 Good morning, and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2018 of the Social Security Committee. Can I remind everyone to turn mobile phones to silent as they made us start with the broadcasting? No apologies have been received for today's meeting, but we do welcome for the first time at committee Michelle Ballantyne, who is replacing Adam Tomkins, and I invite Ms Ballantyne to declare any relevant interests. Yes, the only thing that I probably should declare at this point, I've just been made patron of a food bank. It will be appearing on my register of interests shortly. Thank you very much. Agenda item 2 today is a decision to take items in private, so we're asked to take item 5, which is consideration of today's and previous evidence and the work programme paper going forward. Can we agree to do that in private? Yes. Thank you. It also seeks committee's agreement that our next meeting, which is a briefing from the Commissioner of Ethical Standards and Public Life for the process of appointing the chair and members of the Inequality and Poverty Commission, will be held entirely in private next week. Thank you very much. Our next item is agenda number 3, which is continuing our evidence sessions on the Scottish Welfare Fund. We would like to welcome to committee this morning Rosemary Agnew, Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, Nikki McLean, director, John Stevenson, head of improvement standards engagement and Alison Jack, Scottish Welfare Fund review team manager, all of whom are from the office of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. I very warm welcome to committee and thank you for your briefing ahead of today's appearance at committee. If I could just open with a question that I asked of the other organisations last week, has the work that you have been doing and the review of case work indicated any particular pressures that you see coming forward on the Scottish Welfare Fund? I'm not sure I'd say pressures as such. For us, it's relatively early in terms of identifying trends. What we do see, though, are things like inconsistencies and there's clearly pressure on the amount of money that is available as well, which, as we know from other briefing, can influence decision making and what gets paid to where. Probably the better person to answer that in more detail is Alison, because her team are the front line and they do the day-to-day work-in-contact, so I'll invite Alison. In terms of pressures, we have definitely started to see some of the impact of welfare reform. We have had a number of councils come on board with UC full service roll-out. It's been difficult to track particular patterns because there hasn't been perhaps full year's results to compare with the previous year. We do get about 40 per cent of our case work from applicants in Glasgow, so we are anticipating that when they come on board in September later this year, we will see a bigger impact because more people will be affected. Welfare reform certainly is a pressure that we're seeing in our casework day today for applicants. I'm going to open questions up to the committee and I'll bring in Ms McNeill. Thank you very much. A number of witnesses have raised issues about the Scottish Welfare Fund. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you is whether you think that, first of all, in your experience, the way that applicants have been treated, have they been treated with dignity and respect or have you found any cases where you felt that that wasn't the case? In some of our findings, we have indicated that perhaps some of the land that we choose may be judgmental, and we have fed that back in our criticism to the council. In terms of concerns, one of our main concerns has been around access to the scheme and around the review process. We were quite keen that we wanted to make the independent review process as accessible as possible, so we accept reviews by telephone, but the first-year review process, which is the stage before ourselves that applicants have to apply to the council for, still has to be in writing. We have raised that with the Scottish Government because we see that as a barrier for some people. Under exceptional circumstances, the guidance says that they can make an exception to that. However, we have recorded examples of that being a barrier, both for reasons of disability and more commonly for financial reasons, so perhaps they wouldn't necessarily have bus fares to be able to travel to submit their first-year review or credit on their phone or data to be able to submit it in writing. That has been a concern in terms of fairness and access to the scheme. We also highlighted in our annual review of the guidance that councils duty to make reasonable adjustments. We wanted that reinforced because, again, there has been a couple of examples in our casework where we have assessed that and it hasn't necessarily been done. The one thing that I would add is that, to take that in perspective, because the number of cases that we see is not a huge number compared to the number of applications that are received. However, I think that the message is that, if we are seeing them, they must be there and we cannot quantify what that might be in its entirety. I would just add to what Alison said about in writing. In writing can also mean email and there is an assumption that, because a service is able to be accessed digitally, that it is easy to access. That is not always the case. If you bring it down to actual real people, if you don't have anywhere to live, how are you going to get paper and pen? If you don't have anywhere to live, you might not be able to get a contract. What we are really bringing it down to is the very basic level of vulnerable people getting access. If they cannot get access at first ear, it does not matter how accessible we are. Based on that, perhaps there are some improvements needed to the overall scheme to make sure that that is taken into account. I have given the vulnerability of those who apply for these grants in the first place. I think that it is a combination of improvements and maybe adjustments to the scheme about making it clearer about access. I think that there is also a very big issue about communication. That is where we are having input as well, because we do not just make review decisions. We also comment on practice, and Alison Smith's team points those out. We also held an event for practitioners and third party. If we can continue that improvement approach and that learning approach, what we are able to do over time is raise everybody to the best. We see examples of good practice too. I do not know if anybody wants to add anything to that. I was going to add that there are some really simple things that we can make sure are happening. For example, councillors are meant to provide a free phone telephone number. Actually, if you look on websites, it is actually really hard to find those numbers. We did a quick review, and there are only a couple of councils where it is really obvious. There are some really basic simple things that could happen very quickly to make the scheme more accessible. Is all of that information publicly available? I think that the reference regarding the free phone numbers is not something that is publicly available at the moment, but it is obviously on authorities' websites for everyone to see. But not on your—presumably—how would we access it from your office? We have a free phone telephone number, and as Alison Smith highlighted, a high number of people who come to our service are through a telephone system, but that is not replicated within councils. Do you think that a broader range of options for grants that are provided to vulnerable people should be looked at? Specific things that you had in mind? There are only two forms of assistance that are available. In the case work that you had looked at, do you think that there is scope or the necessity for local authorities to look any wider than the provisions that they currently have? I think that some of it—and I will invite Alison Smith to add to that—is the scope within what is already offered. There is a risk that, if you make too many options, it becomes confusing when you are trying to apply for things, but if, within the options that you have, you have as broad a scope as you can, that might also be helpful. I do not know if you want to add anything from direct contact. I think that I would echo what Rosemary has said. The one thing that I would possibly add is that we have made efforts to ensure that the existing criteria is interpreted correctly. An example that I would give around that is that there is a qualifying criteria, which relates to exceptional pressure. That was being quite narrowly interpreted as only applying to families, and that was not our interpretation of the legislation. In fact, we felt that there were very vulnerable single people who were missing out on that one criteria. We upheld a number of cases on that basis, and through discussions with the Scottish Government, there was clarity that, yes, that criteria is open to individuals as well as families. It is more around ensuring that the interpretation of the existing criteria is correct. I have a whole response. I want to conclude on my line of questioning. Do you think that any more work needs to be done to ensure that local authorities take that into account when they are running their schemes in the future? We are very much looking to be a part of all the learning and improvement work that is in plan in terms of that. We do a lot of work with councils. We have a sounding board every quarter where we will look at case studies, and we will have decision makers there. There is also a practitioners forum that the Scottish Government run, which is at the end of June. We have been out to visit more than half of councils to meet with teams. We are doing a lot of learning and improvement work around the guidance and around interpretation. It is definitely in our plan to continue doing that. You would be reasonably confident if local authorities were to ask that question, whether the support that is available would apply to individuals. You would be reasonably confident that local authorities would agree that that is the case. Definitely now that message has been made clear. Picking up on what we have already said about access to the system and making reasonable adjustments and so on, one of the things that we do in the improvement and engagement role is to develop tools and resources to help bodies to deliver, whether it be complaints handling or in this case, welfare fund handling. We are looking in our business plan this year, we have set out an objective to develop a quality assurance tool for welfare fund decision makers. It will look at the process from accessibility to receipt of the application, to properly identifying what the need is, to properly assessing and making a decision on the need right through to good governance around the decision making process. Our experience with complaints is that this can deliver a degree of consistency across the sector. That is one of the issues that we would hope to do during this year to support decision makers and councillors. Obviously under the new social security bill that was passed a week ago, one of the elements of it was equality of access. There was an implication in last week's committee that, once that comes through and becomes a statute, that falling foul of that will put a lot of councils in difficulty because there was a suggestion that a lot of councils were not currently providing equality of access. I just wondered how big you think that gap is. Is it a hop, skip and jump away from being able to deliver on equality of access or have we got a big gap? I am not sure there is anything much more we can add over and above what we have said about telephone access and actually knowing that you are able to. I do not know if you want to just add to that, but I think that pretty much our view is that there is work to do on access, whether it is making free phone numbers available and the social security bill might actually be the catalyst for local authorities and other agencies making it clear that there is a single free phone access point for any benefit, not just for welfare funders. Do you want to add something to that? I think that one of the differences in the way that we are operating the tier 2 to the previous system when local authorities are undertaking tier 2 is that in every single case, we will automatically phone up the applicant and talk through the evidence that they have provided with them and explain the process very clearly and ask them if they have any other further evidence. In terms of access, that telephone contact communication is absolutely key in ensuring that you fully understand the applicant's circumstances and that you have taken all of the facts and the evidence into consideration. I know that we are really focusing in on this telephone contact, but I think that it is absolutely key that you are not relying on people to provide things in writing because it does really restrict what people's ability to present their case, so I think that we found that to be very effective in dealing with tier 2 applications. And whilst, yes, I would accept that, what about if you're deaf and you can't talk to you by telephone, you know, equality of access and that wider access will mean facilitating everybody regardless of their circumstance? I think perhaps it might slightly different take. It's about two things. One is getting into the process, so that's the accessibility and the free phone number works for many. We'd also expect public bodies, any public body actually, to make it clear that there's signposting for support or advocacy services. You'd expect telephones where possible to come with loop systems, if you're a BSL user, there are services that you can access for that too. Whilst that's one aspect of accessibility, I think what Nicky's picking up on is accessibility is also about going through the process and whether the conversation is by phone or whether somebody comes in to speak. It's about making the whole thing accessible, not just the start point, because how the money is paid at the end point is also about accessibility. I can't speak for local authorities about how prepared they are. I would say from what we see, some will be a hopskip and a jump away and for some it will be a big challenge, and I think one of the bigger challenges is going to come down to resources. We are not over resourced in the welfare fund review team. In fact, we are right at the limit of delivering our service, but that doesn't stop us making the phone calls, talking and engaging with people, but that would be a very big challenge if it's something that you've not done before and it does take, on the face of it, more resource. Perhaps that's what we should say. It might take more resource at the delivery point, but if you deliver a better service, it's likely to take less resource by having fewer reviews, by, if you do have reviews, very easier to look at because you have more information available. It hasn't directly said that it's a hopskip and a jump away, but I think that you'll find that its different authorities will need different amounts of work to get there. I think that it's safe to say that one of the concerns of the committee is about the disparity of service across the 32 local authorities, which is a theme that I'm sure will come through today in our questioning, but from just what you've said, you've given us the national figures for the decisions that have been overturned by the EU department. From what you said about the telephone conversations, is there any trend that it's been poor decision making or just lack of information that has led to the wrong decision for people? The most common reason, both this financial year that's just ended and the first year of delivering our service was around councils incorrectly interpreting the information that they had available to them to give you a picture of what that might look like in practice. Quite commonly we see perhaps the evidence not being weighted correctly when considering things like the priority of certain items, so you might have a single person not being awarded a washing machine, for example, but actually the council have been advised that the person has a mental health difficulty or a physical health difficulty or a reason that they couldn't go to a laundry, and that has been available on the application process, but it hasn't been picked up. The next most common is around the statutory guidance not being followed, so all councils should follow the statutory guidance. Rose may's point that we see small numbers as very valid, and we do see very good examples day to day as well. However, it is fairly common for us to assess that the guidance hasn't been followed in our case work. Rules of thumb is common around perhaps somebody has been awarded carpets on one occasion before. They've had to move for very good reasons, but the council has said that we won't award a second time. It's cases like this that might be a reason for us overturning the decision, because we assess that it's not being fair and reasonable. I want to pick up on the delivery and accessibility question that you were looking at. I wonder whether consideration has been given based on the analysis that you've done around whether delivery through the social security agency in due course would provide benefits in terms of consistency, economies of scale and all the accessibility that you said is not necessarily there across the board? Effective, it's a centralised versus the dispersed model that we have. I think it's fair to say that we don't have a specific view or policy view on that, but I would make a number of observations. I think that the points about consistency are very good, but equally the work that we are doing over and above simply deciding reviews is taking us towards consistency anyway. The benefit of that is that we are able to pick up good and poor practice. Where the more local service has a different sort of benefit, if you like, it's in the integration and the local knowledge and the fact that you can do, like Dundee City Council have done, about maximising income by using other benefit services. Whilst you might achieve economies of scale in terms of administration, the local version is probably much more people-focused about what's needed on the ground in that particular area. Whilst I can't say for certain there is a risk that centralising might lose that. I hope that's helpful. I don't know if anybody wants to do anything. That's very useful, because we've been looking at that point in last week's session as well. I also wanted to—Alison, you said at the beginning that you've noticed that issues with universal credit have increased demand. I just wondered if you could expand on any more detail what sort of issues have emerged. Also, has the benefit cap had an effect since its introduction last year on some of the case work and the different demands that you've seen? Perhaps one or two examples of the benefit cap, so that hasn't been particularly common for us. Again, it has very small numbers in comparison to the whole fund. Universal credit, in particular. We do see issues to do with the wait periods at the start, although sometimes that's mitigated by benefit advances. It is fairly common, however, for us to see applicants facing difficulties due to the deductions that are coming off of the universal credit, which can be quite substantial. That might lead to them facing crisis situations, perhaps repeat crisis situations, because they are expected to make those payments back over a relatively short period of time. I know that some of the recent changes may help to mitigate some of that. We have had quite a number of cases in which sanctions have been an issue for applicants. As a fairly prevalent issue for us in our case work, it is linked to universal credit and sanctions. On the benefit cap, you said that you had only had a limited number of cases that you'd seen. Was there any connection in your experience between where housing demand is high and how housing costs are higher? I'm not sure that I'll be able to answer that, I'm afraid. No problem. Can I ask one more question, convener? I just noticed that you, in the paper that you helped to provide for the committee, at 18.1, you said that your future work will help councils to develop rather quality assurance mechanisms for checking their own case work. I just wondered if you could perhaps expand on what you mean by that. I can perhaps say that. It's something that I alluded to earlier on. We're looking to replicate something that we've done for complaints handlers, and Rosemary mentioned the conference that was held in February. One of the issues there was around communication access and decision making. The plan there is to develop a quality assurance tool that looks at the journey of an applicant from the way in which they access the service through to the way in which the application is received, acknowledged, things like reasonable adjustment, which Michelle asked about, through to properly understanding what this application is for, whether it's a community or a crisis grant, what is the need, and then properly assessing and making a decision on it. The quality assurance tool will provide a number of criteria that decision makers should look at or look for in order to ensure the appropriate and consistent decision. That's the thing that we're planning this year in terms of what we're going to do to support bodies in terms of the decision making. Is that in order to help to get a consistency in terms of the process? Yes, it's about consistency throughout the whole process. It's about making the correct decision, identifying the correct needs and giving assurance that the full application has been considered and awarded as appropriate. I think I doubt that as well, because quality is not just about making the right decision. It's also about how the individual who's making an application is treated. It's about the interaction with the service. We try to, in developing that, capture all of that. The other side of it is also if we have a limited resource, local authorities have a limited resource, and the more we can do in terms of tools that others can use and then if they identify something that they might need more help and support with, they may well approach us and say, could you do something extra for us on that? It's as much about trying to provide an efficient way of improving quality as well as rooting the responsibility for it with the local authorities, because they know their organisations better than we can ever know them. We're trying to do all of that through this quality assurance and tool kit type approach. We've mentioned a number of times that the cases that we see are a small proportion of the total population. The learning and improvement lies within the sector, so part of the quality assurance tool will be what have you learned and how can we improve services, not only within our council but across the wider sector. Learning and improvement will be a big part of quality. Can I ask a supplementary question from the evidence that we received last week? As some of the third sector organisations find it quite difficult to access or understand the decisions by yourself in terms of rolling out that good practice and informing the local authorities, you might just want to comment on that. One of the intentions over the coming year is that we look at some way of producing some sort of quarterly digest of case decisions, case summaries. What we said very early on in discussions with the Scottish Government is that we're conscious of the funding levels for our service. With complaints, we provide a public summary of every decision that we reach. We don't have the funding, we didn't request the funding to do that with the welfare fund, but we do appreciate that it's really helpful for us to provide examples of our decision making. As Alison said, we do that at the moment through sounding boards with stakeholders and through the Scottish Government working group as well, but I think that it would be helpful the more that we can publish the better within the confines of the resources that we've been given to do that. We're also looking between us at how we can leverage more from our main communications function to try and use some of the learning from other areas to perhaps do the annual report for welfare fund in a slightly different way, so there's more focus on cases and less on our performance. We can report that in our annual report and accounts. I would say that we're partway through a journey, so what's very helpful for us is when we get the feedback about what people would like to hear about, because that will enable us then to, as Nicky says, look at how we use the resources that we have to get a more meaningful set of information out there. I'm going to bring in Mr Gryffin. We heard evidence last week at the committee of members of the public who were discouraged from taking forward applications to the welfare fund who would qualify for an award. I realised that people who are discouraged do not take forward an application that the chances of it ever reaching your door are probably unlikely. However, if you have any evidence or anyone who has come across who has been in that situation where they have been discouraged from applying it in an effort to manage budgets. I couldn't say whether that was linked to budgets or I wouldn't be able to comment on that, but we have recorded a couple of examples of what I would call gatekeeping. Basically, an application should be taken for every applicant, even if perhaps it's assessed that it might be declined at the first stage in the process, perhaps due to that application history. However, we have heard examples of applicants tell us that they haven't been allowed to make that application to the council. In those cases, we would then contact the council on the applicant's behalf and query what had happened there. For gaining an accurate picture of demand, those applications should be taken. Also, if they don't enter the process, they can never, as you point out, make a review of that decision. It's really important that that's not going on. It has been a few examples, but nevertheless it is a concern when applicants aren't able to make applications. The previous point about the value of sharing our case summaries is that it would be easy for us to clarify that point through published case summaries around the need to take every application on its own merits and not on the basis of the judgment of what somebody's applied for previously. That's quite clear in the guidance and it's quite easy to clarify. I think that there is a higher level strategic point about this as well. If not everybody who wants to apply is applying, whether they are turned down or not, what we can't know is what the unmet demand is. However, it doesn't mean that there's a cost saving overall. What it means is that there has not been money paid from the welfare fund. I think that it's important that we remember that these are individuals who are the most vulnerable in our society. If they are not getting money from the welfare fund, then where is the other social cost coming from? There will be something else very likely. Whilst it's probably almost impossible to quantify, if somebody is not getting crisis grants, if they are not getting their community care grants, but they are having to feed themselves or provide basic things, then where is that coming from and what is the cost to us as a society in terms of links to perhaps survival crime, things like that? I am not sure that we can ever know, but I think that I just want to make the point that it's not just about access for the individual, it's also about us collectively. That's helpful. Ms Jack, are there any particular local authorities that are, what would you say, worse defenders for this than any other? I couldn't really single anyone out. I think it's probably it's been from a mix really, so yeah, I couldn't really say that there's worse defenders or otherwise, Julie. The other question I had was, do you have any evidence of applications where a grant award would have been made, but the budget set aside by the local authority has been exhausted by that point in the financial year? No, but we are aware of a few local authorities that have gone on to the high most compelling priority level, so that's where there needs to be a higher threshold to be awarded a grant or to be awarded certain items. The threshold is higher and that's within the guidance that they can go on to that level as their budget declines throughout the year. It shouldn't necessarily be towards the start of the year, they should be managing it so that that would only be in the latter part of the year, but yes, we are aware of a couple of authorities that have moved to that rating. I've been contacted by some constituents who have made applications in February, March and have been told that they wouldn't be successful, but if they held off until April, then they would likely get an award. What is your view on the fairness of that system? It's, the fairness is a good question. It's fair in the sense that the public body is concerned and is applying the guidance and the system that is there. If they are open about it and transparent about why, the question of fairness is really then about whether it's fair that there is a discretionary level or whether there should be set criteria that says if you apply for a grant and you qualify, you get it irrespective of the priority that you're at. I think that it's probably not one that is within our remit to give any form of policy view on, but I do understand the point because just looking at it objectively, it means in reality that you could get something in one council area in February that you couldn't get in another. I think that's a question for the policy makers really. I don't know whether this is something you can really answer or have an opinion on, but obviously there was a change to the way the budgets were delivered out. Initially, agreed with COS and then changed to SIMD but with awaiting and now purely to SIMD. I wondered if you had any view as to whether that is working because I know in some areas obviously that we don't hit the multiple deprivation index but there is deprivation, but it's scattered so you don't get that same impact. As far as I'm aware, I don't think that the change has been noticeable to us in terms of the cases that we see. Again, I think that it's a policy decision about how the fund is distributed. I think that from our perspective, as long as that system is open and transparent to everybody, that's as it should be, but as far as I'm aware, I don't think that we've seen examples of changes in funding arrangements. You mentioned additional pressure on the welfare fund as a pot that local authority might have, and I know from my time as a councillor that demand the ratings changed. Can you identify areas where they've had to put threshold up? What was the thing that put the extra pressure on the welfare fund? You mentioned universal credit before in sanctions. I think that it's useful for the committee to understand that, if you're ever going local authority by local authority, sometimes it is that roll-out of... In the particular council that I'm thinking of, I don't necessarily think that they are full service yet or they weren't until very recently, so I think that it was more linked to high levels of deprivation and just demand in that area. Who's to say that it might... Future councils that come on board might not have an impact, but I haven't been able to see a direct impact between that and the move to high most compelling that I can recall. It'd be interesting to have for the record as well the proportion of cases that you're dealing with versus the proportion of our constituents that are receiving it, because obviously you're reviewing it, so it's probably a fairly small number in terms of how much money is actually going out and how much local authorities are giving. What's the proportion? We've got the figures, but I'll confess not immediately to hand them. May I send them to you afterwards? Can I just ask a little about community care grants and crisis grants, because there were increases on the previous year in both cases? It's fair to say that the panel that we heard from last week were very much off a view that if grants were given when they were required, it could be very much a preventative measure that we might end up spending a fortune had we just given someone several hundred pounds, but a failed tenancy could cost us a great deal more. Do you think that enough attention is being paid to that? I know that you're looking very much at specific cases when they come in, but Homeless Action Scotland and Shelter, both through the impact that lacking access to a crisis grant or a community care grant when you need it, might make? This is almost one of the how longs a piece of string questions, because just considering the grants in isolation, I don't think it would really necessarily give the answers to how much is there, is it well used, is it all appropriate. I think that if you, as you've suggested, consider it in the context of somebody's entire situation, there's probably more work to be done in terms of research to find out what the full cost might be of an individual's life journey as opposed to their welfare fund journey. There's a real cost saving in terms of tenancies if you look at it in that way, but there are perhaps other things down the line, and I'm not sure that we have the data for that, but equally I'm not convinced that the data that's out there has been perhaps collated and looked at in a holistic way to see where the true cost of things lie, because it could be as simple as preventing somebody going for a payday, a short-term loan or a doorstep loan by having some money to get something essential like food, so I'd welcome something and we gladly contribute what we know, but I think that there's more work to be done to understand it, actually. Okay. I mean, it certainly seems to me that there is more work to be done to ensuring that people are aware of links to other services, you know, that those links are widely advertised and available when they're needed, and it seems to me that there really is a need here to ensure that best practice is shared across the whole country. I absolutely agree, and I think that I'll come back to the point that Nicky made about the telephone calls and the conversations. It's not always enough to advertise what's available. You often, at an individual level, have to help somebody understand what is available, because if they are not easily contactable by email or they are in a position where they've reached this point, they're not likely to be able to access the channels that would give all this information, so actually the personal contact, and this probably comes back to the local model, I think it puts a very different emphasis on integrating how welfare fund is delivered in the knowledge of other things to help people holistically, as opposed to here's a grant. That's just one element of it. I don't know if you want to add anything to that. I mean, certainly I think that crisis grants have slightly gone up and community care grants have slightly gone down in terms of overall applications, and community care grants, in my view, are the more preventative spend, so it's in terms of them slightly going down that there's maybe something to be said there. We have, as part of our annual review of the guidance, we do think that it's important that people are able to access these within reasonable timescales as well, and one of the issues that we highlighted was around people not having to wait until they had their keys to a new tenancy before they could apply, because there's waiting times for processing as well. That's one of the changes that we've put forward to Scottish Government, because even that a few weeks in a home with no essential items could impact on the likelihood of that individual being able to sustain that tenancy. There are things that can be done, definitely improvement, I would say. Just one final question. You started this piece of evidence session talking about trends, and the fact that you monitor trends, but equally as the session's gone on, you've identified that there hasn't been long enough in many cases. I just wondered, obviously, with going from live service to full service on UC and also with the changes that came through in the budget from last autumn, how long do you anticipate needing before we can get an accurate picture of trend and impact, particularly that impact coming through on the Scottish Welfare Fund? I think that we've highlighted this issue. I think that you have to bear in mind that we're seeing applications in the hundreds. I think that, as with complaints, what we encourage local authorities to do is really analyse their own data. Also, for this committee, so that you can get an annual picture, because with the best will in the world, I don't think that the numbers of cases that we see is going to give you a national picture, so you have to go to the local authority data to identify those trends. It's not to separate out impact and trend, because things like universal credit, when that fully rolls out to all areas, there is likely to be some impact. The trend may be something that takes us much longer to identify, but I'd fully endorse what Nicky said, and also whether collectively we can improve statistical reporting, numbers reporting, not just from us, but also from councils themselves, because it's the collective information that will give us the better value. If you compare that to the model that you have for complaints handling across local authorities, all local authorities have to publish their complaints statistics on an annual basis, including the learning and improvement that they've garnered from those complaints. This is John's area's work, so there's certainly scope there for something similar along the welfare funds. One thing that I would add is that it would be important to ensure that every council is reporting their performance against the same set of key performance indicators. The data has got to be gathered and reported consistently so as to allow for that comparison, compare and contrast in benchmark performance, and that's where the true value lies in identifying themes and trends in patterns. Can I just finally ask who one of the new parts in the Scottish welfare fund is the introduction of the family reunion in crisis camps? I think that Ms Jackie mentioned the high proportion of cases that you deal with from Glasgow already, and obviously Glasgow and North Lanarkshire areas, where they have refugee communities. That will be additional pressure. I just wondered if there were any indications of how that's being embedded into the system at the moment? I think that it's probably too early to say. We have dealt with a number of applications involving refugees. In fact, we asked the Scottish Government to add that to the list of vulnerabilities, and we thought that it was important that refugees were noted on that. Being a refugee was noted as being on that list. As I said, I think that it is too early to say, because it is a very recent change and it remains to be seen if any cases come through to ourselves. I'm not really able to add to that, I'm afraid. I thank you all for your attendance this morning. It's very helpful as we're completing this bit of work on the welfare fund, so thank you very much for your attendance. I'll suspend for a couple of minutes to allow panel 2.