 We welcome to the 7th meeting of the Social Security Committee to remind everyone to turn off their mobile phones as it doesn't interfere with the transcript. It's a beautiful day in Glasgow and thank you all for travelling through. The reason we decided to come to Glasgow we've been saying that we have to go out as a parliamentary committee. A dyna'r rhan o'r ffordd i Glasgow ar y cyfleoedd ymddiannol yn ysgolodd. Yn ymddiannol i'w ddiwedd ar yr ydyn ni, ac i'w dda i ymddiannol yn ysgolodd, o rhan o'r sgwrs gael iawn o'u gwaith i'r bwysig iawn i ddweud o'r pwylltau a chyfyddiadau. Maen nhw'n gwych yn ei wneud hwnnw r grateful i'r amser o'i hwnnw i'r amser iddyn nhw'n gydag o'r pethau. Yn 75% i'r amser iddyn nhw i'r pan wnaethol i Glasgow, mae gennym ni'n fwyaf mwynd yma i'r anod. Felly, rydyn ni'n ddweud yw'n hyn yn meddwl o'u panelu, ydych chi'n rhoi gydag i'r sgwrs maen nhw o'u pi'r pethau Feichan mwy o'i rhanolтовau i'r mfysg. Beth yna'n ysgriffn i'r ddochog wedi'i wneud, George Adam is running late. He's looking for a parking space, so I'm sure we'll welcome him in a couple of minutes as well. Can I just thank you all very much for turning up and also for your submissions, very, very interesting reading as well. And just formally welcome the panellists who are Naomi Estynstall, the Scottish Government's independent adviser on poverty and inequality. Andrew Hood, senior researcher and economist Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Dr Jim McCormick, associate director of Scotland, Joseph Roundtree Foundation. I'm going to start by opening up in a very wide-ranging question and other committee members will come in. I did see my opening remarks in regards to the poverty levels in Glasgow and Scotland as well. Obviously Glasgow having the highest amount of children living in poverty. So can I ask the panellists why, in their view, do they think we need this particular piece of legislation and whoever wants to come in first? Dr McCormick, did you want to start first? Thank you, convener. We've seen in our recent past in Scotland and the UK, we've seen in other countries. Progress towards reducing poverty generally and child poverty specifically. Our progress ebbs and flows over time, but one thing we can say that having a vision, a goal and ambition, having a time scale around that is very helpful in focusing, not just government, it's national, but governments at all level, but others too, housing providers, market providers and so on, focusing them on what they can contribute specifically to this very complex ambitious task. If we are to have that kind of commitment as a society, then having good clear measurements and targets is important for scrutiny, for making sure we're on track and for making sure we can change course if we are not progressing at the rate we would like to. So in order to sustain progress, to widen accountability, to locate responsibility, we welcome this bill and provisions in it. We have some views about some of the specific points, but broadly we warmly welcome what it's trying to achieve. Very similar to the points that Jim made, just to remind the panel, I was a civil servant in the government that drafted the initial UK bill. So it was really, really heartbroken about the dismantling of that bill. So in particular I was very, very pleased and warmly welcomed the Scottish government's resistance about dismantling the bill and putting back together some of the key components that I consider most important. Jim, most of what's in the bill I agree with and I think it can take us really far. I have a few very minor comments that I would make about things that I'm worried about. So as usual with the IFS, it's not that we don't endorse or not endorse particular political decisions. I think following on from what Jim has said, if you look at what happened across the United Kingdom in terms of child poverty rates between, say, 1997 and the mid-2000s, at least there were very large falls. And I think it would be stretching the bounds of credibility to argue those falls were not directly linked to the Labour government's target. There were the interim targets of 2010 and then those targets of 2020. So we have in the recent past in this country seen a very clear link between a set of social policies that reduced income poverty among children in the UK and targets of this nature. I know that Gordon Lindhurst wanted to come in specifically on the target, Gordon. Thank you, convener. Dr McCormack, you talked about timescales. I'm just interested what the panel members think about the targets set in the bill particularly in terms of the timescales and whether or not interim targets would be appropriate to have a bill of this nature. Given the timescale of, well, from where we start now of 13 years, so a child starting school this year will be 18 on average by the time we get to this deadline. So understanding what that pathway through a typical child to looks like, there are various twists and turns, transition points and so on is quite important. So having interim targets I think is a good idea. What I think would be a good way to prepare for that is roughly around the halfway marks around 2023, which goodness is a long way away, but it isn't. Around about that time, I think there's a strong case for a very thorough routine branch look at are we making substantial progress at pace towards achieving the targets by 2030. My guess is that some progress will be more advanced on some targets than on others. So understanding why that's the case and, as I said, being able to change course if necessary and respond to external shocks. There'll be lots of them over that period, which will take governments by surprise and so being able to recalibrate and have the interim target in addition to the delivery plans and annual reports that are proposed is, I think, just good governance. I agree with that. I suppose my only, I think we need interim targets I think halfway through is really important. I think part of the difficult, and I think MSPs would probably welcome this comment, is that we need a cultural change about progress. And again, I was a civil servant when Labour failed to meet its targets. And there was a piece written in the Washington Post by somebody I knew actually Greenberg who said if only the United States had failed the way the British government has failed on child poverty because we had made massive progress, we just hadn't met the target. So the reason I think that's important is because if politicians are afraid of being castigated for failure, they will not be bold enough in their aims. And I think one of the things that I think we need to get better at, particularly at local level, is saying what didn't work as well as what did. And that's why Jim's point about a thorough look that isn't about blame, but is about saying actually we tried this, it didn't work but somewhere else they tried this and it seemed to, is very, very important in terms of interim targets. It's about sharing what doesn't work as well as what does and politicians not being afraid that they'll be castigated for all time for the failure when in fact there may have been real progress. Andrew Hew? I guess a slightly broader question than interim targets is I guess the purpose of those would be to try and ensure accountability or a kind of ability to see whether the government is on track to meet its targets. I guess speaking from my own experience, interim targets might be useful but they're only going to be a part of a successful strategy for that. So I began work for the IFS in 2012 and during that period we were producing independent forecasts of child poverty and it was very clear that those projections, from those projections the government was not on target. But the government had no, there was no mechanism that was making them say how they're going to get there. So that was after the interim targets had happened and so we were kind of saying look, you know, if you want to hit these targets it's important that you start describing a strategy that you might want to meet them. And so I guess where I'm heading with this is that when we have targets in other spheres of economic policy for example fiscal rules you don't just have, you know, you don't just have the deficit this year and you say well that's the deficit this year and the target is that the deficit will be eliminated by that. You have a projection. The OBR says given the current government's current plans this is, this is what we expect to be the case in the year where the target binds. Now it doesn't mean the government can't wriggle out of that and use accounting tricks or whatever else it wants to do but that's a particular way that every year, it's not just an interim target that every year the Scottish government would be faced with. This is on current plans, on current economic forecasts, this is what poverty would be projected to be in year X or 20, 20, 20, 30 or whatever you want to say. Could I just say before I bring Gordon back and then Ben, Ben Fersen wants to come in, there's obviously issues happening throughout that year such as just now for instance we've got Brexit, you've got universal credit, 18 to 21 year olds, you know, not being able to get housing benefit. So surely targets, you know, if you're looking at it just as a number, it won't work, it has to be looked in conjunction with changes that are happening throughout. Yes, I guess what I'm saying is if the intent of the bill is that child poverty should be at these levels regardless of what, you know, the Scottish government should take whatever action it can to make sure child poverty hits these levels by 2030 come what may in terms of the wider economy, then what I guess what I'm saying is that if you just have a set of interim targets and then the government is reporting progress then once you're through that interim timescale or even at this point a long way before the interim timescale, it's very hard to hold the relevant people to account unless you're saying this is what we expect the number to be. Now that number is going to have a lot of uncertainty around it as the OBR forecasts do, but I think it's fair to say that to some extent those forecasts have helped hold the government to account on its own rules in that context. Llywydd, do you want to come back in again on that one or Gordon Lentus wants to come back? I just think there's a real difficulty in the balance between holding government to account given wider circumstances and ensuring that we have the data to make sure we are on track and I just think there's a real, how do you balance that, that's all I would say. Jimmy Cormack? So briefly I think it's important that we are capturing what's within the powers and budgets of Scotland national local government in order to understand the contribution of what can be done here in Scotland. Now that has to be said against wider trends, UK reserved powers, macroeconomic outlook and so on, but as far as possible so that we can identify the contribution of different levels of policymaking and where we have the powers to maximise the positive impact of what we can do here. I understand, I think you're generally in agreement that it's a good thing to have interim targets not just and perhaps not as the most important part for accountability but also for the possibility of review so that at stages through a process not treating the interim target as the end goal as it were but saying at that point one reviews one's assumptions and looks at how things are working, how they're not working and maybe adjusts the approach. To the current circumstances and in that sort of way, is that what you're saying? If I can give you a very specific and very easy example that the convener started with, when I was a civil servant we thought employment was the answer and huge amount of work went into making sure particularly that lone parents got into work and we were very successful. We continue to be successful on the employment side and in fact poverty for children has gone up. So that's an example of a strategy that clearly on its own was not enough because of other factors of flat wages because of other factors of not enough hours. So basically that's what I think you need interim targets for is to say well we made an assumption, was that assumption born out? You don't want to wait till 2030 to find out it wasn't. Thanks convener. Checking the sounds okay. So we've already touched on issues of accountability and interim targets and also annual reporting. One interesting point that stood out in the evidence from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for me was at point 18 around delivery plans. Dr Jim McCormack, I wondered if you could just comment further on your recommendation that a new delivery plan is published early in the next and subsequent parliamentary terms rather than at the end of it and just the thinking and direction behind that. So partly this is about where, so the kind of states of the delivery plan where it fits in the parliamentary cycle. I think if we are having annual reporting, which I think is a duty that should apply to Scottish Government jointly with local community planning partners, but if we're having annual reporting and if that's not just retrospective but also forward looking, then I think the purpose of the delivery plans becomes a bit different is a strategic look at the next four or five years. Again, just in accountability terms, I think it makes more sense to have that as an early act in post-election. So that newly elected MSPs and newly formed administration can decide what are the best priorities for the five years of that term. Partly that will be about manifesto commitments, but also be about a kind of thorough learning that's gone on from the previous term. So it's a non-trivial point about the timing, but the really important point is that we maximise our ability to really learn from national and local contributions to solving gel poverty. The other key point to make, which I have wholly omitted from our response, my apologies, is the link between that and the forward budget process. The more that we can be driving resource allocation decisions based upon the evidence we're getting from what's worked and what hasn't, the more this becomes a living, breathing, practical and useful plan rather than something that's to the side of what government's about. Thank you. I agree with Jim on a Scottish government delivery planning process and the timetable suggested. What I would be wary of is planning requirements at local authority level because they become tick box exercises. You need local authority to report on how they made progress or not, but how they decide to do that I think is up to them. I think that if you make each local authority submit a plan, then you need a couple of civil servants to read those plans, and then you need those civil servants to go back to the local authority and say the plan wasn't good enough, et cetera, et cetera. I get very nervous about too much of specification and not enough of requirement outcomes framework. On the issue of targets, should there be additional targets, either subsidiary in nature? Jim McCormack, in your submission at point 11, you point out that there are several factors that aren't taken into account in measuring poverty. That's access to cheaper energy, access to affordable credit, not having to pay through the nose for household goods or insurance. Should we be looking at recurrent poverty, for example, those who fall in and out of? Just wondering what you think about those four measurements, are they sufficient? I guess I would make two points on measures. I think it's important that we have the right small core set of targets informed by a richer measurement or monitoring framework, which does get more into the detail of what the connections are that drive those outcomes around the targets. One point which we think is missing would be a target that better captures depth or severity of poverty. We have very good broad measures being proposed, but one really concerning aspect of poverty is not the typical experience, but it's a growing experience of destitution. In this city, the fourth highest rate of destitution is estimated in the UK. This is a really important aspect of living way below the thresholds that are set in the bill. So there are measures that can be used that get a better grasp of severity of low income. The other point on costs, I think it's great that the preferred measure here will be after housing costs. It's a more challenging target actually for Scotland, for government, but it's right that we should be measuring effectively the money you have left over once you've paid for your housing, which almost all of us have to do most of our lives. I guess the supplementary point though is there are other essential costs, which reflect a mix of market drivers regulations and public policy. They cover, as you say, energy and childcare and other costs. So in time, we think it would make sense to move towards more of a composite measure of essential costs. Housing plus, without overcomplicating this, there are methodologies like the minimum income standard, which capture what's needed to live a modest but adequate standard of living in the UK, which allows to cost some of those essentials more consistently. As well as understanding what's happening on boosting incomes, it's just about making sure we are attending to cost drivers that families face as well. Thank you. I just want to comment on that. Support the point about the minimum income standard, because I think there are huge differences in Shetland versus Glasgow in terms of the cost of living, and so income on its own doesn't work. And certainly Scotland and Wales both have much more rural poverty than England. So I think for Scotland looking at minimum income standard, particularly in rural areas, is very, very important. Thank you. Andrew, who did you want to comment on that? Three separate things to say. One is that when thinking about measures, thinking about the limitations of measurement, unfortunately becomes relevant. So for example, I think there is an argument that just as the persistent poverty measure exploits the fact that we have data on the same households over multiple years and you might be interested in patterns of poverty over that longer time frame, I can see that there might be a good case to think that you'd be interested about poverty in a shorter time frame. So rather than just that annual capture, you want to see whether people are moving in and out, the challenge there is I don't know of any good source of data that would allow you to do that in a reliable way. And that more generally is a challenge for Scotland in particular, which is that the UK government was armed with a UK-wide survey with levels of precision that still aren't great, but give you a reasonable guide to what's actually going on. Given that I assume that the plan is that these targets were based off family resources survey measurements in the same way that the whole UK ones were, that's the challenge in itself. And particularly that comes to Jim's point about severity of poverty. Intellectually or conceptually, you absolutely want to measure how deep someone is in poverty. The challenge is measurement. So colleagues at IFS have shown that the vast majority of the people who report their income is zero in the family resources survey, their consumption and living standards are actually higher than the people who report incomes between one and 300, because they're just mismeasured. They're people who've just not bothered with that bit of the survey. As you can't just say, oh, that's the group you really need to worry about. And certainly when you're thinking about destitution, there's an argument that at least some of those groups are exactly the kind of people who won't answer the door when the survey man knocks. So there's difficult issues of measurement there. On housing plus, I think that the trickiness when you're thinking about what costs you're deducting from income before you compare them to a poverty line, is there's a trade-off between trying to capture some sense of disposable income, income that people have to live on, and not wanting genuine choices to determine whether someone is or isn't in poverty. So let me explain what that means. To take after housing costs, for example, it's got a lot of benefits as a measure. But one disadvantage is imagine two households with exactly the same income, one of which values the quality of a house they live in more than the quality of the food they eat, and the other has the opposite valuation. So family one spends more on rent and less on food, and family two, just because they value these three things differently, chooses to spend less on rent and more on food. Now, on AHC, one of those households is going to be measured as in poverty and one of them isn't, and you might not want that to be true because all it was was that they preferred one thing to another. It wasn't anything to do with essentials. And so that's the challenge when you start trying to widen the definition, is that you might want to capture energy costs, but people will have different choices about how much they want to spend there, and you might not want that to be reflected in the measure. And the third and final thing I would like to say on this is, I think again as Jim was hinting it, there's an importance of separating targets from the other things you want to measure. So there are things you say, right, these are the targets, this is what we want to achieve, and now to do that well, you're going to need to measure a ton of things that aren't those targets. You'd really want to know about the wage rates of lone parents, you'd want to know employment rates for parents, you'd want to know about childcare provision, you'd want to know about benefit take-up rates. There are huge numbers of variables that if you're serious about hitting a set of targets like these, you need to know what the answers are, but they're not the targets, they're just measures to help you think about what the targets are. And so I think that's a very important conceptual distinction, which as we've said before, the UK government has lost hold of to some extent. There's a case when you look at there, certainly the consultation document that came out in 2013, there was no clear distinction between what was measuring poverty and what was measuring a cause of poverty or a consequence of poverty. And so that's the challenge when you want to think about including more measures is to make sure that in doing so you don't start to muddy those waters. Thank you very much for that explanation. If we weren't confused about data and various others, we're even more confused now and actually look at data that we're getting with the clear eyes, I think, because there's the old adhesion, the statistics, and whatever you want to take from that. Adam Tomkins. Welcome to Glasgow. That's the wrong microphone. There you go. Welcome to Glasgow, everyone. I want to ask you really whether you think this bill goes far enough and if not, how we might encourage our colleagues in the Scottish Parliament to allow it to go a little bit further. So I was very struck by the written evidence from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which says at the beginning that poverty has multiple drivers and setting targets by which I think is meant income targets for children and families is a necessary but partial route to reducing poverty. I would be inclined to agree that it's both of those things, necessary and partial, but what do the witnesses think would be necessary to do in addition to setting income targets if we were really serious about reducing child poverty? Thank you for that difficult question. Does the bill go far enough? Well, I think it comes down to the question of purpose and if the purpose is to set an ambition, set a commitment and then have some anchor points by which we decide if we're on course, then it does that narrow job adequately well. There are some improvements that can be made to it, but I think you're inviting us to talk about what else it takes to arrive at that destination and I think there are lots of things it takes. One question that we pose is does, for example, the Fairer Scotland Action Plan that we saw last year combined with the delivery plan that we'll see here, combined with inclusive growth objectives, do these add up to what we've called for, which is a comprehensive all-age long-term strategy, which isn't just for government actually, but it speaks to business, it speaks to housing providers and so on. We're quite a long way from that in Scotland and the UK as a whole, I think. I think this bill helps us to get closer to it, but there's a lot of policy and practice activity, a lot of other commitments that have to be made. We talk about five major drivers of child poverty, an ineffective benefit system, and therefore improving social security is one of those five. There's lots we can do in this space to make improvements to make life better and more financial secure for families with children, but it's also important that we don't try and put all the strain on limited powers that Scotland is about to take. It's really important also that the labour market contribution is maximised, that we do reduce the attainment gap and reduce the cost of the school day and so on. In that sense, we're trying to take action across, as you say, multiple drivers. This bill is about measuring and keeping track of the income measures of progressing outcomes. I don't disagree with anything that Jim said, and most of that I strongly agree with, particularly the links between the Ferris Scotland Action Plan and inclusive growth in this bill. What I would add is, again, a caution about what legislation can do and how much you need to really work on the cultural issues in terms of employment, in terms of regeneration, in terms of all the other issues that contribute to or can increase poverty. No matter where you sit in the picture, you think your bit is the most important, and certainly legislation is the most important bit, but if you load too much into the legislation, I think you don't get the cultural change. It's a very, very difficult thing to do, so I think that there are some short-term things you need to do. There's the legislation itself, and then there's how do you get the wider community in terms of, for example, public sector employers to play ball in terms of income when funding for public sector is being squeezed. Just one example on it, that some of these things are intention, and the one that I always talk about that's intention is reducing the cost of childcare. And very often reducing the cost of childcare, which really helps on making work pay, is that the cost of the quality of the childcare, which will not contribute to reducing the attainment gap, in fact, will increase the attainment gap. So there's an end, of course, who's employed in childcare? Women. Childcare is the lowest paid industry, and the one group of employers who are most upset about minimum wage was the childcare sector. So you have a problem about the tensions between the costs of what you're trying to do, and is it for child development gains now? Is it for employability for parents, or is it to make sure it's fair work? I want to comment on that. Yes, just briefly building on what Naomi was talking about there. I think part of the answer to the question depends on why the Scottish Government or the Scottish, why you want to reduce child poverty in the first place. The focus is on the material living standards of children, then given the current measurement framework, increasing their household incomes is about as direct to policies as is possible to have, and then how you raise those incomes, well, that's a huge set of things, and that's what I was saying, you want to measure a whole set of indicators and drivers that will matter there. But as Naomi was starting to hint about, maybe part of the reason that you care about child poverty is not the material living standards of children but the long run effects of growing poverty on their later life chances. If you managed to raise the material living standards of low income children in Scotland, but that had no knock-on effects on their schooling, their attainment, their choices, there's a set of objectives where you would have ended up not hitting the end you really wanted. You might have had some good effects on the way, but that in one sense is one of the strongest arguments for incomes being a partial measure or a partial thing. If what you really care about is the life chance of the child, then we're not discussing anything about measuring the quality of education these children get. In terms of their lifetime income, that is the most important thing. Let me just come back on this and try and drill down a little bit deeper into one element of what's been said. Thank you for your answers. They're all really interesting. At least two of you, perhaps all of you, have talked about education and specifically the attainment gap. We all know that the First Minister has said that she wants it to be her number one mission in this parliament to close the attainment gap. Should there be in this bill a legal duty on ministers to take steps to close the attainment gap, given what we know about the very close link between educational underperformance and child poverty? If not, why not? First, I would say no, because I think if you wrap too much in it, you will not get the impact of the bill. I do think that income is enormously important and the bill is about income. I think that the Scottish Government has said income matters. Income matters to everybody in this room and it gives us choices. I really do believe that that's enormous and it's something that government can do more about. Just in terms of closing the gap, no country in the world has closed the gap. Not a single country has no social class gradient. What we want to do is make the gradient a little flatter than it is. The relationship between inequality and the social class gradient on educational outcome is demonstrated everywhere in the world and the assumption is that if we reduce inequality and reduce poverty somewhat, we will begin to narrow that gradient. It doesn't mean that we don't have to make massive efforts on education and the quality of childcare we do, but I don't think it belongs in this bill. Just one more point. One of the bits that I think is really important and will be in the next report that I'm doing for the Scottish Government when we talk about children is late teens. One of the perverse impacts of the real push on university attainment is that I think we have really failed a significant number of our young people in their late teen years, particularly the 14 to 19-year-olds who are not going to university and yet can make a significant contribution to the Scottish economy. I would like to see much more emphasis on that group of young people and that will be in the next report I do. Jim McCormick, you want to come in on that one? I agree with that. I think the place to make the link is in the delivery plan where government has to give an account of which powers and budgets is going to use in order to contribute to achieving these targets. I think what's really helpful though is that we have a richer framework sitting around this bill. One example from the current measurement framework, the indicators are mainly amber, a fewer green, two are red. One that's red is really important here is numeracy rates for children living in the most disadvantaged communities. There's a red flag straight away. If we have the right kind of measurement framework, then we can see, is it on pockets or prospects or places, what does that kind of balanced approach look like, and can we make sure we are seeing, as Andrew said, seeing the long-term consequences of not getting numeracy capability right at various points in a child's life. Equally, if there are areas where we are doing really well, how do we maintain that progress or build upon it? I think it's absolutely right to draw out the connection that you're making. I think the delivery plan is the place where all of us including Parliament should be scrutinising how good is the government's account if you like its theory of change to achieve these targets. Your question touches on, is an important issue which is the potential that a bill such as this one distorts incentives. What it does is say, the challenge with, you want to create incentives to, by putting this in law, you're saying, we're trying to create incentives so that politicians have a stronger reason than they would otherwise have to go after these targets, that might be a benefit. It might be of cost if that distorts incentives away from other action that would not deliver on the income-based targets or might not see fruit within the six-year or even the 12-year horizon that the targets lay out. Now, I'm not saying that it's inevitable that such a target distorts incentives, but I'm saying that if the ultimate objective is multifaceted, is both improving the material living standards of children in Scotland over the next five to ten years and improving their prospects for the rest of their lives over the next 50, 60 years, then that's something that's important to bear in mind when you think about what are we doing by legislating for the income-based targets. Last go at this, a very short supplementary. The child poverty measurement framework is a very rich composite set of measurements that doesn't just look at income, it doesn't just look at pockets, it also looks at prospects and it also looks at places. I'm not sure if I really understand the rationale for having a comprehensive framework, but in the bill, only taking one aspect of that, pockets and not prospects and not places, and just putting that one aspect in the bill and leaving the rest for some kind of very loose, very informal extra statutory, that's to say non-statutory, non-enforcement really. I don't think I really understand the logic of that. Did anyone want to reply to that, or is that just a comment, Mr Tomkins? I understand the premise of the question. I think that the delivery plan should be quite a big deal, is what I'm saying in terms of parliamentary scrutiny. I think it should be where ministers do make these connections. I think when it comes to portfolio commitments, we should be asking how strong are the commitments being made on reducing the teaming gap or improving affordable housing and the other contributory factors. I think that there's a risk if we put too much weight on this bill, it ends up not doing what it was intended to. I think that this is the missing bit of the picture in some ways in Scotland, precisely because, as Naomi said, the UK Government did change tack and get rid of the previous targets, then Scotland has a case to answer. I think this does it to some degree, but it's by no means adequate on its own. We have to make sure that the commitments made in other areas are robust and are delivered as well. Anyone of the panel want to apply to that particular point before I bring in the next question? Just to illustrate the importance of clarifying what is child poverty and what are drivers of child poverty and what are consequences of child poverty. When we say a child poverty measurement framework, the attainment gap is not, in most people's understandings, the same thing as material living standards. They're both important. One thing you can do is say, what I'm defining poverty to be is income poverty, in which case this bill has the right focus, and then I also care about education attainment and I also care about x and I also care about y. Or you take a broader view and say, but then I think that's the point, is once you try and take a broader view, you start to conflate causes and consequences and poverty itself. I think that's the benefit of the focus. Naomi, did you want to come in on that particular point? It's very similar to what Andrew just said, so I'd rather give someone a chance. First of all, can I say thank you to the panel because I think that the committee were very particular that we wanted to have you at the beginning because I think what you have to say is quite important, very important in fact. However, I want to continue on the same team with Adam Tomkins because I'm surprised at the answers I'm getting. Because Andrew said there that we've got to measure child poverty and I agree with all of that. I'm not an academic, this is quite new to me and I understand all of it, I understand why we need to measure things. What I'm struggling with is what is the point of a focus on a bill if we're not going to actually use the bill to at least get the government to specify how they're actually going to make a difference. This is what I'm struggling with. Now, we'll all need to disagree about, maybe we'll agree, there are certain measures that could be taken. But one of the reasons I think that the Labour Government did make some progress is because of child tax credits and the same in pensioners. I know from talking to pensioners in those years I had pensioners who used to come to me and say they never had so much money in their life because they were the poorest pensioners. So it seems to me that if there's going to be a difference here, the government in some way have to make some big bank amendment to something. Now, I disagree, I think I disagree with Andrew on this. Educational attainment, because I follow this, I totally agree with you on this. The age group that you talk about, the late teens, is absolutely deficient from the Scottish Government's programme. I don't mean particularly this government, it has been absent from progressive governments. I can't... I'm not saying I shouldn't have been focused on the under thighs, but I think you're right about this. The progressive governments have done so much for so many age groups when it comes to this. It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between living in poverty and your aspirations to go to university. So I don't see how you cannot make that link. If you believe that link is there, surely, there should be something in the bill which drives the government to at least say what are the three top legislative things they will do in this 25 year life span until we get to 2030 that allows us to see if these are the right measures, are really struggling to see why we wouldn't put something in the bill that would force the government to commit otherwise. All we will do is measuring child poverty for the next 20 years. I'll open up to the panel and I've got a couple of people who want to come in here first. I think the difficulty is the balance between focus and breath. And how do you... I mean, it's an interesting point that Andrew is making about what is the purpose of ending child poverty. And part of the purpose is a productive, wealthy Scotland that's less unequal. And part of it is a social justice argument about why does my child have opportunities that somebody else's child doesn't have. And that's just, in my view, about social justice. It doesn't have to link to economic aims. It has to link to fairness. And that's why I thought the process of the fairness work was so good. Back to your point about why not have it on the face of the bill. I think if the bill is strong enough, then all the other components will be part of the framework through which you think about how you do your planning. And that's why I agree with Jim about the delivery plan. And the difficulty is that it's the short term and the long term. And of course, for young people, it's not so long term. 16-year-old in five years in six years, the poorest 16-year-olds today will be parents already. So where I'm trying to move is to say that we need an economy with enough well-paying jobs where the 60% of young people for whom university is not appropriate or the 50% for whom university is not appropriate still have a chance at a decent life. And just to... We have very low apprenticeship pay. The living wage doesn't kick in till 25. The very large proportion of people on zero-hours contracts are under 25. So I think we have a real problem in income terms for young people and in terms of where those young people are going who are not, for whatever reason, destined for university. But I don't think cramming more and more and more into the face of the bill is going to fix it. I mean, we could pick probably 25, 30 policy areas. And where we have evidence that making the right moves over the next generation will have a small, medium or large impact. So my comment is less about a particular group of the population or a particular policy area and more a procedural test. I would support the bill being tougher on Scottish Government having to report annually as a duty alongside local partners. And as part of that, to give its account of the evidence upon which it has based its budget decisions which contribute towards or not to be discussed towards these targets. We need in Scotland to be investing in better data, better modelling and projections so we know what would happen if we didn't take these. I wonder if you would just go on a step further than that. I hear what you say about cramming everything in the bill. I'm not suggesting that. But it seems to me there's a case in the bill for saying that as well as an annual report and the delivery plan, that the Scottish Government should be required to set out some either budgetary commitments or legislative commitments, even as vague as that, that would contribute towards the long-term reduction of child poverty. Would that not link all of that together better? I would support that. I support being explicit about government having to make the link with this annual budget process in particular. And as far as possible, and this is a big stretch over the 15-20-year period, we need to be making sure that we are investing in those areas that will give us the biggest impact for most children. So lots of little inputs that benefit small groups of people are fine, but maybe a big opportunity cost of not investing in better interventions with better value for money and better longer-term returns. So I'm not the economist of the fiscal expert in the panel, but I think it's really important that we beef up our capacity to convince ourselves we are making the best moves possible over this period. A legislative expert, I don't know quite what Jim said, the theory of change about how laws are going to change policy. I guess it's just a cautionary tale, which is that the UK government had an obligation to publish a child poverty strategy under the bill. It published the last one of those, I think, in 2013. It had no obligation for that strategy to bear to actually hit the target. So they say, here's our child poverty strategy. We're going to do this. This will help reduce child poverty. And if you ask them how much, there was no legislative requirement for them to tell you that. Will that reduce them to the target levels? Will that reduce child poverty strategy? That was the situation they'd got themselves into. I guess that comes back to the answer I gave earlier about the value of some form of projection, which says, OK, show us the modelling that says if you do this, this, and this, you'll achieve that target. Do you want to come back in again on that one? It's just a final question which kind of relates to this because I should talk about policy measures. We could see the 25-30 policy measures that could meet the difference. We could discuss what they should be. In paragraph 17 of the Joseph Renty Foundation's submission, there's a bit in it that talks about amongst the current 17 measures for prospects, we know that nine referred to the poorest households. However, in most cases, even in the 20 per cent of places fearing worse, a majority of residents are not income deprived or employment deprived. I think the point that paragraph is making is we need to be careful that very often we talk about this area or that area being a deprived area. Often within that, the majority will be wealthier. I just wondered if you could all comment on this because whatever policy measures we think can make the difference, we've got to remember that it's the individual families and people that matter and not just the areas to cover that. That's a data challenge. We don't have the data at the level of every single household in the country that you'd need to look at it at a household by household level. The two ways we go about it is to take survey data on a representative sample of households and to look at area level measures. That's the two ways we solve the data gap. In some sense, once you start focusing on Scotland, both of those limitations become more important because the survey data can do less of a good job than when you've got 25,000 households across the whole of the UK. It's a data problem, but it's also a service delivery problem because it's easier to deliver your anti-poverty strategies on an area base because you have a concentration and you have enough of the population. It's more difficult in rural areas. Even in medium-sized towns where you have more dispersed poverty and the whole argument about targeting versus universal goes to the heart of that part of the problem where you can afford to do universal in areas where you have concentrations of poverty, but once you go universal, universal, you wind up with a lot of dead weight costs. It's a perpetual problem. I think it is about how service delivery is sensitive to individual as well as area differences, but it can be done and it should be done in terms of issues like race, gender, or the equality issues have the same problem. We're not worried about race equality just in Glasgow. We're also worried about race equality in the Shetlands. I think it's a really good challenge to us to think about the geography of poverty effectively. Across Scotland as a whole, about one in three of children living in poverty will be found in the most deprived 20% of places. If all you did was target those places, you get about one third of the, in terms of access, one third of the population currently living in poverty. In urban areas it's higher, in rural areas it's lower. Broadly speaking, those are some figures. So area based approaches are important but really again really partial and in some ways increasingly blunt way of targeting resources. And that's for a number of reasons. One is the way the housing market has changed. We don't have vast council of states full of unemployed people. The picture of poverty 30 or 40 years ago has changed dramatically. The labour market has changed. Lots of poverty is hidden. It's disguised by seasonal unemployment, low pay and adequate hours and so on. I think in some ways well we've got to on the people equity fund where virtually every school has some resourcing because virtually every school has an attainment gap. It's one way to go about this. I mean it uses an imperfect measure of female entitlement and so forth but it doesn't at least repeat the mistakes of only targeting certain authorities or certain schools. The geography of this problem has changed a lot in the last generation. It's important that as well as targeting we have broad safety nets which are trying to pick up people who are either hidden in poverty or on the margins and very much at risk of dropping in if we don't have those broader frameworks. I have three members who want to come in to supplement you on that specific issue. On the themes we've discussed in the last few minutes. I just wanted to get back to the points about the wider economic change within all of this. I was interested in the Joseph Rountries Foundation's submission at point 16 about the five major drivers and there was a suggestion to also consider to four other points. I was particularly interested in comment on the inclusion of some focus on the wider GB factors, e.g. universal credit uptake and work allowances, benefit sanction rates. I just wondered if you could comment further on that, Dr McCormack. Also, my eyes and start was very struck at the beginning of the evidence session you mentioned that from your experience work alone doesn't work and you've touched on the issues around in-work poverty and the fact that two thirds of children in poverty and families in work. I just wondered if you wanted to elaborate further on the real critical importance of considering that point and that the inclusive gross agenda is key to this. Dr McCormack. Thank you. On that point about what we might include as indicators and make sure as covered by delivery plants. The first point is we want Scottish Government and partners to be held to account for what's within their remit, powers and budgets substantially, otherwise we have a framework over which they have limited control. So it's important that this is fundamentally about devolved and local policies but it would be a real mistake to ignore UK or GB wide drivers. Andrew's work at IFS will bear this out, the importance of tax and social security changes which will remain at the UK level could have a very substantial bearing on Scotland's progress with these targets over the next five years as a minimum. So to be able to keep track of what's happening with those drivers to make sure we are weighing up the scale of the effect of GB wide influences comparing them to Scotland led influences I think it's important that we have the best grasp we can get on the different contributions. This bill puts local authorities and NHS boards in the spotlight I think we have to get that bit of local reporting right and avoid the bureaucratic box ticking or retrofitting risks but it's really important that we have UK government in the spotlight too for the areas where their choices could have a substantial bearing on performance in Scotland. In work poverty basically it's about low age not enough hours, the quality of the job lack of progression and I particularly dislike the expression positive destinations because it makes everybody feel great that we've done hugely well on positive destinations as young people leave school but it doesn't distinguish between flipping burgers at McDonald's or going to St Andrews University and you will get the social class gradient. So it's the nature of the work that is really important. There's a major role here for the NHS and for local authorities because they're massive employers and one of the things that's happened over the years I mean Scotland is one of the best qualified countries in Europe we don't have an under educated population what we have is people taking jobs for which they are over qualified which other people who could happily do those jobs are excluded from them because the application process is more difficult than the job itself to do. So there's a whole range of things on the employment side that I think could be done but I think that they are through custom and practice and I don't think they're through legislation I think it's how we get private sector and public sector employers to really think the employment picture in terms of in work poverty. Just finally I think work is really important I think work is good for mental health it's good for attachment to the community it's good for role models for children so I did want to believe that work was going to solve the problem and I feel bad that it hasn't but I think our next stage in the work story is the quality of work and how we improve the quality of work and how we make sure we don't we don't wind up having PhDs driving taxis. Alison Johnson you wanted to come in and supplement me. Yes thank you convener. You've spoken about the need for the bill to have a focus otherwise it won't be able to deliver on its objectives Dr McCormack spoken about the link with the annual budget process and I think Naomi Eisenstadt you've pointed out that work doesn't unfortunately always pay so we will be reliant on some additional income you will no doubt be aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the projected increase in absolute child poverty is entirely explained by tax and benefit changes so I'm just wondering if the panel have a view on well I think that suggests then that the powers that the parliament has to raise tax and so on you know we have to make sure that we're absolutely we're using them optimally but do you think there should be any provision in the bill to link with the social security provisions coming to the parliament then? Andrew? On the high level point and this follows on actually from Ben's question it does seem to me that one of the ways that this bill could fail to achieve what it aims to set out is that Scottish politicians could reasonably say what were we supposed to do? The UK Government made all these changes, those are reserved powers and something like that so even at the UK level there are clearly factors beyond the government's control that really affect child poverty rates and in some sense what went on with the coalition government was they said well we've got the biggest recession global economic downturn since the Great Depression that's why we're not going to hit these targets on the bottom line and so there are always factors outside of the control of the organisation or the level of government you're trying to affect and I think thinking through that thinking through what that means for the effectiveness of this bill I think it's an important question but I don't know the technicalities of how that should be played out in terms of the legislative structures Neema did you want to come in? Part of the last question that I failed to answer there isn't a simple answer in any of this it's all very tough but everywhere I in my whole career no matter where you are you always blame the next people up so when I went to Shetland to their fairness commission the people from Unst were blaming Larwick I mean that's just life you know we'll always do that and it's so wherever level you are in government or indeed in the civil society there is something you can contribute to this and I think that one of the lessons of inclusive growth is how do we use regeneration and capital investment in terms of job creation and in terms of training and development so there are things it is about the budgetary response but it's also getting the double payback for every pound that the government spends so I think there are things that you can do that are within the powers of the Scottish Government now otherwise I never would have taken on the job of advisor Doctor McCormack Just to add that I think that when it comes to the Social Security Bill the really important links to make includes what governments plural over this period propose as their basis for driving take up in the right direction what they propose as the basis for annual uprating of those payments for which we will be responsible making sure people have a genuine access to information advice and guidance around the new system there are really important tangible linkages I don't think they sit in detail on this bill but I think they sit in this committee when it comes to the next bill so a very good litmus test of whether the Social Security and related tax powers are doing their job to contribute alongside the other drivers we've spoken about today Ruth Maguire you want to go in the last supplementary Okay it was I'm not sure if you'll let me use it as a supplementary but I'll chance my hand thanks for your contributions I found them very interesting and we've obviously covered quite a wide range I'd quite a specific question about targeting versus universalism convener and I'd like to hear the panel's views on topping up child benefit I think instinctively a universal approach to things is something that we tend to go for but being acutely aware that a lot of that money would be invested in people who are not in poverty I just wondered what the panel's reflections on that were I'll let you chance your hand who wants to answer that particular there is there is simply no way out of the fundamental trade off between universality so basically the way that we tend to think about it is you you've always got a trade off between the generosity of the system towards the poorest the cost of the system to the government and in particular the work incentives that creates so there's just no there's no easy way out of that despite all of its operational challenges and I think fair to say some emerging flaws universal credit actually does a relatively good job of optimizing the trade offs within that structure because it gets rid of some of the idiosyncrasies of the old system structurally it basically does what you can do which is say we'll have this much you get of the income we'll then withdraw that at a rate we're going to choose and then because if you tried to make that universal it would be privatively expensive unless you reduce the generosity to those on the lowest incomes that is just unfortunately the maths this is very hard to get around that Naomi did you want to come in I was afraid of that question because I'm not with my colleagues and I'm not in favour of the five pound extra universal I just don't think it's the best way to spend the limited money that we have I think if you give everyone a spoonful of rice then the people most in need don't get any fatter but the fattas do get fatter so I'm not in favour of it I think that there is a fundamental issue about the delivery of benefits and the benefit system and that's about dignity and respect and I you know I just think that we should stop using stigma as an excuse for universal and start treating people like decent human beings and we wouldn't have that problem and I think that goes to Jim's point about take up It's the classic dilemma so universal universalism has every advantage over targeting except cost and so it's a choice for governments over this period as to what's affordable and what's effective one thing you could do to retain universalism but also have an element of targeting without stigma without take up, falling is to explore the interaction with the tax system so in other countries you know other countries having progressive taxation of some universal payments keeps everyone in the system but make sure that you have more you have different levels of payment within the system so we've tried to do this in a really clunky way with Shell Benefit for top break tax payers I'm not proposing that but we could take a small example of winter fuel payment and we could explore how that could be taxed if we were to raise Shell Benefit in Scotland then we could explore taxation doing the meantime like we could choose to top up Shell tax credits as a more targeted and affordable way of perhaps getting to the same place there are no easy answers here there are only difficult choices I think we should welcome CPAG and colleagues who have at least put this on the table and come forward with figures cost of propositions are really important whether or not it is the best priority in the next five years it's for governments and parliaments to decide but I think it should stimulate a debate where we can look at that alongside other examples of using the topping up power and come to conclusion about the most effective way of doing it a very very brief one Doctor McCormack for yourself you said there you would winter fuel payment was an example of a benefit you might tax are there any others that you've thought of? At GRF we support the principle of exploring not just social security in isolation but the interaction with tax we've said that we think parli because poverty rates have been so substantially reduced for older people that's the place to start we haven't costed other examples but it's the principle we should be I think have the courage in Scotland to explore these interactions with our broad new powers although we don't have easy answers at this stage Thank you very much, very diplomatically put a hand we have run over but thank you so much for the contributions we've learnt a lot I believe can I just suspend just for a couple of minutes next panel and thank you very much for that Thank you Good afternoon once again everyone and thank you for your patience and thank the second panel for the patience first panel did run over slightly so if you wish we would do the same for yourselves can I just welcome John Dickie director of child poverty action group in Scotland and Eddie Fawn policy and public affairs officer Bernardus Scotland as I did previously in the previous panel I just want to make it quite open for anyone to answer the questions so I've put the same to yourself why and who do you think we need this particular bill Eddie Well thanks convener and thanks for the invitation for taking part today it's really appreciated because I'm here representing a coalition of organisations so I should put that on record that I'm actually here from End Child Poverty who have campaigned for quite a long time obviously on End Child Poverty but on looking for income measures to be included as well and just for the record that's the poverty alliance, the Child Poverty Action Group children in Scotland, children first and one-parent families Scotland and all the members of the coalition warmly welcome the bill in fact I'd listened to Naomi Eisenstadt were actually relieved that the bill has been introduced because we work every day with the consequences of poverty we work with families who have one thing in common and the majority of them have one thing in common and that is that they're on a low income and that has an impact it has an impact for organisations like Bernados Scotland who rather than having to deal with rather than getting in early and working with these families to help them improve their lives progressively we're actually ending up having to deal with crisis and that crisis is usually around low income usually around the fact that they don't actually have any money so in that sense we're very relieved we welcome the bill you've got a submission there are areas where we think it could be improved and no doubt they'll answer those questions but certainly I'll handle it to John for us So why, the short answer is we face a scandalous situation where over one in four of Scotland's children officially recognised as living in poverty already starting to see an increase in those figures and projections suggesting up to 100,000 more children pushed into poverty by the end of the decade so we're facing an existing and an increasing child poverty crisis in Scotland it's important, I'll come back to it, it's important why we do have targets and measures but it's also important that we remember behind those statistics and behind those measures are tens of thousands of children in Scotland whose families don't have the resources to give them a decent start in life don't have the resources to support their children to participate in the day-to-day school after school activities that their peers are participating in don't have the resources to ensure their access they've got the same diet, the same healthy food as their peers so we're able to go and enjoy the school holidays and in too many cases are left with literally no income at all and in some cases finding themselves and their children at food banks so clearly we face a desperate situation and that requires Government at every level to be looking at using how it can use all its powers in order to tackle that problem our experience is a campaigning organisation working for an end to child poverty is that having clear targets having a framework a legislative framework in place that can help us to hold Government to account can be really helpful in terms of keeping that child poverty crisis at the forefront and holding Government to account on the progress it makes so we're delighted to see this bill before the Scottish Parliament and very keen to support the committee to strengthen it but to ensure that it passes through the Parliament successfully Thank you very much Gordon Lindhurst, what do you want to go with? Thank you, convener I think both of you were here in the past session so I don't want to repeat too much of what was said but looking at the bill itself there are no enforceable obligations placed on ministers, that is legally enforceable obligations, it's not a bill that anyone could come to court of law to ensure any rights were enforceable under and there are no interim targets as I read it to hold the Government to account or to allow for review and adjustment of assumptions or approach taken the two of the previous witnesses Dr McCormick talked about the risk of not attaining the objectives of the bill I think if certain things might be added into it and Naomi Eisenstadt her words talked about the bill being whether it is strong enough so I'm just wondering what the two of you thought coming from your point of view whether or not interim targets would be a good thing or not I think it's worth looking at the lessons of where we've been before in legislation in terms of targets and one of those places was the fuel poverty target which we set in the housing act to 2001 and that was 2001 the target was to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016 now for a whole series of reasons generally the price of energy for a whole series of reasons we never eradicated that target and I think that but we never had an interim target so we were going 15 years really without actually getting to the stage where we said right how are we getting on now to be fair there was a lot of investment but there could have been more investment in energy efficiency measures we never at any point sat down and said right where are we now and I think that's really important and it's important that we do that in this bill I think a better example is the climate change bill you might be able to tell that I used to work in the kind of energy policy field but that is a really good example of a precedent where it has an interim target of reducing emissions by a certain amount by 2020 but it's also got a final target of reducing emissions by 2050 and it then has annual targets and it has annual targets along the way and those annual targets are advised on by the independent panel on climate change and they are able to say and they advise the government on how to set them but you want to make it achievable you don't want to set yourself up to fail and I think that's the role and that's been the kind of ethos around climate change targets there's been the imperative of actually doing it and there's also a bit there about saying well we need to make it achievable we cannot set ourselves up to fail and I think it's the same here I think these targets have to be achievable if we decide to put interim targets in there we have to make sure that we don't fail on them but I think that at the same time we shouldn't have nothing from end to end yes I agree real value in adding interim targets to the bill we've suggested along with others a half way target half way through the periods that we're looking at that gives that opportunity to take stock to reflect to review for fundamentally off trajectory in terms of achieving the targets so yes we'd welcome that I think there's also something to be said here about the different ways in which progress can be measured between now and the ambition of achieving the targets in 2030 and the role that the delivery plans and the reporting of delivery plans to Parliament laying the delivery plans before Parliament annually and the role of the Scottish Government's commitment to refreshing its measurement framework to sit alongside those delivery plans that as well as interim measures on our interim targets in relation to the main poverty targets that we review progress and have a clear sense of where we want to be year by year in relation to the delivery plan and in relation to the measurement framework that's meant to sit alongside that and there's maybe something here to be said about do we need to have something to explicitly refer to the measurement framework in the legislation given that it's clearly been seen as quite an important part of the overall picture for understanding what needs to be in place to make progress and how we measure whether progress has been made beneath those headline targets Can I just ask a small supplementary to that when you mentioned all the organisations that you represent tend to work on the ground with the users as you might say and John Dickie also you represent a number of groups too would you say that I've noticed in the submissions that users people who are directly affected should have some way of feeding in to the targets in that respect rather than just organisations Absolutely I think that the lived experience the users is crucial and essential to be able to inform government policy whether that's on targets I know that the government did a fairly wide ranging consultation around the Fair Scotland Action Plan and I think if you're going to do that we also need to think about how what is going to benefit but two, what is the outcome of it because I think sometimes too often we can go to people and ask them their experience and then we can wander off and it gets done and we don't actually end up either changing in or being able to tell them what has changed as a result of their involvement so I think if we are and absolutely agree that people should have that input but if we're going to do it we have to do it meaningfully I think maybe it's particularly in relation to the development of the delivery plans that the national delivery plans engaging with and involving families with lived experience of poverty and listening to and understanding what works and doesn't work in terms of supporting them to increase their incomes and find routes out of poverty absolutely crucial to this and maybe get into that in terms of what needs to be put in place to ensure that delivery plans set out a process very clearly in terms of what's expected each year over that five year period and what needs to be actually in them in terms of process and content I may explore that with the next panel in that respect as well or I may even just explore it with yourself as well Adam Tomkins You said John a few minutes ago that you would like this bill to be passed obviously but you'd like it to be strengthened we talked a little bit about interim targets and we just started talking about delivery plans but what else would you want to see included in the bill or indeed is there anything you'd want to be taken away from the bill that you think would strengthen it? Certainly not anything to be taken away from it I think what's in there is good I think as I said the addition of interim targets would be really helpful we think that in relation to the very welcome addition of a duty on local authorities and health boards to report on progress on what they're doing to tackle child poverty that that could perhaps be strengthened by focusing not just on a kind of retrospective report of what's been done to tackle child poverty but try and find a way of ensuring that at local level local authorities and their partners are taking a strategic forward looking approach to ensuring that child poverty is mainstreamed through all their relevant planning processes so we'd kind of looked at local outcome improvement plans community planning partnerships looking at children services plans that rather than imposing a new duty to produce a child poverty strategy necessarily but ensuring that local authorities and their partners are putting child poverty front and centre in existing strategic processes as well as kind of retrospectively looking at what have we done that maybe has contributed to tackling child poverty and we get that there's a balance there between being prescriptive but actually ensuring that every local authority across Scotland has got child poverty and making progress on child poverty as an outcome at the forefront of their decisions around both policy priorities but also spending priorities so that would be a key area where we think that could be developed I've already mentioned the potential of an explicit reference to the measurement framework to ensure that that important role the measurement framework is recognised in the legislation the other areas we've suggested it could be strengthened would be in relation to potential independent scrutiny and the potential for the Scottish Government's committee setting up a poverty inequality commission it would seem to make sense that if that exists if that's to exist that a real concrete role for that could be to provide independent scrutiny and advice on the progress that's been made against the child poverty targets that it would be important that that was established in statute and that function was established in statute and it had the resources and the expertise to do that properly so I think there's a range of ways in which the kind of mechanisms of ensuring that the legislative framework is correct that we can drive the progress and that there is real opportunities to scrutinise and to hold a government to account are built into the framework we've also said and maybe this is picking up on some of the later discussion in the past in the last session that there's an opportunity here as well to actually include some substantive measures the legislative framework underpins the targets and the approach and the needs to be taken the mechanisms with some real policy policy proposals we've specifically looked at and modelled the impact that topping up child benefits would have given the tie-in between this bill and the fact that we've got new social security powers here in the Scottish Parliament everything that we know about the what worked in the past in terms of some of that real progress that was made that we heard about in the last session in reducing child poverty so I don't know whether I'm probably moving into other questions but in terms of what we know about what worked we know that from the mid 1990s and actually going back to John Major's Government the recognition of the pressure that low income families were under investing in child benefit and that being followed through under new labour governments with investment in child benefit and tax credits that boosting incomes using social security powers works in reducing child poverty and improving wider well-being in terms of the on impact that that had we also know that the freeze on child benefit the freeze on family benefits the cuts to the value of social security for families are the key driver behind the increasing levels of child poverty and the forecast explosion in child poverty that modelling suggests is going to happen soon so there's evidence this is a policy that works to have a big impact on child poverty and that's why we think there's an opportunity now both as we talk about the legislative framework for the strategic approach and the targets for ending child poverty that we use this as an opportunity to actually introduce policies that will make a substantive impact on levels on child poverty and starts setting us on that ambitious trajectory towards eradication by 2030 Eddie, did you want to come back? No, I just want to follow my lines I think but that's the days of working in coalition the... I think on the local authority when I think it's quite important to recognise the work that goes on in local authorities and from a Barnardo's perspective we work very closely with them and not only that, a lot of local authorities are taking a strategic approach to child poverty and tackling child poverty and I can mention two in particular if I may is not excluding the others but Renfrewshire and Inverclyde are two areas where there's a lot of work going on there and I know that from experience but I think one of the issues for us is about the inconsistency of that and I know that we hear that a lot in terms of the implementation of policy in Scotland but there really is an inconsistency in terms of how we apply that and that's not to say that child poverty is not a priority for local authorities, I'm sure that it is it just depends on what resource that they are able to put into it to actually tackle it and we would support additional resource for local authorities to take forward some of the work in this bill to make sure that we actually we do that and they can be much more consistent in which things and John touched on a lot of things we've said in our submission but I won't labour the point Adam do you want to come back in again? Yes I may very quickly thank you I very much hear the points that you both are making about additional resource so I'm just conscious that within the scope of the bill opposition MSPs have limited powers in terms of the amendments that they can put down to strengthen the bill where those amendments would require additional revenue spend in particular so I'm going to focus particularly on the non revenue site of where we can seek to improve the bill. I was very struck listening to what you had to say there both of you actually but particularly John that it kind of goes against the caution that we heard in the earlier session and I know you were both here for that where Naomi Eisenstadt in particular was quite strong in her steer for the committee that we should not seek to overload this legislation because if we were to overload this legislation we might actually do more harm than good I'm probably putting words in her mouth but what would you how would you react to that that one of the virtues of this bill is that how slim it is do you agree with that? John It's important that it remains very focused on what it's meant to achieve to set targets and to set a framework and a mechanism for the development of plans the reporting of those plans the holding to account on those plans to reach those targets I think how much ends up on the face of the bill and how much through discussion at committee and in Parliament ends up either in regulations or guidance just to be there is a consistency and absolutely clear that we all have a shared understanding of what child poverty is what is needed in order to end that that there is scope for example for setting out in more detail what should actually be in the delivery plan but as I said both in terms of process because I think that is a bit clear we really need to know those need to set out what's actually going to be done on that five year period what impact that's expected to have in terms of progress to reaching the targets who's going to be responsible for delivering on that and also what the budget allocation what the budget implications of that for the Scottish budget so I think it's important that that we do get some of that out whether it's as I say on the face of the bill or in regulations or guidance to be absolutely clear what these are meant to be doing and that they don't drift and become about something else and again the earlier discussion I think played out how when you're talking about poverty you can start to talk about lots of other things which are really important in terms of children's well being and children doing well what this is about is tackling the underlying poverty that undermines all those other ambitions we have for our children and all the other problems and issues that low income families and other families face but taking away the poverty barrier is what's central to this bill so it is a balance but I think there is ways in which we can strengthen the bill as it goes through Parliament that don't overload it and don't undermine its primary key purpose That's very helpful, just one very quick follow up on delivery plans as you mentioned them do you think that there is room in the delivery plans for putting on the face of the legislation a requirement in those delivery plans to address the attainment gap? You haven't chance to reply to the first part of the question sorry I can talk about that one specifically because we know and I agree a lot with what the previous panel said but I think that in terms of measuring the attainment gap we are very good at measuring numeracy and literacy but we are kind of less good at measuring the health and well being side of things and those are the three pillars of the curriculum really and I know and we've had discussions with Scottish Government officials about how we do that and how best to do that through the national improvement framework so I think that that is work that is that's work that's on going and I think that again we work very closely we work very closely with schools and local authorities on closing the education of the attainment gap and there is action that goes on locally to do that and to go back I think for us there's a big thing here about process as well and I know we're talking here about income and poverty but there's something really important about joining up the work that we already do so the Children and Young People Act part three guidance of the Children and Young People Act there is a requirement in that for local authorities and health boards to report on progress on poverty against the national and local outcomes but again that reporting is patchy and it's inconsistent and I think in this bill we could look at a duty of local authorities to plan but we could also in the fullness of time look at guidance and look at how we join up those actions there's the Community Empowerment Act we set local outcomes local communities will set their outcomes locally we would argue is there something what are the links between this act and that process and how we make sure that local people are involved as well John, did you want to respond to that last part? I certainly agree about the importance of tackling the educational attainment gap and we actually argued during the course of the Education Act last year that that should have been more beefed up and been a clear duty on government to reduce the attainment gap as part of that legislation I suppose that's where I see that more comfortably fitting it's a measure of attainment in the attainment gap it's not in itself a measure of poverty or child poverty clearly child poverty is one of the is a key driver of that attainment gap the fact that families don't have enough money for their children to fully participate at school comfortably and get the most out of the school day is one of the key drivers so if we're serious about closing the attainment gap actually one of the key things we need to be doing is to be tackling poverty and making progress on the poverty targets so the two relate to each other as I say I think we pushed hard for that for there to be statutory targets and statutory duty to close the attainment gap to be in the Education Act and hope for an amendment within this bill that would amend the Education Act perhaps to achieve that I'm not sure yes Adam is that very much thank you Given that the Child Poverty Bill in many ways replicates the UK Child Poverty Act as it was I noticed that the end child poverty submission calls for independent scrutiny and John Dickie you've already discussed that with us today were you surprised that that wasn't that there wasn't a suggestion that a similar body should provide scrutiny I think we're we're encouraged because I should add that we are also members of the ministerial advisory group so the discussions take place at the ministerial advisory group as well and we're encouraged that the government are proposing a poverty and inequality commission we would want to see the details of that but there's obviously and I think that was a manifesto commitment from them as well so I think that we would want to we would want to see what that needs to do because I think the role of that independent scrutiny role is absolutely right it's crucial and it's particularly crucial when it comes to targets as well and I'll go back to the independent panel on climate change if I could because we would see there could be a role for that commission and actually advising the government on what targets they actually set and on why we never met them as well so I think that's important but we're encouraged that we would want to see what the government brought forward we think there needs to be independent scrutiny so let's see how that progresses John Dickie Yes, I'm not sure if it's a surprise I think that there was a recognition that there was quite a landscape there as a ministerial advisory group and independent adviser to the first minister on poverty that there was a manifesto commitment to a poverty and inequality commission so how best to make that work in relation to scrutinising and adding a level of accountability to the child poverty legislation I think this is the opportunity to think through that in a bit more depth how that might work in practice given that there is a commitment to a poverty and inequality commission it makes sense for us to have a statutory function that is to scrutinise and advise on the progress being made in relation to the child poverty targets Okay, thank you John, you've spoken about boosting incomes using social security powers and I'd just like to speak about income maximisation Certainly the Greens have been urging the government to roll out the Healthier, Wealthier Children initiative which has proven positive impacts in Glasgow I think the government are receptive Do you see income maximisation having a role to play? I think the Healthier, Wealthier Children example is a really good example of how that can work so effectively having the right referral networks between mainstream statutory services in that case Medwais health visitors proactively referring expectant and new parents to income maximisation services worked to boost incomes I think it's independently evaluated over a two-year period I think it's over £3 million financial gain to households across greater Glasgow around over £3,000 average gain per household There's money there that people are entitled to whether they're in or out of work that families are entitled to that they're missing out on so building in referrals to income maximisation and providing that income maximisation benefits, advice, service to families at key points of transition birth of the child perhaps the point at which they become entitled to free early-year provision start of primary school, start of secondary school these are key points where things change for families additional costs start to be incurred ensuring that all families are getting access to a high-quality income maximisation check would be a really useful contribution to boosting family incomes and helping towards achieving the targets laid out in this bill Can I really include the same question to Eddie? Hold on, do you think there should be a provision in the child poverty bill to offer all parents or guardians access to that income maximisation advice? I think what we're saying, one I would agree with John in what he said there, what we're saying is that the delivery plans, when ministers are reporting back they should be reporting back on what they're actually doing around income maximisation and the provision of advice and we say that in terms of the delivery plans that we would want to see that there are a number of things in the legislation that the government must report back on and income maximisation should be one of those because of the crucial role that it's got because as we talked about earlier we have to take every opportunity to increase people's incomes here because our options are we only have a certain range of options that we can take so we would want to see that as part of the legislation Are we going to ask you the same question as I'd asked the previous panel which is obviously I think there's a great deal of support in the parliament and the committee for the Scottish government having targets that hopefully we will assess as we go along to 2030 but do you support the view that there should be contained within the bill some requirement for the government to set out some legislative measures either in the budget or in the delivery plan as to how they hope to achieve the targets to reduce child poverty by 2030 John, do you want to come first or Eddie? I think I would go back to the previous panel and the delivery plans are crucial here because the government are going to have to come back to parliament every year they are going to have to report on what it is that they do that's why we would want to see particular aspects that have to be in those delivery plans so the full use of Scottish Social Security powers the provision of information and advice and the provision of suitable and affordable housing the availability of childcare and the facilitation of employment for parents and carers so these are all things that we would want to see in there I can understand why there may not be a commitment in this bill to actual spending but I know that John will have something to say on that in particular I can't speak from the coalition's point of view on that one so I think it will be crucial that we make sure that there's accountability and I think that's where the targets have a role to play as well where we on the outside of parliament are able to look at those targets and scrutinise where the government are getting there but you as politicians can do the same thing in those annual reports so it will be crucial in that and that's where we can hold government to account on what progress they're making but I should say from then to your political analysis we do have to look at increasing incomes in this country for those who are under lost incomes and we need to take as I said before every opportunity to do that and I know that John will want to talk about one aspect of that Yes, I think there's a range of policy leavers so it's important that the bill sets the framework, the legislative framework that ensures that the Scottish Government and local government, health boards and their partners use the whole range of policy leavers that are going to be needed to achieve the ambition of eradicating child poverty so as Eddie says that is about and as others have said that is about employment about improving parents access to the labour market improving the rewards in the labour market for parents it is about using social security powers and particularly using the new powers that are coming to the Scottish Parliament it's also about housing and housing costs and not being complacent about housing costs in Scotland which has actually been a major reason why we've seen progress faster in Scotland and we have lower levels of child poverty in Scotland after housing costs because housing costs have been kept lower but we shouldn't be complacent about that they're increasing more and more low income families are coming up in the private rented sector so keeping housing costs affordable needs to be a key part of the delivery plans access to advice and information as we've already discussed so all those areas need to be all those policy leavers will need to be used to their maximum in order to achieve what are ambitious targets and there's no single one of those which is the only one that needs to be used having said all that I think there is a real potential to use this bill and to use this expression of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament's commitment to ending child poverty to show some real as an example show how it's going to use those policy leavers in a really substantive way and ensure that resources are allocated to make progress to tackling child poverty and there are these new social security powers that do allow us to top up reserved benefits including child benefit and that's the that would be one area where we know there's evidence of what works in terms of tackling child poverty there's evidence of the impact it will have in terms of the actual in terms of numbers talking about a £5 top up reducing child poverty by around 30,000 children 14% reduction in child poverty so I think that needs to be one area I'm conscious of the previous witnesses what they had mentioned about child poverty in particular would you be looking to means test for the top up and this is following up from the earlier discussion it's a it's a real thing you have to think about it hard there's a hard balance to strike approaches and means tested approaches we thought about this very carefully within CPAG and with stakeholders we modelled the impact of topping up child benefit but also the impact of topping up child tax credit there are strong arguments on each side of that to make that judgment call we reached the conclusion that given the administrative ease and efficiency of child benefit 100% take up the fact that families even when they're struggling with means tested benefits and aren't getting the tax credits they're entitled to very often it's child benefit they're still living on evidence from food banks if that was the only income families still had was their child benefit because of the problems with the mean tested system the scale of the cuts to the value of universal credit the fact that it's going to be limited to the first two children alone it's complicated and difficult to work out exactly how a Scottish Government topping up a UK benefit would get round those hurdles and actually make an effective and efficient way of ensuring that money reached all the low income families that we want to reach alongside the arguments that they're not wanting to create any issues as parents move into work or increase their earnings that child benefits paid to families in and out of work a whole bundle of reasons why a non-means test approach makes sense in terms of being the most kind of straightforward efficient effective way of investing in low income families I have no difficulty in supporting that policy but I just wanted to make the I suppose a comment to both of you this is where I'm struggling so far with the evidence I heard in the first panel today but notwithstanding the policy on topping up child benefit I'm concerned about scrutinising a bill at stage 2 where we're getting bogged down in targets and reports and I know these things are important but for me the Parliament and the Government and if you both said your advisors to the Government it seems to me you've got to get this across that if we're going to we're trying to get generational change that has to be the purpose of the bill I can't support the bill in any other terms I'm not certain myself what that generates how you would achieve that but I'm looking for more from all the organisations that we are getting evidence from I'll be honest I'm looking for more I'm relying on looking to organisations like yourself to guide this committee and to give us some ideas of what I could bring about generational change I actually do not believe just setting targets is going to achieve that so that's why I have I have some support for the policy of the chair poverty action group but that won't be the only one the one that the line that Adam Tomkins is pursuing to me is quite an important one about trying to like educational attainment I mean surely if we don't have something to link the targets to Government action then we're going to fail on 2030 anyone want to please come back next one absolutely we need more investment and we need to do that we would completely support that but I can't sit here today and tell you this is what we would say needs to happen although John has got one but the targets are important that is really the kind of bottom line here is that we need to have those ambitious targets and we need to hold government to account on them you know and between those things we have to have them coming back to Parliament every year and we have to hold government to account then so do you know about 80 then you must support into the targets then I don't know what you say yes we do we can't just wait to 20 yet absolutely support into the targets said that earlier I said there were two models we could look at fuel party bill where there was nothing the climate change bill where there's annual reports to go alongside annual reporting so I think that there is merit in looking at all of those models can I just comment about targets and over some targets but Eddie you said yourself at the very beginning this committee is going to be it's rare to look at the targets but we do have the social security bill but you mentioned and I'll follow up with the next panel about working locally and all the other issues that's going on to get them joined up now and I would assume they would be looked at under the social security bill that would give us the evidence for the targets I would imagine I'm just surmising I'm no no I mean I think one of the you know one of the issues for the NCL party coalition here is that what we lack is that link between the local and the national and it's really important that we get that right I think we've got a really to be fair we've got a really complex planning landscape in Scotland when it comes to things like children's service planning or setting local outcome improvement plans through the community empowerment act so I think that what the committee is going to have to consider here is do we need a duty on local authorities directly to plan ahead you could potentially you could do that within the legislation as it sits because when they report annually they could also give an indication of what they're going to do over the next over the next year and you don't even need to necessarily scrutinise that they give an indication of what they do but we need to link up those different kind of planning systems and make sure that that links to the national targets as well and I think that's a challenge and I think that guidance will help with that too John, did you want to come back when Pauline is at the issue? I mean we support this bill because it's not just about setting targets for 2030 and forgetting about them that those targets are not sitting in an isolation that there will be a duty on government to produce delivery plans to report annually to lay that report before Parliament I would be interested in exploring what commitments we can get whether it's in legislation or commitments from the committee and from government that there will be annual scrutiny of those reports by this committee probably the most relevant committee to then scrutinise and to hold ministers and local authorities and health boards to account on the progress that has been made that we can move towards the targets so there's a link between those 2030 targets hopefully an interim half way target and the five year delivery plans and the annual reporting that all that comes together so government has held to account and that within those delivery plans we are very clear about the expectations those really need to include the use of all those key policy leavers whether it's about employability or security childcare housing so there will be concrete practical policies in there if they're not then government needs to be held to account for the why those missing from those delivery plans Thank you Thanks, convener Some may suggest that it could be perceived as a nebulous point but I think it's important so just bear with me Organisations that work on the ground with children and families affected by poverty everyday throughout the year we focus much on the practical and on the legislative capacity of this bill through budgets and through targeting and through holding a government to account but I wanted to also ask a question about legislation and its capacity for social change and shifting social consciousness on to making sure that we do keep a focus on this issue in the child poverty measurement framework performance at a glance that was compiled during the bill it really struck me that 40% of the poorest children don't feel accepted at school by those around them I wondered if you could contribute in general or specific terms how you see this bill's importance in terms of the overall journey that we're going on in Scotland around building a social security system based on dignity and respect and its interaction with the social security bill and that overall programme of change Certainly Naomi Eisenstadt touched on that earlier when she talked about the cultural change that's needed to tackle a lot of these issues but the important thing is that there's no one aspect that will help us get to that 2030 target but cultural change is certainly one of them and this bill as I said before we were relieved genuinely relieved that those income measures were going to be used and put back in because they were taken away and we know the impact that having no money has on the people the people that we work with but I'm not sure that answers your question I mean even if you go back and there might be different arguments about additional support for learning at the moment but it used to be called special needs but the legislation changed that the legislation made additional support for learning this isn't about somebody having a special issue this is just people who need additional support and that's the way we think of it now so I think in terms of legislation has got a role to play in driving culture and driving the way we think about poverty in this country as well and I should add just for clarification we seem to suggest in our submission that there was no measurement framework that was another Government or Government review unit but we would like to see particular aspects included in a measurement framework that would improve it Dickie I mean legislation in itself won't create the change that's needed to end child poverty that will require a wider culture change both in terms of public support for the kinds of measures that are needed to create the kind of pressure and the kind of support for Government and for Parliament to take the kinds of actions that are needed to end child poverty children are living in poverty because work isn't paying enough for too many parents that there's too many child care barriers they're not able to increase their hours or get into work in the first place because the social security system is failing to provide them with adequate financial support whether they're in or out of work costs are so are leaving them without enough money to meet the other costs of bringing up a family we need significant policy changes in all those areas in order to achieve what this bill seeks to achieve I think this is part of the process of building the support within Parliament but also that support outside Parliament for that culture change that will create a kind of environment within which hopefully you as the politicians can make some of the policy decisions and budget decisions that we know are necessary if we're going to have a Scotland free of child poverty and yeah I want to just add to that as well I mean we've got a growing recognition now and I'm sure my colleagues behind me in health and that'll know this adverse childhood experiences and there's been a lot of work done in Wales and in England and Scotland is now doing that as well if you've got four or more adverse childhood experiences then your life chances are going to be severely affected in later life and that's things like for the children and young people you work with it could be domestic abuse it could be alcohol abuse violence but in those adverse childhood experiences poverty is one of the aspects and for too many children that's the reality and unfortunately with poverty comes a lot of the other things that we see whether it's domestic abuse or whether it's alcohol abuse or substance abuse and we work with it every day so I think when we're talking here about targets and about legislation and about interim targets and stuff like that we do need to remember that so I think the question is spot on that way but again if we can talk about trauma poverty is about trauma essentially people are traumatised by poverty and we recognise that through the adverse childhood experience what's going on so if we can build that in to the way that we talk about poverty and change the culture and change public opinion on that then we'll be doing a good job I think I agree it's no piece of legislation as a panacea but I think it's obviously there's wide acknowledgement that this is an important step so thank you very much thanks convener Alison Johnston mentioned income maximisation I'd like to talk a little bit more about that in terms of the current benefits we mentioned that there's well we're quite well versed on the impact of welfare cuts at the moment I'd like to hear your reflection on the difference to poverty that could be made if everyone claimed everything they were entitled to and what are the reasons behind people not claiming what they're entitled to John, Dickie, do you want to go first? Yes, go first I've not actually seen any modelling that would say if everybody got everything they were entitled to what impact would that in itself have on levels of poverty clearly the kind of figures that we've heard about from successful income maximisation initiatives like welfare welfare children suggest significant amounts of additional income going into household pockets I think as we get divergent social security and income maximisation policies in Scotland and the rest of the UK it will be important that we're able to capture the impact of that in terms of the data and some of the challenges that Andrew was talking about earlier on will we be able to capture if there's success in terms of maximising household family income to the benefit system how best can we capture that and know that that's contributing to progress towards the overall targets as well as contributing to the individual lives of those children whose families have now got £3,500 more each year Was the second part of your question reasons behind people not claiming reasons behind people not claiming a range of reasons partly because it gets very complicated and we know that people for example we very much support our tax credits they've played a huge role in reducing improving the incomes of low income families but there were complexities and there were problems with the administration of the system that meant that some people gave up because they hear from their friends and neighbours the problems of overpayments having to pay all that back so there are issues around how can we simplify the access to financial support for families that's another big argument for the value of child benefit as a key part of the overall package of financial support for families is the one that's got 95% plus take up there aren't the same issues that inevitably come with means testing a take now may's point that if we try and strip away all the stigma associated with that then there's potential for making progress on it I think the reality is any kind of means testing form filling, complication administration you're going to have an issue in terms of ensuring that money gets to all of those families who need it the most so I think there's an opportunity with the new Social Security powers and the development of the new Scottish Social Security Agency to ensure it has a function both in terms of ensuring people are able to access devolved sources of financial support a function in terms of making sure when people present for a devolved benefit that actually they're given full information about the wider package of benefits whether they're UK Government, Scottish Government or local authority benefits for that matter Why don't you come on that particular one because we are running overtime again I did say I'd give you next time but they've been very patient just on your second point in particular from our perspective it's crisis really people are in crisis and claiming benefits or having to deal with the benefits system it's just another added complication that they don't need and certainly we've gone in and worked with families and been in a situation where they're just not getting those benefits and we'll work with them to support them so I think investment in income maximisation services will be crucial I think as well because of the new powers we've said we're going to need that and I think the difficulty in accessing those benefits just put more pressure more pressure on families and I think the wider social security system as well things like conditionality around return to work when the pressure being put on parents when their child's 2 to be ready for work and 3 to go back to work really it causes a lot of distress a fair mistrust of the benefits system so the dignity and respect agenda that we're talking about here we need to follow through on that thank you it's a very small carry on fair to you because we are running over it and people are very very patient just very quickly when the funds for the benefits that are being devolved are transferred they're going to be at current take up levels do you think that that's right or do you think that they should be provided at the levels that people are eligible for them so that the Scottish Government can work to make sure that everyone gets what they're entitled to that's one for John I think it's really important that the Scottish Government is currently undertaking a benefit take up campaign I think it's really important that we do everything possible to maximise take up so at the points of transfer those budgets are maximised to their full I think inevitably the transfer resources is likely to reflect the actual spend at the point of transfer so I think the importance and the urgency of ensuring that people are taking up the benefits that they're entitled to now is building the key thing there thank you very much for the evidence session very interesting once again could I suspend the meeting for five, six minutes before the next panel comes on thank you thank you Erin, thank you John for that thank you thank you very much for your patience as I said everything has run on because it's such an interesting subject and the questions and answers have been so interesting as well any extra time if needed I'm happy to give it to you too so welcome to the third and final panel today and our Fiona Moss Head of Health Improvement and Inequality Glasgow City Health and Social Care partnership Sandra McDermott, Head of Financial Inclusion Improving the Cancer Journey to the Council Jackie Erdman, Head of Equalities and Human Rights and Sonja Scott, Consultant and Public Health Medicine, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and you've been here for the whole thing so I'll just say once again what I asked the other panel and obviously bring members in as we go along why in your view do you think we need this particular piece of legislation who wants to start Sonja I'm happy to start I suppose I'd want to say that I think there's a growing body of evidence even that socioeconomic inequalities are an important determinant of a range of social outcomes with child poverty being the sharp end for a particularly vulnerable group so for me setting out an ambition or an aspiration to tackle that in legislation is really important it gives it visibility and a priority for the general public but also as the previous contributors have said around resource allocation to tackling it Jackie, we'll just go down the line will we? Okay that sounds good well I personally believe there's a clear social justice argument for a child poverty for reducing child poverty I think it's an issue of fairness and so I welcome the bill I think it's a complex problem and it's also a simple problem so it's complex in that it covers a wide range of policy areas and I really hope that the bill will be a chance to tackle that that's been a big frustration of mine working on this agenda for years that it does cover so many different areas and that coordination and getting everybody to work together is very challenging but as Sonja says I also think it's simple in that it's about access to money resources and power we know that that underpins health inequality so again on that basis I would welcome the bill I think although I would also welcome tackling poverty across the whole life course I think for children it's about having the best start in life and I think coming from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde I think we have shown that the health service can make a direct impact on child poverty which we're very proud of and it has a very clear link between children and families work we can give advice we've talked about healthier wealthier children already it's actually 13 million that we've raised for families over the past seven years we can give practical help we have a universal approach which means that we speak to more or less all parents at some time in their children's lives and we can be advocates for child poverty and again that comes back to the social justice dimension Thank you very much Thank you I really welcome the bill, I've been responsible now in Glasgow for tackling poverty for the last year and it's been a real challenge but it fits in really really well the child poverty bill with the work that we're doing in the poverty leadership panel within Glasgow along with our partners in health and right across the board and our vision is that Glasgow is a world class city based on economic growth but also tackling poverty and I think for me when I first started in this role probably one of the most shocking statistics that was available at the time was that Glasgow had 36,000 children in the city that were affected by poverty that were living in poverty and I know that you've probably alluded to this in the report about the Institute of Fiscal Studies saying they expect that to rise by 50% by 2020 so taking that figure into Glasgow and I know we're looking at all of Scotland but in Glasgow specific we would be looking at then having 54,000 children living in poverty so if we're looking at trying to make a real difference in child poverty and reducing child poverty with the ambitious target of by 2030 to reintroduce what was previously in the child poverty bill up to 2010 then I would really really welcome that cos I think it brings a really cohesive effort between national government, local government and all the community planning partners the third sector, voluntary sector charitable sector but really importantly people with direct experience of poverty and one of the most powerful things about the poverty leadership panel has been our community activist panel who are people with lived experience of poverty that actually bring that voice and that real lived experience about what it's like and what matters to them what's important and what do we need to do to change that so I really really welcome the work of the bill Thank you Fiona You've got quite a row of us here this afternoon I am the stream lead for child poverty for the poverty leadership panel in Glasgow City and I've been working on this agenda for a few years now and it's an agenda that you don't have to convince people to engage with you won't have heard from anyone this afternoon here all afternoon that says that this is a bad thing to do any society that accepts child poverty is a poor society and certainly within Glasgow we cannot achieve what we would want to as a city if we don't give due attention to child poverty just to pick up on an area that hasn't been mentioned so far child poverty shouldn't is absolutely a focus for us here in Glasgow but it does play out three very different ways in the city so we have some neighbourhoods with as lower rate as 5% and we have a neighbourhood with 48% of their children living in poverty and we have a number of neighbourhoods where you're getting close to half of the children living in poverty and that's really unacceptable to me working within the public service and to all of us working in the poverty leadership panel so we welcome this Thank you very much Before I bring in Gordon Lindhurst obviously you mentioned about local communities very important that they're able to bring their voices and to be heard as well and you mentioned the fact about various areas some more poverty than others health boards obviously social work working together but would you support very localised neighbourhood data being used to put forward in the social security bill or even the child poverty bill as localised as that very much supported, would you support as localised as that that you wouldn't be having in the round the neighbourhoods themselves so obviously everyone would need to work together We can, as Fiona had alluded to we can't have a successful child poverty or anti-poverty strategy for children in the city without having it both area based and people based is that there are areas in the city as Fiona says that you're almost talking about half the children in those areas living in poverty we've got our thriving places in Glasgow which deal with high areas multiple deprivation through the SIMD so we've already got the Scottish index of multiple deprivation so it would seem sensible to go down that path where we're targeting area based poverty as well as people based poverty where it's specific groups of families and children whether that's loan parents whether it's families with disabilities or addiction issues or kinship carers so I think there's room for both both a place based approach and a people based where it's specific families that are experiencing poverty because of their circumstances If I'm understanding your question correctly I do think it is really important for local areas to know their own progress and I think one of the things that sprang to mind was the inverse care law so the fact that people get care inversely in proportion to their need so I think it is also important that inequality that we have in Glasgow to be able to show that we can use our resources differently in different ways to target different areas It's very different things in different parts of Scotland but places very fundamental to the way Glasgow operates and because of our scale we can't actually do business we just consider ourselves as a whole city so in that sense it is very very important to us if I was sitting here from say Shetland with the levels of child poverty there I'm not sure a place would have quite the same resonance so I guess there's a bit about how you work that through in legislative terms but it's important to us but there are also groups of children that we should perhaps be concerned about as well so in the return that we put in and we explicitly brought out children with a disability because we know that children with a disability have a much heightened risk of having poverty throughout their lives and the implications that that has so there's maybe areas where it's not just about place it is about groups Do you agree with everything that everyone else has already said I would just add a wee note of caution about the limits of data to be able to use the area based you're not going to get survey level data at very small geographical levels and as your previous contributors have said that's where you get that individual level perspective which is really important with quite a significant proportion of our families living in poverty not necessarily being in our most deprived areas and the other thing to think about is just spheres of influence I think Jackie makes a good point about the mitigation of child poverty around a service response delivered proportionate to need and you would want to get reasonable disaggregation of data at geographical levels for that but the action you would need to take to stop the poverty in the first place would be at higher levels so that might be sufficient for thinking about or monitoring those actions Gordon Winters Thank you convener and I think possibly all of you have been in at least part of some of the previous evidence I've probably heard my question already so just very briefly do you feel that interim targets could be useful as a means of checking how far we've got partway through this and how assumptions or approaches might best be adjusted Whoever wants to go first We've planned this obviously as you can see I think certainly for public services targets do influence behaviour and they do influence activity and in my experience when I have a target I tend to be able to work on it and change it so where you have targets in place it does influence what you do so in that sense I would certainly be recommending that you have some interim targets the challenge is that we are imagining that child poverty is going to go up in Scotland with everything going on it is going to be very challenging we are bringing that down at the pace and the ambition that you would have but without targets how else are you going to know Anyone else want to comment in that particular one The poverty leadership panel we are actually developing our action plan just now and one of the themes that Fiona is leading on is child poverty and it is very very important for us that we do have those targets about what we are hoping to achieve not just as the poverty leadership panel but as a city approach what can we do right across all the partners in the city to reduce and tackle child poverty so for me there are a couple of things that are really important about targets one is having a clear baseline that we are working towards it is an agreed baseline across Scotland if we are going to measure against that the other thing is about having those targets and having those interim reports but also having an action plan that clearly demonstrates that the actions that you are taking are actually delivering against the targets in the wider aspiration of reducing poverty and you can actually see whether that is on track on a year to year basis to make sure that you can actually modify your interventions and your action plan aligned to that target to make sure that we keep in track and it does not become something that you are constantly thinking we are never ever going to achieve that and I think there needs to be some publicity or some kind of way of reporting where some local authority or community planning areas have done something which really really works and has a fantastic impact so that we are not all chasing about trying to reinvent the wheel that we actually learn from each other about what works, what has a really good impact so that we can all then have this cohesiveness about trying to do what works and taking into account that there will be a different approach maybe for cities rather than a rural area but you know it would be really good to have a community of practice that we can all work together about sharing good practice what we have tried that has not worked and maybe to direct our scarce but valuable assets and resources into what really makes the biggest difference and I think interim reporting would be really key to that as well as the other things I have mentioned Anyone else want to comment on that? I think they are important so I would endorse their use I also agree with Andrew Hood that forecasting will be important and looking at the trajectories that were on course for the interim target I think it gives an urgency because I think 2030 although others have said it will come round soon enough it's still relatively far away and having that halfway mark might put the foot to the pedal a wee bit more so all in all definitely I think they are worth having but I would also introduce that forecasting element Do you want to come back in again? Adam Tomkins Thank you convener so you know we've heard a lot of evidence this afternoon that welcomes the bill and in fact I don't think we've heard anybody criticise the bill either on the committee or in terms of the witnesses that we've heard and we've heard a lot of ideas about a number of ways in which the bill could be strengthened or improved so that it becomes even more effective in terms of not merely measuring but tackling child poverty so I've got two questions the first question is given that you all already work on the front line in terms of helping to address these problems how will this bill practically help you do your job better and the second question is what would you like to see added to the bill that would help you do your job even better than that in terms of being an effective in terms of in terms of your effectiveness at tackling and reducing child poverty Jackie I think what I would like to say on this point is that I really believe that the bill will support our work and I think some other colleagues have already said that targets can be very motivational and I think certainly if we have interim progress and we have local reporting I think it will focus the mind on tackling child poverty and I really welcome that I do think that the bill could take a strategic approach to meeting the targets and again we've had a lot of discussion about that from other colleagues this afternoon talking about the delivery plan and the measurement framework and I really do think for the bill to be successful I welcome the approach in the bill about discussing with local areas about how that delivery plan is formed so I think if it's done as a dialogue so we all do clearly know the areas we should be looking at we should be looking at education employment, childcare the labour market and we should be looking at other things beyond that like gender and ethnicity so we're going to have to have a dialogue about how we actually meet those targets now I won't go into whether that should be legislative or it should be the next level down but I certainly think we do need to have that discussion and I think that will really help things locally I think particularly in terms of health I think there are some initiatives in health it would be good to link the bill to directly so children services plans the new health visitors the link workers programme GERFET getting it right for every child so there's a whole layer of work going on in health and I think it is really important that we make sure that we hold those approaches to account in terms of how they're tackling child poverty Anyone else want to come in in that particular? To say that I would agree that it does galvanise, help galvanise our work I think it gives it that at the most senior level when it's the Scottish Government bill then that gives us that authority at the highest level to actually see what we are doing to say in a community planning partnership within our local outcome improvement plans within our health and social care partnerships or within the poverty leadership panel to see that we are actually working towards something which is a bill which is a target to reduce poverty and tackle poverty to the levels which is really aspirational for some of the areas in Glasgow to reduce it to 5% and 10% to set it out in the bill but that really gives us a real keralon the real efforts of the city to bring that together albeit it's not without its challenges and I think maybe one of the things that could be added to enhance what's already in the bill would be the use of data and the power of data and sharing data which we all have to deal with on a day to day basis and obviously the powers of the data protection bill has now actually been enhanced as you probably know that it's actually going to be even stricter about sharing data but what we've seen in Glasgow is the power of using data to actually reduce poverty and I'll give you a very brief example of that and it's where we actually looked at the uptake of free school uniforms and we recognised by looking at the data that the council held with the housing benefit uptake and also the school role about where parents were taking up the free school uniforms that we had over 5,500 children that were not taking up their entitlement and we did some research to understand why that was and again it was some of the barriers that were mentioned by John previously about the forms were too complex that they were worried it was going to impact on other other benefits that they were already dealing with quite a lot of crisis in their life and actually to fill in other forms was a barrier so what we did is we did a data match between the pupil school role and the housing benefit records and where there was an entitlement automatically and we increased the take up by over 90% so we did that because it was the council's data and we didn't have to share it with anybody that it was what we held but actually if we could across the health and social care partnership with our housing providers where there was still a duty of care and not contributing the data protection act but if there was something in the bill that for the benefit of reducing child poverty within the limits of the law that if there was an encouragement we are possible to share data for the power of good and to actually use the data sets that are available within the country and within the city to improve the lives and outcomes of children that that could be encouraged in some way Excellent Sonya, did you want to come into that with me? On the first question of how it will help me do my job more effectively as a jobbing public health consultant I see my responsibility to reduce premature mortality and to increase well-being and the quality of life and reduce inequalities in those and we can think of how we go about that as fundamental causes of reduced life expectancy reduced healthy life expectancy intermediate and immediate and being hosted as a broad specialty within the health service, within the NHS means that you're quite often pulled downstream to focus on issues around delayed discharge or avoidable admissions understandably so because that's what the chief exec is held accountable to in the annual review but having this as a statutory responsibility gives me a lever to say well actually we know that these fundamental causes of ill health and inequalities and health outcomes are what we should be focusing on and we now have a statutory responsibility to do that so it gives me that lever to rebalance and shift my efforts and care. Secondly what could be added to the bill to strengthen it from my perspective there's a few things I was struck by and I can't remember if it was Naomi or Jim's comment about the government having to set out the budgetary response in relation to the bill I think that would be really useful because at the end of the day it's about putting your money where your mouth is and where they're allocating resource so that would be really helpful also some guidance around the areas of other legislation which are really the fundamental causes of the poverty itself so employment, education particularly non-academic skills routes, childcare all of housing, affordable housing so being able to link those policy elements to the bill I think would be really useful as well and finally just in terms of local accountabilities community planning partnerships I don't think are mentioned in terms of local responsibility but really when we look at that broader set of actions which could reduce child poverty our community planning partners are really where it's at and I think drawing them into that reporting responsibility would be useful as well Fiona A couple of points that haven't been brought out so far I suppose to impact on child poverty is a cross-policy aspect and therefore it does need to come through in all legislation rather than just this and if I pick up on the community planning component all community planning partnerships have their local outcome improvement plan to have in place for the first of October and obviously within Glasgow because we are active within the child poverty you know we are having the discussions around how can I like impact on child poverty but where you have a local area that hasn't engaged in the child poverty agenda will you get that coming through naturally so I think in terms of what difference it will make for me in Glasgow dare I say probably not much because we are actually already very active and engaged in this but if I was in another area that hadn't really taken on board some of the child poverty components it might have a bigger difference and certainly when I first came into the agenda of looking at child poverty I was kind of overwhelmed with this sense of well what am I going to be able to do anyway because it is quite a challenging arena to impact on but it's been quite amazing what we've achieved in Glasgow in the last three years the cost of the school holiday work the cost of the school day work the healthier wealthier children work the loan parents work I mean we have managed to achieve a great deal of things from a start of zero so where you do focus on it it makes a difference and I think that's where I'm hoping the bill will have an impact across the rest of Scotland if I could do one thing though that would help me more it would be to have a greater influence on what DWP are doing I have requested information on how many families not single parent families but how many families have been sanctioned in Glasgow and I've not been able to get that data we have had people arrive at A&E where I think there's a child protection issue because of DWP policy but they are not required to comply with our child protection legislation here in Scotland so there's a whole stack of things where I could say do you know this would really help me if we were able to have influence in other spheres Thank you very much for that Sandra, do you want to come back in again? No that's okay we may be able to help you with that I'm not sure but we will check it up on the data Adam, do you want to go back in? Incredibly helpful set of answers thank you very much but I don't want to push you anywhere where you're uncomfortable going but we're legislators here and we need to understand your expert professional judgement about what should be in the legislation and what should be in guidance and regulations so if you do have views about that please do share them with us either now or in writing later because that's precisely the contribution that we as lawmakers can make to this to this field but thank you very much for those answers It's a continuation of that I was struck by I think it was Sandra was talking about the power of data and in relation to free school uniforms and at the phrase you talked about is that many people with a crisis in their life are just coping with life that's why many people don't apply for additional support so you have to find those people I have two questions I'm really interested in the practicalities on the ground so I really need to get some flesh on the bones so you've given one example of the DWP and that's quite a stunning example but what would you want in the delivery plan then if you could say that there would be one measure The Children's Commissioner many years ago talked about that every child or every family should have access to something like a health visitor or someone that would be support for that family and many families so the children don't get the grades because maybe they need assistance with their homework that they can't provide it could be anything so that stock means a very practical example to help families and children and my second question relates to what I think you said earlier which is quite important not just categorising areas of deprivation but trying to get the individuals who are equally in poverty but may not be in a deprived area so my first question is what would you like in a delivery plan in the first years having passed this bill You will open up to first Okay Sandra you go first I'll go first I suppose there's a couple of things one which was mentioned previously was about the use of devolved powers that the Scottish Government will have for welfare reform and there's a recent change that's happened in Glasgow right across Scotland was implemented from the 23rd of January and it was a benefit cap and just some of the results from Glasgow so that reduces the amount of benefit that a family can have or lone parents or couples with or without children to either £13,400 for single people or £20,000 for a family so there's 730 families in Glasgow being affected by that and 90% of them are families with children but some of the equates to just over 2,173 children but children are therefore obviously disproportionately affected by the benefit cap and if you think of that in a human rights aspect from Jackie's point of view the UK Supreme Court said that the benefit cap denied children the protection defined in the UN Convention of Children for Children's Rights and there is something about those kind of sweeping policies that change fundamentally change up to about £400 a month that completely change these families income levels and obviously we've tried to put in a coordinated approach to try and support those families through a health and social care partnership going out to visit every single one of those 730 families affected to see what else we could do for them but actually to use a discretionary housing payment budget to mitigate against the impacts and that would cost £2 million in Glasgow which obviously we don't have but there's a huge impact so I think one of the things could be is actually looking quite urgently across Scotland and looking to see how we could mitigate against that especially where there's children and families involved to see what could the change to that be I think the other thing is about the erosion of the working tax credit, child tax credit and child benefit which I know John had went through quite articulately so I'm not going to recover that but if there was any provision at all within the act to actually look at that and say how do we actually support trying to increase again the child benefit and stop the erosion of working tax credit and child tax credit if we really believe that working families and families affected by poverty we've now got more than 61% of the families affected that have children and poverty or working families in Glasgow so how do we address that through the uptake of welfare benefits, have a real concerted effort between national government and local government to make sure that everybody gets what they're entitled to whether it is healthy start vouchers, whether it's welfare benefits whether it's the take up of working tax credit, child tax credit or as I've mentioned before about everybody having access so sharing that data exercise that we did to make sure everybody gets their free school uniforms to make sure everybody gets free entitlement to free school meals as well as other supports like access to leisure activities and all the free things that other local authorities and board areas can provide so that real holistic support about what we can do to support families to me in the first year if we could actually target some of that then I think that would be a huge way forward thank you we want to come in next Jackie the bit that I would like to strengthen in the bill and this was part of our response which went in originally was about the gender dimension of child poverty and again we've I suppose looked at this for years in terms of how we tackle child poverty locally and particularly loan parents and as Fiona mentioned we've done a lot of research recently on the impact of welfare reform on loan parents and what we can do practically in a local area to meet their needs working age loan parents are the group most affected by welfare reform and they're losing about £2,500 a year but that is a whole perfect storm of the impact of the inequality in the labour market the fact that loan parents have difficulty with childcare the fact that jobs aren't flexible so I would really like to see that as one of the areas that we impact on quickly and I suppose in a very focused way in the bill and we do have a lot of research that we can share with you on that and some practical approaches as well look forward to getting the research then if you want to send in it be wonderful if you want to come in next thank you thank you we could do things at you all afternoon to be honest but the one that I'll pick up on is DLE for children through healthier wealthier children we have come across a number of families that have not been claiming DLE for their children that are entitled to we as a health service know when children have a disability we are working with them there must be an easier way for families to get DLE than the current system I'd love to see the basic income guarantee I don't think that's possible with devolved powers I'm not sure that would be probably more your area of expertise than mine but I think there's a growing body of evidence again to suggest that that would redress a lot of our problems in terms of absolute and relative poverty and under employment a whole raft of things I'm a big enthusiast for it and then child care affordable child care, flexible child care is another area that undoubtedly would have a big impact on child poverty I would also endorse what my colleagues have said in particular Sandra's point about automation where possible of benefits a colleague of mine, a GP in drum chapel talks about the collusion of exclusion where we're quite happy to tolerate levels of non-access where people are eligible and they're not claiming and actually I think we need to go the extra mile to provide that link between eligibility and access where we can very much, Pauline, did you want to come back in on anything? No, that's wonderful, thank you very much it was just the other question was just if you could say anything at all about how we you talked about areas of deprivation but we know from the data that you could live in an area of deprivation but you're still in the minority and it's taken that individual who's still living in poverty but might be living in one of the areas not targeted It's just to mention again healthier wealthier children and that is the benefit of tackling child poverty through mainstream health services because people are in contact with their midwives they are in contact with their health visitor and it's a we call it inequality sensitive practice so it's about looking at the social circumstances of the person that's come to you in whatever health appointment and that's where we've been able to develop those pathways into mainstream financial inclusion support so we do have a lot of things on the ground and I think you've heard some really good examples of those out nationally we would actually start to tackle child poverty in an incremental way That's great Can you hear me okay? I just wasn't sure if you could hear me Can I just add on, tack on to my last response income maximisation as well so healthier wealthier children and I know you've already asked others about that the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow also has a financial inclusion programme which is currently under threat because it's funded partly by the third sector and one of the funding partners is no longer able to commit to it but it has been raising on average £4,000 per year per family in contact with the service so again there was some way that we could link some of my senior management colleagues in the health service would say that's a DWP responsibility but there was some way to link whoever's responsible for income maximisation into our universal services and just to come to your second question about being able to reach individuals who are deprived who are not necessarily living in deprived areas, Pauline I would say proportionate universalism is the solution to that and I think that also answers the question about that dichotomy between targeting universalism proportionate universalism for me overcomes both if we can get it right and health visiting the old system of health visiting where we had core additional intensive and good example of a proportionate universal service Thank you very much Fiona, you wanted to come in on that Just to pick up on that point a bit further one of the unique things of healthier wealthier children is that we sold it to parents as having a child does affect your pocket so in other words we're not selling it on the basis of you're in poverty you might value this service but over 70% of the families that have used this service are in actually extreme poverty so by having a universal a more universal service doesn't necessarily mean you can't reach the people you need to reach but we are very conscious that quite often we would make personal decisions to exclude ourselves if it was going to give us a label that didn't actually help us or make us feel any better about the circumstances we were in so being able to support people without making them feel any worse is fundamental about how we actually approach it Thank you Ben did you want to go in the supplementary a couple of supplementaries I wondered Sonia Scott if you could just elaborate further on what difference you think providing free childcare makes to addressing child poverty Well I think we know that childcare is one of the biggest costs facing families particularly lone parents I'm not sure about the affordability of free childcare but I was asking for affordable and flexible childcare it seems just from face validity it would have a significant impact I'm not sure if others have statistics to hand that they could quote but yes I think it would have an immediate impact on child poverty Fiona Sorry that we've done around the cost of the school holidays as well because we did a bit of work with families in the north of Glasgow looking at the issues around the school holidays and childcare provision was a major issue and cost actually was fundamental there was more childcare available than was being used but people couldn't afford to use it but it's not just about cost it's also about the flexibility and the timings and the other issue that came through very strongly was for children with additional needs the childcare options are extremely limited Fiona In terms of the link with insecure employment and people on zero hours contracts I think that was one of the things that came out quite strongly in cost of the school holiday as well so again having that flexible free childcare would overcome we're hearing stories about people losing employment because the insecurity and unpredictability of their work patterns mean that they can't access childcare very easily Thanks very much It's just another point that Sandra McDermott brought up the issue of the benefits cap and I just wondered in your experience over recent years any other elements of UK Government welfare reform that you believe have had a detrimental impact on efforts to tackle child poverty I would say that most of the welfare reform changes whether it's a freeze on benefits up to 2020 or whether it's the changes to the tax credit system whether it's this benefit cap the previous benefit caps that have had the bedroom tax there haven't really been any welfare reform changes that have benefitted people in poverty quite clearly in Glasgow alone the impacts of welfare reform have seen £348 million a year been taken out as the Glasgow economy but that's really been taken out of the pockets of our most vulnerable within the city which include families with children in poverty includes lone parents includes people that are striving to try and get back into the workplace that are completely affected by these changes so actually most of them I could actually go through and say there's a complete impact and cause and effect and if you look back to 2012 there was one food bank in Glasgow as a result of welfare reform and potentially other things that have happened in Glasgow we've now got over 70 food banks in Glasgow so there's an absolute cause and effect of the changes the welfare reform changes by UK Government and how it's impacted in the levels of poverty in the city it's absolutely unquestionable in my mind Anyone else want to come in on that particular question? Just to say we do have some evidence of that as well we do an adult health and wellbeing survey in Glasgow city every three years and the last time we did it we asked people if they had been affected by welfare reform and whether they'd benefited or not from that and in some of our neighbourhoods not one single person indicated that they had benefited but overall I think it was about 90% I can check that figure for you if you're interested that said that they had seen a reduction in their income as a consequence Anyone want to make one last comment on that question cos I've got Alison coming in the supplementary Alison Thank you convener Thank you all very much I think your evidence is really compelling and will be very very helpful indeed Given what we understand to be the impacts of these reforms particularly I think they are quite gendered and really have had a dreadful impact on women and children particularly I think Swansea of Scotland you spoke about the sort of gap between eligibility and access and certainly we've been taking evidence from welfare rights organisations who've spoken about the difficulty some people have just because well if you look at universal credit and the digital by default assumption that just mean it's just impossible for people we've heard of citizens advice you know advisors who are spending time setting up email accounts for people teaching them how to use IT I'm just wondering what scope you think there is you know in this bill to make sure that people have the right to access and obviously you know healthier, wealthier children that's people who are trusted by most people you would let them in your front door you trust them to help you just wondering if there's any innovative solutions to that access you know perhaps are we using schools as widely as we might I know stigma is an issue you know I remember when I was at school if you were entitled to free school meals some people simply wouldn't take them up because you had to stand in that separate queue now we're more empathetic and sensible now and we've taken steps in the right direction there but I'm just wondering what solutions you see to making access something that you can obtain without feeling stigmatised I want to go first I've developed in Glasgow and it's actually using our library service and that was because the libraries were seen as somewhere that was safe, that was trusted environment and actually with support from Scottish Government we actually set up our digital inclusion service within the libraries 23 community libraries in Glasgow and the library staff have now been trained to support people with digital inclusion and we've actually now recruited volunteers who are digital buddies that actually go in in a safe environment completely non-judgmental just to help people fill in forms set up email accounts help people apply for both houses and jobs online, help them through their claimant commitment to make sure that they're not sanctioned but also they've also through our financial inclusion worked direct access to wider financial inclusion support debt money advice where that's required and financial capability and I think the libraries are a unique source, a trusted source within most communities in most cities most towns that is somewhere that people feel safe going it's a good source of most now have got digital access if not all of them through the open reach programme that they've all now got that digital access and I think having it in that safe environment has made a huge difference we've also now built on that premise, we've now got our housing benefit and council tax benefit practitioners working within our local libraries and we've now also included our citizens advice bureau partners so that people get that immediate debt money advice prevention of homelessness work as well as access to wider benefits actually within that library setting and I would say it's something that is really welcomed for libraries to explore into being a community and community anchor and be able to provide that wider support and I think the use of volunteers has been a really interesting dimension to that as well Jackie The other thing which I haven't mentioned so far is the work that the GPs at the deep end have done in Glasgow and again this is about really having advice where people are so making it really easy to access so there's been people based in GP surgeries who can give welfare rights advice but the other thing is having people who can access records to help write appeals letters and so on so again that's been a very successful approach and that leaves the GPs to do their primary job which is to take care for people's health so there's been a very good example in Pawsal Park which I think has been written up so that might be of interest Sonia, do you want to come in on that? There's a plan for automation again though because you know Sandra gave a very good example of being able to use existing data sets to check eligibility and put it straight into you know credit union accounts or whatever so people didn't have to have the stigma or the difficulty with literacy of filling out a form. I mean we are all quite well educated and I looked at a healthy start form recently and I thought gosh I'm losing the will to live just pulling it up, I had difficulty clicking on the link finding it and it was quite a big complex form to complete so I think where we can automate and I think we can probably do that with existing data sets, we should do that and we should just give people the money directly but schools there are also examples of schools so any sort of community anchors like that schools are particularly good from a child poverty perspective obviously, health trust and government which sadly no longer exists was quite an innovative primary school that had a community development worker, a full time community development worker in the school and my understanding is that she did a lot of that sort of thing helping people complete benefits applications helping them with the IT side of it so you do need the human resource in addition to the facilities but where you can automate it seems to obiviate need for any of that Thank you Could I just unfortunately draw the meeting to a close I want to thank you so much for your evidence and the question we were able to answer we'll be moving into private session we do have a public meeting half past five round table discussion I think possibly the committee might want to make up a coffee before we start on that having the private session so we move into private session and thank you so much