that there were, just from reading the newspapers, quite a large number of people from Scotland who attended the Ariana Grande concert, so it seemed reasonable that if the fund was dispersing payments that some of those might come to Scotland. Okay, and certainly the people who would know about it, basically DWP would know about that then in regards to the instrument here? That's an interesting point in that because council tax reduction is now no longer part of the benefits system, whilst we've always been quite open, they've never really shown much interest in what the Scottish Government is doing regarding council tax reduction since 2012, when the UK Government was seeking some assurance about the nature of our scheme. Okay, I believe that the minister has appeared before the committee, not our committee, the other committee has given recommendations in December. Is that correct to give further evidence? Yes, that's correct. Your minister for parliamentary business is appearing before DPLRC in early December, and I know that they intend to raise the regulations with him then. Any other questions? Jeremy Balfour? One quick question in regard to any kind of financial shortfall that local authorities would have. Have you done any modelling on this? Will there be any financial impact for the next six months on revenue from local authorities around this? We think that it will have a very minimal impact on local authorities. To take one example, the changes to bereavement support payment bereavement support payment will be fully disregarded in the CTR scheme. That's different than how widowed mothers allowance was handled in the past. However, widowed mothers allowance could go on for several years, often many years, bereavement support payment only runs for 18 months. Over the whole piece, we think that it will be pretty much static where it is now. I just wanted to give you a bit more of an understanding. I don't really know how much how the council tax reduction scheme actually works, but the annual payments, are they the one-off payments? Are you referring to— So that bereavement support payment and anything from a charitable fund that might be disregarded, they would be expected to be one-off payments, would they? My understanding is that the Manchester fund is making lump sum and recurring payments to individuals. A bereavement support payment is an initial payment lump sum and then 18 months of payments after that. That's helpful. The disregard would be for the duration of the lump sum and also— Yes, that's correct. There are some things in housing benefit that are mirrored to do with if somebody hangs on to a lot of that money when it starts to become countered as capital after a year, but pretty effectively unless somebody hangs on to the money, it's disregarded. Thank you very much. Will we note the instrument? Does that agree? Yes. Thank you very much. I'm now going to close the formal part of the meeting and we'll continue in informal session.