 Fygrifon dd rhywbeth a'r diffani ddechnoedd y community. Rydymeth i gyd am y ddymarfa, oedd y ddyn nhw ymddiwedd y cyffredinol. Mae ydym yn unrhyw wrth omfyddiadol. Mae'r ymddiffyn nhw yn ddiwedd yn y cyffredinol mewn gwelinhau. Ysgolau ar y cwmnoch, transition of devolved benefits more widely to the community. Can I welcome Jean Freeman, Minister for Social Security, to her first, hopefully not her last, appearance at this committee and also welcome officials and McVie and Stephen Kerr. I thank the minister very much for the letter of the August and also September very, very helpful to the committee. I know that you want to make a statement, minister, for 10 minutes or so. I am pleased to be here and I do hope that we will find this morning's discussion both interesting and useful. I wanted to take this opportunity as we set out to deliver a brand new social security system for Scotland to talk about some of the things that I believe we need to make sure that we get right from the very start. Over the course of this term, our Parliament will take on legislative responsibility for a range of benefits equivalent to 15 per cent of the UK's spend on welfare. That 15 per cent covers benefits that are currently paid to one in four of us. That is around 1.4 million people in Scotland. It affects a significant number of people's lives. For some of us here today, we are talking about members of our own families or friends or neighbours as well as our constituents. For each one of us, we do not know when we too might look to social security system for the support that we might need. However, we must be clear about how complex and challenging a task it will be to build that new system. In 1999, when the Scottish Government became responsible for newly devolved functions of police, education or health, all of them had their own existing Scotland-specific delivery infrastructure. There is no Scotland-specific delivery infrastructure for social security. Current UK disability benefits are administered from locations as widespread as Blackpool, Leeds, Chester and Wembley. The post is routed via Wolverhampton. What we need to deliver a Scottish system, we have to build from scratch. In building our system, we will still be reliant on the DWP making parallel changes to their IT systems, some of which are decades old. Cold weather payments alone currently rely on a hierarchy of 11 different DWP IT systems, all of which have to be amended to simply identify Scottish customers. The timetable for this work will also partly be driven by the DWP, because we will only be able to switch our services on when the DWP has updated its systems as well. DWP's own change programmes stretch well into the future. The full service roll-out of universal credit is not scheduled to complete until 2022. All of that does not even get into the operational interdependencies when the two systems are up and running. We have to map out the impacts of our 15 per cent on the remaining 85 per cent. For example, we need to understand the knock-on effects that a change to someone's devolved disability benefit may have on their entitlement to reserved employment support allowance, reserved tax credits or other reserved passported benefits. Because of all that complexity, it is absolutely critical that we give ourselves time to ensure that any new Scottish Government technology is thoroughly tested and piloted so that when we start administering benefits, customers receive the right payment in the correct bank account at the right time. It is our overwhelming clear priority to ensure that we master this complexity because we cannot take risks with the support that we provide to people at what are often crisis points in their lives. It is entirely possible that we may disagree over some policy decisions that we make as a Government as we go forward. I hope that what I have just said will let the committee join me in my firm belief that we all have a stake in the success of the system that we will collectively set up and in my commitment that policy disagreements are not withstanding. We will none of us use this exercise as some kind of political football. Politicians change, ministers change, even Governments change, but this social security system will outlast all of us. The people in this room right now have to make sure that, first of all, the system works for the good of the people of Scotland, second that it is fit for purpose and third that it is properly accountable to ministers and therefore to this Parliament. Our best starting point for all of that seems to me is to listen to those who are currently receiving the benefits that we will be responsible for, those who work with and support them and those who deliver the current system. That is exactly where we have started with our first step, the current Scotland-wide consultation on social security. This committee in its previous incarnation has done much to show us the importance of doing just that through the successful and highly informative series of year-say events. We are already over halfway through our consultation exercise. We have been running an extensive programme of face-to-face engagement events from the borders to the outer hebrides. We have got over 100 events in the calendar so far, and we will add more before the consultation closes at the end of October. The events that the cabinet secretary and I have prioritised for attendance have been those where we have been listening precisely to that group of people. We will publish a full report on the responses of the consultation at the start of next year, and by that time we also hope to have reached an agreement with DWP on the commencement of the remaining two sections of the 2016 Scotland Act, which will pave the way for the introduction of our bill. Those commencement discussions are overseen by the joint ministerial working group on welfare, which we will meet for the second time since this session of our Parliament began, and it will meet on 11 October. I will make sure that the committee is updated on the outcome of that meeting. Looking ahead to after the consultation has closed, we will continue to gather evidence through a range of channels, such as our existing policy-specific reference groups and theme events, for example the national conference on funeral poverty, which we will hold on 16 November. We are looking at additional ways in which we can continue to get feedback and involvement from users on a longer term, on-going basis. At the same time, we are also progressing stage 2 of our appraisal of the delivery options for our Scottish social security system, by thinking about the way in which our new agency will work in practice as part of a wider system. That means looking at a range of options across the spectrum from centralisation, where all of the staff and all of the systems and services are based in one place, to localisation, where offices are based around the country and all points in between. I could sit here and talk for an hour or more, and still only skim the surface of what we have planned over the next few months and of the complexity of the task before us. The main points are in my most recent letter to you and to members, where I have also set out key milestones. However, let me take this opportunity to offer you and your members as much access to my officials as you need to answer any questions and to give you further information. If it would be helpful for them to meet with you again informally to provide additional briefings on any area of their work, they would, I know, be more than happy to do so. The Government intends to hold itself to a gold standard of decision making on social security, demonstrating at every stage that the decisions that we make are made on the basis of the best available evidence, with the direct engagement of those most affected and those with expertise and experience that we need, and that we want the involvement of the people of Scotland and the organisations that represent them from start to finish. I believe that this approach will help us to steer us through the complex task before us and, in doing so, ensure that the social security system that we establish for Scotland will be an exemplar. The fairest and most accessible social security provision in the UK, where our founding principles of dignity, fairness and respect will be demonstrated in all that we do, and I do believe that the people of Scotland deserve nothing less. Thank you. Thank you very much, minister. There are lots of questions to come from that, basically very complex, as you mentioned before. If I could just start off the questions, minister, obviously you mentioned that only 15 per cent of the moneys is coming to Scotland, and during our evidence session and with constituents also, one of the areas or two of the areas that come up constantly all the time is when people's expectations, people already think that we have the powers, so I just wondered how the Scottish Government would manage that, and you highlighted this particular point yourself, the transitional period, which is very important. One in four of Scots, obviously, are going to be affected by this. The transitional period, how are we going to, or how does the Scottish Government, going to handle that without anyone falling through the middle? So I just opened it with those two questions, minister. I think the point about expectations is very well made, and obviously in the events and the discussions that we've been having, we're well aware of that. We are in part using those events and the organisations that are facilitating the forums and their networks of communication to try and explain to people exactly what the process is. When the consultation ends, it is my intention to begin another tour of those organisations, to take them through some of the complexity and the steps that we have to take that we are in part discussing this morning, so that there is an understanding about the stages and the process that we have to go through, not because we want to take a long time to do this, but because if we don't go through each of those stages carefully and in the right order, then we absolutely do risk that the system that we set up in Scotland, that people fall through the net, and because it is 15 per cent that has to work in parallel with that 85 per cent, then our system has to work well with the DWP system, and we need to make sure that the interdependencies that will exist, because of the nature of the overall benefit system in the UK, where some benefits connect to others and so on, that what we provide, if you like, in Scotland is not taken away because of that interdependency taken away by the DWP. Now that, in truth, requires a huge amount of expertise, so talking to those organisations, everybody from Citizens Advice Bureau, right through to the alliance or inclusion or the others, is absolutely essential because that's where the expertise lies. Those folks really do understand this stuff and are thinking about things that they need to bring to our attention, so that's in part how we will address the issue of expectation. I do genuinely think that colleagues here in this room can assist us in that by helping locally where those questions are raised but elsewhere, helping people to understand the stages that we have to go through, and the key point that I made at the outset about when we began as a Scottish Parliament, when we reconvened, we had Scotland-specific structures for health, for justice, for education, and we took that over, if you like. Here we're starting from scratch and we don't have 100 per cent. I make no particular point around that except that it is easier to do 100 per cent than it is to do 15 alongside 85, not that I want for a minute to lose the 15. That's my point, really, on the whole issue of complexity. Your second question, convener. About smooth transition. Yes. We will talk with the joint ministerial working group on when we have the commencement of tronche 2. That commencement is important because it sits underneath the draft legislation that we will bring to the Parliament before summer next year. That draft legislation is important because it gives us the legislative platform on which to establish the Scottish system. As we go through that work, we are also looking at which of the benefits that are being devolved to us that we can introduce earlier, where some of the complexity is not necessarily as difficult as it is in other areas. We will take decisions on that and obviously advise yourselves and the Parliament more widely about those and what we propose to do. However, the largest area around disability benefits is where we are talking about the largest number of people and the greatest complexity. There may be a period where the DWP needs to continue to make the payments before we switch on our system. In that time, that is when we are testing and learning, particularly on some of the infrastructure, to make sure that when we switch on, we have the secure and safe transfer, so that people get the money that they are entitled to, on the day that they are entitled to it, the level that they expect and they actually neither know nor care which Government clicked the send button to their bank account. Thank you very much, minister. I know that there is a number of hands up. Ben Macpherson. Thank you, convener. Good morning, minister. Much of the content that I was going to ask about has been covered in the convener's question and your answer, but to pick up specifically on the managing of expectations, you talked about the process and the need to manage expectations through that process and through the development of the new social security system. I wondered if there is a determination, both from the DWP and stakeholders, about how, when we get to the end point—the destination—about making sure that we are managing the expectations of claimants and making sure that it is very clear to claimants where they access the specific social security benefit that is relevant to their needs and just a sense of collaboration around the clarity of the system, given the complexity that you spoke of. The first thing to say is that Scottish Government officials, led by my two colleagues here, and DWP officials have been working very hard on all of this for some time, predates me and have worked very well and continue to work very well to understand what each needs to do and exchange information and so on. Equally, the joint ministerial working group is really clear about the importance of the task and finding solutions to some of the issues that come up. That is the first thing to say. The second thing to say is that the question that you raised touched on is an important area of work that we also need to undertake and have begun, and that is around the whole question of what advice and support is available to individuals about how to access the system, what they are entitled to, how to make their claim and what to expect thereafter. It is my intention that, when people come to the social security system for Scotland, they will be given that information about all benefits, not simply those that are the responsibility of the Scottish Government. We have begun an exercise across the whole of Scottish Government that is mapping out where advice services currently exist, who provides them, how are they funded and what is it that they provide advice on, so that we can look at that and see how fit is that for the purpose that we have here for social security, and what might we do to ensure that we have a more comprehensive system of advice and support across the country that is accessible to you no matter where you live. There is also the question then about different ways of accessing advice and support. That is a parallel piece of work, but very critical to all of this. There is no point in having all singing, all dancing system in Scotland if nobody knows how to get near it, how to access it or what to expect from it. The key point for me is that we do that exercise, but the advice and support that people are given is about the entire benefit system, regardless of who is responsible for it. Good morning, minister. Thank you for coming to speak with us and thank you for your opening statement, which I very much welcome, particularly the remarks about political football. In that spirit, can I ask you about something that is an animating theme both of your letter to the convener and of your opening statement, which is the importance of close and effective working relations between the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government? In your letter, you say that we must work with our UK counterparts and their programmes of work, because this is the only way to ensure the safe and secure transition of those powers. In the notes that Spice gave the committee in preparation for this meeting—I do not know if those notes have been shared with you, minister—there is a report from an interview with the Cabinet Secretary, reported in the daily record in September, where Angela Constance says, and I quote, we are not going to be giving them, that is to say, the UK Government, any information or responding to inquiries if we think that that might lead to a sanction. If that is an accurate quote, and I admit that it is only from the daily record, but it is in the Spice notes, how is that contributing to an effective and co-operative working relationship with the UK Government? You see, Mr Tomkins, that is the big challenge. The big challenge is that the Scottish Government and the UK Government start from different political standpoints. Those disagreements are not going to go away, and we should not pretend that they are going to go away. That is why I also made the point that, in this committee, with different members of this committee in the chamber, we are going to have policy disagreements. That is not the same, though, as saying that we will have some kind of political grandstanding or shouting match around us. That is the bit that I want to avoid. We would be daft to try and pretend, amongst ourselves, far less to the wider population that we do not disagree, because we disagree on some things. We have made very clear as a Scottish Government, and we had the agreement of Ian Duncan Smith when he was in the relevant post that the devolved work programmes to Scotland would be entirely for the Scottish Government to decide whether they were voluntary or not. On 13 September, my counterpart, Mr Hepburn, wrote to Jamie Greene seeking clarification that that remained the UK Government's position. We expect it to remain the UK Government's position, in which case there is no information on whether or not an individual attends that work programme run by the Scottish Government to pass on to anybody. What the cabinet secretary said was, should it be the case that the UK Government changes its position from that assurance given to us by Mr Duncan Smith in terms of the voluntary nature of our programmes, we would have to take a view as to whether or not we would pass any information back to the DWP with respect to a person's participation, where we think that information could lead to that individual being sanctioned, because, as a Scottish Government, we have taken a very clear and consistent view that we do not believe that sanctions are either fair or effective in their intended overall purpose, as outlined to us by the UK Government, of incentivising people to enter the workplace. We simply do not think that it works. That is our political and policy position. The UK Government has its political and policy position. We need to find ways of recognising both of those but finding ways of working together. I know that Alison Johnstone wants to come in on that particular point. It was just to point out, as the minister has, that in our papers there is a letter from Jamie Hepburn in which he points out that Ian Duncan Smith, the then Secretary of Work and Pensions, wrote to Roseanna Cunningham, the then Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, Skills and Training, to advise that the extent of conditionality on devolved employment programmes would be a matter for this Government. I think that it would be less cordial to go back on that agreement that we clearly have. I just wanted to point out that the information is in the pack that we have for today. Thank you very much, Alison. Mark Griffin, on that specific point. It was just to ask if there has been any consideration in terms of the fiscal framework. It is a welcome policy decision by the Government to not take the same sanctions-driven approach. However, if the Scottish Government's approach is successful and that the claimant count is reduced and that the bill is reduced, is that something that has been taken into consideration with the discussions around the fiscal framework? Will that lead to an increase in the Government budget? Or similarly, if any programme that the Government undertook was not as successful, would that result in any clawback from the UK Government? There are some technical provisions in the fiscal framework that are designed to look at the very circumstances that you outline, but the bar in those is set quite high in terms of whether the impacts are direct or indirect. There may be occasions where the Government wants to have a conversation about action that one takes, the impacts on action or behaviour of clients or policies that the other Government pursues. However, I think that being able to sit here just now and see the circumstance will definitely have this impact, which will have this financial result, is very difficult to do. However, there are certainly provisions in the framework that will allow either Government to begin a conversation on that, but those conversations have to be ones where together the Government's agree that there is an impact and an effect. Just firstly, to endorse what you have said about the work that is required here to create a new agency that, under one of its operations, can be a smooth transition, so it is a hard work that is required and not politics. Although having said that, I wholeheartedly agree with the Government's approach to where you have responsibility in relation to sanctions and conditionality. Perhaps we can discuss it another time at the end about what other scope there would be in further to the employability schemes, where the Government could take the same view on whether it can draw back from the UK Government's position on conditionality. However, I want to discuss a broader question, which is how do we create the agency in day one that is the switch over to simplify it? Obviously, it will not be as simple as that. Is it possible, or do you see it if you want to paint a picture of how this is going to work? Would there always be a shadow arrangement, a shadow agency, pre-switch over? It seems to me that that is the only way that you could ensure a smooth transition, or are you not in a position to make any arrangements until the legislation is in place? Certainly, the legislation is absolutely key because it gives us, if you like, the legal platform in which to move forward. The legislation is an important step in the move to the Scottish agency. I will let either of my colleagues supplement what I might say, but I think that the two things—first of all, part of what we do in terms of the operational delivery—is a section of the consultation. It is important to me that we wait to hear what people are saying to us in terms of the shape that they want the agency to take, how they want it to deliver, its services and where they want it to be in terms of central, local or so on. It is also important to me that, in the follow-on work that we do, where we are going to use the experience and expertise of people who are currently on the receiving end of the current system, we are also using the experience and expertise of people who are currently delivering the existing system to help us to design the right processes and procedures to ensure that some of the things that we want to achieve are about speed of decision making, transparency, key issues, key questions around evidence for the disability benefits, where that information comes from, the nature of assessments and so on, that they are all involved in helping us to design that. As we make progress, the possibility of shadow arrangements or transition arrangements are in the mix, but I do not think that at this stage that we are sufficiently far advanced to have reached a final view on any of those particular options. The other part of work that is going on is, of course, the stage 2 option appraisal on the nature of the agency that we will establish. At this point, although I will ask Stephen Rann to supplement what I am saying, it is not possible at this point—indeed, it would not be right for us at this point—to have taken a firm view on whether you make the transition in a staged way or whether you simply do all your testing and then flick the switch. I think that that is absolutely right. There is some preparatory work that you can do, so you can go and visit DWP's sites. You can, as we have done, be into the Isle of Man, Ireland, Northern Ireland and see how other jurisdictions administer benefit payments and how their operations are organised, so that is the learning phase that we are going through. There are also certain things that an agency will have with the Scottish Government, however it is composed, so it will have something called a framework document that sets out the relationship between ministers and the agency, and you can start to think about the shape of those sorts of things. However, as a minister says, those are sort of early and preparatory things that one can do, however, until the consultation is closed and the option of appraisal work is done, the work really begins thereafter. Can I just press a bit further? That makes sense, but should the end of that consultation be of the view or have a particular view that, in order to deal with the complexity and the new design that you would have to almost set up a shadow operation or whatever, I suppose that I am just really wondering what steps you can take before the legislation or do you have to wait until the legislation is passed and then work on the basis of what scope do you have, in other words, to set something up to ensure that smooth transition? The key answer that I want to give you is that a number of bits of work will run in parallel, so the draft legislation will be presented to Parliament before summer next year and will go through due process, but that does not mean that everything stops while we do that and we all just focus on that. One of the figures that Stephen gave me this morning, so I have talked a bit about complexity in terms of scale, that the number of payments that the new agency, when it is fully functional, will make per week is equal to the number of payments that the Scottish Government currently makes per year, so the scale is huge and the complexity is complex. To do that without taking a very, very long time, partly in response to your point convener about expectations and Mr McPherson's too, and partly because frankly we want these responsibilities, I am absolutely confident and convinced that we will run a better system, so I want to get going and doing it because I think it will make a big difference to the 1.4 million people whose lives in part we will be responsible for helping to make better. In order to do all that, you have to run a whole number of parallel bits of work. Try and as you do that, so legislation is part of it, but so are all those other areas, and try as you do that to work out how and when they are going to connect up with each other. One of the parallel bits of work of course is with the DWP, but it is also around the shape and nature of the agency, the options that we might have about transitioning into taking that responsibility, which benefits can we take over sooner rather than later, and really importantly what do we need to do to establish the right culture inside the social security agency for Scotland that delivers dignity, fairness and respect to those who work in it in order that we can reasonably expect them to deliver that to those who come to its door? That whole cultural question is a big challenge, but I am sure that we can manage it, but all of that means that scale and that complexity means that we are currently running and will continue to run a number of parallel bits of work, each one of which is critical to the other. In your introduction this morning, minister, you reiterated that only 15 per cent of the benefits budget would be devolved, but that is only 15 per cent if we do not use top-up powers or create new benefits. We have the ability to do that, but it is fair to say that top-up powers are not really focused on in any great detail at all in the consultation, and I wonder why that might be the case. The 15 per cent that will be devolved will be 15 per cent. That does not change. We are not getting anything more in terms of what the UK is currently responsible for. We do also, though, as you say, have the power to create new benefits or to top-up existing benefits. It features in the consultation, and in some of the discussions that I have had, people have raised that. The primary issues that are coming through the consultation are about how people feel that they are treated, perceived areas of unfairness and difficulty, accessibility and so on. It is not in our mind that it is part of our consideration and discussion, but we also have to remember that over a significant period—I will give you the exact period in a minute—the overall Scottish budget has been cut by a considerable amount—10 per cent, just over 10.6 per cent, if I recall that correctly. There are a number of difficult decisions to make across Scottish Government into which goes this and this entire new system. We will, as I said, look carefully at the decisions that we make based on the best evidence available that meet our overall objectives as a Scottish Government, one of which is, of course, particularly targeted on reducing poverty. I appreciate that the budget has been impacted by cuts from Westminster, but we now have the ability to mitigate some of those cuts with taxation powers that we will have. I agree entirely that there is a need to change the culture, but I think that dignity and respect, too, are achieved by adequacy and having enough income to have a decent standard of living. You will be aware that the child poverty action group is calling for a £5 top-up of child benefit, for example. I just like your views on what opportunities you think the new system presents for tackling child poverty in particular. Of course, we have a child poverty bill that will come to Parliament and that will specifically focus on that. I am very well aware of the child poverty action group's proposal. We have had discussions with them, as the cabinet secretary has said. The point that I would make about mitigation is that the Government has a significant track record of using considerable sums of money to mitigate against the worst effects of the UK Government's policy decisions on welfare support, particularly in our full mitigation of the bedroom tax. We have made an absolute commitment that, when we have the powers, we will abolish the bedroom tax, but in other ways, through the Scottish welfare fund and in other measures that we have taken, the difficulty with mitigation is that what you are doing is spending money to stand still. I am not suggesting that we should not do any of those things. They have been the right and proper things to do, but it means that Scottish Government resources are going into the pot in order for us to stand still and not make progress. On the question of the child poverty action group's proposal, we are giving that consideration. There is additional evidence, though, for example, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is very well respected in its research and evidence in that regard, would argue that any increase in child benefit should be focused on low and middle income families. We need to look at the overall impact of any additional top-ups or new benefits that we might introduce in terms of what evidence exists to demonstrate that that would make a significant impact on our overall objective of reducing poverty. We will do that work and, in due course, be coming back probably through the child poverty discussion, but perhaps also in this one, too, to look at the policy positions that we want to propose as a Government in regard to all those areas. We certainly look forward to the child poverty bill coming through the committee, and we will certainly look into that as well. Ruth, I think that you wanted to come in on that one, and then Adam, did you want to come in? It's a new question, is that okay? Yes, sure. Thank you, convener. I really welcome your statement that advice given from the Scottish Social Security Agency will cover all benefits. It's kind of on that line that I want to explore. We have heard evidence, and I know in our own knowledge from our dealings with constituents, that passported benefits can minimise the strain and worry that goes along with needing help from social security. I wondered what your thinking was about the scope of providing passported benefits, both in our own system and between the Scottish and the UK system. Passported benefits is one of the areas that we have to be very careful about in terms of the interaction of the Scottish system with the UK system. In order to make sure that anything that we do with the benefits that we are responsible for doesn't have a negative impact on the passported benefits that would otherwise have existed that come from the DWP. That is one of the many areas that are subject to quite detailed discussion and will continue to be with colleagues in DWP and will be raised to the ministerial group if there are issues that need to be resolved at that level. We do have existing passported benefits, if you like, that sit with us. For example, when we take over winter fuel payments, although pensions are at UK level, that also brings in free bus travel. In terms of looking at the whole issue around young carers, we are looking at the package of support that might be offered, which could include some of those passported benefits. We are very alive to that, and I do absolutely understand, not only as a constituency MSP but in this role, the difference that that can make to people's lives. To not only their financial position but their capacity to be included in a number of other community or social areas that the rest of us just take for granted. I am absolutely alive to the importance of that, and we are in the mix of everything else that we are looking at. Minister, I would like to ask questions about those who are living in poverty. Last week, Bill Scott of Inclusion Scotland brought up the fact that 48 per cent of those living in poverty are either disabled people or people living with disabled people. A further 40 per cent of disabled children live in poverty and 44 per cent of children of disabled adults live in poverty. Does that quote alone not just highlight the scale, the level of the challenge that the Scottish Government has when we are dealing with this new system? Yes, it absolutely does. Of course, the additional statistic that you could add into that is the disproportionate impact that poverty has and how it affects women. We have some very difficult challenges here. I think that there are key areas and key steps that we can take. Some of those we have made in our commitments already in terms of extending how we deal with disabled children and the support that is given to them, including around fuel support. In the work that we are doing with those organisations, including Inclusion, to help us to design a system that gives people greater access to the benefits that they are entitled to and encourages more individuals to take up the benefits that they are entitled to. We still have a case situation in which there are numbers of people who are entitled to support who are not seeking that support, perhaps because they do not know about it. There are interconnections in terms of the disability support that we can provide and our overall objective about reducing the numbers of people who are disabled and unemployed and the support that we can provide around carers allowance and attendance allowance. Some of the interdependencies that exist there can work against people quite seriously. We need to have a look at, for example, the eligibility criteria around carers allowance that should allow, in my opinion, people to undertake the caring responsibilities that they want to undertake but that does not close them off from employment or education opportunities. There are a range of steps that we can take that will begin to address those issues, but they are, of course, limited by the fact that it is not 100 per cent. We have to recognise that. I am not whining about it, but it is a straightforward fact. It is not 100 per cent, so there are limitations on how far we can go in some of that. One of the other things is that we are living in a time, and this is again from the situation in which the Scottish Government and Westminster Government have two politically opposing opinions. It is the fact that, with disabled people at the moment, the PIP reassessments are one of the major issues that people are going through. About 80 per cent are getting it in appeal. One of the other things that Bill Scott brought up was that, for the old DLA, 70 per cent of assessments were carried out in paper, not face-to-face, for personal independence payment, 95 per cent of assessments are face-to-face, which costs three and a half times as much as the old assessment system. We are paying for assessments with money that could go towards support disabled people. Is this not another example of dignity and respect? There is a better way, but we cannot find a better way to work and the current system is extremely flawed when it comes to dealing with disabled families. I absolutely agree with one of the most striking things in the consultation events that I have attended so far and the conversations that I have had so far is how the current system strips people of their dignity and undermines our self-esteem and is perceived by them to be deeply unfair. We go back to the starting point about what is the purpose of those particular disability benefits. The purpose of the benefits is to provide people with support for the additional costs that they have to meet because of their disability or their health condition. It is not a judgment on whether or not they are disabled. Many folks that I have spoken to have told me that their perception is and this is without fail and it is across the country that their perception is that they are treated as if they are trying to cheat the system. Our premise—we have those guiding principles of dignity, fairness and respect. We have another really important premise that has to run right through everything that we do. That is that the people who will come to the social security system for Scotland will do so because they need to. Therefore, our job is to help them to provide for what they need, as best as we can within all the overall limits that we would know about. If we take the current PIP approach, it seems to me that if you remember what the purpose of the benefit is, your starting point should be what evidence do you need in order to understand the condition that the individual has and what additional costs that might bring. Where would you get that information? You would get it from medical records or from social care information. It already exists. We are in discussions with colleagues about how that information can be provided at the entry point in order—and not with an additional burden on the individual claimant—at the entry point in order to help us to meet two key objectives. One is that we want to be able to have lifetime awards and long-term awards. By long-term awards—I mean genuine long-term awards—not a five-year award where you get called for a reassessment sometime in year two, and everything is thrown up into the air again. We can then only have face-to-face assessments where that is really needed. It may be that the individual triggers that themselves because their condition has worsened and they require to pay for additional support. We also know that the current system does not seem able to deal with conditions of mental ill health or fluctuating conditions, where individuals can be more mobile one day than they are the following day, where individuals will make considerable effort to be as independent as they can be, but the physical toll can mean that for the next two or three days they will be confined to bed. The system needs to understand those conditions and be able to deal with them in a way that allows the individual to retain their dignity and feel respected. I am absolutely confident that we can do that. We can do it in a way that minimises the amount of resource that goes into running the system in order to maximise the amount of resource that you have for the individuals in the system. Any system that has an upholding of a pure rate that the current one does, that I understand is around 65 per cent, is a system that is not working. If that was the case in any other area of activity, we would be jumping up and down and saying that your system is rubbish and you need to fix it. My position is that we need to fix that from the outset. We will, of course, have an appeal process, but I absolutely do not expect it to produce that kind of result, because I want us to get it right from the very beginning. That is just one final question. Basically, a lot of the disabled groups that were in the roundtables were quite impressive about how a very realistic approach that we are taking to that was the fact that they knew that it was difficult, that they wanted it as quickly as possible, but they were under the impression that they knew that the Government had to get it right. They even went as far as saying that they did not expect us to get it 100 per cent right, because that is just a human endeavour. That just cannot happen, but they wanted to make sure that they could get it as possibly close to perfect as we can get it. That was great, but is that not an example of the Scottish Government currently working in co-production almost with those groups? Is that going to continue over the next while while we get the bill through as well? You are right that the groups that represent and work with disabled people are very realistic about the scale and the complexity of that. We need to make sure that that understanding and that knowledge is as widespread as possible to take up the convener's first question, because I think that that is absolutely critical. The co-production will absolutely continue. I personally am absolutely convinced that the best way that you design anything is to involve the people currently on the receiving end of it and currently delivering it. I know that from my experience in health, that you get better health pathways. When you do that, you get smarter systems and you get greater patient satisfaction when that is how you work in health. There is absolutely no reason to doubt that taking that approach into this, where we have the chance to build it from scratch. We have that blank sheet of paper, albeit that we can only write 15 per cent of it, but it is there. When you do that, you absolutely have to involve those people. It is finding ways to do that. The consultation exercise is the start, but right through that, I passed the introduction of the system for Scotland. I want us to continue to involve those who are receiving benefits and entering that system, as well as those who will be working in it, to continue to evaluate for us how well it is working. There is no reason to stop just because you have set it up and to then assume. I am grateful to those organisations for not thinking that we will necessarily be 100 per cent perfect. In light of that, we need them to continue to evaluate how well we are doing, so that we can continuously improve what we are doing. Gordon Lindhurst. Thank you, minister, for coming in today. You mentioned the bedroom tax. I do not want to ask you about that because, as you rightly say, there are policy issues there. To put my question in context, speaking about people who own their own homes, who then have to go into care, and there are provisions about requirements to provide from their assets for funding. Again, that is possibly a policy issue. What I am more interested in and wanted to ask you about is looking to your programme and the ideas of dignity and respect. Is the situation of vulnerable, elderly and disabled people who fall into that category where they may have to provide out of their own assets to pay for their own care? Is that being specifically looked at to ensure that a transition from circumstances is made as easy as possible for them in terms of the systemic way of looking at things and how the systems are being set up? It certainly seems to me that the core of your question relates to our overall policy on the provision of health and social care, which lies with my colleagues in health. However, it is absolutely the case that, in the work that we are doing on the social security system for Scotland, there are clear interconnections across Government with other portfolios in health, in employment and in the economy. I can offer you the assurance that now we are having those discussions between ministers and officials in Government and that we will continue to do so as we work our way through the work that we have got in front of us. I am sure that colleagues in health are mindful of the point that you are raising. In your opening remarks, you talked about when the system starts and the first payment is made, that that payment is made to the right person and the right account. It was just to delve a little deeper into the Government's thinking of who that right person is. We have had the evidence from Engender and other organisations that have given examples about women who are in abusive relationships, where benefit payments are made directly to the abusive partner and that limits their independence and their ability to escape those situations. What are your thoughts on whether you would make pain the women in the household the default person to receive benefits? I have heard and understand very well similar points made to me and to cabinet secretary from Engender and other organisations about the issues around the single householder payment of universal credit. I am sure that you know that part of what will be devolved to us are what are termed flexibilities around universal credit, so we will not have responsibility for universal credit, but we will have flexibilities that will allow us to consider, for example, increasing the frequency of payment, where at the moment it is monthly looking at making that fortnightly payment, at offering the individual the choice for the rent component of universal credit to be paid direct to their social landlord and also now this question about the single householder payment. We are looking at all those, including that last one. There are different ways, and we are talking with Engender and other organisations about how might you achieve that. What mechanism could we use to do it? Is it the principal carer of children or are there other mechanisms that might be possible to make that happen? We are very mindful of it and absolutely looking at it. The additional issue that we have with universal credit is that, in order to be able to exercise those flexibilities, ideally we would be required to wait until universal credit is fully rolled out. Despite the fact that it was announced in 2010, the final roll-out of it is not expected until 2022. That is some considerable time away, and the issue is about the capacity inside DWP to roll out universal credit and to introduce the measures that it needs to take to allow us to exercise those flexibilities. We are currently looking at ways in which we might work with them to be able to introduce the flexibilities earlier than waiting until the final roll-out of universal credit. That takes you into the whole field of IT systems, of data gathering and sharing, of identifying the right people in the right place—precisely your point—at the same time as DWP is undergoing a major change programme in the introduction of universal credit. We have not concluded those discussions by any means. The best assurance that I can offer you is twofold. One, we are very well aware of the additional point that you make with respect to the issues raised by Engender and other women's organisations. By others, including others, we are talking with the parent of a young adult with learning disabilities—for example, who may be independently living to an extent. We are very mindful of all those issues, but equally mindful that the current roll-out of universal credit is not expected to complete until 2022. We are also beginning to think about and have discussions about other options that would allow us to introduce the flexibilities—whatever policy decision we take on those—earlier than waiting until after 2022. I do not know whether Stephen White is going to add a bit. I was just to find out at the joint ministerial working group next month that this is an area that ministers will be discussing. Minister, you mentioned the fact that you would keep us updated in anything, because that is a very important point for getting the roll-out a bit later, the idea that we could come in there and have our say and hopefully get that rolled out a bit earlier, in that respect. Adam Tomkins, do you want to come in? Minister, you mentioned a little while ago, in an earlier remark, the work of the Joseph Rantry Foundation. You will have seen, I am sure, the recent lengthy publication by Joseph Rantry about a comprehensive strategy of solving poverty across the whole of the UK, including in Scotland. It is a very challenging document and challenging for all of us. One of the things that they say in that document is that, for those who can, work represents the best route out of poverty. My first question is whether you agree with that. The second question is that, very strikingly, the Joseph Rantry Foundation also said in this document that additional spending on benefits without addressing the root causes of poverty has failed to reduce poverty. Has failed to reduce poverty has a very strong statement, and I wondered whether you also agreed with that statement. If you did, what, in addition to social security spending, do you think that the Scottish Government's principal priorities are for tackling poverty in Scotland? Thank you very much. I think that we will also find, and I agree that Joseph Rantry is very clear that it is not work per se that is a route out of poverty, but well-rewarded work that is a route out of poverty. We know—and you do too, Mr Tomkins—the significant numbers of people in work who are also in poverty because of low early payments, short-term contracts, zero-hour contracts and so on. Work per se in and of itself is not necessarily the route out of poverty, but well-rewarded and recognised work is certainly a major contributor towards families and individuals not being in poverty. Indeed, that is exactly what families and individuals themselves want. I would caveat that statement that you made at the outset, and I do believe that the Foundation would agree with me that Joseph Rantry would agree with me. In terms of increasing benefits, one of the things that the Joseph Rantry publication says clearly and is very helpful is about the package of measures that any Government should—indeed, it talks about national, Scottish and local Government. A whole tier of Government across the UK is a package of measures that are properly focused and work in concert that they believe can seriously make a big difference—a huge difference—towards, as they describe, ending poverty in the UK. What they are talking about there is getting to a point where there is no destitution, where poverty is short-term and people may move into poverty but the opportunities are there for them to move out of it and there is no long-term systemic poverty. Again, it is important to understand exactly what it is that it is saying. There is no single thing. Social security in and of itself is not going to—no matter what kind of system we sell, in and of itself, sitting alone is not going to be the silver bullet to end poverty in Scotland, but it can be a major contributor towards that goal or it can contribute to poverty. I would argue that some of the steps that have been taken at a UK level have significantly impacted on individuals' capacity to get out of poverty or not. In some instances where, for example, the assessment in the transfer over from DLA to PIP removes a mobility component for that individual, which may remove their capacity to remain in work, that is not assisting that individual moving out of poverty. In and of itself, there is not a single thing that can end poverty. If there was, we would have found it and between us all we would have done it. However, it is the package of measures. It is the combination of UK, Scottish and local government working together towards that goal. It is ensuring that, where you have components such as social security, you do your best with that system to contribute to helping individuals to move out of poverty and you absolutely do not negatively impact on their capacity to leave poverty and, in fact, in some instances, bump them back into it. I am just going to ask the minister—I think that she is here for an hour. It is now 20 minutes to 11. Would that be the last question, or could you take another question? I will take another question. Okay, then. Is it a long question? No, it is a very short question. I know that somebody else wants to come in. The minister has been very generous with her time. Thank you. It is a very brief follow-up to that. One of the concerns that we all have in Government and Opposition is the joined-up nature of effective anti-poverty strategies. In your answer to Mr Lindhurst's question, you talked about the relationship between your officials and health. What can you say to reassure us that the joined-upness between social security and employability, in particular, is there in the current structure of the Scottish Government? I can give you that assurance. I can give you that assurance. Stephen Orr and Anne will respond in terms of joint official working, but Mr Hepburn and I have had a number of conversations to make sure that the work that he is progressing in terms of devolved employment programmes and the work that I am progressing in terms of the social security system for Scotland, that we are both aware of what we are doing and that we are looking at where we can come together and do some joint work and where the direction of travel that he is taking and the one that I am taking complement each other and are not producing additional contradictions. Absolutely the last thing that I want to have is enough complexity in this whole thing without adding to it. In addition, the other point that I can make, which I hope provides assurance, is that, of course, just as a side, I have already talked about how we are discussing with health colleagues on some of those matters as well, so it is not simply in terms of employment. I can say that, of course, the work that I undertake sits in the overall portfolio of misconstants, which includes poverty. We are very clear with colleagues across Government that it is not this portfolio that will fix poverty. It is our job to lead and to provide strategic direction and to take action, but that is an exercise that is across Government. The work is going on at this point to look across Government at how other portfolios can contribute and how we can take the best lessons that we need to learn from that piece of Joseph Rowntree work and others in order to make sure that we are joined up and moving in the direction as we possibly can. It was just to add a couple of comments from my perspective. The minister has told quite a compelling story of co-production on working with external stakeholders. It is my job to get the internal workings across Government set in the right direction. There is no way that we can deliver any of this programme in splendid isolation. In terms of the programme of work that we are putting in place, people in health will be involved, people in employability will be involved in the work that we do. Likewise, we will cross-populate each other's programme boards. They set up the stairs for me in Glasgow. We talk to them often, the director of employability, and I are sitting down, I think, in a couple of weeks time just to talk about those connections and make sure that the relationships are right for the joint work that we are taking forward. Indeed, AWP are quite helpful in this regard as well, because the people in AWP span both employability and social security. So if we ever forget the internal connectedness, they are a good reminder that that is something that we just have to do as part of our DNA. I thought that the meeting that we had the way with AWP was excellent, and I think that we all got something out of that particular one. Minister, can you take one small question from the vice chair? Of course, I can. Thank you. I just wanted to ask you to clarify. The briefing that we have said that both Governments have agreed that the UK Government will provide a one-off transfer of £200 million to the Scottish Government to support the implementation of the new powers, and both Governments have also agreed a baseline transfer of £66 million to cover the on-going administration costs. Is that, if you like, a person? Is that the money for distribution for benefits, or is that admin costs? I know that the £66 million is the admin costs. Presumably, there has been on-going discussion then about further transfer of money to support the new benefits paid out. The £200 million is implementation costs. So that both figures are implementation costs? Well, all right. The £66 million is a recurring amount that we will receive each and every year, so it will fall into the Barnett chair that the Scottish Government gets from the UK Government. The £200 million is a one-off payment that we will take from the UK Government as a contribution towards the costs for all the powers in the Scotland Act, not just social security. Thank you very much, minister. It has certainly been very interesting. A lot of good questions and answers as well. I am sure that we will have you back at the committee again. I look forward to it. I am sure that you will look forward to it, too, and I close the meeting at this moment. Thank you very much.