 The first item of business this afternoon is portfolio questions and the portfolio this afternoon is on social justice. I would remind members that if they wish to request a supplementary, they should price the request-to-speak button during the relevant question or enter the letters RTS in the chat function during the relevant question. At question number 1, I call Willie Rennie. Do you ask the Scottish Government what the current average processing time is for the adult disability payment applications? I don't disability payment statistics are published quarterly, the latest release covering the period to the 31st July 2023 shows the improvement action social security Scotland put in place have reduced the median average processing time for normal rules applications by eight working days. The median average processing time overall since the benefit was introduced is 83 working days. Processing times for cases eligible under the special rules for terminal illness, some of Scotland's most vulnerable people have also been included in this publication for the first time, and this shows a median average processing time of two working days. Willie Rennie. For over three and a half thousand, it took more than 141 days to process the adult disability payment, and the average that the minister has just set out is way above what was promised by this Government when it set out. The DWP processing personal independent payments are doing so faster. How has it got so bad that even the DWP are better than the Scottish Government? I'm sure Mr Rennie is well aware that under the DWP system a customer, as they call people, are required to collect their own supporting information. That has been shown by people who have been involved in the process to be one of the most stressful aspects of the DWP process. Under the adult disability payment collection of supporting information is carried out by Social Security Scotland on behalf of the client. That will take time, for example, if information is requested from a health practitioner and so on. That is one of the reasons why it is not appropriate to consider a direct comparison with PIP to ADP. As I said in my original answer, there are a number of actions that Social Security Scotland has taken to improve processing times, and I'm happy to provide that in full detail for Mr Rennie in writing. What reassurance can the cabinet secretary give that the adult disability payment application process remains fixed to the core founding principles with fairness, dignity and respect at its heart? That is a very important aspect of everything that Social Security Scotland does. One of the aspects that demonstrates that is the example that I gave to Mr Rennie in his question. It is very important that the system was co-designed with people with very, very poor aspects of their care under the DWP. We have seen in the client services reports that have come out from Social Security Scotland very, very high satisfaction rates with the way that their cases have been done and that they feel they have been treated with dignity, fairness and respect themselves. Can I remind members that I am a receipt of PIP? Cabinet secretary, a number of individuals have been in touch because they are being denied the exemption from road tax as a disabled person because they are waiting months to be issued with a certificate of entitlement for Social Security Scotland. Can the cabinet secretary advise whether the delays were anticipated and why nothing has been done to rectify them? Forgive me, Presiding Officer. I did not pick up part of Mr Balfour's question at the start, so I am happy to provide further details in writing if I have not correctly heard his question. As I said to Mr Rennie, I appreciate that there have been delays in adult disability payment. I can assure everyone, including Mr Balfour, that any payments that are due are backdated to the time of application. As I said, I did not pick up Mr Balfour's question correctly and I am happy to do so in writing if there are further details needed. As well as, adult disability payment figures for child disability payment show that from the first six months of the year, from January to June, only 20.3 per cent of cases were processed within the four month target. The median processing time has worsened from 91 working days in December 2022 to 102 working days in June 2023. Coupled with adult disability payment, is not it clear that the situation is getting worse and people in receipt of ADP and families in receipt of CDP are waiting in line for these decisions? What is the cabinet secretary going to do to deal with both of these issues? I am happy to provide the same information that I would to Mr Rennie on all the actions that social security has undertaken. I would once again say, as I said to committee in a recent appearance, that the agency has invited the committee and its members to come up to Dundee to hear very, very careful and detailed information about exactly what has been put into place. It is unfortunate that the committee has not been able to take up that invitation, which has been outstanding for some time. I think that Mr O'Kane and others would certainly gain a lot of reassurance and it would allow us to have a more in-depth and a more detailed conversation than we can have in those answers. I am happy once again to say on behalf of the agency that they are more than happy to welcome the committee and indeed other members to headquarters if that would help assist with much more detailed information about what is taking place to ensure that swift action improves the processing times. To ask the Scottish Government how it supports older people living in poverty to maximise their income. Ensuring financial security in older age is a key priority for this Government and we are taking a range of actions to help support older people living in low-income households. Those actions include tripling the full insecurity fund for the bus travel for everyone over the age of 60, help with energy efficiency through warmer homes Scotland, as well as replacing DWP's cold weather payment with our new winter heating payment. In addition, our £3.2 million social isolation and loneliness fund is supporting 53 projects across Scotland to help provide warm spaces, hot meals, group activities and fuel payments to people most at risk of isolation, including older people. The on-going lack of uptake of pension credit in Scotland means that £123,000 of our poorest Scots pensioners are losing an average of £3,500 a year and will also miss out on this much £300 cost of living payment. The UK Government must do more to encourage uptake given a recent initiative by them, only including one of Scotland's 32 local authorities. Can I ask the cabinet secretary, whilst acknowledging that this is a UK Government responsibility, how the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland can encourage uptake to help to tackle pension poverty, given the poor-poor track record of the UK Government? I am very happy to work with Mr Doris to see if there is anything else that can be done by Social Security Scotland that will deliver our devolved benefits, but this is a reserved benefit, as Mr Doris rightly points out. While the Scottish Government has now on our benefit take-up strategy number two, there is no such approach from the DWP, but that does not mean that there is not a need, certainly, for the Scottish Government to ensure that we are doing everything that we can. That is why we continue to provide funding for income maximisation, welfare and debt advice and are committed to increasing the availability of advice within services such as health, education and community settings. Mr Doris is quite right to encourage people to take up what they are entitled to because the social security principles that we stand on is that that is a person's individual human right and they should be encouraged to apply for what they are eligible to. The inequalities of the gender pension gap are well documented and the 50s women who lost out on state pension and the waspy campaign is also well documented. When looking to maximise income support to older people living in poverty, what efforts can the Scottish Government take to support waspy women? That is an issue that, again, is unfortunately reserved to Westminster and the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament. It does not have the powers to alleviate the injustice that waspy women suffer because of the actions that have taken by successive UK Governments, which is a deep disappointment to me, to the Government and to many members across this chamber. However, I hope that some of the actions and schemes that I provided information for in previous answers show to the member that we are absolutely determined to support older people in general. It is although a shame that we cannot do more to help the waspy women, but it is outwith devolved competence. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the social justice secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding how to improve access to energy-efficient housing in rural communities. Minister Patrick Harvie. Minister has routinely discussed cross portfolio matters. The Scottish Government's ambition is for everyone to have access to a warm, safe, affordable and energy-efficient home that meets their needs. That is why we have committed to deliver 110,000 high-quality energy-efficient affordable homes by 2032, 10 per cent of which will be in rural and island areas to help retain and attract people to those communities. That is on addition to the additional funding that we provide in rural areas, both for social landlords and for home owners, to improve the energy efficiency of existing homes. Thank you minister for that answer. The energy efficiency supply chain is critical to supporting the provision of homes and upgrades, but there is currently a bottleneck in small businesses being able to host apprenticeships, which in turn feeds through to the workforce. Such as the need for more meter-local engineers to work through backlog of repair work. Will the minister look at how funding and administrative support can be targeted at local businesses, perhaps through Skills Development Scotland, to support capacity for more apprenticeships in the sector? We are active in this area both in terms of the heat and building supply chain delivery plan, which we have worked on in concert with industry voices, and indeed the work that I take forward in joint discussions with Graham Day from the point of view of the skills and education side of things. I think that it might be helpful if I give an update at the time when we launch the heat and buildings consultation as part of my statement to the chamber. Some of my constituents who live in Rathol, Bonnington cottages, Hermeson village or Blink Bonnie are in need of support for energy efficiency and decarbonisation improvements. Many will be unaware that Home Energy Scotland's grant and loan scheme offers a rural uplift. What work is the Scottish Government doing to ensure rural households are aware of all the home energy funding opportunities available to them? Yes, indeed. We run a regular nationwide marketing campaign to promote the support that is available on offer. I encourage any household interested in making energy efficiency or heating improvements to their home, whether they are in a rural or urban area to contact Home Energy Scotland for advice and support. They, of course, have a website highlighting the support that is on offer, and their network of regional advice centres allows us to maximise and tap into local promotional opportunities, including outreach and training sessions. We, of course, keep our approach to engagement and awareness raising under review, and we are keen to work with rural stakeholders to continue to increase awareness of the support that is on offer. We recommend what support it is providing to third sector organisations in Dumfrieshire to tackle inequalities and support disabled people and people with additional support needs, including supporting them into the workplace. Minister Emma Roddick. We recognise the third sector plays a vital role in supporting work to tackle inequalities and support disabled people. I recognise the importance of clarity and stability to secure third sector resilience and to grow its capacity. To help support the third sector with fairer funding, we will produce a plan to deliver improvements, including greater clarity and consistency of existing arrangements. We meet regularly with third sector and disabled people's organisations supporting many in Dumfrieshire and across Scotland with a range of investments, including £5 million from the Equality and Human Rights Fund. I want to highlight in particular the work of the usual place in Dumfrieshire. I have been working on a cross-party basis with Emma Harper, Colin Smyth and Willie Rennie to secure additional Scottish Government support for their vital work. They have hit a roadblock where it seems that they do not fit any of the existing funding options. I wondered whether the minister would commit to looking again to ensure the viability of the very important work that they do to get young people into long-term employment. Successful work that the Scottish Government should support. Minister. I thank the member for the question and I am aware of the work that he and colleagues, including Emma Harper, have been carrying out to draw attention to the situation of the usual place. I know that my colleague Neil Gray, the Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, did provide soundposting around where the organisation could go for further support and that the First Minister confirmed that £50,000 of funding would be made available for 2324, but that the Scottish Government, much like the usual place, is subject to the same volatile financial situation that has caused those financial difficulties, so there is no more at this time. As Oliver Mundell has mentioned, cross-party colleagues have been working together to support the usual place. The usual place provides invaluable support for young people living with additional support needs by helping them to contribute to society through gaining skills, qualifications and experience in the world of work. I would like to reiterate Mr Mundell's ask to ask the minister to commit to doing all that she can to provide support for the usual place with advice, guidance and any support that she can offer so that the usual place is here for the future. Once again, I am grateful to Emma Harper for raising the issue. As I said, we have provided soundposting information and asked the organisation to reach out to the local third sector interface. More than happy to provide similar information again and to speak with the members, but as I said, we are all facing the same volatile financial situation thanks to Tory mismanagement down south, so unfortunately there is not a whole lot of extra money to be working with. To ask the Scottish Government how it works collaboratively to tackle depopulation in rural areas of the Highlands and Islands region. We are building a new Scotland paper on migration in an independent Scotland sets out how migration is vital to rural and island communities features. I heard this first hand on Monday in Fort Augustus from hospitality and seafood sector representatives where we discussed the importance of attracting and retaining people to support rural and island areas to thrive. In the meantime, our addressing depopulation action plan will build on existing collaboration with Highlands and Islands local authorities, both through a population round table jointly chaired by the Scottish Government and COSLA and through our support for the convention of the Highlands and Islands population working groups oversight of community settlement officers who deliver place based interventions supporting population attraction and retention. The minister will be aware of the BT and its subcontractor blue arrow redundancies in allness. The only option open to BT staff is to relocate to Dundee or Manchester, causing rural depopulation. The BT group has been the benefactor of hundreds of millions of pounds of Government money through their partners Openreach and EE, yet the thumb their noses undermining Government policy. Can I ask if the minister has met with BT on this issue? If so, what response she has had and what interventions have been made by the Government and their agencies and what action they are taking to protect BT's loyal workforce in allness? I am certainly growing up in allness. I am aware of the issue that the member raises. I am more than happy to speak with my colleagues in the fair work portfolio to provide the member with any further information on conversations that have been happening with BT around the plan closure. To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to tackle the reported record levels of homelessness in Scotland. Minister Paul MacLennan. Homelessness levels are on the rise in all parts of the UK. I am meeting with housing conveners across the country to discuss the challenges in reducing the number of households and temporary accommodation and supporting councils to develop targeted plans to address local need. The impact on local authorities on increasing homelessness presentations has been compounded by the UK Government's decision to streamline the asylum process, placing increased pressure on housing and homelessness services. The Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees recently wrote to the UK Government seeking funding for local authorities to manage the unprecedented pressures created by fast-tracked asylum decisions. I hope that this is something that Jackie Baillie and our colleagues in support this ask. I thank the minister for that response. He will know that, in the past year alone, some 39,000 indeed homeless applications have been made, which is the highest number on record. The number of people forced to sleep rough has doubled since last year and over 6,000 children have been stuck in temporary accommodation for over a year. Shelter Scotland stats showed that, on average, 45 children a day become homeless in Scotland, and I am sure he would agree that that is shameful. One action is the minister taking to urgently deliver support to people who are facing homelessness and at its extreme rough sleeping, and will he join shelter and local authorities like Argyll and Bute and declare this crisis as a housing emergency? There are a number of actions that we have undertaken. The First Minister and I visited Fife in July in August on the recommendations of the task and finish group on temporary accommodation. Obviously, we have launched a £60 million acquisitions fund and also on allocation. I have been speaking to local authorities about that, which is implemented in their own local areas. Obviously, there is prevention duties, which will come forward in the forthcoming housing bill. I also set up a ministerial oversight group, which includes nine ministers, which looks at that overall issue. In terms of solving homelessness, for example, on drugs abuse, we looked after children for a few examples. That is an incredibly important thing. In terms of empty homes, we had a meeting in the housing summit in Edinburgh on Tuesday, talking about how we bring empty homes back into operation. There are a number of things that we are looking at. We also spend £85 million a year on discretionary housing payments that we do not need to spend, which we should be able to spend on homelessness. Again, that is something that I urge Labour Party colleagues to try to support. I urge the Government to change that local housing allowance. Again, it has been frozen for around about four years. We need to move to the next MSP and supplementary aspects. This time last week, councillors from all five political parties on Edinburgh City Council, including the minister's own party, declared Scotland's capital city, is in a housing emergency and needs significant and urgent additional support to meet the needs of the people of Edinburgh. Does the minister accept that Edinburgh is in the housing emergency? What emergency response will ministers now give to Edinburgh City Council? As a challenging situation, Mr Briggs and I visited the Edinburgh housing summit. I have met Edinburgh now probably at least half a dozen times since it has been in post. Seven months ago, we were looking at targeted interventions. There are interventions that the council needs to do, such as empty homes that we talked about, such as allocations, which they mentioned and spoke to in our meeting. We will work very closely with them in terms of what we need to do to try and support that, but we are working very closely. As I said, I have met them at least half a dozen times since it has been in post. The root cause of Scotland's housing shortage is, of course, a lack of housing supply. Can I ask what the increase in housing supply was across all 10 years last year and what number the Scottish Government plans to increase this to? I thank the member for his question. The number of all sector new builds in Scotland increased by 7 per cent last year—14,881 homes—to 23,346 in a year to end June. It is the highest annual figure since 2008. We are committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes target by 2032, of which at least 70 per cent will be for social rent. We have recently published Rural and Islands House National Plan, which supports our commitment to delivering at least 10 per cent of the target in rural and island communities. The 10,757 that we have delivered in June is the highest annual figure since the start of the statistical figures in 2000. To ask the Scottish Government what support it offers to local authorities to help to reduce the number of people in social housing waiting lists. The Scottish Government is supporting local authorities in registered social landlords with a range of approaches to local housing stock management, including large-scale flipping of tenancies, effective oil management and greater allocations to homeless households. We will target £2 million at local authorities facing the most significant temporary accommodation pressures. That will support stock management activity and provide the resource that is needed to deploy capital monies effectively. We are also making £3.5 billion available over this Parliament towards the end of the year for 110,000 affordable homes target with at least 70 per cent of homes to be for social rent. In our own region in South East Scotland, there was an increase from the last Parliament of £107 million, more than 20 per cent increase for the applications. Official statistics show that there are more than 240,000 people in social housing waiting lists. The number of children waiting for a social housing placement is 100,000. Councils are being overwhelmed with applications from people in need, yet the Government has presided over a series of cuts to council and housing budgets. Can the minister, or will the Scottish Government, increase the funding to councils so that they can help people to find the home that they need? I am going on to local authorities and housing associations. The biggest barrier to more building houses is inflation. Construction inflation is around 15 per cent to 20 per cent. We are talking about our £3.5 billion budget that we have set aside. That is a factor that has been cut in its value by £700 million. That is the biggest feedback that I get. I go to speak to housing associations, speak to local authorities and they will tell you the same thing. Again, one of the key things that I mentioned to Jackie Baillie was about the local housing allowance. A study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies showed that only 5 per cent, only 5 per cent of properties were suitable for people on benefit. The UK Government, and this is where Sharon Dowey can be really helpful, has spoken to UK Government colleagues, unfreezed local housing allowance and you will see a massive difference in what we have with the powers here. Can the minister advise what effect the cut in the UK's capital funding allocation this year is having on the Scottish Government's ability to support local authorities to invest in social housing? And what impact he expects the anticipated 16 per cent real-terms UK Government cut over the next five years to capital will have on social housing provision? I thank the member for his question. The impact of the UK Government's economic mismanagement is causing soar inflation, as I touched on my previous answer. Ongoing austerity and his putting pressure on the Scottish Government's budget, the UK Government did not inflation proof for their capital budget, which has meant a 7 per cent real-terms fawn or burn it capital funding between 23, 24 and 27 per cent. That significantly impacts our ability to deliver our capital infrastructure commitments. Our £752 million budget this year has been supplemented by a £15 million contribution from Peat and Buildings Fund and donations from our Charitable One programme that we will be able to invest in more social rented homes. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the social justice secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding the impact of crime on poverty. The Scottish Government recognises the strong relationship between deprivation and crime. Both our vision for justice in Scotland and tackling child poverty delivery plan recognise the need to work together to mitigate the impact of poverty and reduce the number of people who have contact with the justice system. Tackling poverty is at the heart of what we do as a Government and is discussed regularly by ministerial colleagues. We are allocating almost £3 billion in 23, 24 to support policies that tackle poverty and to protect people as far as possible during the on-going cost crisis. The single biggest cause of homelessness for women is domestic abuse, but many are trapped by poverty with rape crisis saying that safety should not have a price tag, but for too many women the cost of leaving an abusive relationship is simply unaffordable. A pilot project will financially support those seeking to escape a violent relationship, but it is three years late and it is limited to just five local authorities. So what are women in the rest of Scotland supposed to do? The Leavers Fund, which the member mentions, is one example of the support that Government, local authorities and third sector can give to women fleeing domestic violence. It is very important that we continue to see that in the round, which is why I would point the member to the other policies that are involved in our equally safe to ensure that we are supporting women at their most vulnerable time than is what the Government intends to do. That concludes portfolio questions on social justice. There will be a short pause before we move on to the next item of business to allow front bench teams to change position should they wish.