 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the fifth meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Apologies have been received from Natalie Dawn. I'm pleased to say that we've got Evelyn Tweed along with Natalie Substitute. Our first item of business this morning is to take a decision on taking item three in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much. Our main business today is an evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government ond the Scottish Government's priority for government. As this is the first time that Shona Robison has appeared before the committee, I'd like to take the opportunity to congratulate her on her role. I'm welcome her to the committee as a former colleague on the social justice and fairness commission. It's a real pleasure for me personally to see you in the position that you are in and ways of committee are looking forward to working with you over the coming session. I also welcome the Scottish Government officials who will support the cabinet secretary today, Alison Byrne, deputy director, social security management and delivery division and also Paul Tyre, the interim deputy director, social justice and regeneration. I'd like to invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement, please. Thanks very much, convener, and good morning to everyone on the committee. It seems strange being here, given I was up on the committee previously. It's nice to be back for the first time in this role. As the programme for government made clear, the Scottish Government has an ambitious schedule of work ahead on social justice and on social security. I'd like to just briefly update you on some priority areas, including driving forward our national mission to tackle child poverty and our social security programme, combating homelessness and violence against women and girls. Turning first to child poverty in March, we will publish our second tackling child poverty delivery plan, setting out ambitious actions across the three drivers of poverty to deliver our interim targets backed by a further £50 million fund. We are on track to deliver the Scottish child payment to under-16s by the end of 2022, subject to UK Government co-operation. We will double the payment to £20 a week as soon as we can within this session, and we will set out details of exactly when and how when we publish the budget bill. To ensure that we are immediately reaching around 148,000 young people, we are making bridging payments of £520 a year to children who receive free school meals. We have already paid out £200 of this year's total and agreed dates with COSLA for the next two £160 payments in October and December. That, of course, is in contrast to the UK Government, who in a week's time will cut universal credit by £20 a week, a loss of over £1,000 a year for six million households. We are determined to build a social security system based on dignity, fairness and respect. Delivery remains a joint enterprise with the DWP, and I am grateful to them for their support and recent constructive ministerial discussions. The challenges of large-scale benefit delivery are well known. The UK Government's own universal credit was originally supposed to be fully rolled out by 2017, but it is more likely to take until 2026. We are proud that, in the three years since we have had the powers and legislative ability to deliver benefits that we have introduced to live-in benefits seven brand new, when all benefits are introduced and we have transferred all clients from the DWP to our Scottish systems, we will be delivering 17 benefits six more than were originally anticipated. The parliamentary term will see more milestones reached. From 22 November, child disability payment, our first disability benefit, rolls out nationally. From mid-October, we will begin to transfer awards for Scottish clients currently receiving disability living allowance for children on to child disability payment. From the end of November, we will pay child winter heating assistance for the second year, extending eligibility to severely disabled young people who receive personal independence payments. If our carers allow in supplement bill passes, we will make a double payment of the supplement in December, totaling £462.80. I want to thank the committee for your work on this bill. I know that it was a very short timeframe. Next year, we will launch adult disability payment, replacing PIP and begin transferring around 300,000 Scottish clients on to the new benefit. After that, my immediate priorities will be delivering Scottish carers assistance, where we are currently working with the DWP to agree a timetable and, of course, our winter heating benefits. Following discussion with the DWP, we will start with our new annual £50 winter heating payments, specifically for low-income households currently eligible for cold weather payments in winter 2022. Following the pension age winter heating assistance, we will mirror the current winter fuel payment, which is provisionally scheduled for winter 2024. It is clearly a packed programme requiring significant amounts of legislation, and I am grateful for the committee's support. When all those benefits are rolled out, we will be reaching 1.8 million people around 1 in 3 in Scotland. Social Security Scotland is preparing for that now, expecting to recruit more than 2,000 permanent employees over the next year, and by autumn of next year, we will directly employ over 3,500 people. That is providing secure long-term employment in Dundee, Glasgow and across the country through our local delivery service, boosting economic opportunities for communities throughout Scotland. I hope that that will be welcomed by all. I want to briefly turn to a couple of other items. I am pleased that members of the committee have joined our cross-party steering group to take forward the minimum income guarantee, which is potentially revolutionary in nature. We are also actively working to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, investing £50 million as Parliament in a new ending homelessness together fund, and we are investing more than £100 million to support front-line services and prevent violence against women and girls through our equally safe fund and other measures. I am happy to take any questions. I will now invite colleagues to ask questions. As you will be aware, there have been various instances where policy has needed to be adjusted due to pressure on social security Scotland. Can you outline how many additional staff and resources social security Scotland needs to deliver the payments that it has responsibility for right now and what the Government anticipates it will need to do so once all passported benefits have been transferred from the DWP? I look forward to working with you on many of the joint areas of responsibility and interest. I have laid out in my opening remarks that social security Scotland has been building up over time, but it is very clear that there needs to be a significant increase in staffing going forward, not least with the move of the disability benefits. For that reason, as I laid out in my opening remarks, we are heading towards a staffing complement of around 3,500 staff to make sure that the capacity is there to deliver the type of service that we want to deliver for clients. It is also good for the local economies, not just in Dundee and Glasgow, but across Scotland, where local teams will obviously be giving a direct face-to-face service to local people. I can maybe ask Alison Allison if you want to say anything more about the pace of build-up of the staffing complement. As the cabinet secretary has set out there, the agency at the moment is going through the process of getting itself ready to deliver the national roll-out of child disability payment in November and then moving forward to adult disability payment next year as a substantial increase in staffing for the agency. A lot of that is about the decisions that the Scottish Government has taken about how the benefit will be delivered, including providing an in-house service and access to health and social care practitioners to help to support client applications. It is a significant recruitment for the agency over the coming year, which obviously takes time to plan and to get the right people with the right skills in post, but recruitment is on track to enable the Scottish Government to launch the significant and complex disability benefits as set out by the cabinet secretary. Happy for you to have a follow-up if you have one. Thank you very much. I appreciate that it will take quite a substantial staff and resource to deliver the payments as they stand, but at the minute that is delivering them with exactly the same eligibility and amount as the benefits are reserved. In response to the ADP consultation, for example, I know that the Government has said that it is favourable to largely replicate the eligibility criteria as it currently exists in PIP. I think for the reason being around staffing resources. Do you have an idea how many extra staff you would need to start moving on eligibility and adequacy for adult disability payment? Do you believe that the current criteria that PIP uses is fair? What is your view on the 20-metre rule? A lot of questions in there. Let me try and take them in turn. I think that it is important to recognise that the look and feel for clients will be very different if you take the issues of functional examinations, for example. They will be removed from the consultation. Now, as you are aware, the DWP routinely carry out those tests during assessments such as asking clients to touch their toes and so on. All of that will be removed. Assessments will be replaced with person-centred consultations. I intend to address the concerns about how the criteria are applied, including those relating to mobility. A new way of making entitlement decisions for ADP will ensure that the criteria are more fairly applied to all clients. The engagement of local teams, too. If you take the pilot for the child disability payment, the feedback from families has been very positive because there has been a lot of time spent on supporting people through the system. If you translate that approach to ADP, there will be more staff-intensive support of people applying for the first time for ADP, but also in the case transfer across. You mentioned the issue of the 20-metre rule, and I very much understand the concerns of stakeholders on that. I am more than aware of that. A couple of things to bear in mind. First of all, as you have used the expression yourself in terms of the safe and secure transfer, the DWP has been very clear that the criteria require to remain the same for people to be entitled to their past ported benefits. I recently raised with the Minister for Disabled People the issue of policy divergence. We want to diverge policy-wise, and we have said that we will review ADP in 2023, after the cases are transferred. The UK Government has announced through its green paper that they want to review and look to make changes to disability benefits across the rest of the UK. I said to the minister that, given that policy divergence, we need to be able to develop and deliver policy that is suited to the needs of people with disabilities here in Scotland without being constrained by concerns of the risk of losing past ported benefits. Ben Macpherson, Minister for Social Security, wrote explicitly asking the minister, who is unfortunately now moved on, to ask the UK Government very clearly for assurances around that past ported benefits issue. We have a journey to go on that. We do not have that assurance yet, but we have an agreement to discuss that on an on-going basis. At the moment, we need to make sure that people will get their payments and that that is not put at risk. You can understand from our point of view, even though there are frustrations that I understand, we cannot risk people not getting their payments. However, I would want to engage with the committee very fully, with Scoss and with the expert advisory group that I have met recently, who in their commentary recognised that, first of all, people need to have their benefits secured and no risk in terms of the delivery of that when they are transferred. However, I think that recognising that the review opens up opportunities for policy divergence, and I want to work with the committee on looking at what the options are going forward. Sorry that it was a bit long, but it is a very complicated issue. That is very helpful, cabinet secretary. We have further questions in this section coming from Emma Roddick and also Gemma Balfour. I am hoping to come in at some stage in that part, too. I note that the previous cabinet secretary raised issues with the joint ministerial working group on accessing data in order to extend the Scottish child payment, and I wonder if there was any update that you could provide on how that went and if those issues are still a factor. Again, that was an issue that we raised directly with the minister for disabled people last week. That is a critical issue. We need to have movement on the data from the DWP. In the meantime, we have brought in the bridging payments to make sure that families get money for their kids over this year and next year, but we need to have the data in order to be able to move to the new system. It is fair to say that there is yet to be an agreement on what method that will be. The DWP has suggested one route in which we do not have full confidence in that being delivered by the DWP by our timeframes. Our officials have suggested a different way, which has not yet been accepted. However, I am confident that officials are working very closely on that. I would have to put it on record that there is a very good working relationship, particularly at the official level. I am confident that a solution will be found. Alison is very close to those discussions, so I will add a little bit of detail. As the cabinet secretary said, we continue to work closely with the DWP on how we can access the data that is required to deliver Scottish child payment phase 2, which is for six to 16-year-olds. Social Security Scotland currently does not hold that data. Without access to information on entitlement to reserve benefits, the Scottish Government could not move forward and deliver that benefit. As the cabinet secretary said, we have established that DWP holds the data that we need, and the challenge is the method in which DWP will transfer that data to us, and therefore what digital infrastructure we need to build to plug into DWP systems to get that. As the cabinet secretary said, timing remains critical for us around this, but we are working hard with DWP. We have another meeting with them today on this issue, so we are hopeful and confident that we can reach a resolution. Thank you very much indeed, Alison. That is very helpful. For the record, we have also invited the Secretary of State to come to appear before the committee so that we can discuss some of those issues around data sharing and relationship building, which is clearly going to be very important. Jeremy Balfour. Thank you for that, and good morning, Cabinet Secretary, and welcome back to committee. A couple of questions have actually been followed up by Pam Duncan-Clancy, in regard to the divergence in policy. Clearly, under the Social Security Act, we diverged in policy around terminal illness, so we have a different policy from that. Was that a problem with DWP at that point? Did they react negatively to your act? Are they aware of it? Is that a way that we can build a relationship around policy difference that it seems to work in okay at the moment? I did not quite catch the the terminal illness. Our definition is different north of a border than south of a border. That is obviously a change in policy. I am just wondering how DWP and UK Government reacted to that change. I might bring Alison in, because she would have been around when that happened. I think that the difference will be around the eligibility for passporting benefits. I take your point that there were different approaches to terminal illness, but I do not think that that would have put at risk any of the passporting benefits, whereas the mobility component of PIP and the adult disability payment is seen by the DWP as a fundamental part of the eligibility for passporting benefits, so it has been treated in a different way. We have to get beyond that. It appears to me an opportunity that the UK Government has published a green paper that is clearly thinking about changes. If we are both thinking about changes, we need to come to some kind of agreement that is okay and should not put at risk the passporting on to benefits that are still currently reserved. I am optimistic that we can get there. If we can, that opens up a lot of opportunities for the review of ADP from 2023. It allows us to scope and build something that, if we were starting with a blank sheet of paper, we would choose to build rather than necessarily what we are inheriting, albeit that the look and feel, and there are some major changes being made as a laid out in my answer to Pam Duncan Glancy, that it is going to feel a lot different for clients. Nevertheless, we want to go further than that. My second question is, we took evidence last week or a week before in regard to take-up and you will be aware from your work committee that there are still a lot of benefits not being taken up. One of the reasons that was raised is that if we ran a campaign here in Scotland that encouraged more people to apply for attendance allowance or any other benefits like that, that there may be a financial cost to the Scottish Government. If more people take it up, would that mean that it has to be funded out of the Scottish Government or would it just continue to come out of the budget from Westminster? Have you had discussions on that? Is there any clarity in your thinking about running campaigns and take-up in regard to cost? I remember that we got into this in quite a lot of detail when I sat on the committee. To say that it is complex is a bit of an understatement, I would say. The issue, as you have quite clearly laid out, is concerns about the fiscal framework and the knock-on effects. The previous Cabinet Secretary for Social Security wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions back in February of last year to agree that an increase in take-up of reserved benefits to which an individual is already entitled is outside the scope of the spillover provisions, which you will know a lot about, and again, they are complex. The DWP will not seek to raise a spillover claim in this scenario. One of the qualifying criteria for a Scottish benefit is that entitlement is conditional on receipt of a reserved benefit in the main income-related benefits, Social Security Scotland signposts clients to those reserved benefits. That is particularly important in relation to take-up of Scottish child payment. Social Security Scotland does not directly promote reserved benefits, as a matter of course, since we regard that as being the role of the UK Government. However, we fund advice services and they will give advice on all benefits, whether they are devolved or reserved, to try to maximise take-up and maximise people's incomes. There are on-going issues around the fiscal framework. I think that there have been a number of times that it has been expressed that changes need to be made to the fiscal framework around this issue, but that is really as much of an update as I can give you. I do a very complex issue and I am not absolutely sure that I followed totally your answer, but that is more to do with my understanding of your answer. I wonder whether it would be possible for you to write back to the committee, just to put you in a bit more of a layman's language, if that would be possible. I think that for us going forward, if we are going to seek to promote benefits that are now devolved to the new agency, I think that it would be helpful for me to know who is going to pay for that. I appreciate that it is a very complex subject and it is not easy to give them one answer to it, but maybe some kind of letter back to the committee, if that would be okay, committee would be helpful. I am happy to do that and maybe the exchange of correspondence that I mentioned from the previous cabinet secretary might help. I am happy to do that. That would be very helpful. We have received some very useful and interesting evidence around benefit take-ups such as the work that was done in the deep end practices in Glasgow, for instance. Getting a handle on exactly how the fiscal framework works in that scenario would be really helpful for us, as it is an area that the committee is very interested in. The first question that I have is in two parts. Please, for the cabinet secretary, could you please explain how challenging it has been for you, for Social Security Scotland, to be able to develop new social security benefits under the hybrid system that we are currently part-devolved system that we are currently operating under? You have alluded to some of those challenges already. For Ms Burn or Mr Tyra, please, I note that seven of the 11 benefits that have been delivered are new. Could you outline how the differences in developing a completely new benefit are compared to maintaining a replacement benefit are in terms of infrastructure, logistics, manpower etc? It is complex and a bearing in mind that, when Social Security Scotland was first established following the legislation back in 2018, it did not have any infrastructure, so all of that had to be built from scratch. If the DWP or the UK Government decides to bring in a new benefit, it has all of the infrastructure there to be able to do that. Social Security Scotland had none of that, so it essentially had to start building from scratch. Every new benefit has to be built from scratch. We have an issue in relation to winter benefits in that regard. If there is not a process of household matching, then Social Security Scotland has to build a new system for that one benefit. You can imagine the complexities. On top of that, we then have case transfer. I do not think that this has never really been attempted in any way of the scale that we are going to do where that number of cases are transferred from one Government to another one department than one Government to a department and agency under a different Government. The complexity of that in itself is huge. There is no room for error there, because the ultimate people need to get continuity of their payments. All of that is very challenging. Scottish child payment was delivered within 18 months, and that was a very ambitious timescale to do it. Of course, in order to do it in that timeframe, the top-up powers were used, which is using the entitlement universal credit to top up that benefit entitlement with Scottish child payment. Going forward, it would be good to have a different legislative basis for Scottish child payment. However, trying to do that in the timeframe would not have been possible in order to get payments. We have a hybrid system that is not ideal. I said that, if you were starting with a blank sheet of paper, you would not build a hybrid system where you have the interaction with the DWP that can bring its own challenges. At the same time, you are trying to build those platforms for a system in Scotland now. Alison will be able to say a little bit more about that, because she is closer to the complexities of the system. Just to expand on what the cabinet secretary said, one of the challenges that we face in building a brand new public service from scratch is just that there is no existing infrastructure in Scotland. When DWP launches a new benefit, it already has the payment system, the document management system, the telephony system and everything that it needs to support the launch of a new benefit. We have built all of that from scratch. I will give you one example to bring that to life a little bit. When we launched the pilot for child disability payment in July, we launched that in three local authority areas. In order just to launch that pilot in three local authority areas, we had to procure, build, develop and release 20 big bits of new functionality. They included everything from the digital portal, which is the new online way that clients can access disability benefits in Scotland through to an appointment booking tool, so that clients can go online and book an appointment with a local delivery officer, all the way through to building a document management system, so that we can communicate with clients through texts, through letters and in a variety of different ways. The complexity of those systems and the pace and scale of the processes that we are putting in place to build the infrastructure necessary to deliver benefits in Scotland is hugely complex. To your point, convener, about what is happening in a hybrid system, we then need to take those bits of kit, if you like, in Scotland and plug them back in again to DWP, so we extract ourselves to design and deliver a system for Scotland, but we need to then plug that back in again to share information. Of course, as the Cabinet Secretary has talked about, particularly for the disability benefits, there are a number of passport entitlements that require our systems to talk to DWP systems to ensure that clients continue to get the benefits that they currently receive. Added into the mix of that is case transfer, which the Cabinet Secretary has referred to, which is a considerable and significant undertaking for both Governments of transferring about 700,000 cases of existing Scottish clients from DWP systems to Scottish systems and all of the associated case records and documentation that goes with that. The hybrid nature of the system lends an additional layer of complexity to what is already quite a challenging build in terms of building a brand new public service from scratch. Thank you very much indeed, that was very helpful and useful. My next question in this area is about any Scottish Government analysis that has taken place about what euphemistically described as UK welfare reform that has happened over the last decade. Has the Scottish Government done an impact analysis of that? How has that impacted on the Scottish Government's ability to be able to deliver on your devolved areas of priority in social security? I think that there is not just the Scottish Government's analysis, but there have been numerous organisations that have done various bits of analysis of the impact of the welfare reform. A lot of attention at the moment is on the reduction of the universal credit £20 uplift, which is estimated to potentially remove £460 million from Scottish beneficiaries. We are fast approaching the DD on that. As I said in the debate last week, I sincerely hope that there is a change of heart on that. Apart from anything else, the fact that we are in a bit of a perfect storm at the moment with rising fuel costs, rising food costs, it would just be the worst time to compound those financial pressures on households by the removal of that universal credit uplift. Some families who are just about keeping their head above water will be in a very challenging situation that will make that a very difficult winter indeed. It is a huge impact. Alongside that, we have raised concerns over the peace around the benefit cap, the two-child limit and all those things that put pressure on families that are already struggling. It is worth bearing in mind that the universal credit recipients, many of whom are already working, have the idea that one of the UK Government's responses has been that people should go out and get additional hours. It fails to recognise, as the committee knows very well from the previous work that it did around how many people are in work poverty and how many of those who are on universal credit are already working, but they are working in insecure low-paid jobs. That is huge. It will add to what is already a perfect storm that is brewing. It also undermines the work that we are doing not least around the Scottish child payment. We are trying to get that money into people's hands and, of course, the commitment to double, which is obviously a commitment that is shared around this table. We will be giving with one hand and taking away with the other. That does not help us to get towards our interim child poverty targets, which is a huge concern to me. I hope that I have given you a flavour of the work. We can write to the committee with the further analysis that has been done. There is a lot of detail there. The committee members will be well aware of the headline figures, but if it would be helpful for us to furnish the committee with more detailed evidence on that, we can do so. That would be most helpful, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much. Sticking to the poverty theme and the child poverty targets, I would like to bring in Emma Roddick and Marie McNair. I like the comment from yourself that recognises joined up work across the portfolio is needed in order to improve people's lives. Obviously, poverty and child poverty is affected by every Government portfolio. I wondered how you are working with other cabinet secretaries to ensure that their decision making is poverty aware and their policies are poverty proof. That is a very important question, because tackling child poverty cannot just be my portfolio's responsibility. It has to be the whole of Government. Indeed, it is the responsibility of the UK Government and the local Government in the third sector. We need to work together around tackling child poverty, which is why I made the comments in my previous answer that it does not help if another organisation is facing a different direction. Yesterday, I gave a presentation to a public services reform group, which is a group that brings together all cabinet secretaries and ministers under the chair of the Deputy First Minister to look at how we make the improvements that we need to make to public services and do things differently. On child poverty, I was basically making a number of asks that we have a shared responsibility, and of course everybody accepts and acknowledges that, but that we need game changing policy ideas from across Government to add to what is described as a game changer by many organisations in the Scottish child payment. It is fair to say that, in tackling child poverty, we need to do that in three ways. One is to make sure that people have opportunities to get into work, which is secure work at least living wage, and employability programmes are an important part of that. Secondly, we reduce costs and, therefore, the wraparound childcare, making sure that housing costs, which are lower here than the rest of the UK, are important as well. The third is social security and other supports. We need those other bits. One of the areas that is very important is around employability, and we are looking at how we can make that work for people better. We know that it is around 90 per cent of children living in poverty who live within the six priority families. The six priority families are key, so they are facing issues not just around financial poverty but disability, loan parents, and bain communities, and all those additional issues. We need to make sure that support is not just about saying that there is a door over there if you can find it to walk through and get on this employability programme. That does not work for folk who have all those pressures upon them, so we need to wrap around the families and give them all the support, so it will not just be about a job opportunity or training, it is about childcare, it is about transport costs, it is about relieving some of the barriers and pressures. If we can get that right, I think that that could get us a significant way to meeting those targets, even against that really difficult backdrop that was described earlier on. That is one of the main areas of focus. There will be other things that cabinet secretaries and ministers will bring to the table, but for me there is a big opportunity there if we can get it right. Again, I am happy to keep the committee furnished with updates as we go forward with the detail of that. Thank you, Ms Roddick. I thank the cabinet secretary for taking the time to come along and give evidence this morning at the committee. I will go back to Emma Cymru's comment on lit poverty proofing. You are aware that we took evidence last week from the poverty and quality commission, the child poverty action group and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and they suggested that there is little evidence to show that the Scottish Government poverty proof all policies and budgets. Do you think that that is a fair comment? I think that we can get better at it. I think that there is more work to do. I think that we do try to do that as much as we can, but I think that we need to do that. We need to make sure that we interrogate all of our spend. Again, one of the commitments that was agreed yesterday is that we interrogate our commitment on spending review and the budget that is coming in terms of what impact will that spend have on tackling child poverty. Doing that is going to be a really important part of getting to the right solutions. That might mean some difficult choices, setting budgets and spending review usually does. I am keen for us to keep a laser focus in difficult times. Difficult decisions need to be made. You cannot do everything. For me, this has got to be the overriding priority of government. There is an acceptance of that. It is then about making that happen. It probably is a fair comment that there is always room for improvement and we can get better at it. I want to push that. My experience from a local councillor is that people often struggle to navigate the social security system and, unfortunately, they do not have access to the full entitlements. How important do you view the role of the advice sector and how you plan to support them, especially with respect to the Scottish Government's obligation on promoting social security entitlements? It is an important obligation that we should have a duty to promote benefit entitlement uptake. It would be nice if the UK Government did the same. That would help. Advice services are really important and they deliver huge gains for individuals and families because the money that people get will be spent more often in local communities. The value of that is huge. We see that as being key to making sure that people get access to what they are entitled to and are able to support their families. We want to do more of that, so we should be aware of the work that is being done around co-locating advice services in places that people go to, such as GP surgeries, looking at the role of schools and other places where people go, so that it is made easier for them. It is less threatening that they are in that place anyway. They do not have to walk into somewhere else. It is there. I think that the more we can do that. I know that those who are working on the front line, whether it is in the health service or in other services, value being able to signpost someone who might be there for a health reason but is expressing concerns about the impact of debt and financial worries on their mental health. To be able to signpost to an advice worker is really important. We need to be there to scope to do more of it. How confident are the Scottish Government that child poverty targets will be met? I am certainly doing everything that I can, as is the Government to do absolutely everything that it can and to leave no stone unturned. We will give it absolutely our best shot. If we manage to do all that, I think that we will have played our part in getting towards the targets. What I cannot control, though, is the impact on those targets from decisions made elsewhere. How frustrating would it be if the analysis at the end of the day is that we would reach the targets had it not been for people losing £20 a week off of their universal credit, for example? There is a bit of a kind of water. You can only control what you can control. We can only do what we can do alongside third sector local government working and really doing everything that we can. I absolutely give the commitment to do that. I am confident that we will do everything that we can, but there are some things that are out with our control. I have a worry at the moment about what I described earlier as a perfect storm. The worry of fuel poverty rates going up this winter because of the rise in energy bills is something that is fast upon. I attended a resilience meeting of the Scottish Government last night that was looking at the very issues. A lot of those issues are reserved in terms of energy caps. We would want the UK Government to do everything that it can around energy prices. The big energy companies have a role to play here as well. We need to keep people safe over winter. As ever, the Scottish Government will step up to do what we can, and we would expect nothing less. However, there is a worry for people's household incomes that we have all those pressures brewing at the same time. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Before we move on to the next section, led by Evelyn Tweed, I would like to bring in Pam Duncan-Glancy here, please. Thank you, convener, for the opportunity. You are right to point out the kind of perfect storm that people are facing. I genuinely am terrified for what families are going to do, particularly around the cut to universal credit and fuel poverty. It is a shame really that we could have possibly had an opportunity to have a publicly owned energy firm, which could have addressed some of that. However, my specific question around poverty is for the two of the groups that you identified around children and disabled people, first of all, on the Scottish child payment. Last week, we heard evidence saying that social security really is going to have to do the heavy lifting if we are to meet the targets. I understand that the £20 cut to universal credit is catastrophic and should not go ahead, but the targets were set by this Parliament without caveat. We need to find ways across everything that we are doing in this Parliament to meet those targets. Can you commit now to do that, to do all that you can, regardless of what is happening elsewhere, to meet those targets? Our view, obviously, is that we will need to double the Scottish child payment immediately and again next year. If you could set out what you intend to do to meet those targets. Secondly, on disabled people, have you made an assessment of the extra cost of living as a disabled person so that we can begin to address some of the poverty that disabled people face too? Let me be absolutely clear, yes, is the answer to your first question. Without hesitation, we will do absolutely everything that we can to meet those targets. You are right, there was no caveats, but it is fair for me to point out where progress is undermined by decisions made elsewhere and it makes that task all the more difficult. We absolutely need to do that. You described social security needing to do the heavy lifting. To a degree, that is true, but, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said, it is not sustainable to try to meet the child poverty targets through social security alone. It would be unsustainable financially and does not recognise the other two pillars of reducing costs and employment. Those two are hugely important, which is why I spent a little bit of time earlier on talking about the importance of game-changing interventions around employability and making it easier for parents particularly to be able to get to where they want to in their lives. Employment and employment opportunities are a huge part of that. We have said that we want to make progress on doubling the Scottish child payment as quickly as we can, and we have set that in the context of the forthcoming budget bill. I am confident that we will make progress as quickly as is humanly possible to do. That will make a difference, but it sits alongside all the other interventions that are happening to support families. Importantly, the bridging payments have been a way of getting money into the hands of families now without waiting for having to wait for the DWP data issues to be resolved. That was a way of recognising that the issue is current and it is here. People need the money and the bridging payments were a way of getting that support into people's hands. However, that sits alongside best start in making sure that we help families with the cost of food, the work that has been going on in free school meals and holiday meals, all of which are support in cash and in kind for families to keep them afloat. If there is more that we can do over the course of this winter, we can be assured that we are looking at that at the moment. We want to do everything that we possibly can to keep families safe during this winter. In terms of the disability assessment of additional costs and disabilities? Oh, my apologies. Yes, there has been work done around the additional costs, not just by Scottish Government but by a lot of external agencies as well. I am happy to write to the committee with more information on that, if that would be helpful. I am very interested in a minimum income guarantee and I think that the public is too. Can you give us your thoughts on how challenging it is going to be to put it in place? First of all, I thank you to all the parties represented who have agreed to take part in the minimum income guarantee work as a kind of political overview, if you like, and oversight. It is important in itself because it is quite an ambitious thing to try and do. Having as much political consensus as possible about the principle of trying to do this and to create a minimum income below which no one would fall is a different way of thinking about the support that people get. Of course, that brings in to it not just the cash that people get through whether it is through work or whether it is through support, such as social security payments. It also brings in the support in kind that people would get through wraparound child care or support with transport costs and so on. Work has begun and the expert group is going to be doing the heavy lifting on the detail of how that could work in practice. We think that we can make more progress with the minimum income guarantee than would be possible with universal basic income because although a minimum income guarantee runs up against the tax and benefits system, to do it fully, it gives us some latitude to be able to make some progress and test some of the thinking out about how a minimum income guarantee might work in Scotland without necessarily having full control over the tax and benefits system that we do not have at the moment. I am keen for us to get on with the work. I would like to see some of the ideas that emerge from the expert group that we could get political agreement around and then we could try and test those out. It is exciting but not easy to do and it will not be done like a week on Tuesday. It is going to take some time, but I want to thank colleagues for their political support in doing this. I am pleased to hear that there is the cross-party input and we are all working together to hopefully see a good conclusion of this work. Do you think that we will be able to implement something by the end of session 6? I think that we will be able to implement something, whether it is a fully fledged minimum income guarantee with all singing, all dancing. I am not sure about that. We will be guided by the expert group, but I think that we will be able to certainly implement elements of it. It might be that we do bits at a time. If the expert group recommends that there is a change that could get us on a stepping stone towards a full minimum income guarantee, that would be something that we could do perhaps as a series of parts of implementation. My ambition is that, if we could, it would be good. If it is possible, we would do that. If it is not possible to do a full minimum income guarantee, we would want to do stepping stones towards that. We will be guided by the expertise of those who are sitting on the group. Paul, do you want to say anything more about the work of the group? Just to say that the original idea for a minimum income guarantee came from the social and new advisory board report that we should publish in January. It very much saw a minimum income guarantee as a very ambitious call to action. It was the first call to action in its report, but it saw it as a long-term ambition. It recognised the complexity of it and the difficulty of getting to that game-changing minimum income guarantee. It talked about it as a 10-year ambition, so its delivery in 2030 is being realistic. The cabinet secretary has talked about the potential for stepping stones towards that, but certainly the report itself recognised the challenge of that. Thank you very much indeed, Mr Tarrar. Just to ask what engagements have your officials had with the DWP regarding Mick. Well, over the peace, there has been a lot of engagement around, first of all, the wars on the universal basic income. There was a lot of dialogue or a lot of requests from the Scottish Government to the UK Government on how to test out the theory. How could I describe the response as being lukewarm with perhaps being generous? We have a bit of an issue there that there is not a joint commitment or agreement to work towards that. That is a bit of a problem. With the minimum income that we have yet to guarantee, we have raised it with the UK Government. I think that they are perhaps not particularly any less lukewarm, but will continue to discuss the opportunities. Clearly, if you had an integrated tax and benefit system, the scope to do a lot of the more ambitious changes are easier. As Paul said, the social renewal advisory board has set us a task that is a very ambitious series of recommendations. It would be remiss of us not to try and do what we can do, even within devolved powers, to make progress towards that. If we get any support or help from the UK Government, I am not going to put much store in that. I think that we just need to get on and do what we can ourselves. How feasible do you think that it will be without full devolution of welfare and employment law in Scotland? Having half the tools in your box is never as good as having a full tool box, that is for sure. We would want to continue to argue that having full control over benefits here makes more sense. We talked earlier about the challenges of a hybrid system and the complexities of the interaction of those two systems. That is going to continue to be a challenge without a doubt. That is before we get into the policy divergence issues, which again are also a challenge. Employment is an issue that there is more of a growing consensus that having employment powers here makes a lot of sense. I know that a lot of the trade unions are in favour of it, and there is a bit more political consensus around it. It would give us the opportunity to make some of the changes around the statutory basis for the living wage, for example, for one. Issues around terms and conditions make sense for that to be devolved here, and then this Parliament can make the policy choices that it wants to make. I am optimistic that that will eventually happen. I want to ask some questions relating to homelessness. I am looking at the September 2017 Scottish Government announcement of additional £50 million over five years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. It is not exactly clear whether or not in the latest programme for government a reference to £50 million, the ending homelessness together fund, is additional money or not. I wonder if you could clarify that to the committee. Paul, can you help me out in terms of whether it is additional money? I think that we might have to come back to you on that. I think that it is, but I want to confirm that with you if that is okay. That would be really helpful, along with if it is, how much money is still within the 2017 fund to be allocated, which I think would be still running two years. Let me come back on the detail of that, if you don't mind. That would be very helpful, thank you. Also an issue that I wanted to raise was with regards to implementation of unsuitable accommodation orders. This is something that has impacted many families who, during the pandemic especially, have maybe been left in B&Bs and hotels. I wonder if you could outline to the committee when the Government would fully implement those orders to end people in unsuitable accommodation. The member will be aware that there were exceptions, particularly during the pandemic, because of the increased use of temporary accommodation, keeping people safe in hotels. Nobody wants unsuitable temporary accommodation to be used. We have given local authorities until the end of September to make sure that they are not using unsuitable temporary accommodation. Officials have been working very closely with those local authorities that have told us that they have the biggest challenge in meeting that deadline. It won't be of a surprise to Miles Briggs around which local authorities those are. Edinburgh is one. I would have to say that, despite the challenges—I have had some very constructive conversations with the housing convener Kate Campbell—that they have taken some quite innovative approaches to try and make sure that they use every lever at their disposal to try and make sure that they increase the accommodation supply and work towards not using unsuitable temporary accommodation. They have flagged with us that it will be challenging for them to meet the end of September deadline. There are other local authorities that are similarly in that situation. The vast majority are confident that they will meet that deadline. We are therefore working particularly closely with the fewer—I will try to remember off the top of my head how many there were—but there was a handful of local authorities that were going to find it difficult. We want to give them particular support in meeting their responsibilities beyond the end of September. It would be helpful for the committee if you could keep us updated on that. I know from discussions that I have had with the cabinet secretary, organisations such as Crisis and Shelter, I have put forward a preventative model that I know the cabinet secretary and the Government is looking at. To look at how we strengthen homelessness prevention legislation, I wonder whether you could outline to the committee timescales for that and when we are likely to see some of that brought forward in action, given the impact of the pandemic, but opportunities potentially coming out to look at a preventative model? The homelessness prevention duty, again, I will get back to the committee on the time frame, but we are hoping to do that relatively soon. I think that prevention is absolutely key. There is some really good work around the rapid rehousing plans that local authorities are taking forward. They are quite ambitious. There has been a real sea change of move away from the kind of systems that we had previously to a recognition that a housing first approach is really important for those who have additional vulnerabilities. Preventing homelessness and local authorities and RSLs are essentially working with tenants who are at risk of becoming homeless. It is not in a landlord's interest for a tenant to lose their tenancy and just end up back in the system. A lot of work has gone on, particularly local authorities and RSLs, around that preventative work. The pandemic has been tough and we have worked, as you will be well aware, on a number of ways of strengthening that. The pre-action protocols, the loan fund, the grant fund to try and make sure that people do not lose their tenancy and that we get tenancies sustainable. That is the best way of preventing homelessness for those who have particular addiction issues and other mental health challenges. The rapid rehousing and housing first model is definitely the way, because it gets people back into a sustainable tenancy, but with the wraparound support that they need. Miles Briggs covered my question on the unsuitable accommodation order, so I welcome the response and the further updates that are to come. As someone who has been homeless, I welcome that this is under the social justice remit rather than housing. Do you think that that is reflective of the Government's good understanding of the drivers of homelessness beyond just housing availability? It is not just about bricks and mortar, it is about all of the other supports that someone needs. It is a recognition that housing itself is an important anti-poverty measure in that it gives the safe, sustainable routes to then be able to give the person the family need. Whether that is support around dealing with addictions, mental health, debt or employability, having that safe, sustainable tenancy is so important in being able to then be dealing with all the other issues that are in someone's life. I think that the ambitions for the affordable housing supply is a big number of 110,000 but it is not just about building or acquiring new houses, it is about making sure that people are supported in those tenancies successfully. I am aware that the Highland Council is quite worried about changes to the rapid rehousing policy and that previously somebody had to have a connection to the area in order to have a right to be housed. I wondered what conversations you are having with councils such as the Highland Council to make sure that they are supported to enact what they see as quite a challenging pressure that is coming towards them. As you would expect, those issues have been raised with us by individual local authorities and by COSLA as well. Again, it is about supporting those local authorities who have some concerns. It is the right thing to do in terms of making those changes, but we do understand that some local authorities will have some concerns more than others and it is about us working with them to overcome those challenges. Thank you very much, Ms Roddick. Cabinet Secretary, I have got Marie McNair with a brief supplement to the police. Just to ask yourself to advise the committee, has there been any assessment of the pressures that the UK welfare cuts are having on the drivers of homelessness? I thought that it was quite revealing that there was a UK Government adviser in a quote that they gave, which I think I might have used in my speech last week, said that the UC cut itself would drive up homelessness. You can see why. If a tenancy is just sustainable and the person loses £20 a week, that can knock what was a sustainable tenancy into an unsustainable tenancy for all the reasons that we understand. I think that it could and will have a knock-on effect on homelessness, which is why it is absolutely wrong-headed. At this late stage, I just hope that sense prevails and that, given all the other pressures that the UK Government thinks again. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Next to come in is Pam Dung and Glancy again, please. Thank you, convener. One of the issues that the cabinet secretary will be aware of has been on-going for some time now is that thousands of disabled people across Scotland are unable to access homes and effectively they themselves are now considered homeless. We know of a circumstance, for example, in the Glasgow region, where the council is building accessible houses on a very, very small scale and only to about 8 per cent. The Government current target is 10 per cent, but it is not in legislation. Given that there is a huge variability across the country on those builds and the significant need for accessible housing for disabled people, will the Government consider making that a statutory target? I am always open to consideration of those things. I think that housing to 2040 sets out very much around the need for barrier-free housing. As we go forward, we need to make sure that, rather than trying to retrofit homes, all homes are built in a way that is barrier-free. That is absolutely right and proper. As we take forward the housing standard that we want to apply across all 10 years, there are opportunities in all of that to make the improvements that we need to make. We will be consulting on the rental sector strategy of which they will follow a housing bill. There may be opportunities to make some of the improvements around some of those things. If we set it in statute, we need to be confident that that can be delivered. There will be a lot of work, but what I would say today is that I will give further consideration to that. I am also happy to have a follow-up discussion with you about the cases that you are citing and how that might work in practice. Before I bring in Jeremy and Faisal on the next section, and I am conscious of the time, I do not know if you have got five or ten minutes beyond 11 o'clock, Cabinet Secretary, thank you. Attention has rightly been given recently on the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Could you expand on the Scottish Government's work on doing what can be done to provide those with no recourse to public funds access to support and what work is going on within the Scottish Government, but also in terms of working with the UK Government in terms of trying to address the situation, which is obviously very, very challenging for those involved? Yes, it very much is very challenging and obviously we have made it very clear that we want to play our part in the Afghanistan resettlement programme. I myself and Angus Robertson have been involved in a number of calls with UK ministers around Scotland playing its part, stepping up to the plate and doing what we can in helping people who are fleeing an intolerable situation. Obviously, we have taken an approach that is captured in ending destitution together, which was published back in March. It is a joint document between ourselves and COSLA. It really looks at how to improve and strengthen support provision and service for people who are subject to no recourse to public funds living in Scotland. It is really informed by really powerful testimony. I have heard that myself, because I have met virtually a number of asylum seekers and refugees and heard directly some of the challenges that they have. Third sector organisations providing the front-line support are absolutely critical, as are the expertise of legal practitioners and others in supporting and helping people to deal with trauma, for example. The strategy sets out the initial actions to deliver essential needs, enabling access to specialist advice and advocacy. We will continue in answer to the other bit of your question to press the UK Government to make changes to reduce the risk of people falling into destitution as a result of their immigration status. There are very strict rules about what can literally jeopardise someone remaining here if they had access to public funds that are regarded as not being acceptable or breaching the rules. There needs to be caution there. We have also specifically asked for the UK Government to remove the Scottish welfare fund from the list of restricted public funds, because it would be a flexible way of helping people who are in crisis. We have not yet got agreement on that, unfortunately, but we will continue to pursue that. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. It is very interesting, and I know that the committee colleagues will be interested in that, too. If you could furnish us with a continued update on those areas, that would be very helpful, particularly if the Secretary of State does come before us in the future. I turn now to Jeremy Balfour, followed by Faisal Chardry. You have a very large remit within your portfolio to save at least. One of the things that I was interested to note was that you are responsible for Oscar and for charities. It is perhaps not the most sexy subject ever to discuss, but I have had a number of people contact me over the years to say, is there any thought of the form for Oscar in that if I am a charity with two people, I almost feel like the same number of forms every year as the national trust to a very large charity. I know that Oscar Tuka had a consultation running earlier this year, which is now concluded. Is there any thinking of bringing forward the form to charity law, which might not sound exciting, but for many people it would make it a lot easier to engage in my local community? First of all, thank you for Jeremy Balfour's recognition of my rather large remit, but it creates opportunities to join the dots across that portfolio. There will be a charities bill coming forward in this session of Parliament, and there is an opportunity to look at some of the issues that charities have raised and that Oscar is keen to see some changes made in the light of experience. I am happy to write to the committee with a bit more detail on that, if that would be helpful. I think that one of the things that was positive out of the last 18 months was the relationship between local government, Scottish government and the third sector, particularly around homelessness. I know here in Edinburgh, for example, there was a very positive three-tier approach to it that really did work. One of the things that the third sector talked about a lot is proof-funding the funding, so often it is a one-year amount of money that they get. I know that when I was working in a third sector organisation, we used to get our redundancy notice every December, depending on whether we got money coming in the next year, which was never the most ideal place for any organisation. I know that it is difficult to forecast funding, but is there any thought that you are doing with your colleagues, particularly Kate Forbes, around a two- to three-year funding package for the third sector so that we could plan better going forward? Yes, it is something that is constantly under discussion. I have a lot of sympathy for desire for multi-year funding so that organisations know what the life of the land is going to be beyond one year. I think that Kate Forbes has said in relation to local government as well that that would be a desire moving forward. I think that that is only possible, though, if the Scottish Government has certainty too. Obviously, if the Scottish Government gets a one-year funding settlement from the UK Government, it is very difficult to go beyond that in terms of the organisations that the Scottish Government would then fund. It depends on the certainty that we would have. I was able to give a five-year indication of the funds available for the affordable housing supply, but I was only able to do that because, essentially, within Government, there is a commitment that we will meet the affordable housing targets and, therefore, whatever funding we get, that is a key priority going forward. I was able to do that, but in a larger scale it is more difficult. In short answer, yes, those discussions are on-going and we know that it would be better for the third sector to have that certainty and we will continue to discuss the opportunities to work towards that. Thank you, Mr Balfour and Cabinet Secretary. Finally, Foysal Chowdry, please. Thank you, convener. Congratulations on your new role. My question is on the third sector. Does the cabinet secretary agree that Scotland voluntary organisations and social enterprise are integral to Scotland's economic and social fabrics? If so, should they have had representation on the Scottish Government's council for economic recognition and meaningful role in producing Scotland's economic strategy? I have heard concerns about the Council of Economic Advisers and I understand where they are coming from on that. I have had a number of meetings with third sector organisations and social enterprises where we have talked a lot about their role in the Covid recovery phase and not least their economic role. I think that social enterprises particularly are keen to play an increasing role, so the new plan for social enterprises recognises that they have a particular role to play. Some of them are keen to do more in areas that they have maybe not traditionally been involved in. For example, in housing, the social enterprise sector in a conference I had with them were keen to look at whether they could become involved as part of the affordable housing, social housing supply, which is not traditionally an area that they have been involved in. I think that that could be potentially quite an exciting development, and we agreed to do some more work around that. It is true to say that the can-do mentality that we had during the pandemic is important that we grasp and continue with that. The third sector really stepped up to the plate and helped to keep people safe, helped to build community resilience, and we want that to grow. We want them to be equal partners. We have a bit of work to do to make that a reality. I know that, but for my portfolio interests, I want to try and make sure that the third sector and social enterprises are a part of that. I am really at the heart of what we are doing. Just as an extension from that, one of the clear positives from the pandemic was the engagement of the third sector and the volunteering work that was done during the pandemic. It appears to be anecdotal evidence that volunteering levels spiked considerably during the pandemic, partly perhaps more time for people who were on furlough and other reasons around community engagement. What can we do to support the likes of SCVO and other organisations to make sure that we harness that greater engagement in volunteering during the pandemic and make sure that we can take advantage of that in the future? That is a really important point. There was a whole new set of volunteers who appeared, people who had never volunteered before, but they wanted to help to look after their neighbours, so a lot of it was very informal. Nevertheless, it tapped into something special and precious. One of the challenges is that the voluntary sector will tell you that they have had a bit of a fall-off from their traditional volunteers. If someone was volunteering in a charity shop, for example, they were closed for a prolonged period of time. People were out of the habit of going and doing that, and other opportunities might have been found. A lot of them are struggling. I was speaking to some of my local charity shops last week, and they were struggling to get volunteers. We need to send out a message and play our part in trying to encourage people back to volunteering, including some of the more traditional settings, so that we can make sure that they are supported going forward. It is a bit of a double-edged sword. We have work to do to make sure that we keep the voluntary sector and all the services that they provide going forward. Thank you very much indeed, cabinet secretary. You have been very generous with your time this morning. We are very grateful that we have covered a lot of ground. Mr Balfour expressed the wide remit that you have that is shared by this committee. We managed to cover a lot of that ground today, so it is very appreciated. We look forward to the follow-up correspondence from yourself and some of the questions that were raised, and to working with you on shared priorities around delivering on the programme for government. Thank you very much indeed. We will now move into private session.