 Felly, gyrda'n ei gwaith i'w ddoch chi'n ei fod yn'ijsigod y Felaniddorio Jwc, i'w gëlltwn i'w ddwylau drwy gyffredinol. Mae gyrtaf yn gweld yn gwahodd y naf, ond fel y rai chi'n gweithio arol ymellodau deiligolme i'r mêl метl. Yn ddwi cyfleoedd ar y maes, rydyn ni i wnaeth yr amyloedd y Llywodraeth Ffabiani oedd cynnu ar gyfer hyn a fyddai weithiau. Rhyw gweithio'n pobl, yn gweithio'n gweithio, yn mysg meyddiad, ac mae'n cywraeth o'u mhoryn o'i meddwl am sunger ac yn y peth yw i gwneud i'r Brifenniidd Cynedd. Felly, rwy'n fwyllgor fydd honno i'r bysyn Cynedd. Rwy'n credu i dda i Llyfrgellwyr 1 i ddweud yma y byddau i etmysgwydau i ddiweddur i Llyfrgellwyr 3. Llyfrgellwyr 3 rydyn ni'n gael gyd yn bain o'r fawr sy'n ei walch i Llyfrgellwyr The members agree. OK. That's agreed! That brings us to our second item of business today. It's the final evidence sessions on the welfare fund Scotland bill. This week, we are taking evidence from the Scottish Public Service ombuzzment, the Office of the Social Fund Commissioner in Northern Ireland and the Minister for Housing and Warfare Programs and Markt duties. I welcome a first panel this morning, which consists of... Karen-Jeyred-Sing, who is the social fund commissioner for Northern Ireland. Cameron Martin, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, Nikki McLean, the director of the SPSO and Paul McFadden, head of complaint standards at the SPSO. Welcome to you all. I don't think any of you have indicated you want to make any opening statement, but I'll open up the discussion if you don't mind by going to your paper, Mr Martin. The first paragraph you point out that this bill is proposing to give the SPSO not simply a new area of jurisdiction, ond y newid yn gwneud hyn, rydyn ni'n fiekwm o gydag ein dweud o'r ddyntau? Rydyn ni'n bwysig i chi wneud i fynd o'r gwneud ddyn nhw'n mynd i chi'r prospector? A bod y cwmwyffiaethơ o'r ddim iawn oleadau o'r fund ddoedd, o'r dweud sy'n gw hold o'r ddam teulu ac mae'n gweithio. In this case, we'll be looking at decisions which require a decision to be made, particularly for some vulnerable people. It will require to be made very quickly. The standard work that we do involves bodies under our jurisdiction going through a complaints process, the work coming to us and there being an investigation process thereafter. This will require us to work in a different way. The cases, we'll need to look at whether the local authorities have handled them properly, whether the decision was correct and whether we should put another decision in place and that decision be binding. The kind of skills that should be required by my team will be different, the turnaround times will be different and I think that the relationship with the local authorities and the need to get local authorities to give us information more quickly will be different. One of the issues that we have, as you have seen from the rest of the papers, is that it's difficult to plan for us because we don't have a clear idea of what the numbers coming through will be. That could mean that some of the people that we currently have will have to take on this work, but if the numbers reach the volumes that the Scottish Government think they will, then what we would do within our office would be to create a special unit that would operate separately from the other work of the Ombudsman's office and deal specifically and only with these cases so that we can get a fast turnaround, build up expertise and build up learning. It's a different kind of work that would come. Okay, another issue that you raised and it's something that has come up in the evidence that we've had prior to this morning, is that within the ambit of the bill is the potential for a local authority who, for whatever reason, it may be the cost factors or in order to reduce costs, might outsource the processing of the Scottish Welfare Fund. You've highlighted that this would have implications if you were to take responsibility for appeals. Just how would you manage to do that is quite clear. Everyone understands your role when it comes to adjudicating on decisions made by a local authority, but if the local authority passes the responsibility for that administration to another agency, just how problematic would that be for you to address the role that you're going to be given? We would engage at the point at which a decision has been taken and we would set out clearly the rules by which we would undertake the reviews that we would intend to do. In my view, people should not be disadvantaged in any way by any decision to outsource or not to outsource any function, so we would expect local authorities to ensure that we receive material in the timescales that we would set for them and that the review process would apply as if the decisions were being taken by the local authority. Our aim here would be in the review stage to ensure that the people who require decisions to be taken quickly get that decision taken as quickly as possible. Therefore, we require whoever has been involved in the first stage of decision making to ensure that we have the information that we need as quickly as possible so that we can arrive at that decision regardless of who they are. You currently undertake investigations into decisions made on behalf of a local authority by an agency at the present time. That doesn't create any particular difficulties. We have to be aware, and sometimes I think that the bodies under our jurisdiction—it's not just local authorities who use arms length bodies—have to be aware too that because a function has been outsourced, it doesn't mean that the citizens who use their services should be disadvantaged in any way. Therefore, we would expect bodies under our jurisdiction to ensure that the complaints processes that these organisations use are the same as or better than the ones that the local authorities or other bodies would use themselves. Okay, that seems pretty clear. Again, an area that you've highlighted in your paper, article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Again, rather than me asking a specific question on that, can you explain to us why you've had to include that in the paper, why is that a consideration in respect to this? It's an issue which has been raised around this issue, and we've taken some legal advice on it. The advice that we have is that it is likely that article 6 requirements are covered by the processes and procedures that we currently have in the Ombudsman's office and would be by the processes that we're planning to put in place. One of the provisions within article 6 is a provision that would enable hearings to be held if that were appropriate. What we want to do is to make sure that when we put the processes and procedures in place for the review system that they are article 6 compliant and therefore we don't have to waste time at some point in the future through judicial review or anywhere else of anyone testing whether they are compliant. So we've had discussions with the Government, with the third sector, with lots of lawyers about making sure that whatever review process we put in place would be as far as we could make it article 6 compliant. Okay, I'll put up to the rest of the committee to ask questions. I've got the deputy convener first. Thank you, convener. It's my first question for the social fund commissioner and thank you for your paper and your paper. You say that your independent status is important in giving confidence to customers who have already received two agency decisions on their application that they're dissatisfied with. Obviously, you perceive it to be the case that the people you work with feel that because you're independent of the decision makers, that's important. Can you set out why that's your perspective? Well, that's based on my experience. In 2012, the Westminster Parliament passed the Welfare Reform Act and that, as you know, abolished the social fund across Great Britain and I was up until then for three years. I was the social fund commissioner for both Great Britain and Northern Ireland and certainly my experience during that period and my experience since then as a social fund commissioner for Northern Ireland is that when I engage with community groups, when I engage with representatives of applicants, and also when I look at the survey which we carry out every six months of the people who apply to my office and we ask them what is it about our office and they very often mention words like impartiality and perceived independence. I think at the end of the route of all this is that what is it that we're looking for in any review process? I would suggest that what we're looking for or the citizen is looking for timely decisions, high quality decisions and decisions which promote confidence and I think what's important is that you actually have a process which is seen to be separate. I mean, one of the things I've found interesting looking at this material is that in the last complete year of the Great Britain social fund which was 2011-2012, the financial year, there were 6,258 review cases that came to my office from Scotland in that particular year. The following year we were moving into an abolition situation and I've noted with interest that and also if I were to look at the figures for 2013 and 14 in Northern Ireland my office has received 1,650 cases in approximate terms, you know give or take four or five. So when I look at that and I compared the number of cases that I and I accept that you've got a different interim welfare fund here which is not covering loans and we had loans in the social fund, nevertheless you've got quite a significant difference in terms of numbers and I appreciate you've clearly got some challenges as the Ombudsman said in terms of reviewing, thinking about the number of cases you're likely to get in any process. So sorry, a long-winded answer but... No, not at all, I appreciate it so I've got two for a lot of questions. The first is clearly for this Parliament to legislate for how these matters affect Scotland but would your recommendation be that in any secondary review process it should be an independent organisation? Well I have to declare an interest, I'm also a part-time Ombudsman and so I ought to sort of tell you that in Northern Ireland as well as a social fund commissioner but my view is that any review process should be user-focused and I think certainly all the surveys and if you actually ask service users what they want they obviously want to use a review process because they're dissatisfied with the initial decision so the question from that is really what is going to give them the most confidence and I would suggest to you that it's likely that an independent process is more likely to give them confidence than one that necessarily rests within the same organisation. It may be a different part of it, I think a large part of this is about perceptions. And you talked there about the number of complaints you receive in your current capacity and complaints you received in your formal capacity with the role for Great Britain as well but you did make the point there's a bit of a difference there because loans are involved, how many of the complaints pertain to a request for a loan if you've got that information? Oh in terms of the Scottish cases and indeed in terms of the Northern Ireland case? Well I don't have those figures broken down in terms of loans and grants but if I can quote from my Northern Ireland experience in the last year in the Northern Ireland experience I mean just to give you sort of some blanket figures we had just under 350,000 applications that were made for grants and loans to the Social Security Agency this was first first first line we then had just under 79,000 that went for internal review and we then had of those we had I sorry there were 78,000 that were refused and we then had 16,000 actually that went for internal review and then we had 1650 that came to my office now the breakdown there was that 1406 of those were for community care grants so only the remaining 220 or so were for loans so it was skewed very much towards towards grants and I'm very much aware that obviously both your interim welfare fund and indeed your proposed process is clearly going to be focusing on grants rather than loans the ombudsman convener and your paper Ms Martin you say that your experience of the system where council processes have multiple complaint stages is that this doesn't improve outcomes for the people going through that process can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yes we were asked by the Parliament to set up a simple and standardised complaints process for local authorities and all other public service bodies in Scotland which Paul McFadden has led and the what we found was that in some local authority areas you could have four or five or even six in some cases levels of appeal against decisions on initial complaints and what we were finding in the old system was that a lot of people were dropping out a lot of people couldn't find their way through the system there was very little change happening in the complaint system so we've introduced a new two-stage system into local authorities which simplifies it makes it standardised and applies to all 32 local authorities in the same way what we're finding here is that more people are prepared to see their complaints through that process the feedback we have from local authorities is that it is improving their contact with their customer base with the people who are paying their council tax with the people who are providing services to so all around appears to be improving that kind of service so taking as many layers out as we possibly can and deburocatising these systems seems to enable people to get through the system quicker and also to improve the relationship between the body and the citizen speak of the necessity for an independent arbiter should that become necessary i think the once you have the two-stage system people can come to us and we are independent of local authorities and health boards and others and i think that the fact that the numbers coming to us are increasing year on year i mean i think this year we're looking at maybe 14% increase or even on last year which was up in the year before and stuff like that i think people are increasingly aware of and making use of that independent route i think carams it's correct and the people who come to us tend to say that they are looking for that impartiality i mean pomech Fadden and i were involved in creating the police complaints commission in scotland and the first period of that body the most consistent question most consistently asked by people coming to us where was are you or have you ever been a police officer so it was a people were really looking for independence there in the decision making one last question convener in your paper ms martin you also say that under the legislation we're currently assessing that for the ombuds municipal the first time you've been able to specifically review a decision and make a direct binding change to that decision and whilst that's unusual for you the ombudsman rules prove the very flex one and powers are very around the world such powers do exist elsewhere can you tell us a lot about the international comparison the standards for ombudsmen generally across the world is is that people make recommendations in some areas in some countries within jurisdictions the ombudsman will take on simply say a local government complaint or a health complaint which is about administration but won't take on a health complaint which is about clinical judgment and in some cases the powers differ but also the impact of the powers differ so that some of my international colleagues when they make a decision that tends to be tends to be a recommendation but in some cases and i'm thinking of people in Australia in particular they can in certain circumstances make binding decisions now in the other side of the work that we do i've always shied away from making binding decisions because i do believe that the recommendation process that we have there is working this is a quite different kind of case that would be coming to us it's about specific requests for specific sums under specific legislation and i think at that point it is important the decision that's made is final and binding on that one so it'd be fair to say what has been proposed here isn't without precedent and is manageable it is it is certainly manageable it is something which i would not want to be read across to the rest of our work because i think we've been quite clear to say that this is a separate area that we've been asked to to look at and take on and in this particular instance i think that binding powers are appropriate thank you okay ken mackintosh we follow by kevin thanks to our screen and almost to start with yourself just this the issue about hearings and whether they're required to make the new service article 6 compliant can you just expand on that because what you're suggesting is that you have provided the availability for complainants to have a hearing but you don't expect them to be many who will make the decision do they have a right to a hearing or is it your decision to grant them a hearing and how would that compare to other similar systems what we if the parliament suggests decides that this comes to the ombudsman and what we would advocate we do at that point is publish after consultation rules and within these rules we'd set out the obligations that we would have the timescales we would have the process that we would use and within those there would be an element which would allow people to request a hearing the decision as to whether or not a hearing would would take place would be one for me at that point and i can foresee circumstances where it might be appropriate in order to do that in order to test evidence but my understanding of the experience of the irs and the way that things are operating currently in Belfast that hearings are few and far between when they're had so what we're trying to do in this is to make provision to enable us to have the the powers to investigate as appropriate when things come through because we're putting a new system in place so we need to make sure that we allow for all eventualities can i just check with Mr Singh that the is a hearing a right under the system currently as practice in Northern Ireland no it isn't it we've worked we've worked on the basis in an ideal situation you might want to see face-to-face contact between the applicant on every occasion and a member of staff that isn't obviously that's not practical in terms of one's got to think of value for money as opposed to actually so the question for us is how do we ensure we have a high quality process in terms of getting the right information and taking the right decision the way we tend to do that is by making sure we get the file from the agency so we see everything that's gone before and we also then get one case worker who deals with the entire case who will pick the telephone up and will actually have a telephone interview with the individual and we send a record of that telephone interview out to the individual now our we have a 12 day working working 12 working days figure for completing our cases in 2013-14 we had an average of 6.7 days so we've clearly managed to reduce that quite a lot I think what's important here is if you want to give confidence to people who are applying certain to the social fund and I suggest your welfare fund I think you've got to think about the background characteristics of the people who apply many of them have multiple disadvantages poverty is certainly a key issue here as well as clearly vulnerability and therefore you've got to think about having a system which is user focused and it seems to me that certainly what people want is a quick decision and I think what's interesting for us is that when you compare the fact that we've had just over 1650 cases in those 12 months where people have sought a review in other words they've asked us to look at decision again that compares with the fact that we only received five complaints about our service during the same year and we received 81 other requests where people asked us to look at the case again so just to put that in context so again the thing I would stress is that we haven't found the lack of hearings to be a problem there is in theory in theory the possibility of going to a judicial review after our stage roughly how many hearings per you've got 1600 complaints in a year how many hearings no we've had no hearings so hearings at all no no no we've we've used the telephone that's the point I'm making we've not used hearings but did you have the you had the ability to go to hearing if you wanted to no no no we well we haven't anything in statute but in theory yes we could we could arrange to go and see the individual applicant and the provision we do have interestingly is that we could make home visits if we felt that was appropriate but we would only do that if we felt there were some serious inaccuracies in what was being said and we needed to we need to make that visit that tends not to be the way we we undertake what we do but we do think very seriously about how we can promote confidence on the part of the people who are applying and their representatives so just mr marg just to clarify then is your understanding that that accessibility to a hearing access to a hearing has to be written into the legislation to make it compliant and how does how do you think it's going to work are you going to have these telephone interviews is that how you intend to we intend to follow a lot of what what's been happening in Belfast and we've been to see what they do in Belfast in Birmingham on the article 6 thing the issue has been raised with us and what we want to try and do is to future proof the processes that we put in so putting enabling powers in there to have a hearing would certainly future proof it but I can also see circumstances but it might actually be useful to have two people in the room we've got two different versions of what happened and to test that out between them you just a quick point you said in one of your briefings that you want you want the legislation you want the ability to make rules in legislation not just you know you can drop rules anyway you actually want it in the ad why why does that have to be in the ad I think the third sector bodies are very strong that this should be a part of the act should be something that's a duty on me to do I think I think that's going to help build confidence in the system that that's there I think it should it should not simply just be for me to determine whether or not there are rules and whether or not the rules are published and not have you I think it's very important that it's very transparent it's very open that everybody sees what the rules are and that whoever comes after me has to be as committed to that as I am convener i had a couple of other questions it's on different issues about complaints and appeals and some timelines but maybe other well what other members can in case they want to ask the questions or maybe save us having to come back to you but I'll go to Kevin Annabelle Thank you convener my question first of all is for for Mr Martin Mr Martin and I have come across one another in a number of occasions because he appears in front of the local government committee at least on an annual basis I think it would be fair to say Mr Martin that there are a number of critics of the ombudsman service out there and I can imagine that some of them will be wondering why it is that you feel that your service can take on additional workload could you give us an idea of how you foresee the service handling this additional workload you did talk some numbers earlier on and you talked about flexibility of maybe setting up a stand-alone team could you maybe give us an idea of how you foresee that happening OK convener we can either have our annual spat now or we can have our annual spat in front of your committee in January I was going to suggest that we do that just like any other public body we have our critics I'm sure this committee will have its critics once it comes to a decision on this because looking at the evidence you've had so far it's quite polarised and the ombudsman tends to deal with cases which are purely polarised therefore there are critics on either side but we can deal with that in January and I look forward to that the additional workload I think what we've set out here and it should be clear this is not a case of the ombudsman office going looking for something this is something that was brought to us and we were asked if we would set out if it were to come to us how we would do it it is different work from what we do it is additional it will require some resourcing my worry in this and I agree very much with the the view of the finance committee in this is that until we actually see the numbers which are coming through it is going to be very very difficult indeed to plan for what the resource base to handle this should be so if for example the number of reviews requested falls below this 400 figure which you know is a reasonable low benchmark figure if it falls below that then setting up a separate unit within my office is not viable it is not a good use of public money there's not something that we would do what we would do is we would try to look at using some of the resource we had retraining people getting people aligned with that we will need some funding and some support to do that but how much that would be we would have to wait and see if we have something which is at the top end and the 2000 number has been has been used and given the number which caramge has mentioned for Northern Ireland being about 1650 it's not that wilder an estimate perhaps then at that end we would look at what do we need as a fixed cost on that and Nikki McLean can answer any questions you've got on that how we arrive at that and then what do we need in terms of people in order to deal with that what I would hope that this committee would do would be to support finance committee position that this this issue should be reviewed six months into it might be too soon certainly a year into it I think we should have a review as to whether the funding that we have is adequate too much too little and I agree with the finance committee recommendation that in our 2016-17 submission to the corporate body we should not only show how many cases we've actually dealt with but project forward what we are likely to deal with over the period so that we can work that out it is something where I think we're just going to have to start it to find out what the actual impact is going to be we can talk forever about what might happen but once we see what actually happens in the ground then I think we can we can go ahead but I can give the committee assurance that it is not my intention to put in place anything that cannot be collapsible should the numbers not come and that if I find I've got insufficient resource then I will be talking to the corporate body and asking them to raise that with the Government community I think that is extremely useful indeed the finance committee paper which I think is extremely useful in evidence that they have taken it seems that according to our Gail and Bute Council evidence that they gave in evidence that there came from civil servants there were only 144 second tier reviews in that first year we all know that these things can change can I ask in terms of those those second tier reviews are you privy to any information there Mr Martin and and how long those processes took and and the costs of those reviews that were borne by local authorities at that time I think that you've seen from the evidence you've got from local authorities that we have 32 councils each of which are operating by and large in in different ways to suit their own circumstances you have the minister next I know that and the minister will undoubtedly have better information than I have the the information that I have heard is that in the first quarter in Scotland this year was probably around 75 second tier reviews which are if that is correct would take you to 300 400 probably in the cost of the year so it looks at the bottom end the costing element of that I think that's a matter you have to ask the local authorities rather than me I see in some of the evidence you've had that some councils are are quite clear about how much it's costing and others I don't see any numbers there so you're probably in a far better position to get that number from local authorities than I am okay thank you thank you convener Anna Bell followed by Kenneth thank you convener good morning gentlemen just a few questions picking up on on what's gone before so to to mr martin I just wanted to ask what do you anticipate as being the grounds for the second tier review at this stage in terms of discussions that have taken place thus far Paul McFadden's been working this year I think Jim outlined earlier the existing role we have in relation to complaints which actually covers the social Scottish welfare fund complaints at the moment so our current role would look at things around the mal administration of that so for example whether Scottish government guidance policy had been applied correctly whether criteria had been applied in the way that the government had set out and we can't know whether factual areas have been made where decisions were made clearly this neuro gives us essentially the key differences that we have a legal power to remake the decision about what to award based on the merits of that decision that guidance so again all of the things that we would look at at the moment in a way to complain so was the guidance applied correctly whether criteria applied correctly was the decision explained clearly these would all be still applied in addition to us looking at to the discretionary decision that the local authority is making and looking at where that decision was correct I mean I'm just thinking particularly taking into account the discretionary nature of the fund it therefore begs the question how you could look at an appeal without you know taking into consideration a key issue which would be could any reasonable council have reached that decision or not reached that decision and that tends to be a test that's used quite often in areas of discretion in administration in public life and I'm just kind of trying to get up where the hearing need comes in because if you're looking at whether discretion has been properly exercised you know the in page four of your submission you the from the ombudsman's office talk about hearings for example would be necessary in circumstances where critical facts are in dispute but I'm seeing further down the line taking into account in particular that there has been a first year review within the council I would doubt to what extent at that secondary level critical facts would still be in dispute and therefore begging the question why why hearing but perhaps there's if I mean if we take a practical example of where discretion may be used so that each local authority may determine for itself the criteria it applies when looking at a case as to whether it's high medium or low priority and that may vary from from council to council you may also have councils were taking decisions on relatively similar cases but in a different financial position given that in some cases the fund may be exhausted in other cases there may be funds there and so one of the things that we will have to do is to look at not only each of the cases as they arise against the legislation but whether there's discretion for local authorities and others to apply their own judgment as to whether or not that judgment is reasonable and fair and for example if we get to a case where the cases comes where the fund is exhausted then I think the fact that the fund is exhausted the local authority don't have money it's probably more a discussion between local government and government than local government and the ombudsman but one of the issues that might happen in these cases is that a decision is declined in a period when there were funds and that by the time the reviews happened the funds are exhausted and at that point we're going to get into pretty interesting territory but obviously it's difficult at this stage I appreciate that to anticipate all circumstances but I just felt it was important to make the point about discretionary decision making and appeals one of the things that I'm committed to doing is if it is agreed that the SPSO should be the body that deals with this is to engage with both the third sector and with local authorities about the practicalities of how this should be administered and I'm picking up and I will I want to come to Mr Singh in a moment and I know that he's keen to get in but I'm picking up on on some comments that he made just a moment ago where if I understood it correctly there is no formal provision for hearings within the system that he's in charge of in Northern Ireland however that would not preclude telephone conversations home visits etc where necessary I just wonder would that not be a possible approach for for the SPSO yes as appropriate yes so there wouldn't necessarily need to be a procedure about article 6 and formal hearings because it seems that in Northern Ireland they managed quite well without I think I think the article 6 thing is growing to a greater significance that possibly deserves what we're trying to do here is to take as based on the legal advice we have had is to try to put something in which we future proof this process against challenge under article 6 and so making the provision for the hearings in our view would do that although I do think it could be a useful tool to have in our toolkit could I maybe ask mr sing I know that he had indicated he wanted to comment I also have another question after he's really three points if I just take the last one first I think to remember about the social fund legislation that we have in Northern Ireland that's derived from legislation that the Westminster parliament first passed through in 1988 so this was very much before article 6 and issues like that were being thought about the legal advice that I received as a social fund commissioner some years ago was that actually if you looked at our review process and you looked at the fact that in addition to that that if anyone was dissatisfied with the external review process and the work that my office had done that they could actually take take a judicial review application and it was felt that those two issues combined made us article 6 compliant that was the advice we had it was never tested in in court but that was the advice that we had so that was that that issue just coming back to your your other point I think there are two issues here one is that the word discretionary is really really referring to the fact that you've got a finite sum of money and therefore you've got to take decisions looking at the individual circumstances of of each case now the work that my office does and it's quite interesting is that if you looked at the last year 2013-14 25% of the cases that we received in other words when we looked at them from the agency we actually found fault in 25% of the decisions that were taken by the agency because the first thing that my inspectors will do when they receive an application is that they will first ask themselves has the decision making process at the first line and we also have an internal review process within the agency has the law been interpreted correctly has the decision that's been arrived at followed the principles of natural justice so that's the first step in the process the next stage is that if we're satisfied that that isn't the case then we go on to the next stage the next stage is to then look at and review the merits of the case at the beginning so if we think that actually they've complied with the process that actually it meets the guidance then we won't uphold it and and just to say as an aside that in that last year we overturned 36% of the cases that came to us now the second stage when we look at the case is that we look at the merits of the case and the first question we ask ourselves is is there any new evidence are there any is there any change in the circumstances or it may well be that we may come to a view that actually the guidance has been misinterpreted and therefore we actually will take a decision which overturns that and finally in that respect we ensure that our decisions which are communicated are always a maximum of two sides they always have the decision at the top so that so that the actual applicant understands what decisions being made whether it's a positive or a negative one from their point of view but at the bottom of the letter because we send the same letter to the social security agency is that we will also say if we found error with their reasoning whether it's in for example they may not have followed up they may not have asked the right questions so we would say there's an inquisitoral error or we may say it's a qualification error error they may not have actually interpreted the guidance appropriately so those are the things that we do the final thing I think I just wanted to touch on was this question of the budget which Jim Martin just touched on it's interesting if you look at how the DWP which was responsible for social fund across Great Britain from 1988 until 2013 they used to divide up the annual budget for the social fund amongst the 12 different regions in Great Britain and here in Scotland you of course had the offices in Springburn and in Venice so you had two particular budgets here and I recall giving evidence to the Westminster Parliament's Public Accounts Committee in 2011 when they looked at the community care grants and the operation of them and one of the points I made was that actually depending on where you lived in different parts of Great Britain you actually in theory with the same case you could end up with a different resolution and the question that then raised is clearly well is that is that appropriate the second thing that raised is actually you saw different levels of complaints coming from different parts of Great Britain so there are issues about awareness of the review process there are issues about actually how the operation of the first line decision making is is undertaking but the one thing what was really interesting is that what the DWP tried to ensure across the 12 regions was to make sure that each of those regions were aware that their budgets had to carry them through the whole 12 months so there was never any question of the budget running out but what it meant was that priorities you had high medium and low priorities it meant that those priorities would alter during the year and clearly this was something which particularly third sector representatives and applicants found very difficult to understand and appreciate so there are a lot of issues here which I think clearly I only imagine to some extent with your 32 local authorities you may have some similar issues emerging thank you for that background information in terms of the opportunity that there is as far as your processes are concerned assisting for judicial review it's not clear to me it has that what is the instance of judicial review have there been none or you say that it's a rare occurrence but doesn't happen in practice I just wonder has it happened at all or what's the incident incidents of that I think I think the interesting thing is that I mean judicial review is going to be about process it's not going to be about the original it's not going to be about decision that's taken it's about whether the process has been undertaken and the experience of the social fund from 1988 until 2013 was that my office dealt with over 600 thousand cases during that period I'm the fourth social fund commissioner in that period and to put it in context in GB you had something like six million plus applications social fund applications for front line level against that background you had 25 judicial review applications over those 25 years and interestingly interestingly 19 of those were in the first five years and they were essentially what I would call testing the system they were testing for example are the social fund inspectors interpreting the law correctly are the social fund inspectors actually demonstrating their independence appropriately so they were they were actually very much about so they were really ground setting ground setting and and actually what's really interesting is that we then moved to about six judicial reviews over a period of 20 years so I think that you know that may or may not be your experience in the future okay okay thank you mr martin I want to follow in from initially from what Kevin Stewart actually asked you which is he talked about effectively the viability of sbco being able to deal with the second tier reviews and it's mentioned that it was perhaps 75 in the first quarter of this year now in North Ayrshire County on their evidence they said that if it was 400 reviews a year that would not demonstrate value for money when compared to the cost of the service being provided by Scottish councils and but if we go above 400 or whatever the number is I wonder if you can perhaps tell us what that number would be the spso according to the financial memorandum we have to physically expand the restate to accommodate the expected number of staff required to undertake reviews so it seems under 400 there's an issue about that you know the kind of viability of the cost per review but once you go up to a certain level there is almost a diseconomy of scale because you then have to look at perhaps additional premises and resources in terms of staffing etc so where basically does this become a workable prospect and where does it not I'm happy to take that one um I think in terms of the information that was provided um by local authorities um in the original comparison undertaken by the Scottish Government in relation to tribunals local authorities and the spso um that information actually suggests that local government panel would be around I think it was around £520 per case versus tribunals 420 and spso 200 I think that was at the 2000 figure so I think that even at the lower end of the spectrum of 400 cases obviously it's for yourselves to consider that but I think the costs at the lower end would probably be relatively similar to the costs that are being provided by local authorities in terms of where in terms of where spso becomes viable I think that if numbers fell below the 400 level what we would then need to consider is whether or not it was possible to absorb those cases within our current operation in some way so that rather than establishing a separate unit um within the organisation whether we could further absorb that work within the current structures and the current management systems um to try to reduce or keep costs to a minimum um I think it's difficult to say where the where the tipping point would be um but I but I think that you're talking about comparative costs at the moment in any event at the 400 level with the predictions that being made by local authorities and then sorry can I just tell you that the question you asked about accommodation we are not free agents in this we we operate under the direction of the copper body and currently we are leasing out part of our office to the Scottish Human Rights Commission as a part of a shared services initiative to save cash and it's working quite well but the the building has got physical constraints on it now if we were to put another six seven people in there they just wouldn't fit in the building so that then throws up an issue of well what happens here do we take some of our work into to our building and put some of the the current ombudsman what somewhere else do we move to new premises with other people all that kind of stuff these are issues which I think the the corporate body will need to grapple with because I think it's a bit bigger than just simply how could the ombudsman you know find a place for four people I think that there are better ways of doing it smarter ways of doing it in economies of scale to be had in that calculation yeah the other thing that is as well flagging to this committee is that there are other discussions going on with different parts of government about future other future increases to urge jurisdiction as ombudsman coming along probably in roughly the same timescale as this which may bring that to a head even before this issue arises okay and how realistic is the possibility that you might get 2,000 cases when you've talked about 75 already in this quarter I mean that doesn't seem as if there's any likelihood that you know that there's there's going to be this huge upsurge to reach anything like 2,000 cases so where's the analysis that that's a potential figure this is the thing that's been baffling most of us we've been trying to get a head around this for a few months and you've got the minister I know coming next and I'm sure that with all that the back-up the minister has she'll agree a better answer than I do I can what we decided to do when this was first moved to us was to go to Birmingham before Birmingham was was abolished and at that point as as Karamjit Singh has said there were around 6,200 scottish complaints a year so we thought at that stage we're probably looking at around 6,000 cases coming we then went to Belfast and had a look there because it's roughly similar although smaller than us we saw about 1,600 and that kind of makes the figure of 2,000 viable but I think what what we've the mistake that's been made in all of us not mistake that's wrong one of the things that's not been given sufficient weight in all of this has been that the solution which has been brought to the problems that people have under the welfare fund in Scotland have been approached differently by local authorities in Scotland so there has been effective signposting of people there has been pick up by other parts of local authorities and others which have alleviated some of the problems that people have and what we don't know as yet because the scheme is so young we don't know how much of that will actually reduce the number of people who want to go through this process and come to us for review or whether it's just that there's not enough signposting of the processes itself just now and that in time that that number will grow our experience has been when we have taken new areas into jurisdiction that we've seen an almost doubling of cases that come so the best two examples I think are in prisoner complaints where the numbers come to us doubled and I think in water complaints where that is also also the case it was also the case in 2005 when further and higher education was brought into the SPSO but that was before my time so we may be looking at you know a doubling of the numbers we may look at more than that we just don't know it's not an exact science at the space which is why I really really urge the committee to build in as many reviews as possible in the first couple of years to make sure that we don't build a big edifice for insufficient people or that we don't put enough resources on to give people the fast turn around the need. I think that Jim Martin made a really important point that obviously what you've you've clearly got here is in your local authorities is that they may well be signposting people to other activities I mean I think the important thing we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that in terms of any review process particularly an independent review process you not only want to deal with the individual cases for those customers for those applicants as quickly as possible but you also want to evaluate what's going on and learn the lessons and actually in a sense what you want is the organizations who are taking the decisions the first time you want them to get it right first time and actually you want them to learn the lessons from the process it's not about the question at the end of the day of actually how many numbers you get coming through it's actually and that that is relevant of course it's relevant to the viability of any any review process but the ultimate aim has got to be surely what are the lessons you learn from this and how can the service providers the original service providers in this case your local authorities actually learn the lessons from that I mean one of the things I do in my annual report is that with the different offices of the social security agency I actually publish the data in terms of their decisions that we overturn and I actually have meetings with regional directors and we discuss the issues that arise because at the end of the day it's in everyone's interests that they learn the lessons and their decision making actually becomes better Mr Singh you obviously talked about you know appeal going to someone independent of a local authority being more palatable for those who are actually applying I mean does that make you think that there'll be that alone will cause a significant increase the number of people who put their case forward for review and I'm just wondering you talked about if I heard you correctly some 36 percent of cases actually being effectively upheld do you think this will cause a surge in cases and how does that how does that figure relate to what local authorities I mean obviously can't give you exact figures because local authorities are everywhere how does that compare to local authority figures in terms of appeals being well my difficulty is that that I don't know too much about what's happening here in in Scotland or what I can talk to you about is my experience from a great britain perspective and actually you might be interested that from a great britain perspective the figure was 42 percent of cases that my Birmingham office dealt with for the whole of great britain that we actually overturned the decisions in 42 percent so in Belfast which is the office that I still have responsibility for until the social fund is abolished in the welfare reforms in northern Ireland you know we've currently got 36 percent but that 36 percent actually differs in terms of the different offices you know you will in some offices the proportion is lower in other offices the proportion is higher so that raises questions about consistency or lack of it in decision making it must raise questions I think about you know how are people learning the lessons in terms of applying the legislation I think that's also important I think what's also important is that you know I go out and I have discussions with third sector bodies and I talk to them about their experiences because their their representatives will be assisting people making applications and again I think it's in everyone's interest if you get focused applications coming forward. Is this high level of appeals being successful encouraging more people to actually go forward with appeals which might lead to a significant increase over a period of time? Well may I kind of just bring you back to a figure that I quoted at the very beginning that if you looked at northern Ireland 2013-14 we had just under 350,000 applications that went to the social security agency of which 41,000 were community care grants it's in my evidence to you 131,000 were crisis loans and 161,000 were budgeting loans now of those just over 78,000 were refused so the remaining were upheld I think there's a question here that really at the end of the day it hasn't been my experience that people who make these sorts of applications are doing them frivolously now people may have a a they may have an incorrect sense of what they're entitled to in terms of the the directions of whatever but certainly the overwhelming majority of applications are being made because people are in very difficult economic circumstances and people feel that that's that's certainly been my experience and I've I've been social fund commissioner certainly for Great Britain and Northern Ireland from December 2009 so the last you know four plus years five plus years you know I've I've sort of seen five well coming up to five years that's the the picture I have now I think it's always the case it will inevitably the case that in any complaints process or any review process there may well be a number of applications which have have to be turned down because of conflicting evidence but I don't think we should start on on the work from the premise that actually people are simply making these applications because they they are putting it bluntly a trying it on I think most people no I think that more likely to succeed you know you know if the if they know other people who've succeeded not that they're trying it on it's just well I think that oh I see I see I see where you come from well I think that I I think it's it's an interesting question whether the high levels of cases which are which are the decisions whether overturned whether that encourages more people to to come forward I think what what does encourage people I think to make an application on what we get very positive feedback from people is because of the way they they feel they are being treated during the review process I mean what encourages me most is when we turn people down and we say with sorry that you you know the legislation doesn't allow us to to make this grant is where nevertheless people will respond to our surveys and say although I didn't receive a grant I still felt that the way I was treated and the way the fact that you listened to me and I think that's actually important I think the issue I think is not about exceeding to every request I think the issue is really how you deal with the application I think that particularly with the frontline decision makers and I come back to your people in your local authorities I think what's going to be important is that how you actually ensure that they respond positively perhaps signpost it because I think one of the issues here is that is that you know we we all understand this we're all operating in a in a process where public sector finances are under pressure and the issue is actually how do we ensure that we get high quality decisions using financial resources and I think that's what the obviously all of us have to whether you're first line or whether you're an independent review process you have to think about I don't know if that's helpful to you yes thank you ken do you have any questions you indicated you wanted to ask earlier very briefly on timelines to mr martin mr sing has indicated that the deadline they work within i think was 12 days but they've got it down to seven what sort of timescale are you working going to work to and is that something that you will consult on is it something that you set the government to regulate on I think it's something we consult on I think the the great respect to my good friend here the the actual number is calculated once all papers have been received in the case so you have to add another four or five days at the front end of that whereas when we calculate in our current work we calculate from the day that arrives in our office not in the case our aim would be to set targets which were which would take us to at least the best practice that I see in Belfast and hopefully better whether we can achieve that we'll depend on volume we'll depend on resources and all the other things that we've talked about but there will be an initial period where we have to get people up to speed you have to remember that the people who were operating the fund just now been doing it for 25 years tried and tested processes they haven't been dealing with 32 local authorities so in the first period we need to feel our way but we do have a record of setting pretty challenging resources and we would consult not just with local authorities but with the third sector and others as to what these things go should be. Just check on that point very very briefly are you trying to do so timiously because again as Mr Singh said earlier you know speedy decisions ensure effective robust confidence in the in the process or do you want to do so to try to meet the crisis that the applicants are in in the first place? Both of these but the thing that we need to make sure that we get into this is that the quality of decision making is right because it's doing more by that than by the it's not going to be a crisis process. No no we will have a process in place which will be designed to get to the right answer as quickly as we can because we recognise that the people who are bringing these things are people who are in need also it may require local authorities to work slightly differently with us and I would hope to do as much electronically with local authorities as we possibly can to get that four or five days at the front end reduced. You've currently got a process and systems in place to deal with complaints about local authorities handling applications and you're now going to have a new system and as you flag up you're going to have one system for dealing with complaints and another system for dealing with reviews of decisions and with different powers for your staff different powers of dedication. Who decides it strikes me the decision about whether to deal whether to treat an application to the Amazon whether to treat it as a review or as a complaint seems to be entirely yours is that how you understand it? If you set up a separate unit do you understand the separate unit will only deal with reviews or will it deal with reviews and complaints do you basically want to to make sure that every single complaint or review is basically examined for to be to be both as it were treated as both? I know you're against the clock convener so I won't go through our whole process but we do currently have a process in place which enables us to get back to people very very quickly as to whether or not the complaint they've brought to us falls within our jurisdiction is competent for us to look at whether we can achieve the outcome that they want what we would do is at the front end of our organisation we'd have people trained to look at these things to determine immediately something arrives with us as we telephone or on paper whether something should go through the review process or the complaints process or in some circumstances both it's something we do all the times just now so that element of it doesn't give me any you know sleepless nights that's not the bit that makes me worry about it the bit that worries me about it is getting the right amount of resource in order to deliver to ourselves so you haven't got the powers to review decisions at the moment now we've got different jurisdictions coming in so that for example if you write to me today in a social care issue for example you know we would have to look at the social care element the health element and what have you and we train our people to do that so if you say they have a special unit well that special unit deal with complaints and reviews no they'll do the reviews just reviews not the complaints if it's a turned out to be a complaint because a complaint as I understand it has to be if you've got a decision you have to refer to the local authority for their views on that which again add all sorts of time you know someone who's applying to review the decision because they don't they don't agree with it once a quick decision and I want their money a local authority once they're viewing the complaint when they come to us can be two separate things or they could be interrelated section 7 9 10 i think of my my legislation says that someone who brings a complaint to me to be looked at either has to have gone through a complaints process or a review process and we're pretty confident that that enables us to move speed layer on these things see up on an important point that mr mart mentioned even just a moment to go about hoping to work electronically I mean I would hope that it's more than a hope frankly because if it's an appeal of a first tier decision the documents there it should be on email it should be communicated immediately so you don't need four or five days I would respectfully suggest you could impose a deadline of 24 hours subject to exceptional circumstances of computers crashing or whatever because we need to really focus nowadays on speeding things up all these administrative processes with respect take far too long and we if there's a way to speed it up I think we do the public at a service if we don't actively examine how we do that I agree a whole hearted with that and I hope a lot of people read the minutes of this meeting and see that written down yeah I just wanted to take up the point that Jim martin made we had an agreement with the DWP that because we're dealing with paper files largely that we would receive the files within four days our experience was that over 90% of the the files came within those four days if they went beyond 10 days then the practice in my office was to write to the applicant and tell them that the file was still at the DWP and we usually found that that had expedited I just wanted to make a point that mr if I may follow up mrs macintosh show raised I notice you have crisis grants and community care grants and I'm assuming that crisis grants are dealing with the very urgent cases now the for us in the social fund we have crisis loans where people seek expenses for food food and fuel and the targets that we set within our office are 24 hours in those cases and I'm happy to say that in the 177 cases that we had during that year we met all that target with all of them so what we have in my office is a clear receiving process which distinguishes between on the ground of urgency so that we actually prioritise those cases we are up against the clock but I have to ask this question because I'm getting more and more confused by the answers and information I'm getting in relation to the estimations of the numbers involved there's been reference to the numbers that existed at Birmingham under the old system I think 6000 was the figure that was used for the the appeals the figure for northern Ireland that you've given to your documents around 1600 1600 50 something like that the indication we're getting so far from local authorities would indicate something around four to five hundred if we go from one quarter and the figures remain reasonably stable we could be talking about four to five hundred and that you've both said that a figure of 2000 doesn't appear to be you know too far away from the mark but northern Ireland is a population of about a third of scotland's but it's getting 1650 the whole of the uk had 6000 so how do we arrive at a figure where 2000 is a reasonable estimation of the number that we're going to have it's coming after me that be able to explain how we arrived at the actual number but the 6000 figure is the scottish figure that's number of scottish appeals that went within the uk figure right okay so it was 6000 we're now seeing around 400 we know the northern island number is 1650 so for planning purposes we've had to come to numbers to think through well what would the implications be if we got the certain numbers what the actual numbers will turn out to be at the moment i think it's anyone's guess which is why i think i've said three or four times i think building in review of this is going to be very very important yeah just to say that for the last complete year of the Birmingham office which covered all the cases all the all of great britain we had just over 48 000 cases for the whole of great britain of which 6250 were from scotland yeah well that's helpful in clarifying exactly where the 6000 figure comes from but again if it was under the old system around 6000 if it is currently in northern Ireland around about 1600 and northern island is about a third of the population of scotland it's very difficult to see how you can extrapolate that to a figure of 2000 but you have to be careful we don't take apples and pears because the local authority system in scotland may well be directing people to routes that people weren't previously being directed to by the dwp so there might be a better qualitative response happening in scotland which is lowering the numbers coming through i don't know if that is the case i suspect that it is but i don't know what the impact that has on volume and from a manager trying to think this through as nicky will have to do pretty soon it is very very difficult to plan for when we don't actually know what the numbers are going to be yeah that's a helpful answer and add to that you shouldn't forget that this is now the 26th year that the social fund has been in operation in northern island and what you're dealing with here is of course an interim welfare fund that has been in for less than two years as i understand it so it's i think it's a case of making sure we don't compare apples with oranges is this always worth remembering that's a good rule of thumb on that point then can i thank you all very much for your contributions this morning certainly helped clarify a few points but it's also raised some questions that we'll have to pursue elsewhere but thanks very much thank you i'll suspend the meeting for 10 minutes or so to get the change of witnesses and welcome back to our second panel which includes Margaret Burgess, Minister for Housing and Welfare, Stuart Fewister, Scottish Government Legal Director and Callum Webster, the bill team leader. Good morning to you all and thanks very much for coming in front of us. Can i start the ball rolling minister by asking a question in relation to the report of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee? They queried why it has been considered appropriate that section 4-1 is framed as permissive which allows the Scottish Ministers to regulate to require local authority reviews rather than requiring regulation, we shall put the review process in place. So why was that decision made? I think we've had a letter from the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee asking us to respond by the 25th of this month and we are currently preparing a response to them based on that but in terms of the technical issues i'll perhaps ask Stuart to put some of that. As we indicated in the letter that went to the Delegated Powers Committee, there are various ways to draft that produce effectively the same result. The committee has expressed a wish to take a slightly different approach. I don't think that on our preliminary analysis we would see difficulties with that so I suspect we will be coming more into line with what the committee was looking for. Yes, because they said that there's no good reason why there should not be a requirement to provide for the matter set out in sub-paragraphs A and B rather than this being discretionary. So you think that they were on the right track when they raised these kind of issues? In the bill it's basically to say that regulations can create a right of review and can also say that not absolutely every decision is reviewable and that's still the policy but there are different ways of saying that. You can say in the face of the bill there shall be a right to review every decision except such as are stated in regulations which is kind of the direction the committee, the Delegated Powers Committee were pushing us towards. We have been in this sort of territory before when we've looked at other aspects of legislation in relation to the new powers that's been given under the welfare changes but again the Delegated Powers Committee have gone into the same issues that we did and they have said that the regulations should be subject to the affirmative procedure unless there is a good reason why that procedure would not be suitable. Are we going to have any subsequent legislation that is affirmative or can you tell us what the good reasons is why they aren't going to be? As the minister said, we haven't finalised our position to respond to the committee yet but I would be surprised if we see difficulties in moving to affirmative. From the previous evidence that we've taken and again especially in relation to the evidence that we heard this morning minister, there are some questions around the costs of the SPSO becoming the appeal body for the SWF. In their submission, the Scottish Public Sector Ombudsman said that other options were considered in relation to who could carry out those appeals other than the SPSO. Can you tell us what those other options were and why the SPSO was considered to be the most cost effective one? We looked at a number of options, one being a complete new set-up tribunal system set-up, which was extremely costly for the fund. We also looked at whether local authorities should provide the secondary review service and the other option that we looked at was the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. It was very clear, both from the committee early on and from what we had said as a Government, that we would look for an independent review that had to be independent of government. Therefore, there was very little support for local authorities providing that service other than outwith local authorities. That came out to be even more costly than what we looked at in relation to the Ombudsman. The tribunal system was cost prohibitive to set up a full system simply to look at the Scottish welfare fund. Therefore, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, who are used to looking at dealing with local authorities, albeit that they deal with complaints at the moment in discussion with them, said that we felt that they had the skills there as well and that they were willing to take on the training to train their staff to look at reviewing decisions of the Scottish welfare fund. In terms of cost, it was certainly cheaper than the tribunal and, in our view, cheaper and a better option than local authorities, which would not be perceived as being an independent review system, which is something that we said from the outset, and that was the one thing that was lacking from the interim fund, was there was no independent review. Some of the evidence that we have received has indicated that local authorities in particular, but we did hear it from other sources as well, were concerns over the administrative cost of the Scottish welfare fund. Some of those complaints are in opposition to one another, if you like. At the finance committee, when the financial memorandum was being scrutinised, some concerns were raised that £5 million was given as a cost for administering a fund which is £33 million in total, and some people thought that that was disproportionate, but local authorities and others have said that the current cost of administration is insufficient. The local authorities feel as though they have not been provided with adequate resources to administer the fund, which would indicate that they believe that £5 million is too little to administer the £33 million. Do you have a view on either of those positions? At the outset, we were clear that the £5 million was sufficient. That represents around 15 per cent of the total fund, which is more than would normally be in a procurement, in that it is around 10 per cent in the administration costs and less as real complexities. We are aware that COSLA in particular has said that that is insufficient. The 15 per cent is insufficient to administer the fund, and it is conducting a benchmarking exercise. The Deputy First Minister has said that, once the benchmarking is complete and there is compelling evidence that demonstrates that the fund cannot be administered for the costs that we believe it can be, that is something that she would look at again, but not until that evidence is placed in front of us. Those are always discussions that have to take place between local authorities and the Scottish Government to understand that. We do our best to try to get to the bottom of it, but, if there is at least an agreement that the figures are not agreed to, then we have to wait and see how those discussions take place. What came out in the evidence this morning is that some of the additional costs in terms of the new system that is being proposed under this bill is that the Scottish Public Services ombudsman would take on responsibility for an aspect of it. There are some questions about how much that will cost. There are some estimates that are being queried about their accuracy, but ultimately the SPSO is not funded by local authorities, it is funded by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. If there are additional costs to the SPSO, what discussions have taken place between the Scottish Government and the SPCB of the Scottish Parliament about the additional costs? There have been a number of discussions between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body. That is where we base the planning assumptions that we have made and how much we will transfer for administration costs and how much we will be given to the corporate body to allow the SPSO to operate the system. Obviously, there are costs to run the system over and above the number of reviews that will take place, but that discussion has taken place and we have had that discussion with the corporate body. Are the figures that have been discussed and agreed, are they in the public domain? Can the information be made available to the committee to assess that? I am not aware of that if it has gone to the finance committee. The figures that most of them came from discussions with the SPSO in advance of the bill being submitted were in the financial memorandum that came along with the bill, so in as much as they are there, they need to be made public. I know where to look for them, because I sit on the finance committee and there are other members on this table sitting on the finance committee. That issue never came up in the discussions that we have. They have now, so I just want to know where we can look to see where those figures are. I will go to Jamie for questions and then Kevin. Convener, notwithstanding Mr Foo's point that the Scottish Government will look sympathetically at the request from the Rehlocated Powers and Law Reform Committee to use the affirmative rather than negative procedure, I am just wondering how widespread a concern this is, because I am looking at the report of that committee. I do not see them particularly referring to much evidence that they have gathered. I cannot recall any of the witnesses that have come to us suggesting that this is a burning issue. Has this been raised as a burning issue with the Government by anyone other than the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee? No, it has only been raised by them and we have been asked to respond. We gave an initial response and we are going to complete a response as requested by the 25th of this month. We do not see any problems with what they are requesting and how we take it forward. The context is that it is only them who has made the request. It is not this committee that is far to be fair. We have not made a report with no-one else. The convener referred to some members of this committee sitting on the finance committee. I am one of them. I know that Mr Webstone came to give us evidence at the finance committee in terms of the financial memorandum. He was very helpful in pointing out what the specific cost differential between the ombudsman taking on second-tier review, as opposed to the tribunal service or some other body. I just wonder for the record if we could get that set out again, because I know that you have set out there were considerable differences, but if we could quantify them, that might be helpful. Do you want to put it in writing or do you want to go through just what we have in our papers? Certainly, we can send that information to the committee of where we arrived. Certainly, we looked at it in terms of the per case, if we are talking about per case. That was the context in which it was provided to us before. That would be fine from my perspective, if it is per case. The Scottish public services ombudsman services came out about, I think, based on the planning assumption of 2,000 cases. I think that we have to say that, but we had to have a planning assumption to look at how we can take this forward. It was based on 2,000 cases, and the Scottish public services ombudsman was in the £202 mark, whereas the others were, I think, at the tribunal with £413, with much, much higher set-up costs, and also local authorities was up to anything between £420 to £500 per case. In terms of looking at it in that way, it certainly was cheaper with the ombudsman service, but I would like to say to the committee that it is not just the cost that we are looking at, it was about the integrity of the whole scheme to ensure that we had an independent review that the public and the users of the service would have confidence in and also in the third sector, and also local authorities, once that bed is in, would have confidence that we have a truly independent review process. No, I think that that point has been well made. I think that that has been well made by a number of others who have given us evidence, but not with standard. We obviously deal with financial realities, and it does seem pretty clear that there is quite a substantial difference between what has been proposed in the bill and what the alternatives were, so that is helpful as well. One final question, if I may convener. We had some very compelling evidence from some individuals who have gone through the welfare fund process. I think that you could tell them that it is not too patronising. It is young people who came to us, I think, last week. I was very struck by the evidence that they provided. A number of them were in contact with various parts of the local authority that related to them, and there were only two out of the witnesses who provided evidence. There were two local authorities in question, Glasgow and North Lanarkshire. I was very disappointed to hear that, despite having contact with the housing department, despite having contact with social services, they were able to tell us that they never were referred to the Scottish welfare fund or made aware of the Scottish welfare fund internally within the local authority. We were able to explore that with COSLA, because they were in a session after those people. They gave a commitment that this would improve. I am just wondering if the Scottish Government is aware of this as an issue. To be fair, there were only two local authorities in question. Is this an issue and is this something that has been looked at and improved? It has certainly not been an issue that has been raised today. I spent a lot of time during the recess going round the local authorities in speaking to the Scottish welfare fund teams to those in the front line delivering the service, making the decisions. Certainly, one of the things that came out from that was the better relationships that have built up with other departments of the local authority. The point that was made by the young people last week is not something that we would want to ignore. We have to look at that and ensure that it is not just from the Scottish welfare fund to other departments of the council, but we maybe have to look at whether it is working just as well from other housing and other parts of the council back to the Scottish welfare fund, that it is not just one direction. That is something that I would be keen to look at. Like COSLA, we would want to see where it is not happening the way it should, then make sure that it is going to happen. It is certainly something that we will take up in the guidance and in the practitioners group that regularly meets. Scottish Government funds an officer, a Scottish welfare fund officer to co-ordinate between local authorities, and it is certainly something that we could look at. When relationships are getting built up one way, we want to be absolutely sure that they are happening in both directions. Thank you. That is very helpful. The finance committee had evidence saying that there were only 144 second-tier reviews last year. The evidence came from Argyll and Bute Council, and I think from one of your own civil servants minister. We have an assumption that there may be up to 2,000 cases that go to the SPSO. Are those assumptions made around the fact that many folk, once they have gone through first-tier review at a local authority level, with the current system of the second-tier review, are going to local authority? Do you think that those folks who may go to the ombudsman do not currently do it because they have done it through the council? Do you think that they will get any further the second time round? I think that that is perhaps one of the reasons that they feel that they have already asked for a first-tier review through the local authority, and then going back to that same avenue for another review would perhaps not get the result that they are looking for. That may be one of the reasons, but I also think that once we have an independent review service, I would anticipate that we will see more reviews coming forward. We will also see third sector organisations assisting people to take a review forward. That would be useful for the good of the scheme, but we looked at it before. When the system was still under the DWP, the social fund, the number of reviews in Scotland was over 6,000. There is a huge difference between 144 and 6,000—absolutely accept that point—but we had to look at some planning assumption that was reasonable to base the costs on to take it forward. That is why we came to the 2,000 figure, but it was not just plucked out of the air by the Scottish Government. It went through the reference committee, which includes local authorities, COSLA, third sector and stakeholders, and they felt that that was a reasonable assumption to plan on. That is why we have arrived at that figure. We have heard the numbers of 6,258 Scottish cases handled by Birmingham previously, 1652 in Northern Ireland. However, as some of the witnesses said earlier, that can be comparing apples with oranges in the fact that, because the system is administered by local authorities here, there is the ability to signpost people to other services if things are being done right. That assumption has taken into account the different way that we are doing things here currently. Obviously, the review group has taken that into account as well. It is an assumption and that will be reviewed again before the fund goes on to the permanent footing. The SPSO is aware of that. It is not just a tablet stone figure that it is going to be 2,000 if it seems that it is going to be less than that. The figure will be reviewed down the way. The ombudsman talked about a constant review after that has been established. Can I ask if that is in the Government's plans? Beyond that, will you allow flexibility in case those numbers go up or go down? Will there be that constant review? That was the point that I was trying to make a moment ago. It is an assumption that it can go up or down according to what we see happening within the scheme and how the decision making is taking place in the number of people. It is based on the number of people who will be turned down for the scheme. That is where the reviews are going to come from. Yes, that is a figure that will be reviewed and constantly reviewed by the Scottish Government. I turn to the additional evidence that we have received from COSLA. Members have received this morning, which is not particularly helpful. I understand that the minister has caught sight of that. You said earlier that you want to ensure that administration costs are fair and reasonable. Where we have a fund that is established to help those in the greatest need, it would be a great shame to see a large portion of that fund swallowed up by administration costs if that was not necessary. You have said that you think that 15 per cent is a reasonable figure and above what it would be under a normal procurement. We have written a piece of evidence from COSLA saying that, under the old DWP system, the percentage of administration on administration is much, much higher. Would that partly be down to the fact that, under former DWP systems, a number of those things were loans rather than grants, which are often much more costly to the minister? That would be fair to say. I think that that would be part of the system. A central system, as the old DWP system was, and a loan system and collecting the repayments and setting up all that is more costly to the minister. That is very much part of why the DWP system was 20 per cent. We are not comparing like for like here. The Scottish Government topped up by £400,000. What we got from the DWP for local authorities to administer the system, we topped up by £400,000 for the first year, and local authorities made representation that that top-up should continue for the next year, and we listened to what they said. We topped up what we got from the DWP for administration costs to local authorities. We have said clearly that once the benchmarking that they are doing comes in, if it is showing compelling evidence that it costs more to administer the scheme, the Deputy First Minister has said clearly that she will look again, but it is clear that in this year there is no additional funding in this year, and she has made that clear to COSLA. Some of the bits and pieces that are in the COSLA submission, some of the things that they are saying contradicts what we have heard in evidence. Part of the submission says that it is much more costly for them to provide cash payments to customers, and it says that previously the DWP were able to use post office accounts. COSLA seemed to think that that is not possible, and yet at the same time, in evidence last week, we heard from some of our young witnesses then that one of the things that they had difficulty with sometimes was getting to the post office to deal with the check or the voucher that they were getting. In terms of the benchmarking that COSLA are currently undertaking, have you had involvement yourself and input into that, and will you look very carefully at what they are saying, because the experiences of individuals who have come here seem to be different from what COSLA have come up with thus far? We are waiting, and the COSLA has a complete report that they are going to send, I think, in the first instance to the Deputy First Minister, and we will be looking at that very carefully. We want to drill down behind some of the issues that you have mentioned there in terms of the costs of paying out loans in cash, as opposed to the DWP paying out in different ways. We want to drill down behind that, and if there is compelling evidence that there is costs attached to that, it is something that we would consider, but we need to see that evidence so far that we have not got that. Okay, I think that that is very useful indeed. My final point, convener, is round about best practice. Obviously, the cost that COSLA benchmarking will obviously find areas of good practice and probably areas of less good practice or even bad practice. How do we ensure, minister, that to maximise the amount of money that is going to those folk in need? How does the Government ensure that best practice is exported right throughout the country to ensure that money is put to best use in helping poor folk? We constantly look at best practice in terms of practitioners' meetings and where good practice is coming out. In terms of the officer we fund, the Scottish welfare fund and the Scottish officer in COSLA that the Scottish Government funds, we look across the board to try and get the consistency that we are all looking for and sharing that best practice. We also have the reference group that is constantly looking at where there is good practice in sharing that out. I found when I did my tour of welfare fund teams that those in the front line have benefited a lot from that. The participation in those practitioners' meetings is really important to them because it is a great way of sharing experiences and learning about good practice and taking it back to their own teams. We also have the officer looking at that overall. I think that there is not saying where we should be yet but that is continuing and it will continue and we will be looking at that in terms of when the benchmarking report comes into the Scottish Government, just how across the board it is and what variances it is across the board and how it administers the fund and the costs. It is an issue of drilling down and the consistency that I want to pursue with you, minister. In terms of drilling down, as well as looking at best practice, we should be looking at comparative costs between local authorities because as COSLA is talking about 20 per cent across the board, I would imagine that some would be considerably less than that, some would even be more than that. In terms of benchmarking exercise, you are going to be looking at these variabilities and variances to see why there may be such differences between local authorities? We certainly will be looking at that and that is what we are waiting for COSLA to provide. We are also looking at, as you say, that it may cost some local authorities more. They may have a higher demand in their fund where there is a lower demand in a fund elsewhere, but currently the agreement in terms of the administration costs and the funding for awards to each local authority area was agreed at the outset by, based on historical DWP applications in terms of the administration costs and awards in terms of the funding that is there. As we move into the permanent fund, we would, in discussion with COSLA, have a more needs-based approach to it. Therefore, that might spread the costs in a different way, but we will certainly be looking across the board. If there are huge discrepancies with or without demands in the scheme, we will be looking at the reasons for those discrepancies if there is absolutely something that we need to look at and say, well, wait a minute. We would have to look at that. Presumably, when COSLA is doing their benchmarking, they will be looking at that as well before they submit their final report to the Government. That is very helpful. It leads on to the next point, which is taking administration out of the picture and looking at the award of funds. In terms of the finance committee, we took evidence to suggest that, although some local authorities are under very severe pressure for this fund, others are not. There are differentials in terms of the promotion within each local authority, so I do not know what the Scottish Government is doing to encourage their consistency approach. In local authorities, some are being much more prescriptive in who they actually make awards to. You get a postcode lottery whereby you might get a grant in authority A, but you do not get a grant in authority B. As a result of that, would you be looking for more consistency of the type of awards that are given, or would you be looking to reallocate budgets if, for example, one local authority had a surplus towards the end of the year, but another local authority was under pressure? How do you make those judgments? It may be that one local authority is giving out its maximum simply because it is more generous in terms of the groups that get it, whereas others might be only awarding to a narrow priority. How do you square those circles? The first thing is that we expect local authorities to manage the budget. That budget has been agreed by, as I said, the historical means and the causal distribution group for the current scheme as we are going ahead. Local authorities have to manage that budget by looking, so some will have to pay only out in a high priority, because there is more strain in their budget. In another area, they might be able to pay out an immediate priority, or, in some instances, even a low priority when they define how they allocate their awards. We anticipate that that is what local authorities will do. As I alluded to earlier, as we move forward into the permanent scheme, we have to look at what has to be done in discussion with local authorities and with COSLA. We have to look at a more needs-based approach to the funding that we have available as a finite amount of money across Scotland. We want to make sure that those who are most in need get the money that is available, so we have to work towards that. What Mr Keramjit Singh said in the previous session, the Social Fund Commission of Northern Ireland, was that you are getting inconsistencies within a local authority, or potentially within a calendar year, because of the way budgets have to be allocated. For example, at the beginning of the year, there may be more costs towards the end of the year and there might be less costs of the budget to use up. What can be done to try to allow a bit more flexibility? It seems to me that some people are getting awards A because of where they live and B because of what time of year they apply for that exact same thing. That is going to surely ultimately lead to more appeals. The costings that we have talked about in terms of secondary reviews, if we cannot iron out those consistencies. There is always going to be a difference between local authority areas. The scheme is a flexible scheme and it is discretionary. It allows local authorities the flexibility when they are looking at their budgets. I very much accept that in the first year there was that element of caution, particularly in the first six months of the scheme, where local authorities anticipated a higher demand than they initially had. They had more money to distribute at the end of the year. However, as the scheme goes on, local authorities will know the peak points in their area when they are liable to get increased applications. That might be around holiday seasons, Christmas when there is real strain in family budgets. Local authorities can work that out and plan their year spend according to that. However, even with the previous social fund, the DWP social fund, there were always some local authority areas whose budget was used up and they could not pay out because there was no money in the budget and others that were differently. I am not going to say that we are going to absolutely resolve that, but what I am saying is that we can look at more a needs-based approach as we move forward with the scheme on a permanent basis to reduce those inconsistencies. However, I think that it is important that we allow local authorities a level of flexibility in their scheme. They know the issues in their area. They start to know when the demand in their scheme is going to be high and the kind of awards that they are going to be making. If there is a problem with sanctions in one area, if it is during when they still have in some parts of Scotland where during a certain time to a year, factories shut down and they pay off temporary staff, so they have to manage their budget to see that we may get a demand at these periods. That is part of the flexibility of the scheme. In the finance committee report, we said that it is vital that the administration of the fund is supported by the appropriate resource levels and that growth and demand for assistance be recognised. We know that the budget has been stable over three years, but more and more people are getting to know about the fund and more and more people are going to apply for it, so pressure is going to increase. As pressure increases, all else being equal at the moment, only more and more serious cases are going to be awarded grants, and again that could lead to more appeals. What is the Scottish Government doing to look at how that is being resourced over the long term, given those rising demands? As you will be aware, the Scottish Government can only plan to the spending review and how much the fund is going into the fund in the spending review. There will always be a finite amount of money to spend on the Scottish welfare fund, but some of the other preventative things that the Government is doing will hopefully reduce some of the demand in the fund. However, any Government would have to look at that. If the demand grows and grows and grows for the fund, we have to look at how it is resourced. I think that that follows any Government looking at what their priorities are and if it is reducing inequality and assisting those in poverty, we would have to look at the amount of money in the fund. However, at the moment, it is being very clear—the finance sector has been very clear—that what has been set aside for the fund until the end of the spending review. However, it is not something that just stops there. We clearly have to look at it as it goes on to permanent footing. Will there be more demand on the fund? Will more people review so that more money is getting paid out and that is something that the Government will continually be monitoring? Thank you. The Government has made various statements at various stages about its approach to welfare, not just treating people with dignity and respect, but rebuilding trust in the welfare system. Is that an aim of this particular bill, or is it more simply just a technical bill? I think that the policy objective has stated that it is simply a bill to put the interim SWF arrangements on a statutory footing. That is a high-level aim of the bill. It is a high-level stage, but the actual operation of it and the guidance will come out in the statutory guidance and the regulations. The aim in the high-level bit of the bill is, as you say, that it was not the aim, that it was to mirror the section 30 order, the bill itself mirrors what was said in the section 30 order, and what we do in the regulations and the guidance is how it operates. The area that you talked about is about dignity and treating people in local communities with respect, ensuring that people are not destitute as best we can, so that is what the teams out there are doing on a daily basis. A different approach to welfare from that pursued by the UK Government. The UK Government's welfare bills intend to treat people with dignity and respect. Is there something different here that we should be looking to that would mark a different approach to welfare? This is specifically about the Scottish welfare fund, which replaced the social fund that the UK Government abolished. It abolished the social fund, so if the question is different than what is happening south of the border, because it does not have a national scheme like this in some areas, it does not have a scheme at all. It is about protecting vulnerable citizens, and that is very much part of what the Scottish Government is about. In terms of the bill alone, yes, it was introduced initially in section 3 to order to protect vulnerable people that were not to be protected elsewhere in the UK. In the Government's expert group on welfare, there are a number of suggestions that are made that are very welcome, including, for example, to empower people to take control of their own lives and to offer them choice in the way they receive benefits. Has that influenced your approach in terms of whether to offer people cash or awards in kind in this bill? We are very clear in this bill that it is up to local authorities how they administer the fund that they get. While in some instances cash is the solution and I think that the committee heard a lot of evidence of how much goods are appreciated by those who make an application to the fund. I have reservations at the outset about goods and other methods of payment, but after speaking to users of the fund and to social fund teams that, in many instances, that is a solution for people, I would say that vast majority of crisis grants are paid out in cash to meet that crisis at the time. We are very clear in the guidance and we will be looking at this again in the guidance to ensure that there is absolutely no stigmatisation of people when local authorities have to make a decision to pay out by a voucher that there is no stigmatisation at all and that there is good reason for paying out by voucher, but the vast majority are cash in terms of crisis grant. The choice of the local authorities whether to pay in cash, the Government is not saying that it should be in cash or saying that it should be in kind, it is leaving it entirely, so you are not providing any guidance on that. We have guidance in terms of the expectation that in terms of crisis grants there will be cash payments unless local authorities have the option to pay out in vouchers and we are going to be consulting on the guidance, the formal consultation on the guidance and the regulations will be taking place very shortly and that is one of the areas that we will be consulting on when we are looking at that. We will be looking at the number that are paid out currently in vouchers, the reasons why if they are paid out in vouchers and also consulting with again those that use the service and get the financial help from it. The regulations that we can expect the regulations to suggest that crisis payments should be cash, that is what the Government regulations are. Sorry, I did not say that, I said that the regulations at the moment are local authorities have the discretion to pay in cash or vouchers, that is in the draft regulations, I am correct in saying that. You are not going to recommend cash. We will be consulting on those draft regulations and will be consulting on the guidance when payments should be made in cash or the reasons why payments in the most instances should be made in cash and they are at the moment. That is fine, they are at the moment because it is a local authority's choice. Now what I am asking is does the Government have a view whether crisis payments should be made in cash or not? The Government has a view that the crisis payments should be made in the way that it suits the individual and when the local authority is administering the fund as long as the individual is getting the best service and getting the help from the fund that they require, then that is the view and that is why that flexibility is there. The best way possible but not cash or vouchers, that is entirely up to local authorities. It is entirely up to local authorities to pay out in kind or vouchers if they wish to do so, however, we have made it very clear that stigmatisation is an issue that has to be considered. Can we move on to another issue? The old DWP system used to have a one-day deadline for turnaround. The interim arrangements and this new welfare fund appear to have a two-day deadline but we have heard quite worrying evidence both from recipients and from the voluntary sector that this is quite damaging. If people are in crisis they do not need a two-day turnaround, they need the money right there and then. I think that the majority of local authorities and teams work to a one-day deadline if all the information is there and the evidence suggests that I think that 67, 68 per cent of all applications are paid out on the same day and I think absolutely right if it is a crisis then people should expect money ASAP and the majority are doing that. There is not a presumption to work on a two-day deadline. The presumption is to get things done as quickly as possible if all the information that they require to make the decision is there. That is something that I am certainly willing to look at again. I would be reluctant to force local authorities or to change it to make rush decisions in something. For example, if we say that it must be done in 24 hours, there is a rush decision taken and that perhaps it then ends up in a review so we need to get the balance right but I think that we have to be clear that decision should be made as soon as possible if all the information is there then the decision should be made on that day. That is what I have been finding when I have been talking to the teams where I have found that decisions have taken longer is where another piece of information has been required and that applicant has not been coming forward with it perhaps and that information is not there but the presumption is that it should be same day in a crisis. Just to quote Connor last week who gave evidence, I totally agree with Lana who said that it should be one day. There is no way it takes 48 hours for them to make the decision. I applied for a crisis grant which meant that it was in crisis. How could anyone expect me to make 48 hours knowing that it was in crisis? Are you suggesting that it is because the applicants are not providing information? I am saying in most of the cases when I spoke to the teams around the country, I mean they would give me examples of where they would have, they were not on their socks off that made people in one thing about the Scottish welfare fund. Those delivering the service now are much closer to the community. They represent, they are really seeing the real issues that people are facing on a daily basis where perhaps before they didn't have that kind of contact with people in their area and they make every effort to pay out as soon as possible. I am willing to look at the, if there is evidence from the committee and the report from the committee and whether or not that should be reduced to the 24 hours. I am not simply saying here today, no we are saying 48 hours and it has to stick at that. If there is evidence suggesting that it would operate better without having rushed decisions going through then I am more than willing to look at that. Just to clarify minister, you are saying that local authorities are closer to the community. The DWP had a 24 hour deadline, 24 hour deadline. It is the Scottish Government that has introduced a 48 hour deadline. Can I ask why you have actually increased the amount of time taken when you were supposed to be closer to the communities in the past? The bed was, we consulted widely and initially on the guidance for the current scheme, the interim scheme. We consulted widely on that guidance with this committee and also with all our stakeholders and the previous users of the DWP and that figure of 48 hours arrived. That was not the figure that we are asking local authorities to work to, we are asking local authorities to process claims on a crisis as soon as possible and yes in most instances it is done on the same day. What I am saying to you today is that we are still looking, when we are consulting on the guidance and this, that this is something that we will look at as well and also in terms of what we are saying, that if there is evidence to suggest that anybody is dragging their heels on this and stretching it to 48 hours, when the decision can be taken in 24 hours, then I am willing to look at that. I just put it the other way to minister. Is there anything to suggest that the DWP managed to do this within 24 hours when rushing their decisions? No, of what I would say is that from experience of the years that I worked in helping people up high for crisis loans with the DWP and budgeting loans with the DWP, very rarely in many occasions that it wasn't done within the 24 hours and lots of the times it was simply that they didn't have the information and it's not somebody deliberately not providing that there was something missing off the form. At least being done by Scottish welfare fund teams, they are phoning, they are trying to get the information, they are being proactive in many cases, they are being proactive to try and get that piece of information in and that decision has been made. The DWP's 24 hour decision was once all the information was there. Sometimes a 24 hour day decision could take three weeks because the DWP said they didn't have all the information and I'm simply saying that's not happening now that we're trying to get those decisions reduced as quick as possible. We're working to and local authorities are working to a same-day deadline and that's what we're going forward. The 24 hours, the 48 hours was the maximum that we're looking at. So you're suggesting that the Scottish Government with a 48-hour deadline is doing better than the DWP with a 24-hour deadline? I think that we are doing better in getting the awards out there and getting them out to people, I think, going round. I'm saying this a lot from personal experience in 20 odd years working in the advice sector and working with the DWP. I'm saying I think we are doing it better. Thanks minister. I think we'll perhaps give you a follow-up to find out some statistics on how well the government is doing compared to the older DWP. I'm not entirely sure that's backed up by the official figures. Can I ask minister finally why have you put in a clause suggesting that you want to outsource this or privatise the service? That clause was put in the basis that local authorities and COSLA felt that it required that flexibility. At the time, I thought that that would be outsourced to a third sector or a social enterprise and that's what we were looking at. It's something that I've no the committees. There's been a lot of engender, a lot of interest in this committee. I've looked at this again and I'm looking to see the stage 1 report on this matter, but that was put in because it was felt that it was a flexibility that was there, that there was a potential that could be outsourced. I, to the third sector, is where I was assuming that it would be outsourced to. I'm not assuming that it's going to be outsourced to anywhere else. I'm not even assuming that it is going to be outsourced. It was a protection that COSLA and local authorities wanted in there. It's not something that I'm precious about that has to remain there. It's just simply something that I'm looking forward to, to the evidence. I know I've followed the discussions on it throughout the committee. At the moment, it doesn't say that local authorities have the power to outsource it to the third sector or to share it among the public sector. It just says that it's outsourced it. Can you take this opportunity to rule out privatisation and take this clause out? I certainly do not envisage privatisation. I am certainly looking for the stage 1 report on this. I have never envisaged that this would be the Scottish welfare fund would be about privatisation. It's not something that I would envisage or look for. Thank you, convener, and good afternoon, minister. Just picking up on the point, Macintosh Rees, I'm just looking at the official report for our meeting on 28 October, where we had a lot of young people who were users of the system and, I have to say, it was a fantastic evidence session. Mr Macintosh asked whether the new system was more supportive than the old system, and the witness said that they thought the new system operated by local authorities was indeed more supportive than the one operated by the Department for Work and Pensions. On the subject of the 24 hour 48 hour, one of the issues that came up in the session last week was the desire to have the possibility of a face-to-face interview. Obviously, when we get into that territory, that can impact on turnaround times and so on in terms of competing priorities. I wonder what facility there is at all for a face-to-face meeting for folk at the moment, because, for some people, they feel much more comfortable doing that. There is nothing that prevents a face-to-face interview currently. I think that one of my colleagues will correct me in this, but we said that the outset of local authorities had to offer two methods of receiving application forms—am I correct in saying that? Some take telephone and online applications and take applications from a third sector. There is nothing to prevent a face-to-face interview, but it could slow the process down in terms of a face-to-face interview. There is some evidence to show that the very most vulnerable are making their application with the assistance of another agency, so they are having a face-to-face interview with the other agency. However, you will never hear me saying that I do not think that anybody should get a face-to-face interview. I always believe that if somebody—and if that is felt, what is required—of a face-to-face interview, then I think that that option should be there. That is encouraging to hear. The point that you alluded to was that the fact that they may already have seen another service in the council. That brings me on to my second question, which was an issue that was raised last week, which was that some of the witnesses felt that none of them had found out about the fund through the local authority involvement, none of them. Secondly, some of them, at least, were already involved with other departments in the local authority and that information was not being passed on. They accepted that there would have to be a consent element to that, but nonetheless, if they consented, none of the information seemed to be passed on. It seemed that each department was working in isolation and there was no joined-up working. That probably goes to cost as well, in terms of administration. If there were the preventative joined-up holistic working that we all hope to see, including, I am sure, the local authorities, then that presumably would, in turn, reduce administration costs. I do not know whether the reduced administration costs it probably may well do, but I think that it goes back to the response that I gave to a previous member that there is very good communication from the social work Scottish welfare fund teams to other departments of the council, but what I said I would do is look at and take to the practitioners group. Is that coming back the other way from other departments of the council to the Scottish welfare fund? I mean, it does seem nonsensical if somebody is in one department of the council and then they have to go elsewhere and find out about the Scottish welfare fund and then come back to the council to make that application. Absolutely right, that does not make a lot of sense, so if there is something that is not happening that should be happening there, then certainly that is something that will take to the practitioners group. I think that that would be important because that, in turn, presumably would also assist in speeding up decision making in some cases because the council is already sitting on most of the information that it needs. It just is not getting from department A to department B. In that respect, going back to the COSLA paper that we received just before the committee started this morning, one of the points that they make is in terms of the furniture provision, and they suggest that the receiving reports of around 20 per cent more staffing costs deployed, resources deployed in dealing with this aspect of the fund in providing furniture in terms of, for example, resources needed to be deployed to manage suppliers' relationships, but I would have thought from many councils that those relationships already exist with respect to other activities of the council. Again, maybe it is just a change in culture that is required that the council, as one entity, is involved in providing various services across the piece to its citizens, but that those departments are very actively working together. If a large council has already got a managed supplier relationship, it would be difficult to see why such an increase in resources is required simply to deal with some furniture provision under the welfare fund. I think that the two things that I would say are that it is always up to the local authority to decide whether they want to use that supply of goods or not. As the committee has heard from many people, that is the way that they want to get the goods from the Scottish welfare fund, but it is also backed by what I said to Mr Gibson about the drilling down behind the figures that COSLA has come up with. Is that across every local authority, or has one local authority come up with saying that it costs more to do this? Looking behind it, why does it cost more to do it when the council has probably been working with those organisations through social work departments or other housing departments for many years? We need to look at that. Alex Rowley has a final question. Thank you very much. Excuse me, Minister, if I go over some things that we have discussed already, but there are a couple of points that I wanted to make. The first thing is the issue of local authority discretion. I am very supportive that that is in the bill, but the more I look at it, the more I am concerned that we need to know where the dividing line is between the virtue of diversity and the vice of inconsistency. Are you confident that the structure put in place by the bill is strong enough to allow that diversity to take place without destabilising the scheme in terms of inconsistencies between one local authority and another? I do think that we can arrive at that. The bill is structured and can get there, but I absolutely appreciate that there is still a concern about consistency across local authority areas and that we have to look at that. I do think that we are doing that through the guidance and regulations that we are trying to get consistency. When the second tier review is in place and is effective, that will help with consistency, because there will be good practice and decisions that are binding in a local authority. Other local authorities will look at that as well. I understand that Ombudsman has laid out clearly that there will be many transparent issues about how they conduct a review, what will happen at a review and, on that basis, in that all-form part of the training and how we get a consistent approach across local authority areas, but still allowing that bit of flexibility that they need to operate the scheme effectively in the area. Kenneth Gibson, when he was asking his questions earlier, went on to the issue of how funds are divided between local authorities and how they may be divided in the future. How do you envisage changes taking place over time? How do we avoid a situation where a local authority that perhaps manages its funds less well than another may then appeal for additional funds at the expense of one that managed its funds more appropriately? Can we be confident that that will not happen? I think that what I said earlier is that as we move into discussion with the permanent scheme on a needs-based approach, that would be a needs-based approach, but we would also be looking at local authorities on how they apply that scheme. It will not be free for all. You will use up all your money in the first two months of the scheme and then apply to get money that somewhere else. It will have to be done on a needs-based basis and do it with discussion, with COSLA, local authorities, social work teams and other stakeholders to get a scheme that we are all confident will work and will be based in need. I do not think that local authorities—my view on speaking to local authorities about the scheme is that there is a real willingness to work for it and to make it work for those working in the front line. The scheme's input is critical because it is the ones that are dealing with it on a daily basis, and I think that we can come to that agreement of how it will operate and clearly we will be monitoring it as a Government as well. If anything is happening in this committee, I am sure that we will also not be slow in telling us where something is going wrong if it does as we approach a needs-based allocation. On another subject that was touched on just a few moments ago, outsourcing, I wondered if the minister would perhaps say a little about whether she sees outsourcing of this responsibility as one of the ways in which local authorities—for instance, smaller local authorities—could pool resources across their boundaries, or larger authorities perhaps that have a geographical or population synergy might work together. Is that outsourcing one of the means by which you could see that happening? I think that there is provision in the bill for local authorities to work together across boundaries without the outsourcing part, am I correct? With a specific provision in section 3 about two or more local authorities may make joint arrangements. Outsourcing would be an option for dealing with that, with that being the case. More than one local authority could contract their areas jointly to a single third sector organisation, for example. I think that that is from getting right. The provision in the bill allows local authorities to work with another local authority to deliver the Scottish welfare fund, with one of the local authorities being the leader of that. With a specific provision allowing a joint committee, but the powers to make joint arrangements are quite wide. That provision is there. The outsourcing, I would look at that, perhaps you want to comment on that. Does that provision allow for outsourcing, I think, is the question to a third sector organisation? I think that outsourcing on a joint basis would be possible. One final point, and it is one of the strange things that often the thing that seems most superficial or trivial is the thing that actually causes the biggest problem to individuals. One that we have drawn to our attention on more than one occasion is the size of the application forms that people are being asked to fill in. Do you envisage the change in legislation providing the opportunity to remove complexity from the application process? I am certainly more than happy to look at the application process. I understand that most applications are made online and are not being filled in by an individual sitting going through, but I appreciate that if somebody got a form, the number of paging can be quite daunting, so it might stop somebody even going through it. I know that it is quite lently, but in most forms that people are not actually having to fill in every single part of it, there are only parts of it that are relevant to their application. What I can say is that I am willing, having heard the evidence from some people having to use the form, to look at that again and, if there is anything that we can take out or simplify that form, we will certainly do that and we will consult on that when we are consulting on the guidance. Thank you very much. Thank you. I can register to turn back to the exchange had with Ken Macintosh, minister, and it is in relation to the 48-hour target, as opposed to the 24-hour target of the DWP. Operating, I just wanted to drill into something you said, because from what you said, it seems to me that it is fundamentally false to compare the two, and I just wanted to clarify your saying that under the DWP scheme, it was the case that essentially that 24-hour target only kicked in once they had all the available information that they felt was necessary. Is that correct? That is correct. So essentially to compare that as a 24-hour target, because it is meaningless if it takes a week for the 24-hour target to kick in or the 48-hour target, that could be fundamentally false. I think that what I am saying is that it is about, in any application to the DWP, it is about that their timescales are based on when they have all the information on the form, when the form is completely filled in according to the way that it is meant to be filled in. In many instances, they are not proactive in going to the applicant to get that information that is missing. Within the Scottish welfare fund, the teams are proactive if there is a piece of missing information. The teams are proactive in going out there to try and get that information either from the person making the application or from the third party organisation or another department of the council. In that basis, the applications are dealt with. I think that it was my view that the applications are a better service to the individual. Thank you. That concludes the questions from the committee this morning. Minister, thank you very much for that. We will now go away to look at our report and look forward to your response to that. Officers this morning have been very helpful in trying to clarify some of the questions that we have given, so thank you very much for the evidence if you produce this morning for us. We now, as agreed earlier, go into private session with two or three issues that we need to deal with.