 Good morning everyone, and I welcome everyone to the sixth meeting of 2019 on the Social Security and Felly eirester o'r fawr o'r cydagol, neu llawer mewn bwysig, rwy'n dech Birthdays. I tvarwch ein modd yn fawr i byech eich bwysigol o hyn cyfronwyr. Mae Ystafell yn fawr i tech. Rwy'n bobl yn fawr i bwysigol o'r bwysigol o'r fawr i'ch bwysigol o hyn o'r bwysigol o hyn o'r bwysigol o hyn o'r bwysigol o hyn o'r bwysigol, I move to agenda item 2, which is in relation to subordinate legislation. The committee will take evidence on the carers allowance operating Scotland order 2019 draft, which is subject to the affirmative procedure, and also the carers allowance operating Scotland regulations 2019 SSI 2019 forward slash 2021, which is subject to the negative procedure. I therefore welcome the cabinet secretary for social security and older people Shirley-Anne Sarraval MSP, along with her officials Veronica Smith, cross-cutting policy officer and Colin Brown-Salister, both from the Scottish Government. Thank you all three of you for coming along this morning. I can invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement and then we'll move to questions. Good morning, convener. I welcome the opportunity to provide evidence today on the carers allowance operating Scotland order 2019 and the carers allowance operating Scotland regulations 2019. This is the first time that the committee will hear evidence on social security operating legislation, which is to become an annual event. As you know through the Social Security Scotland Act 2018, we committed to operating carers assistance, disability assistance, employment injury assistance and funeral expense assistance on an annual basis, and we also committed to annually review all types of social security assistance. As you may recall, on 12 December last year, I wrote to the committee setting out our approach to the upgrading carers allowance and to upgrading the carers allowance supplement, and that they would be upgraded by the Consumer Price Index or CPI. I would like to highlight that the regulations today are about the upgrading of those benefits and how it is measured and not about the level of the benefits itself. The place for that discussion was during the Scottish budget deliberations, a process that was completed by the Parliament a matter of weeks ago. The order and regulations that we are laying today are about how we ensure that the benefit levels that we agree on as members of this Parliament retain their value. The committee will be aware that we introduced a carers allowance supplement last summer to address the fact that the carers allowance is the lowest working-age benefit. The supplement has brought carers allowance up to the level of jobseekers allowance and can rightly beheld a success. It has put an extra £442 into over 77,000 carers pockets in 2018-19, an increase of 13 per cent and an investment in Scotland's carers of over £33 million. As I have previously explained to the committee, getting that extra money into carers pockets as early as last summer was only possible because of the use of an agency agreement with the DWP. Without that additional payments, we would have been delayed while the policy was decided and a system built to implement that. The agency agreement was drafted, as it was, to enable us to upgrade carers allowance using CPI. As well as being the right mechanism to use in itself, it allows for a consistent approach across carers allowance and the supplement. That approach will continue until we have our own regulations in place for the Scottish form of carers allowance. We are committed to ensuring that benefits in Scotland keep pace with the cost of living. Let me now turn to the detail of how we achieve that. We will upgrade carers allowance through powers in UK legislation. The draft order proposes that we upgrade carers allowance according to the September 2018 Consumer Price Index that was 2.4 per cent. It is also the rate at which the Department of Work and Pensions will upgrade carers allowance in England and Wales. The carers allowance upgrading order will increase the weekly rate of carers allowance from £64.60 weekly to £66.15. The order and the regulations will also make some adjustments to additional payments made to a few long-term recipients of carers allowance, the adult dependency increase and child dependency increase. Both those payments have been abolished for new claims for many years but remain for a small number of carers. The regulations that we are laying also increase the carers allowance earning threshold. That is the amount that a carer can earn in a given week and still be eligible. That is increased from £120 to £123. There are also changes to the earnings thresholds related to the historical payments that I mentioned. They are set out in detail in the draft regulations and mean for this small number of cases that those elements increase by a few pounds. I next wish to speak on the annual upgrade of the carers allowance supplement. As agreed in the social security action, no new regulations are required to affect this upgrade. However, it is worth highlighting today as it demonstrates the commitment that we have made through that act that carers allowance would match the rate at which jobseekers allowance would be paid if it had been upgraded. Our approach to upgrading will increase the supplement from the equivalent of £8.50 a week to £8.70 a week. That means that here in Scotland we are providing carers with an extra £452.40 a year compared to their counterparts south of the border. It represents an additional investment in carers by the Scottish Government of around £37 million in the next financial year. Overall, a total investment in carers through the social security action in 2019-20-20, taken into account of what we are providing through the carers allowance and the supplement, is £320 million. An investment that I am sure you will agree is just and right for Scotland's carers. I am, of course, happy to take questions from the committee. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I am sure that there will be a few questions. I would like to start off before I bring fellow committee members in. To ask a little bit about process, because obviously the statutory instrument affirmative is in relation to the upgrading of the debate yesterday in relation to what mechanism should be used for that upgrading, but I am just wondering if there is a future opportunity to look at the inflation of the pressures on upgrading. That is because, when you did write to the committee on 12 December, you explained the upgrading mechanism that would be used. I will not go over that again, but I will read out one paragraph that refers specifically to that. It is about upgrading in future years. It says that the process outlined above would be what you have explained, cabinet secretary, already. For upgrading carers allowance and carers allowance supplement will continue annually until we have made our own carers assistance regulations. However, when other benefits begin to be delivered, for example funeral expenses assistance in young carers grant in 2019, there will be reporting requirements under section 77 of the 2018 act to consider the effects of inflation and report to the Scottish Parliament on what we intend to do. There will also be a duty under section 78 to operate funeral expenses assistance in young carers grant, which I apply in 2021. Please bear with me. Operating in these circumstances will require regulations under the superaffirmative procedure involving scrutiny of the draft regulations, but the Scottish Commission on Social Security and Affirmative Procedures in the Scottish Parliament. That is a long way of saying in your reply or your letter to the committee in December last year. Will the Government, in partnership with the Social Security Commission, be looking at what mechanism is used at that point, because there is a commitment on the face of the legislation that underpins all of this, that when we take on full delivery in Scotland, there is a statutory duty to look at the inflation, the pressures and how it will be operated? You raised an important point about how this process will progress over the years as the agency begins to deliver more and more benefits. Some of those will be dealt with in different ways, depending on what is in the Social Security Act. You are quite right to point to the role of the commission to look at every draft regulation that comes our way. There is a statutory obligation for us to ensure that we are outlining our plans to Parliament to the committee, going through that in detail about coming to decisions on operating, but for those that require regulations, that will go through the commission as well. I made the commitment in the debate yesterday with reference to the Conservative amendment that the Government will look at different options. I know that we have already done that during the process, but, as with all aspects of the Social Security System, we have said that we are open to discussions with political parties, with the committee, to be able to look at different options if they are out there. That is what the Government has determined is the correct way forward. I hope that the committee passes that today. Both on a level within Parliament and within a statutory obligation, we will look to see whether there are other options available in the future. I am still content that that is the correct way. Having looked at all the other options, I would be surprised if there was something that changed my mind on that, but I am open to those discussions and to see what can come forward from that. I have one final question from the cabinet secretary. I will reserve any additional comments to the debate that we have on the next agenda item on those matters. A much more concise way, I suppose, is that, by the year 2020-21, when carers allowance becomes carers assistance, there are statutory obligations on government to look at inflation and the pressures when deciding the operating mechanism. That would be my understanding of the situation. We will have statutory obligations as we pass every single piece of legislation, whether that is on carers assistance or on any other payments that are going forward through regulations. The reason for asking that question is that it allows this committee to return to that in a structured, process-driven, evidence-based way at a later date as statute dictates, rather than anything else that might happen this morning. Any other questions on that, Mark Griffin? Thanks, convener. I have some questions on both instruments, but if I start on the Ernst threshold, the paper that the Government has provided to the committee has said—I am quoting here—as the increase to carers allowance earning threshold ensures that the benefits that people receive maintain the current situation, then it is considered that there is no significant impact on a private, voluntary or public sector. Do you still agree with that statement, contained that that maintains the current situation, given the impact that the changes to the level of national living wage will have on working carers? Yes, I do. I appreciate that I have a difference of opinion with the Labour Party as demonstrated yesterday on how we should measure the operating, but I am content that this is the correct way to operate and that this is the best measure of inflation that we have to ensure that inflation measures are taken into account. I do yet. That is not really about a difference of opinion. At the moment, the factual situation is that this year, a carer on the national living wage would be able to work 15 hours and 20 minutes. Under the new Ernst threshold, a carer will only be able to work for 15 hours on the national living wage, so a carer will have to go to his employer and ask for a reduction in their weekly working hours to still maintain the eligibility for carers allowance. As we all know, it is a significant cliff edge to go over just by one penny to lose your entire entitlement. Just wonder whether you would reflect on that and the position that working carers will be in through no change of their own, that they will have to go to their employer and ask to reduce their working week? I do absolutely appreciate the cliff edge that is there for the carers' assistance and those difficult conversations that carers might have. The question that comes down to is whether we should have different rules here in Scotland for carers than is already present in the carers allowance that is run by the DWP. If you would want to change those thresholds in a way that is different to the DWP, then we would have to renegotiate agency agreements and so on to allow those changes to be able to take place. We have the agency agreement in place during my opening remarks to ensure that we got very quickly payments into carers' pockets after the Social Security Act was passed by the Parliament. That was a decision that the Government took to ensure that we ensured that payment. Those other aspects of the rules around, for example, working age carers are aspects that can be looked at as we move to a form of Scottish assistance to carers. Do you not regret, though, that a carer will have to ask for a reduction in their working hours as a result of the changes to the threshold combined with changes to the national living wage? We had a choice at the time when the act was passed. We signed an agency agreement with the DWP that allows £442 into the pockets of the lowest income carers, or we take the time to set up the policies and implement a system that would allow us to deliver a Scottish system for carers allowance. By pure fact, we would not have been able to deliver the money as quickly to carers. That was a choice that we took. It was a choice that the then cabinet secretary, Angela Constance, made clear to Parliament some time before. Mr McGriffin might think that that was the wrong choice, that we should have delayed the carers allowance and put in carers assistance more quickly in Scotland, but I would disagree with that. The fact that we have made that quick payment to carers has been warmly welcomed. That is the first step in what we will do with carers. It was our first priority when we took over social security powers. Finally, convener, on the earnings threshold, just to ask whether you cabinet secretary have been in touch with the UK Government to inquire about any flexibility in the threshold that would allow carers in Scotland to maintain their working hours. We have signed an agency agreement with the DWP which ensures that we will move forward with the carers allowance as it is currently delivered. If we wanted to reopen that agency agreement and to discuss any changes to that agency agreement, we could of course get into that. That would then take us away from delivering the disability benefits, which would take us away from plans to devolve the rest of the social security system. We could look at those changes and the DWP would tell us how much that would cost the Scottish Government, or we can use them into arrangements that we have to move very quickly forward with the disability assistance packages that we are doing. I have other questions on the other instrument, but I do not know if you want to give other members the opportunity to... I am going to thank you for the back to the initial off your line of questioning, and we will have other members in. I have a quote here, which says that Consumer Price Index does not adequately reflect the cost of living and that, moreover, the Treasury must already know that because it uses RPI whenever it wants to justify an increase in taxation. Would you agree with that characterisation on the difference between CPI and RPI? What we have done when we have looked at what we will measure inflation by is the agreements that I have had, for example, from the Office of National Statistics, the Bank of England, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority. I have all suggested and concluded that there are deficiencies in the use of RPI, and that CPI is a better measure of inflationary pressures. That is the work that I have looked at in coming to that decision that we have placed forward before the committee today. That quote was from Jamie Hepburn, one of your ministerial colleagues. That reflects quite clearly the Government's position in that when it takes money in from citizens, it considers the RPI method to be appropriate. We see that with rail fares, but when it comes to paying citizens, it is content to use CPI, which has been at a lower level historically. However, I would like to ask about the process. I asked questions of the cabinet secretary when you appeared when we were scrutinising the budget and asking for further detail on your deliberations and methodology and how you came to the conclusion that CPI would be the preferred option. In response to that, we have a single paragraph in a letter. It does not go into any detail as to the methodology or how you came to that conclusion. Given that this is such a significant stage in the creation of social security payments in Scotland, do you not think that a wider debate and more than just a paragraph in a letter would have been more beneficial when we are talking about such an important precedent of setting the rate of uplift in social security payments? Most certainly, if the committee was not content with the paragraph, I would have been more than happy to respond to another letter from the committee to ask for more detail at that time. I am not aware that that response was requested from me, but if I can go into some detail at this point if it may help Mr Griffin about why we have done what we have done, RPI is an erratic measure of inflation that greatly overestimates and sometimes underestimates changes in prices. I give the example of the fact that you can have a negative rate for RPI. For example, in 2009, when the RPI changed over 12 months to September 2019 by minus 1.4 per cent, that is mainly due to the erratic nature of housing costs being involved with that. There is not one single measure of inflation, so we looked at different aspects of it. We discussed in the debate yesterday, and I mentioned that we looked at CPIH as well. However, as I mentioned in the debate, I think that from memory seven out of the nine last years, we would have involved a smaller increase in payment larger rather than the increase when compared to CPI, so we ruled out CPI. Retail price index, as I said, does not meet international standards for the designation as a national statistic. It is heavily influenced by house prices. The UNS, the UK statistics authority, the Bank of England have discouraged the use of RPI. Legacy requirements have allowed it to still be recognised in some areas, but there is a suggestion and a recommendation, indeed, from authorities that that should be moved away from. As I said, we discussed the CPIH indicator and what that would have included, so I hope that that gives more detail again of some of the aspects that we looked at and the reasons why we came to the decision that we did. I thank you for letting me pursue the question extensively. Finally, on consultation, in the papers that you have provided, you have said that you have relied on the consultation for the social security bill in itself. Again, I would ask you to reflect on the significance of the up-rating mechanism that we are being asked to accept here in the precedent that sets for all devolved social security payments that whether, in fact, an individual consultation on the up-rating mechanism would have been more appropriate. Given that the responses to the consultation that you refer to in the paper just sets out that the majority of stakeholders agreed that devolved benefits needed to keep pace with the cost of living and does not reflect the range of submissions that some supported RPI, CPI and others that, given the precedent that was set in and how important up-rating mechanisms would be that a consultation would have been valuable. There is no statutory requirement to consult on this instrument, but it was within the consultation within the social security act that we ran. That consultation included a chapter on up-rating and sought the views of stakeholders on the best way to ensure that benefits keep up the pace with the cost of living. Mr Griffin is quite right to point out that there were differing views within that. There is no agreed definition of inflation, therefore it would be not unsurprising that there was no agreement over what up-rating should be done, but that consultation was completed as the bill progressed. I would again point out to a fact that the convener raised in questionings that when we bring forward up-rating regulations under the 2018 act, they will be subject to independent scrutiny from the commission. There will be very clear independent scrutiny that will take place during the regulations. This is not a one-off decision that is made today that will carry on, but we will very much be in a process of going forward on this on an annual basis. Particularly when we are bringing forward regulations, they will be independently scrutinised by the commission. That was an extensive line of questioning, but it is important that we have that level of scrutiny. Remind everyone of the wider comments to make that there is an opportunity in the next agenda item to do that. Alison Johnstone I appreciate that the Scottish Government is currently constrained by or committed by the agency agreement with the UK Government to up-rate carers allowance in line with its plans. Before carers assistance comes online, we have been having a discussion about how we up-rate, but how can we be sure that we have the actual amount correct in the first place? We heard yesterday in considerable detail during the debate about the sometimes very negative financial impact that caring can have, because people are giving up work and it can be costly caring for one, if not more people. Can you assure us that the Government will be carrying out extensive consultation with carers themselves and with organisations that represent them before you come to that decision? Certainly, in constant contact with stakeholders, when we move forward with social security and carers organisations, I meet them regularly on this and many other issues. You are quite right to point out that there were quite a few speeches yesterday that pointed to some of the areas where we need to take a more holistic view of what was happening with carers and whether the Government had indeed got the level of carers allowance supplement right. That is an absolutely valid debate for the Parliament to have and to question the Government on. We think that the supplement has made a tremendous difference to carers. There may be views within the Parliament, which I think we should go further, and that is absolutely quite right and proper. As I pointed out during my introductory remarks, that is a discussion that I had on an annual basis during the budget process. As we discuss all the decisions that the Government makes on social security and on other aspects about whether we have got the policies right and the levels right, I think that we have done a good job at delivering our first priority for carers as we move forward with the carers allowance supplement. However, that is a determination for Parliament and the different political parties to challenge us on whether we have got that right. Good morning, cabinet secretary. I want to clear my own mind before the debate. No legislation is required to affect the up-rate, but it is open to the Scottish Government in future. If you were persuaded, that is a choice that you could make to change the law legislation required for carers allowance supplement. However, as I said during the debate yesterday, I know that there are different views on that. We have committed to carrying on those discussions and to hearing those suggestions. I am content with the fact that we have already taken a great deal of time and thought within Government to do that. However, of course, that is an area where people will have different opinions on in the future, I am sure. You could choose, if I just wanted to get to that point. It is a choice that you have made. Just in relation to the questions from Mark Griffin on the question of the earnings, I noted what you said that it might be difficult conversations for some carers who might find themselves over that threshold. Is that something that was known? Was this an issue that arose in the course of making decisions about the up-rating? The decisions that we take are, in essence, built on the fact that we have an agency agreement. I will not reiterate the point too far, but I will go back to the reasons why we took out that agency agreement in the first place to ensure that we could get money into carers pockets. If any other changes were required that would make what we are doing in Scotland different to what was happening in England, that would have to involve a renegotiation of the agency agreement. It would require the DWP to tell us whether there was a cost to the Scottish Government of changing what they are doing for Scottish clients, rather than what is happening in England. The choice was taken to move to an agency agreement to allow us to pay the carers allowance supplement. I appreciate that, and I appreciate why you took that decision, but you would accept that the downside to that is that some carers will have the difficult conversations that you talk about with employers for a lot of people, which means that they will lose their entire entitlement. The challenge is that you either have an agency agreement or you do not. If you do not have the agency agreement, you need to set up an entirely different system to deal with the areas in which we know that people want to see in carers assistance. If you do not have the agency agreement, you can make those changes. You would not have got any changes in the speed that we delivered the carers allowance supplement. That is a choice that the Government took. I have a tiny question about your RPI being an erratic measure. I can face up front that it is not my specialist subject. I was just interested in the year that was used in 2009. I am very conscious that 2009 was a year after the crash. It is an ongoing discussion about the question of housing costs and the fact that housing costs are a major factor of pushing people into poverty. I wondered whether you would have looked beyond the year 2009. I wondered whether you would acknowledge that the specific year that you have quoted to the committee is a kind of strange year, just because that was one year after the crash where things were, that the country was erratic. I wondered if you had taken that into consideration. It was one year after the crash, which was a major economic event that caused great difficulty for the country. We can only imagine other examples of great economic events that may come across the country that we do not have any control over over the next year or two that might also cause RPI to be erratic as well. However, it is not just the example that happened just after the crash. It is, in essence, an erratic example of a cost, of a way of measuring inflation. That is not just because when large economic events happen like a crash, that is something that is on-going, and what has led the ONS and others to suggest—this is not the Scottish Government's view, but independent agencies are coming to the view that it is an erratic measure. The final question before we move to the next agenda item, Keith Brown. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, cabinet secretary. I suppose that it is two questions just at the same time to make it brief. It follows on from that conversation. There are reports in today's newspapers that there has been a significant setback in house prices because of Brexit in the newspapers today. If it was the case that played out, and depending on what happens with the shambolic Brexit process, if there was a reduction, a substantial and sustained reduction in house prices, does that open up the possibility that people receiving the allowance if it was RPI, including housing costs, could end up with a significantly reduced operating or even a downgrading if housing costs were included, as it would be with RPI? On the agency agreement and the point about changes, and I do not know whether it is possible to say or not, are you able to give us any idea what the likely cost of seeking and getting a change to the agency agreement? My previous experience can be very expensive. Are you able to give us any scale of £5 million, £1 million, £10 million? In any event, does the Scottish Government have any say over that? Is there any kind of bargain, or is it just the price that is given to you by the DWP? On Brexit coming up, I am not going to even attempt to forecast what inflation might look like over the next year, when we have no idea what is going to happen in the next couple of weeks. I am quite right to point out that, at times when there are economic challenges and economic circumstances that are disinvaded to the housing market, that will have an impact on RPI in a way of course, which we would not have on CPI because it is not contained within that. That is in essence the reason why it is a more erratic measure of inflation than CPI, and it is the reason why we have not chosen to go around that way. On the aspect of cost, it is not, I suppose, possible to put a price on it because we have not asked for a change because we are concentrating on getting on with the devolution of the disability and carers benefits and anything that involves us trying to renegotiate an agency agreement would of course take away people from that work of the devolution of benefits. The cost for change would need to be looked into on an individual basis, of course, depending on what we are looking for. You are quite right to point out that it is not within our gift to decide what that cost would be. It is for the DWP to suggest what that is. Obviously, the Scottish Government in turn works very hard to ensure that that cost is kept to a minimum and to ensure that we are delivering the best value for Scottish taxpayers, but that is not something that is chosen by the Scottish Government. That is something that would have to come from negotiations with the DWP. I now have a bid for a late, late question. I am conscious of time. It is really important that we get the maximum opportunity to scrutinise here. I apologise, Mr Balfour, but I will put it briefly, please. In one of your statements, the cabinet secretary said that, if you went back to DWP to renegotiate, that might delay the other benefits coming forward, such as PIP, etc. Is that correct? It would be a danger that you would not be able to deliver the other benefits as planned if you had to go back and renegotiate with DWP. I suppose that I will put it this way. I am exceptionally fortunate to be supported in my work by an exceptional bunch of civil servants and agency staff. There are no directorate or agency staff sitting around looking for something else to do, so if anybody had to go around to then renegotiate agency agreements, they would have to be taken off other work. They are obviously working exceptionally hard to ensure that we deliver at pace on social security. I do not want them to have to delay any of that work because we are looking at what would be an interim solution as we move forward with the devolution of benefits. I think that we have a good session in relation to questions, cabinet secretary. We will now move to agenda item 3, which is still supporting legislation. There will be a debate to follow, but at the moment, I will invite Ms Fart Somerville to move the motion S5M-15926 that the Social Security Committee recommends that the carers unless operating order 9 be approved. There is now the opportunity for a debate. I would appeal that any debate be a short debate, given the time constraints that we have, but would any members like to make a comment at this stage? I have touched on earlier questions, but I think that this is such a momentous decision, such a momentous stage in the devolution of social security entitlement. The method of operating really deserves a wider conversation, a wider discussion, a wider consultation and a wider debate before we are considering a method of operating that we use. Members who were on the committee who scrutinised the legislation will know that the committee was concerned about the exact position that we could find ourselves in, where regulations would come before committee that would take it or leave it without a high level of consultation scrutiny debate, because of the nature of how the social security bill was drafted and how reliant that piece of legislation was on regulations, so it transpired that we are now in this position, where, like I say, we are taking such a momentous decision, such a key milestone, on the progress to full devolution of those social security entitlements, that it is done so without yesterday's debate, almost with no debate at all. When it comes to the actual decision, the Government, you, yourself, your predecessors, are on-recording and criticising the UK Government for exactly the policy that you intend to implement. Regularly, ministers and members come to the chamber and talk about the almost four billion pounds that has been cut from social security spending and then your own briefings that you received when you assumed your position. That is set out clearly that the coalition operating policies, i.e. changing from RPI to CPI, up to 2021 will cost recipients of social security in Scotland £1.9 billion, and yet we continue with this method of CPI, like I say, with little or almost no debate in the absence of it being brought to the chamber yesterday. If the UK Government had continued with RPI, carers would be almost £1,000 better off at this point. For those reasons, I cannot support the decision to operate by CPI, given that I feel that there has been a complete lack of real debate and discussion when it comes to this. It is such a huge, huge point and I am really concerned about the precedent that it would set. Thank you, Mr Griffin, for putting that in the record. Are there any other comments from members? Mr Brown followed by Ms Ballantyne? I am happy to support it. If it is hugely significant, as has just been suggested, then there really should have been an amendment to the budget. When that was being considered, there was no amendment to the budget. There was not the significance attached to this at that time. It is also true to say that people seem to be quite happy to see a situation where the Scottish Government has had a cumulative cut of over £2 billion to its budget. There have been no RPI increases in the Scottish Government's budget over the last nine years and yet, once again, more has been asked of the Scottish Government than has been given to them to undertake. Over the past few weeks, we have seen so many different demands to increase funding for all sorts of things. The Scottish welfare fund, even though it was underspent a demand for that to be increased, but I have seen no suggestions as to where that money should come from. It is hard to see the logic of that. I think that what has been said tries to take away from the fact about how much has been done by carers, by the new social security provisions in Scotland. It is a major step forward. If we manage to convince the Scottish Government to accede to a request to revert to RPI, and if Brexit has a major impact on the housing market, we will be here next year, demanding a return to CPI to protect carers in that regard. For those reasons, I am more than happy to support the motion. Michelle Ballantyne? I have some sympathy with Mark Griffin's position around worrying that things will come and that there will be a tick box exercise. I do absolutely get that. I think that on this particular issue it is fundamentally very complicated, because RPI has been found to be flawed and there have been a lot of calls for it to be fixed, and those calls have been resisted. What this debate is about is two things. It is about whether or not we should debate and look at how we operate. I totally agree with that. That is why we asked for and got a very welcome guarantee from the Cabinet Secretary yesterday that it will be looked at consistently as we go along. That is obviously important. If RPI was fixed and they corrected the flaws, the flaws ironically are around clothing estimates, not about housing. Some of this discussion is slightly off beat in terms of what the actual problems are, but you cannot. It would be irresponsible of a Government to suggest that we used a flawed measurement as a starting point for a new system. It is for that reason that I support where the Government is, but I absolutely do think that it is important that we keep reviewing that. If RPI was to be fixed, I doubt whether it will be any time soon, because it is linked to the gilt market. It would have significant effects on the gilt market, and I think that the last gilt expires in something like 2066 or something, so I suspect that we will have to wait quite a long time for anybody to be willing to fix it. The depth of understanding of that is slightly the responsibility of members when they come to debate this. I certainly would never be calling for us to use a statistically flawed method of uprating. It would be irresponsible, and it is for that reason that I support what the Government is doing at the moment. It is beholden on us as a committee to get that depth of understanding individually and to bring to the debates. If we do that, we might not like it and we might see other issues that are caused by it, but it is inherent on us to understand that we either need to call for those fixates to be made and push that or find an alternative or look at the thing in the round. I hear very much about what you are saying about cliff edges, etc., but that is a different issue to the uprating, so I do not think that we should conflate those issues. We need to look at them separately and figure out how we do the best for our carers along the way. For that reason, I am supporting the position today, but I empathise with where you are coming from. A few more bits for speaking the debate, Deputy convener. Thank you very much. First of all, I will put on record my thanks to cabinet secretary for answering questions in a straightforward way. I do not agree with everything that has been said, and I have always recognised the importance of the work that the Scottish Government has done in introducing the supplement, and I hope that that goes without saying. However, through the amendment procedure, the committee and the Government were quite clear that there should be an annual uprating mechanism. It is quite important, as Mark Griffin said, that it is healthy to have a debate about what the guidance that we use for that uprating mechanism is to ensure that inflation is a true reflection of people's living costs. There is a huge distrust around the use of CPI adopted by the UK Government in 2010. That distrust goes wider than members of this committee. It is also distrusted by a number of third sector organisations, and I think that that has to be taken into account. I do not see it as a budget issue. I see it as a point of principle, in the way that we adopt a measure that may have a difference of opinion, but I want us to see a adopted measure that truly reflects people's housing costs. It is an essential cost for people in that calculation. I am also concerned about the earnings issue. I have noted what the cabinet secretary had to say about things that you have to weigh up in terms of the agency agreement, but it distresses me deeply that we do not know the numbers, but some carers will lose their complete entitlement because of a lack of flexibility. I welcome the fact that we might have a future discussion on that. I know that you have said that you are content that that is the correct way, but I hope that you will keep an open mind going forward. No-one would want to support a statistically flawed process, but I certainly believe that CPI for this purpose is the wrong one, and I cannot support it today. Time is almost upon us. I think that it is Jeremy Balfour and then we are to Alison Johnstone. I welcome Mark Griffin's debate, because I do think that there is an issue here. I personally do support the Government on this one, but I think that something that we as a committee need to have a dialogue with the Scottish Government on is in regard to how the future regulations will be debated. I think that one of the concerns that we did have when Bill was going through that was that we were leaving a lot to regulation, as Mark Griffin has said, and there is a danger that you can like 75 per cent of it, but you still cannot amend it. I do think that we need to, with other regulations coming forward, find a mechanism where these can be debated and discussed with right just then having to vote yes or no right at the end. I think that we had a bit of a discussion about that earlier on using third parties to do that, but I do think that it is an important point to note going forward that we do not want to end up with having to maybe like a lot of regulation, but there is one or two things that we would have to vote against it. As a committee, we just need to have a think and a dialogue of how we do that in a way that is open, give scrutiny but also does not delay decisions. Thank you, Mr Balfour. I will make a contribution before then, but I have got Alison Johnstone for the moment. I do not see any other bids to speak, I am just conscious of time constraints. Alison Johnstone. Thank you, convener. I think that it is widely recognised that the green supports are PI rather than CPI in this situation, but I understand that the Scottish Government is locked in to operating at the same CPI rate as the UK Government at the moment, and is there an alternative to the agency agreement? I find that a very difficult situation, but I find the situation in which we find ourselves this morning quite unsatisfactory on both counts. I think that that is being expressed fairly widely across the committee, and for those reasons this morning, I am going to abstain. Alison, for making your position clear. Any other members? Can I make a few remarks before we move to the cabinet secretary for summing up during the debate? I take my position as scrutinising the work and delivery of social security by the Scottish Government as community of this committee very seriously. I hope that that was clear by the extensive questioning that we wanted Mr Griffin to have this morning, given his very specific interest in it. I am sympathetic to an evidence-led methodical approach to looking at what measures should be used for operating benefits and entitlements in relation to thresholds and benefit levels. Absolutely. If that is an item of work for this committee that we wish to carry out, we absolutely should do that. I would put on record that the details of the operating of carers allowance and carers allowance supplement was provided to this committee on 12 December 2018, some 11 weeks ago. It was not until the last couple of days that there were particularly any issues raised in relation to that. I read that letter at that point that it was received and referred very specifically to operating in future years section contained within the cabinet secretary's letter, which quite clearly states that when we move from carers allowance to carers assistance, when the Scottish Government and the Scottish Social Security Scotland takes control over that benefit, the Scottish Social Security Commission will have a statutory role to play, and that is quite clear. That would seem an absolutely appropriate time for this committee to have a substantial look at the levels of benefits and how they are operated, and I think that that would be the appropriate way for this committee to do our business, particularly given that we have had that information from the Scottish Government for the last 11 weeks. I think that it is disappointing that what we are really looking at today is an additional £37 million investment into the hands and pockets of carers who do an amazing job. If what we are doing is talking about the level of benefit, let us have that discussion, and that discussion is absolutely at budget time. Whether there are consequences for any financial asks to government from back benches or opposition parties, and I think that the figure given was an additional £3 million into the pockets of carers, so if the political discussion that we are going to have is how best to spend £3 million additional into the pockets of carers, let us have a frank discussion about where that money comes from and the best way to spend that money. Is it changing the operating mechanism? Is it looking at the young carers grant and extending that? Is it looking at respite care for carers? There is a whole variety, there is a wider package that we could look at to improve the lot of carers. In terms of the committee and the scrutiny that we have, we have to continue to do that absolutely without fear or favour in relation to the level of benefits in Scotland and how they are uprated, but opposing an affirmative instrument, which will effectively mean less money, not more money for carers, is an irresponsible way of doing business, in my personal opinion, although, ironically, I commend Mark Griffin for raising the wider issue because there are some underlying discussions there in areas of scrutiny that our committee should absolutely engage with. Others have had the opportunity to see where they are in relation to the debate that we have had this morning, and this was my opportunity to put some of my thoughts on the record. Cabinet Secretary, I think that quite a high-quality debate from committee members here this morning will have the opportunity to sum up in relation to that debate. I appreciate that opportunity. As some members have pointed out, the first time that I raised this with committee formally was on the letter that I sent in December 2018, which set out in detail what we would propose for the carers allowance and the carers allowance supplement. There is some opportunity of time for the committee to have reflected on that. I would have, of course, been happy to have provided any further evidence or appear before committee at an earlier point had that request came in to have that wider debate, and, of course, more than happy to do that in the future. It has been a very informative debate, not just on the particular regulations that we are looking at today, but also the wider points that Jeremy Balfour and others have raised about how we deal with regulations as we move forward with social security. The letter in December 2018 was my first opportunity to be able to make clear my direction of travel on this issue, but I am mindful whether there is more that needs to be done to ensure that committee is aware and has opportunities. Going forward, I hope that Mr Balfour and others will be reassured that section 77 of the act that was passed requires me to report to Parliament and to discuss those issues and, of course, to be held accountable for those issues. The draft regulations, as the convener points out, will go forward to the commission for independent scrutiny and will be available for the committee and wider stakeholders to be able to take a view on and to require evidence. Again, I am more than happy to take part at that point for any deliberations on that. I am mindful of the points that we have raised today that people still have concerns about what we have chosen as a measure of inflation. As I said yesterday, I am more than happy to hear those discussions going forward with that. Again, the wider point of how we deal with regulations with the act is something that I will look at very seriously and reflect on. I am, of course, available to the committee at any point, should any further questions be raised on that issue. Given that the debate is concluded, the question is, is the committee content to recommend approval of this instrument? Is the committee agreed? The committee is not agreed. We will therefore move to division. I will just check that we are ready. Those for the motion please show, those against the motion please show, those abstaining, the vote being six for, two against and one abstention, so the motion is agreed to. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary, for coming along this morning. We now move to agenda item 4, but we will suspend briefly just allow for the cabinet second team to leave. Everyone will now move to agenda item 4, which is still subordinate legislation. The committee is invited to note that carers allow operating Scotland regulations 2019, SSI 29, forward slash 2021. We are asked to note that. Is the committee content to note that particular instrument? We are, thank you. We now move to agenda item 5. The committee will take evidence from Social Security Scotland. I welcome David Wallace, chief executive and James Wallace, head of finance, Social Security Scotland and also Alison Byrne, deputy director, Social Security programme delivery support, Scottish Government. If there are any open remarks, Mr Wallace, you want to give before we move to a discussion? I am very conscious of time, but I do have a couple of remarks. First of all, thank you for this opportunity. The privilege of being chief executive of Social Security Scotland means that you have lots of firsts, first payments, etc. This is my first appearance in front of you formally as chief executive of Social Security Scotland, so thank you for that opportunity. Just a couple of things I wanted to touch on very briefly, given time, and also I know there are some areas that you would like to explore as well. I very briefly want to just cover where we are as an organisation and how we have got there. I wanted to say a little bit about the culture of the organisation that we are trying to build and also a little bit more about the information that we would expect to start to generate through you in order to help your scrutiny function around performance as well. In terms of background, as members are aware, we opened for business in September last year with the Careers Allowance Supplement. I shall stop in terms of any more of the Careers Allowance Supplement. As of now, we employ just over 300 staff, based across our headquarters in Dundee in Glasgow, and we also now have a small cohort who are operating across Scotland in preparation for face-to-face local delivery. In terms of getting to that point or launch, there was a huge amount of work that has gone into getting us to that point. Again, I am conscious that some members have visited the programme to see some of the complexity behind what is being achieved here, so there is an enormous amount of work to get to that point. Alison is from the programme side of the Scottish Government, and we continue to work incredibly closely with our programme, our directorate and our chief digital officer colleagues to achieve what we need to achieve. I want to very briefly draw out from an agency perspective just some key historic points for us. If I could just take us back to March 2016, where we had created a fairer Scotland document, for us, there will be an agency moment. I joined the directorate shortly after that, and my particular agreement at that point was to make that agency happen. We then had a statement in Parliament in April 2017, our outline business case, and that outline business case is published and gives a lot of detail around how the agency will operate, including that face-to-face delivery. That was the first time we set out how many people of the agency would likely employ. We had said 1,500 across those two sites at that point, and it is also a high-level operating model. In May 2017, the cabinet secretary, as was then, also announced that the carers allowance supplement would be our first benefit that we delivered, and that gave us our point of delivery in time. Very swiftly after that, in September 2017, again with some published evidence in Parliament, we set out our decision as to why we would end up in Dundee and Glasgow. I am really quite proud to say that one year on from that in September 2018, from essentially a standing start in the city of Dundee, we were able to deliver a carers allowance supplement, as you have been debating before, putting money into people's pockets in Scotland from that city. Moving on briefly to culture, we have been taking a really key role in trying to ensure that the workforce that we have is diverse and reflects the society broadly and our clients that we want to serve. Again, I want some members to have visited Dundee in particular to see that in action. I just want to draw out that that is not just an ethos, it is some practical measures behind that. One of the things that we have done on a very practical basis is that, as we have developed job adverts, we run those past stakeholders, we are trying to ensure that there are no language barriers around about how people can apply for our jobs. We have removed minimal qualifications for our entry-level jobs, and that has allowed us to attract people into the organisation who would not otherwise have been able to be employed by the civil service, so a real ability for us to expand our workforce. We have also been determined to offer people continuous feedback through those processes. I am delighted to say that, in Dundee, we have people who were originally unsuccessful in applying for the organisation and, as a result of the work that we have done with them, are now back and have been successfully employed. We are really trying to embed that in everything that we do. That goes through to our executive advisory body. Our advisory body and our run executives have a broad range of experience and skills in the area of people that we service as well. That is a conscious move that we are trying to deliver on. One of the other things that we are doing is building in through the act in the charter, getting continuous service feedback from our clients. We do that in a number of ways as services come on stream. We may come on slightly more to that, but I am delighted to say up till now that the feedback that we have had from clients has been remarkably positive for the services that we have delivered, so we are very pleased with that. At a more general level, we will obviously start to publish more information around the money that we are putting out through benefits and the impact that they are starting to have. I know that there has been a set of official statistics released quite recently on carers allowance supplement, so you should be aware of those. I will just give you the high-level figures for that. You will be aware that more than 77,000 payments of carers allowance supplement were made in the first tranche, and as you have been debating, that gave in that particular instance over £17 million of money to carers in Scotland that would not otherwise have been paid, so we are incredibly proud of that. The next set of figures will be released in May in terms of the carers allowance supplement. Over the coming period and into April, we will also be producing official statistics around the best start grant. Obviously, we have given some very early indications as to how the best start grant process has worked, but we will be pushing something out, which is official statistics in order for you to get that better feel. I should also briefly say as well that, in terms of that scrutiny and transparency, we will, of course, be producing annual report and accounts, which for this year will be a part-year set of accounts, covering from September when we launched until the end of March. James here would be happy to cover those elements off, and we are in discussions with Audit Scotland around what that might look like. I hope that that has given you a flavour of some of the activity that we have been doing and where we are currently at. I am happy to take questions. Absolutely, and thank you for that opening statement. I am conscious when committees do scrutiny, we sometimes look to see whether the strains can be an organisation rather than accentuate the positives, but I should just put on record that many of us took the opportunity to come and see you on Dundee, and it was a real positive experience. We are also able to see the commendation from service users that the good positive feedback that you were getting from claimants in relation to their experience. I am not going to ask you about the positive feedback, funnily enough, but it is important to put it on the record. You cannot always get things right all the time. As an agency, that is just a reality and a fact of life. Given the significant caseload that is starting to be built up, whether there has been a number of complaints received in relation to carers-aligned supplement or best start, I know that it is very much in its infancy, in what your experience has been of disputed resolution or appeals, if you like, in relation to that process, can you give some more information in relation to that? Yes, I can. Again, for the reasons for official statistics, I will give rounded sort of flavour of where we are at rather than specific numbers. Is it complaints rather than appeals at your particular complaints? Because of time, because you said to try to roll two things together, but let's deal with complaints. In terms of the number of complaints for BSG and carers allowance, we have had under 100, as I would probably say at the moment, for both. Across the piece. A phenomenon low level of complaints, the vast majority of those are being what we are termed resolved at first line. Acknowledging, understanding what's driven a complaint, and very often just apologising and ensuring that that will fall forward. It's a phenomenon low level, so without wishing to only dwell on the positive, we still see that as a positive. We may come on to the best start grant element around that, but one of the things that particularly struck me through that process as well is that we had a relatively large number of calls immediately after launch for BSG, but there was only one sort of recorded complaint that we had, which was around about how somebody had been treated on the phone. There were discussions about how it's taking longer than anticipated, when will I receive, when will I know. There were these types of details, but we had only one where an individual indicated that they felt they had been inappropriately dealt with. The 199 was in terms of process. One was in terms of, if you like, the relationship they had with the individual who was the representative of the agency. So from those 99 then, there was a very, very small, welcome small amount given the case load, but were there any themes emerging from those that, even at this early stage, you could determine what the issues were? The vast majority were actually in relation to the policy, rather than necessarily to service. Ineligibility, so people will lodge a complaint around about whether they are not receiving. We would absolutely acknowledge that as a bit feedback and make sure that it goes back into the wider discussions that we have, but they tend not to be service complaints. On BSG in particular, as I'm sure we'll come on to the expectation about how long it would take to get a payment, the speed of processing and when would people receive with some elements, but remarkably most are around about policy. I had conflated complaints with appeals. I could perhaps maybe talk about, has there been any appeals made? Obviously people have to go through our redetermination process before they reach that point. Again, we've had in the low hundreds of requests for redetermination. We are working through those. Again, we have our very set timescales to work through redeterminations. We have considered just over 100 requests for redetermination. Broadly speaking, we are probably changing the decision in around about a third of those cases. That's a third. Of the two thirds, where you don't change your redetermination, how many of those move on to a formal appeals process? I probably need to be careful so that I don't tread on official statistics, because the number is one at the moment. I can't say much about the one in terms of identifying, but we're into a single digit. I mean, we will want to scrutinise this further at a later date, but that might suggest that the redetermination process, hopefully, is doing its job. Would your feeling be that, although claimants might not like being unsuccessful because of eligibility criteria or whatever it is, they're at least getting a clear understanding of what the position is, and would that explain the low level of appeals? I suppose that what I'm saying is why do you think—I should have asked you, actually, apologies—why do you think that there's such a low level of appeals, rather than the kind of build-up to answer my apologies? So, only one, why do you think it's such a low level? I think that it's probably too early to do proper analysis behind it—a whole range of factors. At one level, best start grant is a relatively straightforward benefit in terms of eligibility. There's not a huge degree of subjectivity around eligibility, so that's probably behind it as well. I would obviously say how we are dealing with the redetermination process leads to part of that as well. Again, in terms of the feedback that we have, we have had people doing that acknowledgement of saying, thank you for explaining why I'm not eligible. The work that's been done in the programme and user design and research to ensure that the way that we communicate, what our letters say to people, I think, is having an impact of how that looks like. Again, hugely final question then, and I wonder if you want to explore a line of questioning. Again, really, really small numbers, but those successful redeterminations, any themes emerging in relation to that? The main one, I think, is around about in receipt of a qualifying benefit. People have to be not just eligible for an underlying benefit, but physically in receipt of it to qualify. I think that particularly around about UC, for example, from the information that we exchanged with DWP, we might see that somebody may have applied for UC but is not yet in receipt of it, and by the time it comes to that redetermination process, their circumstances might have changed. I want to be very careful how I ask this next bit, because I don't want to politicise the question. I really don't, but are delays to UC causing an issue in relation to the awards that you're seeking to make, and that's what's been picked up in the redetermination? I wouldn't categorise it as delays, no. I think that in all of these systems, there is going to be an inevitable bit of time lag. Again, some of the early complaints around about CAS we saw, for example, where we take data from DWP inevitably people change circumstances, so we've had people change their bank accounts. I think that there's been a recent parliamentary question around about have we paid any money to carers south of the border? There's a tiny percentage because they've actually moved in the preceding period, so there's always these movements around about it, and people's circumstances change. I wouldn't, again, I think that it's too early for us to really put any evidence behind what's underlying. It's such a small sample as well, you're analysing. I appreciate that, Mr Wallace. Pauli McNeill. Good morning. It's nice to see the committee again. The area that interests me is the area of redetermination. I didn't fully understand that statistic because in the papers it said that a third of the applications were declined for best art grant, but that figure that you spoke of, the convener, is that a different figure? You said that a third of cases were redetermined. Could you just go over that with me again? A third of best art grant applications have been refused, so those have gone off and decided either to accept that decision or to be redetermined or to ask for a redetermination. Of those ones that have asked for a redetermination, we are in the low hundreds, and of that subset we have approved a third, so we have overturned the decision. So where people have been given an original decision of you're not eligible, we have overturned that in a third of cases. All right. Do you think that that's high? I think, again, we're probably into relatively early territory. I think it's too early and probably quite dangerous to kind of say one way or another. I think it's also, we have been quite clear and, you know, we've gone through the bill process. If we see something that we think needs corrected, we will correct it, and the redetermination process is specifically designed to make that as easy as possible. So I think it's too early to draw conclusions from it, but it's something that needs to be watched carefully. I appreciate your point of view. You're reluctant to do it. Just from my bystanders point of view, I think that that does seem quite high. It might indicate that the redetermination process is working, but it does seem high. There must be an underlying reason for that to be my own view. I think it's back to the point around about UC finding people in payments, so it's not that the original decision was necessarily incorrect at the point that it was made, it's people have now come into payment of UC. Sorry, take me a minute to understand that. On the question of redetermination, I think it's a very important process, one that the committee discussed at length, at stage 2 and at stage 3. I'm interested to know so what level of training, how have you approached this with staff? Because obviously the redetermination process is meant to be something completely fresh, different from the DWP, so I'm just interested to know how you've gone about that. Well it is separate from our first decision making, so again structurally within the agency we have put that team in an entirely separate part of the organisation. They've had the same training in terms of how the system operates, so they're aware of how people go through that first case of it, but the training that's been done has generally been again similar across the board to the rest of the organisation about just the ethos of trying to look at it from if people are entitled to a benefit, our role is to help them get their entitlement, our role is not to defend a previous decision or our role is not necessarily to sort of garden differently, those are people's entitlements and our role is fundamentally to check and make sure that people are getting what they're entitled to. So we've done a lot of work in terms of getting people into that space, I think trying to get behind what's causing the redetermination to get some data around about it, it's still very early stages which is why I'm being slightly hesitant. Just finally, so the question of appeals in the act, so from the redetermination, if someone chooses to appeal, the paperwork is supposed to follow automatically. Has the work been done for that, is that happening? It's a work in progress appeal rather than a finalised, but yes, on that particular case we are working with a tribunal service around what needs to be prepared and indeed the individual. I should just very briefly say on the redetermination process, one of the fundamentals that we do is we pick up the phone to the client if that's appropriate and just talk through what further evidence they might have, why they want a redetermination, so we ensure that there's a very personal contact with the client during that process. Thank you very much. Might it be worth noting, we've got Shuler Robinson, Arthur Allen, Mark Griffin and Jeremy Balfour all wanting to ask questions. Time is limited, my apologies to members. We'll get them all in, but I think we'll be getting you back, Mr Wallace, for an invite in probably short order, because I think there's a desire to have a longer evidence session. I know the delays is our issue and not yours, Shuler Robinson. First of all, just to put on record, my thanks for the achievement carried out by Dundee staff in successfully delivering the carers allowance supplement. That's a good start to the organisation, I guess. It would be helpful, maybe, in writing of times against us. Just to hear a bit more about the challenges of the next benefits coming on stream and how you marry that with the growth of the organisation both in terms of the new recruits but also the skill mix required to deliver what is beginning to be a more varied variety of benefits, some with different claim deadlines and some of the complexities around that. Is there a, presumably there will be, an organisational plan around that might be helpful for the committee to have sight of that, if that would be possible? I can certainly provide further information through correspondence. I should also highlight that our interim corporate plan is in the public domain as well, and we'll shortly publish our business plan for next year as well, which will give some of that detail, but I can set out some of those details. Do you want to try to cover off any of those just now? If times against us, I would be happy for it to be sent by correspondence. Very kind of you, Shona. We'll see if Alice Rowland will be as kind when he asks his question. I can be sent by correspondence as well. My question was really about the delivery locally of services and the fact that you've said that on your website there is an organisation, you said that over time we aim to build up a network of locally-based staff. I just wondered where planning had got done that on two fronts, one from the point of view of the service user and two I say this shamelessly as a rural MSP. There's obviously a demand in rural Scotland for civil service job distribution. Without taking anything away from Dundee, is there any thought being given to how, round the edges of what you do, people might be given the opportunities if they wish to move somewhere else to take their job with them? If there's very, very new parts of me. Gary Hill, I should point out that you can answer that question. Do you want me to answer that just now? Let's, a couple of minutes, Mr Wallace, then we'll move on to the next question. That would be good. I mean, in terms of where we are with local face-to-face delivery, it's one of those services that comes on stream when the later benefits, though what we've referred to as the Wave 2 benefits, start to come on board. So it was never a service that's intended to support the first benefits primarily because it wasn't deemed necessary to support people through that process in that face-to-face environment. So we're at still a very early stage of it. We have 19 individuals who are our lead local delivery, leads around Scotland, and their job is to have those conversations locally with local authority, with the third sector, with current service providers, and to really understand what the landscape looks like. What we've said through all of this is that our local delivery model isn't decided model and planted 32 times across Scotland. It is 32 conversations and more around about what's suitable for these environments. The rule is a good point. We have, again, in starting those conversations. The example of our Gail and Bute have been particularly helpful to us in talking about how they currently service services, whether it's local authority of others from across Ireland or Gail and Bute, so we're very conscious of the rural aspect to it as well. I come back slightly to the outline business case in terms of the whole model of Dundee in Glasgow. There was an evidential piece of work as to why those are our main locations. However, we are open to mobile working for other parts of the organisation where it's possible. Just to ask you about the statistics that you intend to release for best start grant, the pregnancy and baby payments. Just to ask what level of detail those statistics will go into, and I'm particularly interested that, if you're able to produce the statistics that would indicate to the committee how many payments were paid to third and subsequent children in a family? That is a question to give a proper answer and to take away and discuss with our analysts. One of the reasons that I'm not giving specific numbers today is that there's a process of official statistics, obviously, to ensure the robustness and that they are verifiable and evidential. From the data that we see on a daily basis, we can identify some of those trends, so I see no reason why they wouldn't form part of a BSG statistics release, but if that's one I am able to take offline and clarify, that would be useful. Thank you. You might want to take both of those questions away, and I'm very happy to have a written answer. I was slightly surprised yesterday when I asked the cabinet secretary about where people are coming to in regard to their new employees, both in regard to the diversity side, the lived experience, how many people have that and also what their previous employment was before that. I'm probably slightly unfair to that question in the chamber, but have you done any analysis of where people have come from and what kind of experience they had beforehand? If people don't have two fingertips, could you provide that to the committee? The second area is that the committee and I had a really helpful visit down to the Scottish Government on Tuesday, which I found. I came back and said that that was one of the best meetings I've had since I've been here, but the interesting thing was the good working that's going on between the Scottish Government and the agency. Obviously, the Scottish Government is doing quite a lot of the work at the moment in regard to data protection, in regard to how we're going to design forms, which, obviously, you are having input into. Just looking at your accounts, obviously, that's a cost that's not been met by the agency that's been met by the Scottish Government. In your discussions with Audit Scotland, I appreciate that the Scottish Government aren't feeding you for that work, because that would be slightly... But will that be indicatively shown in your accounts to say, if we were doing this work, this would be £8 million, so that we can get a true understanding of the cost that this is costing to bring all of us into place, if that makes sense? I'll take the first one away in terms of coming back to you, Mr Balfour. The second one, I think that we can be fairly clear, is that our set of annual reports and accounts will be for what I am in the accountable officer for. When the agency went live, I am formally designated the accountable officer for the expenditure of the agency, and that's what our set of accounts will cover. The financial memorandum, I'm turning to James in terms of the overall costs. I think that David is right. David is the accountable officer for Social Security Scotland, and our annual reporting accounts will only report on the costs in terms of running the system and the payments that we have made as an agency. Implementation costs were described in the financial memorandum for the bill. You will recall that it was £308 million for a four-year programme. That was the initial high-level estimate. The expenditure against Scottish Government budgets for implementation are reported in the Scottish Government's accounts, which again are laid before Parliament. The one area that you will see in due course is the assets that the programme is producing within the Scottish Government, while at some point transferring them to the agency and becoming assets on David's balance sheet. You will see that in due course, but that will not include the full extent of expenditure on implementation. You will have to get that from the Scottish Government's accounts. I suppose that my only slight concern is around the transparency of all of this, that, yes, you can go and find it somewhere in a page 108 of a document or whatever. Is it up to the Scottish Government to let us know of that budget, which is an estimation of £308 million? How much has that been spent already? That would be Scottish Government if you are not an agency. Is that right? I also might want to come up on that. The agency does not commission the Government and build-back services. Alison, her team and the director in the wider science are Scottish Government civil servants who are working on social security. As David and James have said, the social security programme is a change programme, and that is the space where we design and build the services that we then pass to David to deliver. Obviously, we design and build those services with David and with his team, but the £308 million that is identified in the financial memorandum are start-up costs that the Scottish Government is driving at the moment for the development and design of the services that David and the agency will then deliver. I would like to ask on the issue of local delivery. It is not all about stand-alone social security offices. You will be working in different venues with different organisations, so I would like to understand a bit more about what that might look like, but also with regard to the welcome focus on dignity and respect. You might not be working with another organisation that has that same commitment, so I would like you to touch on those two issues. I would say that it is more than just that we will work with others and not about our offices. The presumption is complete off the way that we will be embedded where people are already going to access services. Those are the conversations that our delivery leads have started to have. There are two things around our local staff. One is where we base them on one where they operate their services from. Across Scotland, we have seen some fantastic examples of libraries, health centres and wherever people are travelling around to ensure that there is a joined-up service. On the whole, people are really responsive to us becoming part of a holistic joined-up service. That oversimplifies it. Of course, there is an incredibly complex landscape. We have already spoken to more than 600 individual organisations who view themselves in some way related to that sort of space, so it is not phenomenally complex. We intend to be in places where people are already going to access services, but I would agree on your other point that those places also have to ensure that they deliver against our values of dignity, fairness and respect. We have tried to do that on our interim locations. Where we are basing people in Dundee and Glasgow, it is no accident that there are shared local authority buildings. We are services already being delivered to clients as well. That is a theme that we want to explore further. I want to revisit the money again. I have been looking at the figures that we have been given over the period. On our papers for today, we have an estimate of the steady state running costs. Just for clarification purposes, before we go further into discussion, I am taking it that this is all revenue figures that capital does not really come into it. If I am reading it correctly, there is no asset transfer of IT as such, because that seems to be a shared service cost. Am I correct in saying that? The current IT-shared service? In your running costs for 1920, it refers to shared service costs, including IT HR procurement. That would tend to be desktop services that are delivered to us by the Scottish Government. Aside from our arrangement, working closely with the programme, we also take shared services wherever possible. That in the main is shared services from the Scottish Government. As people sit, the hardware and connectivity on their desks is what that relates to. When we look at the estimated steady state running costs, which are estimated at between £144 million and £156 million, that is purely revenue. I am interested in the relationship between the cost of running the agency and what it delivers. Are you comfortable that that figure is correct? Has there been any alteration to that figure at the moment? Those figures come from the outline business case, which I referenced earlier. The public document is still the source of estimate that we are looking and working from in that sense. Because of the way that it operates, there will be changes inevitably around the service design that has an impact. Some of those will be very small, some will be large conversations that happen in places, commitments to a free phone, for example. All those things on the edges, commitment to what assessments actually look like, where they are going to be delivered. If we give people choice around assessment, if we want to move any face-to-face assessments closer to people's homes, all those things are service design conversations that in some way have a consequence for running costs. Those are the current figures that we are operating against. That is against the full delivery package of £309 million worth of benefits that are currently— £3.3 billion of benefits, £308 million of its Scottish Government implementation cost to set up the systems and processes that are required for delivery. There is an implementation cost to build the systems, and then there is an annual running cost to pay out the benefits under that system every year. However, the benefits and administration will be—at the time that that was written—£3.3 billion under a steady state. Did you have a target figure in terms of your planning around the relationship between cost and delivery? James James might correct me. Those figures were built up essentially from the existing operating model of what we knew about DWP delivery in Scotland. They were built up from that. We did not, in constructing that, the target was not to arrive at a percentage of administration costs to do benefit expenditure, but it was built up from the effect of what is the current system. Is it not to be vastly different in the long run? I think that, on those numbers, it is around about 5 per cent, which is in line with the existing system. DWP is around 3 per cent, isn't it? Not for non-pension benefits. The financial memorandum to the social security bill, the Scottish Government, did make estimates of what it potentially cost DWP to administer non-pension benefits as a proportion of the benefits that they administer in Scotland. Our estimation was 6.3 per cent, and our estimation for social security Scotland was 5 per cent. That is not intended to be a stark comparison between DWP and social security Scotland. It is supposed to be an indicative figure that the basis of our estimates is sensible and reliable, that we would expect to be comparable broadly. The current agency agreement that we have is running at about 2.2 per cent, is it not? For carers allowance? It is. As a proportion of the carers allowance, it will be in that region. However, that is not the full range of activities that are required to deliver carers allowance. So we have a good deal right now in terms of that? I think that DWP has been fair, but the work that is involved in delivering carers allowance in Scotland is not solely the agency agreement. There is work that is carried out by Social Security Scotland. I am within the Scottish Government to ensure that Scottish recipients of carers allowance get their carers allowance, even though there is an agency agreement with DWP. I will come back to your earlier discussion. It is based on that that is the service and changes to it in any way, shape or form, are entirely out of scope. Perfect timing. That was eight different questions from MSPs in a relative short period of time. I thank MSPs for their focus on that and for their concise answers as witnesses. Time is upon us, so I thank you, Mr Wallace. Both Mr Wallace and Alison Byrn for coming along this morning. We hope to see you back. Probably in a relatively short order, because I think that there is a thirst to obviously expand on some of those lines of questions, but we really appreciate your attendance this morning. When I move to agenda item 6, Social Security Scotland, which we are previously going to take in private, is when I move into private session.