 Good morning and welcome to the 26th meeting of 2023 of the economy and fair work committee. Our first item of business is a decision to take item 5 in private. Are members content, Terusa? Thank you. Our second item of business is a further evidence session on the Bank, Crop, State and Diligence Scotland Bill at stage 1. Today we will hear from front-line money advisors. I welcome Alan McIntosh, who is an approved money advisor from Advice Talks. Gwneagol, Monead Advice Training and Development Officer, from South Lanarkshire Council, Natalie Mundell, Monead Advice Manager, Dal Keith, and District's Advice Bureau. I thank the witnesses for coming along this morning. If I could ask members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as concise as possible. If you agree with one of your colleagues on the panel, please don't feel the need to repeat what the colleague has said. I'm just quite happy to hear from, if you have agreement, just hear from one member. I'll now invite Colin Smyth to ask the first questions. As you'll know, the bill tends to introduce a mental health moratorium, and the first few questions will focus on that area. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to our panel. As convener said, the first couple of questions around the mental health moratorium, the mental health moratorium working group has recommended that only those in compulsory treatment should be able to access a mental health moratorium. I'm keen to get the views of the panel and I know that you've made comment on that criteria, but I'm keen to put on record the views of the panel on that criteria and what that would mean for the clients that you work with. I was on that working group and there was a lot of issues discussed in that group. The final report didn't really cover, as you imagine, a consultation, or the commit here. You discussed a lot of facts and figures and evidence. There was a view from us, and certainly I think that Sarah June, who is a Vice Scotland, that the fact is that there should be more mental health issues, including those not just compulsory orders. It would be down because there's a lot of significant health issues, people in the community, as you'd probably see from South Lancer Council's submission. There's a lot of people in the community who are getting care and support, and it's both social care and NHS as well. It's not just people who are detained in a psychiatric ward at that hospital that really require some help with us. I'll use one example of a case that I'm actively working on just now. For example, the clients have been impatient at Hermos Hospital since May. It's not yet discharged. They're working on a discharged programme, NHS and support. So just say, for example, that there was a reason for her to... She had capacity, but it was the pressure on the worry that that was really compounding the health issues. I've seen some previous evidence, like saying that the statutory moratorium is six months so on and so forth, but it's what happens after that. We're talking about having an extension on that. But having said that, that's one example of a case. For example, she discharged me in another six months a year. That's quite an extreme situation. I'm dealing with other cases. For example, yesterday, they did two energy grants to the HomeHeat Support Fund applications, and both of those clients had significant energy debt. Both of them had mental health problems. They got an adult disability payments. One person, her brother, is caring for her. The other one's sister is looking out for her. You get people like that. If it wasn't for the fact that there were tenants, one's housing association and one's council, if it wasn't for the fact that there were social housing tenants, if it wasn't for the fact that they don't have any significant debts, we could be looking at the moratorium, but if you change that round to someone who maybe had significant debts, maybe the homeowners had echoed in the properties, you would be looking at a mental health moratorium over and above what would be a statutory moratorium. One of the things that the working group that we had discussed was that it would be a mental health professional that would be signing off on the level of mental health issues that the person would have. The money advisor would be going with that, but to have it just purely done as a compulsory order, I think it's very restrictive. Certainly, I'd like to see more on the draft regulations to see how it's going to be delivered. There was a talk about the counting bank notes. He was going to do a portal, a separate portal, like for the statutory moratorium, doing another one that could reach out to all the creditors as well, but having it too restrictive to someone's got a compulsory order. I don't want to put you on the spot, but when you're dealing with clients, what proportion of them will have a compulsory treatment order and what proportion will have a mental health issue that's clearly impacting on their management of debt, but they don't have that compulsory treatment order? One is financial year. The vast majority are active in the community, but they've got care and support, they've got CPNs, they're regularly going outpatients and whatever, so there's a lot more. If it wasn't based on compulsory treatment, what could that qualifying criteria be? How would you expand? How would you define that qualifying criteria beyond compulsory treatment? Just now, we have money visit, we have the Debt and Mental Health Evidence Form, and I'd like to think that you may have seen it or had it distributed. I've got one copy here, but I can certainly send it on to the club kind of ones. That normally has to be completed by mental health professionals or even a social worker. The social worker would be basing it on evidence, the medical evidence that they have, and it details how the person's mental health is in relation to dealing with the debt and the pressures of the debt, can they handle it, can they, is it any issues, do they understand financial issues or is it the pressure of the debt, something that's tipping them over? So there are three significant questions there, and when it's put down, that's down to a medical professional. So it could be a GP who obviously would be doing it based on possible any psychiatric reports that they have. It could be a CPN, a community psychiatric nurse, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, whatever, but it would be down to what they consider the capability of that person that's dealing with the debt and the finances and what risks they're under, under that pressure. So that is a good basis to start with, you know, and that was brought out at the working group, the CFT, moratorium working group, and I was a bit disappointed that that wasn't in final report. Bear in mind, there's a lot of contributing, you know, sort of different organisations where we're providing evidence at that, you know, but I would be saying it's thing to basically the mental health professionals and how they assess the individual as they're dealing with the finances, whether that financial pressure is tipping them over and then that's causing further exasperation or, you know, of anxiety. It's making it worse than the health problem. So that's very helpful. I don't know if Natalie or Alan want to add anything to the position that Joyce outlined there. Well, I fully agree with using the debt and mental health evidence form as a trigger for the moratorium. The only obstacle to it at the moment is that some health professionals still charge for it. I think not as much as they used to in the past because maybe more people know about the form and what it means and what we can do. But it is sometimes a prohibitive factor. However, we do use that particular form in our advice process quite a lot because it does allow to capture the difficulties client might have. It does say specifically how their mental health condition affects how they deal with money. It doesn't just stipulate that somebody has bipolar disorder or somebody has depression. We all know mental health is quite fluid. One diagnosis doesn't mean exactly the same thing for everybody. So that's maybe another thing to work on to give guidance to medical professionals what should be in the form to make it as helpful as possible because sometimes even if they agree to fill in the form, it is not very specific. It just sometimes means that they say, oh, client suffers from such and such, patient suffers from such and such. And when the creditors look at the form later, they are struggling to see how that impacted client's decisions in that particular situation in reference to the debt that they have. So, yeah, I think that the form would be a fantastic tool to be used as a trigger for maratorium. And I fully agree. We see hundreds of clients who have very significant mental health problems. Evidently, even contacting us is something that is triggering them. It's difficult. They miss appointments. They don't respond to our correspondence. Sometimes we have to actually make it. We have to forewarn them that we are going to call from a specific number. We have our own mobiles so that the client recognises who is calling them, who is trying to contact them. And yet these people are not subjected to any compulsory treatment because maybe they don't need compulsory treatment or maybe because there is a waiting list to be actually seen by a mental health professional. So it might mean that people who otherwise would fill all the criteria that are required are not ticking the boxes yet just simply because they are waiting in the system for their problems to be recognised. And that form allows those closes to them, social workers, support workers, CPMs, to inform the creditor about difficulties that the client has. And I think that's amazing too. I can just come in at a very short point. If we look at the English breathing space, which is the equivalent of our statutory moratorium, and then you've got the English breathing space for mental health crisis tool, the number of ones that are used for mental health crisis is about 1.4 per cent of the total number that are used for normal breathing spaces. If we use a similar model to the used in England, the percentage is roughly the same, 1.4 per cent, you're probably talking about 50 a year. So if you do take that model, we're talking about passing a bill that's going to help 50 people a year at best. And I don't even know if it would be that amount because we are definitely going to have a better moratorium that lasts for six months, where the moratorium lasts for two months. If you want this to help people, then you really need to look at that because otherwise it's going to be really restrictive and is it really worth it for the sake of 50 people a year, do you know what I mean? Okay, Michael Chapman. Thank you very much, Claire, and good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us this morning, and thank you for what you've said so far. I'm continuing on this question of the relationship between you as money advisers and the kicking in or not of the mental health moratorium. Natalia, you spoke quite clearly about even contacting you being a trigger and potential hurdle for people, and there have been suggestions about who would actually make the application for the moratorium and how that person, if it's the money adviser, would have the right information. Do you see a situation where you as money advisers could actually be gatekeepers in a way and potentially giving a responsibility that you don't want in that role? Is there another way of looking at the process of how the moratorium would come into place if we get the criteria for it sorted out? I think the first issue is that we have to recognise that not all people who have problems with mental health and debt are going to cross our doors and are going to come and seek help. Those who already do, I would say they're already in a good position because they recognise they have a problem and they recognise they need assistance. I would imagine that for those ones who have that awareness, it wouldn't make a massive difference to us as money advisers to what we are doing now. I think a new issue is with people who maybe lack that awareness or who potentially could be referred to as by mental health professionals. I think that that co-operation would be very useful. I think that there would need to be some sort of a way that is written out somewhere, some procedure, because we have to adhere to data protection, we have to adhere to all the regulations where mental health professionals with agreement from the client could potentially refer them on to us like any other organisations do. For example, they recognise that the client's current mental health status is triggered by existence of the debts and they would like the organisation like us or any other to discuss this with the client. It can be a software fellow, it can be just telling the client there is this service, they have that advice available, please go and seek it. It can be a more formal referral where they generally send us a referral form and say this client in the meeting expressed that they are struggling. I'm not sure if they are going to try and reach you because of the problems that they have at the moment, they are finding it difficult to make a decision. It is a lot for them to actually make a phone call to even appear in the outreach, would you mind trying and contacting them? I don't think that that would change a lot. We get referrals, as it is, from the council, from other organisations, it would be pretty much the same. I would just be more concerned about the data protection aspect of it and honing the way where it is going to be a bit structured and the same across here on this point. There is a practical and operational problem with that. If you look at our current moratoriums, which are fantastic, in the sense that you could go on yourself online, put register, it comes on within 24 hours, and that has you got protection for six months. You don't need to wait to see a money adviser, you don't need to get an appointment, you don't need to go through somebody deciding whether you deserve it or not. I can understand your concern about keeping. The problem with this is, first of all, we are dealing with people who possibly don't have that ability because of the mental health crisis. I think that looking at money advisers as gatekeepers on this concept, context is wrong because we are trying to be there as a system. There is another issue, and it is about what the effect of the moratorium is. If you look at the English breathing space moratorium, one of the effects is that it can freeze interest in charges. In Scotland, doing moratoriums does not freeze interest in charges. This was raised during the coronavirus, because an amendment was laid by Jackie Baillie in the coronavirus bill about freezing interest in charges in moratoriums. One of the problems with that is that the accounting bank reps are raised at the time. If you do that, you have to give notification to the creditors, which means that you need to tell the creditors that we don't need to do that at the moment with accounting moratoriums. If you have 10 creditors and you have a mental health crisis and you apply for a mental health moratorium and you have to notify them, you need to know how that is going to happen, is that the accounting bank reps are going to notify them, how we are going to get a list of the creditors, how we are going to get their account numbers, because the person might not be in a position to deal with them. In that context, that is why maybe there are money advisers. I don't think that removes the problem, I think there are issues, but that is one of the operational problems that I think we need to explain. If this is going to freeze interest in charges from what they have said in the past, we need to notify the creditors, we need to know how do we find out who the creditors are, and I will tell you that is a really difficult problem sometimes. How do we get their account numbers? Who is doing that? Are we doing that? Or is it the accounting bank reps who are doing that? I think that is an operational issue of it as well. No, that is really helpful. I suppose that there is a general question. Do you support moratoriums if there was the freezing of interest rates and charges in that way? Yes, I would support the moratorium. I think that the whole issue, and it is maybe an open highlight enough, is what does this moratorium do? The current action moratoriums stop our diligence and stop somebody being made bankrupt, unless a petition has already been raised for bankrupts. What does this moratorium do? In England and Wales, their breathing space moratorium stops coming to raise the co-action, earth don't. It stops freezing interest in charges, earth don't. It stops cars being repossessed, earth don't. It stops evictions, earth don't. It stops repossessions, earth don't. It stops PPM metres being forcibly installed, earth don't, which is an issue, because that is a reserved matter for the UK Parliament. It stops debt areas for electricity and gas bombs being deducted from our PPM air, earth don't. I think that there is a big issue here. What is this going to do that is going to make it better or more enhanced in the current action moratorium? At the moment, we do not know. We look at it as a multi-agency approach because we have NHS, we have social work, we have social worker, we have mental health officer. The way that I use the analogy is that the football team, we are playing the ball from the back. It could be a mental health social work, they cross the ball and then the money advisor puts the ball in the back of the network. It is a team approach, thank you. We all play in a part. It is not just the money advisor doing it themselves. There is a lot of coming together. We will do that, but the mental health professionals will do their part, their social work will do their part, if there is a social work involved. Sometimes it is the money advice who sees something with a client. Maybe sometimes they are in with a relative and think, have you discussed this with your doctor or whatever, because some people we have come in, they haven't seen a doctor in several years, and it is basically the bottom doubt because of the debt pressures. It is identifying that and saying, well, go and speak to your doctor and then maybe go down that route. Very much as I can have it, it is a multi-agency team working. We will play our part, but we are not in total control, we are not monopolising it. I was not trying to suggest with the questions around gatekeepers. You make the point about the partnership, collaboration and multi-agency approach being really important. I am wondering whether there is enough, either in the actual legislation or in the guidance that might come around this, or what would you like to see to support that? Natalia, you mentioned that the people who come to you are already in a better place than many people who just either can't or don't know about it or that kind of thing. What are the things that we need to make sure are in place so that people do actually know that you exist, that there is support for mental health, the care and support in the community, Joe, that you talked about earlier on, so that people don't fall through the cracks? How can we use this legislation and this process to plug some of those gaps? I will play a little bit to what Alan said, what this moratorium is going to offer, because it's true that statutory moratorium, we use it a lot at work. I'm yet to meet a client who applied for it themselves, even though they have ability, it's super easy form. We make people aware that it even exists, people don't know, but in reality, yes, it's limited, so it doesn't even stop the creditor from starting the action, it just stops the creditor from acting on it, so in that six months the creditor can obtain a decree and when the six months is gone they can just use it to address wages, I don't know, go to the bank account and so on. So if that moratorium really, particularly during the first period of time where people need to focus on their mental health, and I think that's a very important part of this proposal, that we recognize that when you have a mental health crisis or when your mental health is generally so bad that you need to take time out, you need to pause, this isn't time to think about your debt, this is the time for you to recover, to focus on your treatment, whatever it might be, and then when you feel better this is the time to start slowly going into the process of addressing your debts, and I think that slowly is also crucial because it can't be like this that it is like as if a knife cut it, you are unwell and now you're fine, and we are just going to throw it allatia, so if people know that particularly in this first moment the interest are stopped, the charges are stopped, the correspondence is stopped, there is no court action that is going to be started, everything stops, then I think that would be a massive incentive and that is something that can be advertised and I think it would really meet the need out there in the community, and I think that can be used as a massive incentive. Otherwise, if it just does about a statutory moratorium, we'll just apply for a statutory moratorium, we've got six months, you know why would we waste our time doing all that extra work when we can just do it online and get it tomorrow, it's simple. I know what others want to come in so I'll leave at their clean. Thank you for coming. I've been listening to what you said, I'm really interested in the practicalities, and Alan you talked about what we're trying to solve here, what's the problem that's trying to solve here. I think that looking in an ideal world, somebody who hasn't had mental health issues will seek treatment and during that treatment they'll then come to you that reality is, that's not the real world, the real world is in mental health a lot of people will hide it, so therefore won't be in under the auspices of treatment. So I think from my perspective what I would like to ask is around the skillset required from yourselves, do we have that skillset as an extra training required, do we have the practicality, the practical skills to be able to identify, deliver on what the bill is trying to achieve here. My slightly concern is around practicality, what we're trying to do here. I know in Attlee you talked about very much around the need to identify those who would benefit from mental health and you discussed very clearly that there's so much of a scope within mental health that not all people with a mental health issue will need this, so how are we going to identify this, how are we going to make sure that we don't drop the ball here. That was the problem we had for, we identified this issue in our own service that we have to have a way to reach out to people rather than wait for them to appear in our office and we've really tailored our advice model to try and answer the demands of the clients. So at the moment we are actually offering advice mainly in outreaches so that it's easier for the client to come out and seek advice in a familiar place rather than go to the building they don't know. Very often we are present in the countries and we are just there giving people a chance to come to us and talk to us. We also have a separate project we sought funding for that where we offer support to men whose mental health is affecting them in a way where they are struggling to engage with services or who have attempted to take their own life. We are trying to have good working relations, like it was said, it's a teamwork with the local council. In my previous organisation where I worked we had very good working relations with the GP practices. At the moment as well we have a couple of GP practices where we have our own outreaches and we do get referrals sometimes from the GPs with the permission of the clients if the GP recognises that there is an issue there they will let us know and the client can be seen in the clinic. So I think the skillset is there. There is a way around this. It does demand a little bit of flexibility I think I dare to say demands funding because it all costs money. But we as money advisers have access to quite good training platforms where face-to-face or via e-learning we can get really good mental health training. There is the mental health first aid, there is matrix learn where there are very good units on supporting clients who are vulnerable. We go out to trainings organised by our own bureaus with mental health professionals. I would say yes there is this ability to recognise issues with the clients and recognise what can be the trigger or the client is a point of crisis. I think it comes with the job as well because we regularly see clients at the door who come in with no appointment, bags and hands, lost their house or who say that essentially if they don't get help they are going to go on in their life. I was going to say that money advisers are quite skilled people in terms of you know they'll tell you their accountants, their lawyers, their social workers and their mental health workers because they pretty much do everything in large numbers of money advice clients. They have mental health problems up to a varying level, we might just be anxiety but you know sometimes it's going to be a lot more severe. So there is a very lot of skills in the money advice sector with especially identifying mental health problems, working with people mental health problems. I think the only thing is that special at times like this with the cost of living crisis is putting increasing strains on money advice services and money advisers personally because obviously if you're working under that sort of environment and dealing with very old clients all the time then emotionally you know in terms of the wellbeing and money advisers themselves so that can really be eroded quite quickly you know that it has an impact on money advisers but in terms of the skills set I think you know it obviously varies compared to somebody who's just started and somebody who's been doing it for 10, 20 years but you know there's certainly a lot of skills there and it is not with Natalia say there's some funding as well making sure that we can actually attain those advisers but my big concern is the effect it has over time on the advisers you know to take these problems home with them especially if you're short start or you're under resourcing as an impact on their wellbeing and you end up seeing a lot of maybe advisers going off themselves with stress and sickness because they're the only on a daily basis. I've been a money adviser for 20 years, 13 years I'm training and development and I train our advisers we're up to date for the training and as Natalia said there's external training, there's internal training we do ourselves in house money matters advice service, it's also the council wide training we've done and the that's always available in that respect and well Natalia mentioned a few things I've done assist training that's a suicide awareness training as well so and a good money advice as Alan says is trying to hold on to the good money not mean good but seasoned you know the ones that got that experience there's a lot of pressure there's no doubt about it taking the job home sleepers nights it's not unusual particularly when you're worried about a client and losing the house or whatever or even concerned about the health but we you know but one of the the biggest quarter attributes for anybody in the front line money advice welfare rights officer whatever is the ability to build that rapport with an individual to get to understand them to get them to trust you and it's the same throughout you know NHS social work it's the same it's having that ability that's not just a paper exercise that it's having that ability to build that rapport with people and and also for them you know to try and give that kind of you know the advice you know in the right level make sure the person is capable of taking it on over the years I've had to say bringing a family member a friend or whoever you trust well who's going to be able to talk to you through scubaid of care or whatever but this is there's a lot there's a lot of trainings there's a lot of knowledge there's a lot of sharing and and across from the council environment you know like the housing officers are the same they're trained up to identify if they've got a tenant that's maybe got issues should they be you know you see go to you know a sort of NHS go and speak to social work speak to money advisor social workers are the same as well but there's a lot of good people it's a lot of good trainings a lot of good information available this is a concern about the capacity issue there's no doubt about it but if everyone can play the part as I said earlier on we can do it but you know if the and you know if the NHS can do that but then social work anywhere else then obviously we're part of a team as Natalia said as well we've got links workers well they're not it's not council but links workers are working out of GP practices and part of their part of their remit is basically to to refer out to you know likes of council services you've sent us a device to other community projects that can can help the person you know whether it's a you know if it's doing a debt or whatever or you even get job coaching or whatever but I'm sorry if I've rambled on a bit that's a very small to you. I think I was going to say Joe you raised this issue of the and as to the this bill will affect very small number of people and to your point Joe you would like you'd like to see you know that there are those with with capacity issues that are out with the confined to this bill at the moment but then you've also talked about resource yeah so I think I think my concern would be around the way the bill is drafted is to to ensure that you know we don't run out of resource but we want the whole point of the bill is to help those who are in real need so where are we in that that sort of if I would add to that we're already doing with some of these people but they don't have enough protection so this is you know if we're giving the right procedures as Nana talking but expanding it the fact is we're giving better protection you know that's that's the thing we already are it's not a case it's we're not dealing with any clients that's never got no mental health issues whatsoever it's getting them better protection and more extended protection if someone's on going if someone's on going two three four years of on going treatment you know it's like the standard the statutory mode two and six months protection if someone is is going to be required treatment I I you know I've I as well as people through my job and I'm aware of other people in the area where I grow up in Glasgow the fact is you know you've got neighbours and things that you have people in the community you've you've got problems people come to me in the street and speak to me when I say street they come and tap my door or see me at a football game at my queen's park man so there we go speak to me because you know I've got my I've got my foot in the door as far as that's concerned it's pointing people in the right direction so some people already are on a case hold just now some of them are already existing clients but trying to extend that protection trying to give them that scope to learn to get treatment to get protection and you know until such time hopefully they're well enough and you know and they're able to stand to the two feet and move on so so that they're here already it's also going to be new clients but it's already got them as it stands I think there is an issue it's a valid point though if that we make for something that's really good and gives a lot of people a lot of protections you might get a lot of your health and social care workers starting to refer more clients on A5s agencies because they've seen that this is great because it's got high profile it really can help my clients and if the procedures are quite complicated because we've got to notify the creditors and all that stuff then it does have an impact on services obviously you may be creating further work and if you widen it so it's no just 50 people a year you know so there's a lot of factors and the problem with this bill is obviously you know in terms of the moratorium the meat's not on the bones we don't know any of this shit you know in terms of we don't know what effect it's going to have we don't know what the application process is going to have we don't know who it's going to apply to we've put knowing that it's really difficult to commentate and what an impact this is is it going to be something we want to use for our clients if it is how many clients are going to use that and what impact is that going to have on services we don't know at this point in time because there's no meat in the bones in terms of thank you Kevin Stewart that you was coming on this and I'll bring in what to phrase on the next one. Thank you convener and you know I know that sometimes when folks see this kind of bill they want all of the meat there and then but actually this session this inquiry and the scrutiny of all of this gives us the opportunity to go into more depth to make sure that the bill actually is the right one and is helping folk. Joe was talking about rambling on and I don't think you have today and I think what the evidence that you have given today has been extremely useful and you know I think this is the first time and I stand to be corrected but I think this is the first time during the course of the oral evidence that we've actually heard folk talk about the mental health form to any huge degree and I think for many folk who will have watched this and who won't have looked at all of the background that will be a new thing for them so I think you know what you've done today is actually showing some more light in all of this. I want to come back to what I think is one of the most important points in all of this which may not necessarily require a huge change in terms of legislation or regulation because you have talked today about the training that you have undertaken, that your frontline staff have undertaken around about a system. I'm sure that many of your folk, if not all of them, have done trauma-informed practice training and various other things. What we're not sure about in terms of the evidence that we've had is what training is being done on the other side with mental health professionals, social workers and others around about their knowledge, around about the advice that they can pass on to their clients. In some areas, other areas of business, Government and local authorities have come together and put in place toolkits so that everybody knows what is required in terms of doing the best for the person. I wonder from your general knowledge whether you've done anything locally around about toolkits for social workers, for mental health professionals and others that you are dealing with on behalf of clients. If anything like that has been done previously in order that we get the smoothest possible journey for folks at sometimes the most traumatic times, if I could ask Joe first, that would be useful. Thanks, convener. Yeah, in the park, well, not in recent times because of Covid and of course 11 cases, I don't know what that is, but we haven't done it as often as possible. It's in itself, that's the council of the Havelin online, which is sort of an internet, it's an internal council sort of training as well. We've also done webinars, which basically I've done them in the past, one of my colleagues, David Hartness, he's a wealth rights officer, a guru for a self-launched council and he does webinars and to that is invited for the social work staff, for the staff to attend a bit to information sessions. We also, and this is probably something that probably we need to do more, to be perfectly honest, is doing more of the face-to-face meetings. We use teams, we use teams for, as obviously came out with Covid, but I sometimes find the face-to-face training events tend to be sort of more informative because you can look around the room and you can see who's taken on board and it's easy for people to ask questions, but certainly we've done it in the past, we continue to still offer it, but what needs to be, it probably is, if we're looking at this kind of a new mode of time, then yes, there should be more, you know, probably more information, more kind of a, you know, and I say, but typically in social work there's been, I don't know what's like the other councils, but I know there's a kind of a, there's a turnover in staff, it was soft and you get the new social workers and training, so obviously part of the part of the remit for their training is obviously to understand what's an offer from like money matters advice service, we will for ice, for debt advice and also from other departments. So obviously your own local authority seems to be or have been on the ball, obviously there have been blips over the past week well in terms of some of this, but nationally we don't have a set toolkit in terms of advice and help for everyone involved in this, do you think that that would be beneficial? Definitely, because it would be, because then it sets a national standard, we have national standards for information and advice, you know, which has been set down and that's for, you know, where it's money advice, housing advice and so I think that having a national toolkit would be good because then we know that everybody and it's healthy as well in respect of, if it's stipulated nationally then the fact is then it's not a case that you can go from one area, it's a post-codal authority, that it's going to be different types of level information advice, plus obviously there's going to be kind of a standard addition, so if you're dealing with creditors or whatever, then they exactly know what's involved. Grant, thank you Joe. Natalia, do you have any other comments on that? I'm thinking about it now. So while you're thinking, I'll tell you what my thinking is here because we have in place a toolkit which came into play around a bit homelessness so that, you know, folk are following or should be following the same kind of things and that toolkit can be added to, you know, with a wealth of knowledge that comes in from various professionals who are dealing with homelessness. So do you think something like that, with a flexibility around about it so it can change so that we keep the knowledge up to date, would be useful? I think yes to a degree with the flexibility added. I think that there is already, like mentioned, we have national standards for that advice and we have a financial statement, I know that there's conversation around whether it is going to exist in its current form or should be changed. So there is a element of standardisation in this and I think we have to recognise that as well. Service is slightly different coming from the council or housing association and from the independent advice agencies. I'm lucky to come from the agency that has support of the wide network. There are small agencies that don't have that and they are maybe a ruler up north in Scotland. They might find it more difficult to take some things off their boxes or utilise the toolkit fully. So I think we have to recognise that agencies will maybe depend and take different things from it. I think definitely there is a requirement for a standard of that advice that has to be provided, certain things that has to be done even by the advisor, even from the point of the view of the creditor so they know what to expect from the point of view of the debtor. They know what to expect, how they can be helped and if that can be done as some sort of a recommendation, then that's fantastic. You're looking at this and I understand why, from the debt advice side. Is it possible to make some progress while a bit pressed for tonight? Yeah, well I just, very briefly. You're looking at it from the debt advice side and I understand that because that's who you folks are. Do you think that it would be helpful, a toolkit like that, for the likes of GPs, the link workers that Joe spoke about, to follow the same lines in terms of getting the right advice for clients as well? So not just the toolkit for debt advice but for all who are involved in this process and help and folk. Thank you very much, thank you convener. Thank you, thank you convener, good morning to the panel. I wonder if I can broaden the discussion to a different topic. We've heard quite a lot of evidence as a committee from those we've spoken to about the minimal asset process bankruptcy and some witnesses have said that they would like to see the current restriction on applying for that, which is 10 years, reduced to five years and it's fair to say that we've heard arguments for that and arguments against that. I'm interested to get any perspective you might have on what impact that change might have on your clients and what difference would it make if they had to apply for full administration bankruptcy instead of the minimal asset process? Yeah, if I can come in, I mean, I could maybe give the panel a very short brief history about why we ended up with a minimum asset bankruptcy. Scotland actually was the first to introduce what we, I suppose, now call bankruptcy lite, which was actually a low income asset bankruptcy in 2007 or 2008, and that was even before England introduced the debt relief orders. We used to charge people £100 per application. I think in 2012-13 that went up to £200 because we've fallen a full-cost recovery process. The number of low income bankruptcies dropped off because of that. In 2013, we brought through a new version called the minimum asset bankruptcy, which had limits on the amount of debt you could include and also it only lasted for six months rather than 12 months. That was where the purpose was to reduce the cost to the public post of administering the minimum asset bankruptcies so that we could bring the price of the cost to it, applying for it to £90 rather than £200 so that we could increase in take-up. The reason why we said that you could only do it every 10 years, I never really understood that, but I think it was just that thing that happened when you're cautious for any thing and you don't want people to just keep doing it. The reality is, if somebody qualifies for a minimum asset bankruptcy, whether they've done it, even if they've done it five years ago, it's somebody who has no assets, who has no heritage property, and they're only going to be able to pay anything. Who does us benefit from stopping them doing it again after another five years? If they can do a full administration bankruptcy, what's the benefit of not preventing them from making them have to do it wait 10 years before they can do it again? Because if they do do the full administration bankruptcy, it does take 12 months, it does cost more to administer, so it has an impact on the public post. It means that the client basically remains bankrupt for 12 months rather than six months, which really doesn't have any benefit for the creditors, because if you qualify for a minimum asset bankruptcy, you never make a contribution. My point is that I think we've got caught up in this whole moral issue about whether they should be able to do it twice in 10 years, and why not, because they can definitely do administration bankruptcy. The purpose of the minimum asset bankruptcy, the light version of the bankruptcy, was that it's actually cheaper to administer for the public post. It doesn't actually make any kind of difference to the creditors, because if I get a dividend payment anyway to the person, it doesn't have any money, and it's about getting the poor, sort of financially excluded person and the system, almost giving them a quick wash, but they're doing America, their money's last about four months, and getting them, hopefully, because a lot of people might put off getting a job again or, you know, while they're banking up, they'll say, I'll wait until I'm done with my bankruptcy, so it has any benefit. So if you can actually get somebody and get it dealt with, there's no assets, no money, they've kind of paid anyway, get them out, base, then it's beneficial for them, because maybe hopefully then they'll go on, maybe become economically active again. It's cheaper for the public post, so I don't see any budget at all for that point of view. Great. Natalia Odo, do you agree with that? Yeah, I concur, yeah, because obviously the full administration bankruptcy requires six-monthly reviews over four years, so whether it's the Kingdom Banknot, say, acting as a trustee, or someone in Somerset Partition, if there's a contribution, the fact is that they're having to take that time and effort to do the six-monthly reviews, so I mean to say. So it's basically, you know, it's from good money after bad, and it makes it a bit seamless, so I think that's great. All right, thank you. Thank you, Colin Beattie. Thank you, convener. Just a couple of quick questions here. You've already touched on the role of the money advisers in connection with the mental health moratorium, but it's recommended that money advisers should actually have the role of applying for a mental health moratorium on behalf of the person concerned. Do you have any views on that and how it might work and how complicated it might be? Well, I can be quite equipped on this, because I know the times present. There is an issue. If the person has got a capacity issue, then we can't act on the behalf unless somebody else can act on the behalf, so we need somebody with a private attorney or a guardianship order. Do you know what I mean? Because ultimately, if you lack mental capacity to instruct us, then obviously we need somebody who does have it, so that's the first issue. Now, obviously people who are having mental health crises, they may still have capacity, and that may be a doctor's decision whether somebody has a capacity, but there is an issue as well about how much can they assist us, because if we go down and go back to the point that Maggie made about interests and charges, if we have to notify people, we need that person to be able to give us information about their debts, what debts have got, what the account numbers are. If they have a diminished capacity, they may have still capacity to instructors, but if their capacity is diminished, then it can still be operational and really quite difficult, because we still need to get a lot of information off of them to basically do that if we are going to have to do a notification to credit us. I think, yes, there is an issue of capacity sometimes, but we have this issue even now with some of the clients where I have been uneasy to sign off sequestration or advise them that that's the route to go for without having it confirmed that they are fully aware of what they are doing, so I think that's the beauty of our job. I think that's where mental health professional involvement in this process is important. I think this is where this form as well, that mental health evidence form can help, because that would explain the extent of clients' capacity issues. In terms of process, I think it would need to be something that is fairly straightforward, almost similar to what we do now with statutory moratoriums, so it's an easy form. You can submit it and do it via A, B. There is an issue of contacting the creditors. We tend to rely on the credit reports because many clients simply don't know what they owe and to whom, so that makes it more straightforward. It does have some delay for people who are digitally excluded because most of those reports require an active email address and many of the clients don't have it or can't operate it for whatever reason, so then we have to apply on paper and it takes time, but that ultimately can be done after the moratorium is submitted, I would imagine. I think it's doable, but definitely we have to think about that capacity thing and in which moment the mental health professional would have to have a say where would be the criteria where we have to seek further advice. As far as my view is well, it would be the fact is that the medical health professional is making that referral to the money advisor and the fact is that they are saying, obviously if we expand the criteria, the fact is that they can confirm that the person has his capacity. Yes, they do have mental health issue, but they do have a capacity to make decisions. The fact is that, as I said earlier on at the working group, we were talking about the county banknot, so we are able to do a portal, like we do this now, with the statutory moratorium. I mean to say, if we have that meeting with the client and then we have that medical evidence, that the fact is that they do need this protection, that they have capacity, then it's quite a simple thing just to upload, just to put that on to the system. It's obviously a case load after that. Obviously we're dealing with a case, obviously we're contacting creditors and whatever and acting on behalf of the client for as long as they require our service. So, for purely just getting that referral from the medical professional to upload on a portal, you know, the moratorium, then that shouldn't be too time consuming. It's obviously when you start expanding the case and you're actually working on the case, that's where work comes, but for just putting the moratorium on, that's not what I call excessive time consuming. Okay, thank you. I'm going to move quickly on. Something totally different. How effective is the debt advice and information package as a way of communicating the key information to people who are facing enforcement action? Are there any improvements that could be made? We have heard evidence before of some issues with that. Maybe Alan? Probably not very much, to be honest. Technically they get a wee book on it, it does tell them they can contact money by Scotland, so it's by Scotland's tech change and stuff, but I don't think it's actually probably a major source of referrals, but I suppose it's the fact that they get one and they know who to contact, but I probably say it probably hasn't been that effective. Would you say that it's simple and easy to... Yeah, I think that's a problem, isn't it, because you know, you don't want to give somebody, there is the accounting bank and obviously the other booklets, you know, and there are more comprehensive booklets as well, which you can send out, but, you know, should it just be, I mean, should it be an A4 piece of, you know, a sort of A5 sheet or something rather than a booklet? I don't know. I mean, I think there's, yeah, it's always been a difficult issue, you know, how do you communicate things to people effectively, you know, how do you tell them to get advice, but I think, I suppose you could slam it down to an A5, you know, I mean, but at the same time, you know, to through all your role I want to get, some days if you need to help, then you come to these A4 numbers you can form. I mean, that's effective for the core message you're wanting to get to people, but would that make it more readable, and people would read it more? I don't know. Thank you. I'm going to stop there because I'm conscious of the thing. Thank you. In terms of diligence, so the bill does make some limited fairly technical changes to diligence, but we have heard calls for increasing the reforming, the earnings part of diligence. There's been a suggestion that the amount protected should go up to £1,000, there should be a system of deductions which takes account of family size, that reflects on the local government committees, that wasn't the local government committee, sorry, but the Parliament today inquired Rob and Peter to pay Paul, I think made that as a recommendation, and also introduced some flexibility into the system for creditors so they could reduce the amount if it was relevant to helping the debtor to support their liabilities. I know, Alan, that you've done some work on that. Do you want to talk to the committee about it? Yeah, I mean, if I can. Obviously, this is a difficult one because obviously the origins of the start back in 1987, even further back in 1985, when the Scottish Law Commission did the report on diligence and debt of protection, and they brought forward a modern earnings assessment. The amount that was protected started out as £152 per month, and that was in 1987. Obviously, up until 2009, it went up with a median amount by average weekly earnings. In 2009, I think it switched to the CPI, whatever the consumer price index was, and then in 2023, I think it's new, it went back to the median earnings. I don't know how to do it exactly, but I've looked through handsome stuff like that and I've tried to figure out how did they ever come with a figure of 152 in the first place. At the time, as you look at the Scottish Law Commission's report on it, they looked at a number of different options. They looked at, for example, some countries set the protected minimum amount against minimum wage. Obviously, in 1987 or 1985, the UK didn't have a minimum wage. Some countries set it against the personal loans for tax. If I can give you examples very quickly, in 1987, the protected minimum amount represented 70 per cent of our personal loans for tax purposes. It's now 62 per cent. At some points, it's been down to 50 per cent. The idea that the minimum protected amount has held up against compared with the personal loans for tax purposes is not significantly dropped. In 1985, it was as high as it was because it was actually 125 per cent of the personal loans, but now it's down to 62 per cent. Last year, it was down to 5 per cent. We don't have a minimum wage in 1987, but we obviously got one in 1999. The protected minimum amount, based on some of the work that's offered at seven hours a week, was 47 per cent of the minimum wage. It's now down to 39 per cent. It's significantly dropped. If you were to increase it to £1,000, which is what I've suggested, that would bring the protected minimum amount up to 59-60 per cent of the minimum wage in this country. In terms of the personal loans, the amount that we don't think that people should have to pay tax, if you were to increase it to £1,000, it would probably work out roughly 95 per cent of the personal loans. These were things that the Law Commission considered at the time. I think it's something that we should be considering now because if you go bankrupt in this country, you're allowed to have £1,000 in your bank account. If you get your wages arrested, obviously you know I was involved in campaigning for that, but if you get your sort of your bank account arrested obviously since last November, you're allowed to have £1,000. Why should somebody know how to have £1,000 in their wages at the end of the day? I mean, we're talking about 60 per cent of the national minimum wage. That's all we're talking about, given some basic protection to people. So, yeah, that's basically, and obviously I've done a survey of Logan because I know it's the past pressure thing, but my experience, and I don't know if my colleagues are the same, it causes a lot of hardship. It's not based on whether you've got children or not got children or two people in your house or three people in your house. Again, this is something that the Law Commission looked at in 1985. The four of us are really complex at how you would do that because obviously the Britain is a responsible one employer to try and establish whether somebody's got to depend on the children or not, so they didn't think that would be a good idea. But one example that I would, of all that I've had to add for is if you look at the welfare reform act, UK piece of legislation, the DWP and local authorities as well can do a direct illness attachment, which is a UK illness arrangement. And one of the things that they can do under the welfare reform act is they're allowed to change them out. So, if somebody contacts the DWP or a local authority when they're doing it for overpaid benefits and says to them, I'm really struggling, I really can't afford this illness arrangement, I can't pay my current council tax, et cetera, because I've got two children or whatever, they're allowed the DWP and local authorities for overpaid benefits, they're allowed to revere the amount of the way that you're risked and they can say, well, we'll reduce it. You can't do that with a Scottish illness arrangement. And I think if we were to give local authorities, and I see South Lanarkshire Councils obviously supported us as well, but if we were to give local authorities that flexibility to say, when somebody contacts us and says they're having trouble with their illness arrangement, they can't afford it and we accept that. Maybe they go to the Money Advice Service and the Money Advice Service does a financial statement and gives it the council tax department. Why would we do no give councils the power to at least reduce the amount, though, to vary it? It's something that the DWP have, it's something council has already had when they're risked, resting wages for overpaid benefits, but they don't have it for council tax. I would encourage it to come up and I'm happy to share those tables in relation to the minimum wage, in relation to the personal allowance where I can email them to the clerk so you can look at them. So I think the point is it's never really held its value and I think we need to look at it and maybe anyway, I would argue a £1,000 amount and we need to give councils or creditors, sorry, but obviously 90% of wage arrangements are actually done by councils. For council tax we need to give creditors the power to vary the amount of a wage arrangement. Natalia and Joe, do you have anything to add to that in terms of your clients and the impact of wage arrangements? Yes, you probably read the South Lanarkshire Council submission, though I wasn't directly involved in that because I was on the money advice side but this came from the council as a creditor for the council tax in particular, but the fact is you get something coming in and what happens is someone gets a earnings investment for one year and then that often overlaps into the next year so then they're going to run up council tax years for the subsequent year. I'm not going to say that's going to happen in every case and in some scenarios the earnings investment can then result in the person getting it rent-a-viewers, mortgage-a-viewers and then we're looking at a solution like the like we're looking at DAERS and we're looking at banknotes. The debt arrangement scheme for example, the creditor is only going to get 78 pence in the pound as you stated from the South Lanarkshire Council submission, they would rather amend the investment and get 100% and particularly as we all know now the fact is like local government funding and even funding for the third sector is struggling just now so if you can make sure that the fact is that the councils have the power you know particularly for collection of council tax and even not just the council tax but the other creditors because there's going to be some creditors who are going to be happy getting a regular amount you know each month than getting potentially nothing at all for that person if the individual has to apply for banknotes say it's a fair chance there will be a zero dividend trustees don't get me to talk about trustees but they're not good but if it goes in the debt arrangement scheme then the fact is that 78% of that debt so you know the fact is I think it's having that power to vary the and there's the precedent as Alan said in the data in his attachment that there is something else case at UK level than the fact is I would like to think is a caring country that the fact is that not only caring for the individual but but being astute and even to form a commercial point of say called a council or any creditor from a commercial point of view that's got to be more viable for them and Natalia is there anything you would like to say about in his arrestments or the impact on your client I fully agree the level is not appropriate at the moment it is adding to energy poverty it's adding to child poverty and the the wages when they are arrested at the current level we often have families where families where only one person works so if that amount of money is arrested from their sole income it really leaves families in destitute severe financial hardship and there is just nothing that we can do to try and alleviate it to the level to bring it back to the level where people can cope so yeah one last point in scott's law traditionally there was always a saying it was a judge used to say it and it's the same was that diligence should always was harsh by nature because it's a case of coercive formula legal debt recovery so it's by nature harsh but it should never be on Julie harsh the problem we've got in the moment where there's a risk but it's too often it's new tournament to be on Julie harsh and the legal procedure for challenging that involves going through courts getting a review of the evidence arrestment clients won't do it and there's just no flexibility about it in the system so even when you've got a perfectly reasonable creditor and many councils are perfectly reasonable because they're also helping people with their welfare as as other creditors who are obviously been told by the financial conduct afford it to people reasonable they don't have the power to actually vary it it's just we've got to give them the power to vary it because too many cases what we're here and what that was and that was saying there's too many cases where it's new being on Julie harsh that's no the point and even in the debt of scotland act it says you know if it is on Julie harsh you can ask it to get it recalled but it means come through the court so the law says it shouldn't be on Julie harsh but we are seeing that every day that has new on Julie harsh from too many cases okay thank you to the witnesses for joining us today that is much appreciated we'll now move into private session