 Okay, good morning everyone, and can I welcome everyone to the 18th meeting of 2019 of the Social Security Committee. Content mind, everyone present definitely of mobile phones or other devices to silent mode as they, we don't want them to to disturb the meeting. We have to apologize this morning for my deputy convener Pauline McNeill who won't be with us Felly, we move to agenda item 1, which is in decision to take business in private, and the committee has asked to agree that agenda item 4, consideration of evidence heard during this morning's meeting, is taken in private, as the committee agreed. Okay, thank you. We move to agenda item 2, which is universal credit consent provisions. The committee will take evidence of universal credit consent provisions this morning, and I welcome Richard Gass, welfare rights and money advice manager, Glasgow City Council, Sheila McCandy, benefits and welfare manager, Highland Council, Richard Bailey, representing National Association of Welfare Rights Advisors, noras, acronyms and more acronyms, and we're hoping to be joined by Sandra Stewart, a little bit later, advice worker, family advice, resource, the acronym being fair. That's a nice straightforward one. Thank you for coming along this morning. We very much appreciate that. We are going to go straight to questions, but I'm supposed to give some context to what evidence session this morning were minded that the information commissioner's office has given some opinion on how DWP's applying implicit or explicit consent, how that is secured, the length of time that it can endure for before you have to go back and refresh that consent, and it might be helpful to put in record just two snippets of that advice. April, the information commissioner issued the opinion that the DWP appears to be taking on a duly restrictive view of the definition of consent under data protection, and they also wrote to the DWP asking it to revise its consent policies and internal guidance and to take advice steps to ensure that the policy works on a practical level. Now I'm listening to that. These are just abstract things, I suppose, for people listening to this evidence session, but we are told examples of the impact of where the DWP are just now are quite significant and varied. I've got a briefing paper here outlining those, but there's no point in me outlining those issues. We've got witnesses here to tell us a little bit about that. As a more general opening question, we're aware of the change of approach that DWP are taking to empowering advocates and welfare rights officers, MSPs, whoever, to help particularly vulnerable people to get access to benefits and advice that they need. Could maybe our witnesses this morning set out what their experience has been, Richard Gaston, if you want to start? We're still fairly early into universal credit in Glasgow, and we've not had too many instances where we've been working with individual service users. We've been hands-on with that service user, so generally able to input into the journal that we are mandated. However, we have come across some problems at the stage of trying to make a claim, particularly where there is an existing appointee. That appointee is not recognised as the person to act for universal credit purposes, and they need to reapply to be that appointee. There's also been experience at the other end where a claim is being rejected and the person then wishes to seek your support. Unfortunately, at that point, the journal has been closed down, so we've not been able to go online and register us as their representative. However, we've been in direct contact with the people, so we're able to make phone calls and have them present and establish identity with DWP. Thank you. Any other witnesses who want to see what their experience has been so far? Yes, certainly. We have very similar experiences, and we were the first in Scotland to implement a universal credit under the live service, so we have a lot of experience of universal credit. It's fair to say that it has matured. I think that there's quite a bit to go yet, but it has matured in terms of the processes. When it comes to explicit consent, there are real problems with explicit consent. For me, the key word in the information commissioners recommendations is the word practical, because whilst in 3D the explicit consent may seem reasonable to DWP, it's not practical on the ground, and we experience very similar situations to what Richard is experiencing in terms of appointees and practical support on the ground. Of course, we've got the rural challenges to overcome, which I think that we may cover later in this discussion. There are real challenges on the ground with explicit consent. I think that the first point that I would like to make is that, from the DWP's position, they are pursuing explicit consent because they believe that the risk of data breach and it's not safe to take the traditional implicit consent that applies for all legacy benefits that the universal credit replaced. Although we are seeing the thin edge of the wedge, the terms of explicit consent have been ruled out to other benefits such as personal independence payments. I think that we would all agree that keeping people's data is safe, and that's a good thing. It's often mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, but it was from the 18th century philosopher, the aphorism, that any virtue that has been taken to extreme becomes a positive vice. That's more than true here, because what we have in a situation whereby the DWP are claiming to try to keep people's data safe, on the ground there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that people, advisers and family members are keeping people's usernames and passwords to access their journal in order to be able to, you know, with good intention, obviously. Coming on to practicalities, like Richard and Edinburgh, we've only been on full service universal credits since November 2018, so we're really just at the beginning of it. For us, I think that we're obviously going to be talking about vulnerability, because universal credit obviously has brought in people who would have formally claimed employment in support allowance, so you're dealing with people who have physical health problems and mental, cognitive and intellectual impairment, and all of those types of people who are going to have problems accessing their journal or coming to see somebody face to face. It's a feature of many modern advice services that they're offering help over the telephone, and that's going to prove problematic in terms of assisting people there and then to get the vital advice and representation that they need. Is there a consistent application of data protection policies and guidelines by DWP across Scotland or across the UK? Is there clarity from DWP in exactly what is required? I hate to be slightly tangential here. I'm at my office in a situation with an energy company that uses the new GDPR provisions to say that not just myself but every single individual in my office that I employed had to have an individual mandate every single time they sought to contact that energy company on behalf of a constituent. We got that resolved pretty quickly by going to senior management, but it did show how either the application of consent rules can be inconsistent, misunderstood by the agency trying to do the right thing, or quite frankly can be used by an agency to game the system and not necessarily give the help, support and assistance that's needed. In other words, individuals can play games with consent simply not to have to do what welfare rights officers whoever is asking for them to do. Is there any experience about good practice from DWP where they've sought to actually see beyond the rules? Is it inconsistent across the country? Is there any experience of a bit of game playing quite frankly in terms of how individual officers within DWP are seeking to interpret data protection issues? Richard? We raised that very question at a rights of Scotland meeting just last week. Round the table had a number of different local authorities present and it was quite surprising that experiences were different and didn't seem to be geographically specific. It seemed to be really down to who you got on the phone. There are indeed some staff working in universal credit who are adopting a common sense approach and allowing what would be implicit consent, perhaps not with the permission of their management, but we heard that some folk were able to get through in the phone without too much difficulty, others were reporting that they would phone up and it seemed that there was no way, unless it was written in the journal, the person that they were speaking to wasn't going to entertain their inquiry. Okay, thank you. Any other thoughts or comments on that, Shalyn McAndy? Certainly what we detect is a nervousness on the part of universal credit staff as if they're unclear as to where the boundaries are. So some are very cautious and that makes it very difficult, whereas others are more confident in the guidance that they've been given. I think that that's what's coming across in terms of the inconsistencies that we're receiving. They are a lot more consistent than they were. The other point that I think is worth making is when we had PBS and ADS, when local authorities were delivering that, there was a lot more data share that was possible and our local job centre staff were tremendous. They were very pragmatic in their approach whilst respecting people's data and it worked really well. Local authorities have lost that since help to claim was introduced in April, so that local data share has been lost and we're reintroduced to another set of challenges that we had that predated PBS and ADS. Okay, thank you, Richard Bailey. Okay, if I can add to that, yes. What I would say is that inconsistency is part of the nature of the beast of the DWP and it is nothing new, it's nothing particularly true, especially true of universal credit than it was with any other benefit. For many years, we were operating under implicit consent and obviously towards the end of the meeting we'll talk about that a little bit more, but even trying to get that applied consistently was deeply frustrating and problematic. There would be spells and it seemed like some message had gone out that implicit consent was something that really the call had that there wasn't that comfortable with and in the well of periods where it was flowing quite well. When you're experienced and you're forming up the DWP following representation on behalf of your clients, you get to recognise accents and you know that some would appear anecdotally that some local service centres were over enthusiastically applying the rules to the disadvantage of the representative and the person that they're representing. Now I have to say that my experience of individual employees within DWP is actually the vast majority are trying to do a high-quality job in hugely difficult circumstances now. In another inquiry in relation to social security and inward poverty that this committee did, we have some pretty powerful and compelling evidence from PCS Union about the number of numbers of employees working with DWP about the workload and the stress that they were under and the lack of resources. Mr Bailey, you can't comment on any particular detail, but my concern would be that if you are an under-resourced, overstretched member of the DWP working with job centre plus in a service centre or wherever and you have 10 different demands in your time and you can only do one thing, if five of them are a query in relation to explicit and implicit consent, those get bagged, those get sidelined and they might not even be about deliberately gaming the system. It's cherry picking the things that they can do and can do quickly and maybe more vulnerable people are losing out as a consequence. So could a resourcing issue of staffing at DWP lead to a more stringent interpretation of some of these rules, do you think? Yeah, we concurled with that and I would also start off by saying all the benefits that I've dealt with. I would say that the staff, the call handlers for universal credit are the most pleasant and appear to be the most helpful in terms of their attitude, in terms of that first line customer service experience that I've ever experienced and I don't know if my colleagues concur. So there's been lots of effort to try and treat people with what the Scottish Social Security System is trying to do as well, dignity and respect. I think there's been a lot of good work done there, but I would agree from a bureaucratic point of view, if you're under pressure, yes, there are certain things that are easier to sideline than others and you've got a stock response. Why? How can I kick this down the can as a common expression that we're hearing in politics at the moment? How can I kick this inquiry down the can? Can I get the person to call me back? Some other time because I've got 15 calls waiting on me and a manager breathing down my back. Any other comments in relation to that, Richard Gass? The individuals in the DWP certainly not had a problem with them, both at call handling and at management local level, so no, not a problem there. There was a point that I was going to make there, but I've kind of just distracted myself. We can come back to you by adding Sheila McAndy in and then just come in again after that. We'll absolutely come back to you. I'm sure that I'm glad it's not just me that happens to me. Yes, I think there's a couple of things that we are certainly detecting, and I've now just forgotten the first one, but welcome back to me. DWP introduced on 4 June the improved to their automated voice recognition system. What was happening is that the system was originally designed when somebody phoned the 800 number, they had to wait until the end of the message to select which option they were choosing, and customers and advisers weren't doing that, and they were trying to intervene throughout the process, and that was rooting calls incorrectly to advisers in the call centre. Of course, that was adding to the stress and the workload of call centre staff and increasing the demands upon them. I would just echo what my colleagues are saying in terms of the individual member staff. They're highly professional and really are trying to do what we're trying to do, which is do the right thing for the client and the claimant. The first thing that I was going to say was that, quite often with DWP, it's the case of whoever shouts loudest gets dealt with. As a result, the more vulnerable clients tend to fall to the bottom because they're unable to articulate the issues for themselves, and that's when they do come to advisers and they need the support, and that's when implicit consent is so important, and that's because that's why we're having so many challenges through explicit consent, and that's why there does need to be some change. I have one final question, but before I ask it, Mr Gass, do you want to come back in? I have remembered, so let's do it now. We sometimes find that when we're trying to get through on the phone and we've got the appellant or the claimant present, we can have explicit consent over the telephone that we can't get through on the phone, and then, as a result, we then need to phone back afterwards. Obviously, if we can't get through on the phone, that would indicate that at DWP they've got a larger volume of calls. So, when we finally do get on the phone, we've no longer got our person present, and it's at that point that we then run into the barrier of not being able to establish implicit consent, because that's not a feature of universal credit. That's very helpful. Why is it helping to put in day-to-day issues on the table to committee members rather than talking in that abstract? There was one final question. I was going to raise it later, but Sheila McCandy made reference to it during one of your replies, and that was in relation to the thing that you helped to claim system in universal credit, and we mentioned protected date of claim issues as well. So, just for anyone following the evidence session who might not be clear on that, as of 1 April, anyone who was seeking to submit a fresh new universal credit claim who couldn't submit it that day were only protected from the final date that their claim was submitted. Whereas, before 1 April, depending on what agency you were working with, as soon as you opened a universal credit claim, irrespective of when that final form was submitted, you were covered in relation to backdating of benefit. I know that Glasgow City Council told our committee that using data from your universal credit hubs and the network of libraries across the city, you estimated that that meant that 200 vulnerable claimants each month were going to lose out on money that they otherwise would get because of the change of the rules under help to claim as of 1 April. Now, as we approached the end of June, that is 600 many of my constituents in Glasgow who will have lost out because of this in the first three months. I am just wondering if, in relation to bringing it back to what we are here for today, if one of the reasons that there may be a delay from opening a universal credit claim to submitting the final form might be some more vulnerable claimants do not have all the information at hand, you may have to contact DWP to speak to DWP to clarify a number of things about the claimant and the constituent, and if they turn around and say, sorry, we can't talk to you about this because we don't have implicit consent anymore, there needs to be explicit and you can't prove who you are, actually has the GDPR issues made this situation even worse? Because if you open a claim on the Monday, you tried to get information from DWP on the Monday and they say, sorry, we can't talk to you or you can't get through to someone on the phone, it could be another 10, 11, 12 days before you see that client again to then get that information. Are issues under the loss of protected date of claim being exacerbated by issues in relation to consent? More generally, I'd be very interested to know because I'm very clear in the situation in Glasgow about what the situation with loss of protected date of claim feels like, not just in Glasgow, but maybe Edinburgh elsewhere within Scotland. Any thoughts and comments on that, Mr Gass? Again, we had a conversation about this because the change was the transfer of the resource to Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland, and when it was a delivery partnership agreement with the specific local authorities, we were providing that support, we were doing so under some kind of agency agreement with DWP, and therefore any delays that happened because we couldn't make the claim in a set period. The point of contact with ourselves was the date of claim, and that didn't apply across the board. Folk who found their own way to a welfare rights officer to make a universal credit claim wasn't so protected, but it does seem the case that when this has been transferred to Citizens Advice, that facility has been lost for whatever reason. I can't imagine that it was an intention. I would imagine that it is more of an oversight, and I can't imagine that Citizens Advice are particularly happy that folk can now come to see them. If there is a delay, we will find that the clients have lost out. What we have discovered from rounder table discussion was that where there had been referrals to Citizens Advice in Scotland so far to the CABs, there was no delay. At this point in time, there was capacity to see somebody promptly or worry will be that that might not be sustainable as more and more folk are looking to claim universal credit. Hopefully, Citizens Advice Scotland and Citizens Advice nationally can engage with the Government to overcome what is hopefully only an administrative oversight. Just before we go to other witnesses in, you were saying that under help to claim, my understanding is that Citizens Advice have not been flooded with claimants going through the help to claim schemes, so they absolutely have capacity in anyone watching to go and see a local Citizens Advice Bureau and get the support that they need. However, do you have any feeling about whether Citizens Advice are able to get that claim process and submit it in the same day? Because if they don't, it doesn't matter how much capacity they have, people are still losing out money. In practice, from my own team, we would not be sending somebody to the CAB. We would be doing it with the person there and then, but I imagine that it might be other agencies that do not provide welfare rights support that are sending folk to the CAB. Perhaps we need to speak to Citizens Advice to get that directly. We would keep our work in house. We know that we are up against the clock, so we need to press that button and we will look to do that. I should put on the record that the committee has written constructively to Amber Rudd because we very much hope that this is an oversight as well and that this can be fixed. I am conscious that we have had no reply back for Amber Rudd. Maybe that is something that the committee has to follow up pretty strenuously if it is an oversight. We can fix that quickly. I will bring in other witnesses in a second. The second question is whether, in those advice hubs that you have in Glasgow, your advisers are having issues with getting through and getting consent over the phone to get the information that they need to file a successful claim under universal credit? I do not have information for you on that. I just know that, in the hub, they will be seeking to make the claim promptly. If there is missing information, it will be because the person has not got their bank details, so that is not information that you are going to get from DWP. In those scenarios, we would be putting in effectively default information just to take to the point where you can press the claim button so that you do not have a mobile phone number and it will centre a set of zeros so that we can press the claim button and then when we have the journal up and running, add the extra information in at that point. That is very helpful. Any additional comments from Sheila Richard in relation to those matters? I would just add that the experience of the Citizens Advice Scotland in Highland is exactly the same. The referrals that they are receiving from the job centre, for example, are at a low level at the moment, so people are being able to submit their claims that same day where the evidence is available. However, as you have already pointed out, we very vulnerable clients do not always have that information to hand for a number of reasons, and that is where the delay comes in. Certainly, the Highland Council's welfare support team has challenges in contacting DWP when there is a particularly complex claim. Quite often, people have mental health, physical disabilities and other complex needs, so there might be drug addiction, alcohol reliance and other complexities going on in that household or the wider household. There are real difficulties in dealing with those more complex claims, and there are delays. There is a potential going forward that this is really going to hit in terms of the date of claim and it not being protected or unprotected. The capacity over time will be a real challenge for Citizens Advice Scotland, and, obviously, they will have to have those discussions with DWP. Before I move on to other questions, Richard Bailey, anything you want to add? I think that both of their experiences have been mirrored in Edinburgh, but I was going to make it in connection with the previous point and it is valid for less as well. Let's not forget that of the two stated aims for universal credit, one of them is to save money to the public purse, and one does wonder that it could be an oversight, but it could be yet another way of disentitling people for a period of time, which, when you add it up, the number of vulnerable people could bring in some form of saving. Again, that also applies to the issue of consent, because people are given advice and representatives. We are there, and our job is to ensure that people get their full entitlement from the earliest possible date. That is a cost to the Government, and I start to wonder and amuse on whether explicit consent and the changes to the protected date of claim are there to reduce the amount paid in benefit. Thank you for putting that on the record. I should point out that, when we made representations to Amber Rudd, we did so as a committee, including we are conservative members in our default position at the moment, is that this is an oversight and we can address this and that we can fix this. If we can, then the committee will have to think long and hard about if there are any other reasons, but right now we will get unanimity as a committee to tackle this issue, but thank you for putting that on the record. Mark Griffin Thank you, convener. I just wanted to ask witnesses about how easy it is, or isn't, to get explicit consent. Indeed, the way we have said it is a much simpler process, it is as easy as just putting a note on the journal and everything is okay. What are witnesses experience of that? Those who are digitally capable, yes, that is a very quick way in the past to get a quick mandate in, you had de-fax it in, now you can have it in the journal immediately, so for folk who are able to use their account, they are able to log in, no problem. If there are folk who are present in the office again, no problem subject to being able to get through in the phone. The problem is where you have someone who comes in to see you, who can't stay for other pressing reasons, or they have phoned up, they have not had their money, they are not able to make it in, and they want someone to help them, so it is the most vulnerable that are disadvantaged by the need for explicit consent. If it was implicit consent and we are floaring up saying that we both know that Mrs Smith is having a problem with her benefits and that I am here to try to help her, then why can we not be believed to be acting in the person's best interest? The current process assumes that the claimant has got access to their journal, that is not always the case. There could be connectivity issues, there could be accessibility issues, there could be affordability issues, they might not have credit on their phone for example. Those are all the practical issues, I keep going back to the practical, those are the practical issues that our claimants, our clients are facing on a day-to-day basis, so it's not as simple as just locking into your journal. Same challenges with making a telephone call, affordability issues come in there, it's a free phone number, but if you don't have credit on your phone to begin with, it's very difficult to engage, so what happens there is these individuals need the support of services, advice services through the sector, but of course in Highland we've got the rural challenges, they could be quite a distance away from a local agency, so again there's more delay built into that, so all the time what we're seeing in Highland is the system is working against people, it's not working for people, the system is very good for those individuals who can do for themselves, what it's not been designed for and doesn't cater for it is the vulnerable clients who have got the complex needs. I think I'll focus on putting explicit consent into the journal, now if it was an easier process then perhaps there is some benefit to it because the previous method would be getting a client to sign a mandate and send it in and that mandate would go via Wolverhampton and get buried underground for a couple of weeks and maybe never appear where it needs to appear, so the principle I've been able to, if you're digitally literate or indeed other forms of literacy come to it as well, if you're able to do that and get through some little hurdles then fine, but I think I would say approximately about a third of my claimants where I'm dealing with face to face cannot remember their login details. Now I would suspect that that's true of every single one of us round here at times we've forgotten our login details for a piece of vital information and it's especially true if you've got literacy issues, if you're a foreign national with limited English and obviously universal credit is now bringing in people who would have formally claimed employment and support allowance, so again you're getting a higher proportion of people with physical, mental, intellectual and cognitive disabilities as well, so there are those issues and there are issues obviously extending that what if someone's in hospital where they may not be physically well enough, even if they do have the connectivity, even if they do have the technology they couldn't physically use a keyboard or a telephone, but it's possibly previously they might have just a bit been able to put an X on a mandate, so there's that issue as well and again in terms of IT literacy is a big thing and I'm trying to find some statistics on that and I struggled, but what I did and what I did come across is we're looking in terms of adults across the United Kingdom, we're looking at a level for adults of about a 15% of functional literacy and that's excluding IT and I suspect with IT it's a lot higher and again even more so for claimants, it would be a higher proportion of claimants on universal credit. I think it's clear that the digital by default way of operating isn't working for a high number of universal credit claimants, but just how simple is it for those who do have the IT skills, who do have good connectivity, we've heard previously about things in journals not being actioned, being missed just because of the high workload of work coaches. Has it always gone smoothly even for those who do have good IT skills and easy access to the journal? Does that still always work? I'm not a hand-on adviser any longer so I don't have first hand experience, but I know that people from my own staff when they go in and they're helping folk access to the journal it's maybe a bit strange the first two or three times that once you've done it with regularity you do know how to get into your journal and there's requirements on claimants to put information in their journal all the time except the point that there'll be information going into the journal that the DWP might not act on. However, if we're phoning up to say if you look at the journal you'll see that we're mandated to do this then that will draw a focus to that and I'm not aware of any occasions where there's explicit consent in the journal which DWP feel to see. In our experience the people that it works for we don't see is the people that it doesn't work for who come and access local authority services and assistance advice services and it doesn't always work. Either the claimant doesn't understand the message that's been sent to them on their journal or the messages they are sending in to DWP are not being acted upon or are being misunderstood and it goes into the sort of like an email chain that both sides aren't understanding and there's a bit of miscommunication between the two so it probably is working for many people but the people who we see it's not working for and that's why they've come to our services in the first place. The first point that I would like to raise about that is that the national association of welfare rights advisers put points across to the department for work and pensions to an order that the consent was easy for staff and the DWP to see straight away get it pinned close to the top so I'm hoping that that's an issue that's now resolved and that the call centre staff are able to see that information rather than saying well where is it so we've got that but given your hypothetical scenario everything's perfect, everybody's got connectivity, they're able to use it. I still think that there are remaining issues and this is directly from the Government's guidance on universal credit consent and disclosure of information if you're giving explicit consent on the journal for the record and saying that it's telling you to give consent to your personal information to be shared with your representative, outline what information you want to be disclosed, explain why the information is needed, explain the representative relationship to you, whether the representative is your family member or friend and it gets worse, give the name of the representative and the organisation including branch where applicable if you cannot provide, the name of the representative you need to be as specific as possible, for example you should provide the representative's job role or team name within the organisation. That's going to be challenging for a lot of people to do that. Even if everything is perfect, there is still a number of significant hard dogs to get over. That does seem like a very high burden. Can we move on to a different area? Contact Scotland BSL is a Government-funded video interpreter service for deaf BSL users. The funding for that was up until the start of this month was purely to access Scottish public services, but it has now been given additional funding and is rolled out to access all public services and any private services that a deaf BSL user would want to access. How easy would it be for a deaf BSL user using a video interpreter service to give consent for their interpreter to discuss their case? BSL specialist within the Highland Council. We have made use of our colleague for a universal credit claim that I wasn't present, so I don't have that insight to it, but the feedback that I got was very successful, and it helped immensely. I don't know how they navigated through the system. I'm sorry that I can't share that with you, but the feedback that I got was very good. Jeremy Balfour, thank you for your time. I have two or three questions that I could explore. The first one is, once you have the consent granted, is that an indefinite consent, or do you have to renew it, and how often do you have to renew it, and is that different from what was previous? Yes, it's different from what was previous, that consent now is only for a specific period and needs to be renewed. Again, for folk who have easy access to their journal and are capable to use their journal, it's relatively easy to replicate. However, where someone has greater problems and is relying on the advice service to fix it all for them and has provided consent, then the expiry of consent would be a major hurdle. I don't have any evidence today of scenarios in which the authorisation has expired, but, if it were to expire, that would certainly be a problem. Do you know how long it lasts? There's a suggestion that it's a number of weeks, and it would not last for more than two payments, so before being paid monthly, then the maximum it could last between five and eight weeks. Again, I don't remember my colleagues who have experienced that expiry. The consent is given, and it covers that assessment period, which is one calendar month, and it would cover the next assessment period as well, but very often—again, like Richard, no direct experience—we have our experience with the legacy benefits, and we know that it can take many months to resolve even just one issue, and often with benefits issues that are interconnected, so solving one thing leads potentially—there are multiple issues with the person to claim, so it could easily take longer than two months, and therefore the person would be required to renew that. The added to that is until the matter is resolved. With universal credit, you think that you've solved it until the payment doesn't appear or an incorrect payment appears or there's been a deduction that you weren't aware of, so it's still a very much alive issue for the claimant, but it's been closed down because, in DWP's mind, the issue has been resolved, but it's not. I think that I heard Richard Bailey saying—I can just clarify—this is not just for universal credit, this is for legacy benefits and also presumably now for new applications for PIP, DRA, attendance allowance. Is this consent across the board for all benefits or just for universal credit? I think that what's happening is that, for the legacy benefits, the benefits that universal credit has replaced, and for those that were always intended to be outside the system, I feel that there has been a bit of leakage, that other benefits are taking their lead incorrectly from universal credit and trying to enforce some form of explicit consent, whereas they should still be using the implicit consent and working with a representative document that's been around for at least 15 years. If I apply for PIP now, is it explicit consent or not? It shouldn't be, but, in fact, is it happening? I haven't come across personally any experiences of it. I mean, our situation would be that we would get somebody to sign a mandate and we would submit that with their form, but then that becomes, because it's not a low—and we will come on to this—a low would be very much strongly advocating for implicit consent. It still wasn't a perfect system, but our service would take a mandate and send that in, but I haven't phoned up PIP recently, frequently, and I haven't had any particular problems myself with using implicit consent. However, I understand that colleagues and other members of the NORA have across the United Kingdom. Just to bring it slightly so that we can have a fuller picture, it may be too new, but we've got a new Scottish security agency up and running and some of you will be dealing with benefit claims into the course. Are they looking for implicit consent or is it implied consent? Have they been in touch with you about that going forward and do you know how that's going to work? There have been no discussions with us regarding explicit implicit consent, and we're working very closely with the agency in terms of introducing the social security benefits. I'm not aware that they are contemplating explicit consent. I'm sure that this is relevant to the other people in front of the committee today. It's about some of the difficulties where it's not practical for people to get into a local office. We have received written evidence about the situation and the difficulties of people in remote and rural areas. It was put to us that people can make arrangements for a three-way call between themselves, a representative and the DWP to verify their ID. On the face of it, that sounds like a very complicated thing to arrange just to identify yourself. Is that what's happening and how does that work? I could perhaps speak from a rural perspective. This facility has been available for a very long time. I think that, actually, since we introduced life service a way back in those days, we have never made use of this facility because our clients just cannot cope with the system. The very reason that they're a client of a local authority or citizens advice is because they cannot deal with those issues themselves. The three-way calling certainly doesn't work in Highland. That sounds very interesting to hear, because it's got a lot of experience in that. I just wondered if others on the panel have any knowledge of this being used. Existence but not aware of anyone having made any use of it? That sounds very interesting to hear, because it was put to us that this is a useful means of people identifying themselves. It doesn't, frankly, sound like it is. For people who are living 50 or 100 miles from their nearest centre, as you'll be familiar in the Highlands, what are people supposed to do to identify themselves? If people are unaware of this, is there any effort being made to make people aware of this by the DWP themselves? I'm not aware of DWP making people aware of it. We certainly do advise people the facilities there, but very quickly they say, I can't cope with that. That's why I need you. What we do in Highland, my team actually have got mobile technology and go to people's homes, and that's how we facilitate the system in Highland. It does mean that Highland Council is incurring a lot of cost in terms of the travel and time to get to people, but without that service these people would not be able to access universal credit. As you say, they're 50 to 100 miles away from a centre. They don't have the money, and public transport isn't there. They cannot access local services from where they are, so we have to take our services to them. From what you're just saying, they are nonetheless DWP think it's the role of others to pay for that intervention of the kind that you're talking about, to actually make people find their system accessible. Certainly we get a lot of people referring themselves to the Highland Council support service and citizen advice. DWP do have a visiting service, and I think that's across the board. They've got a visiting service. How well that's used, I don't know, I don't have any statistics in terms of how regularly that service is called upon. My team in Highland Council are out every single day in people's homes helping with universal credit processing. The other thing to say to the committee is when individuals in legacy benefits used to be somebody would come for support, we'd help them through the claim process, help them through the appeal process, and then they'd be on their way. That's not our experience with universal credit. It's not a one-time service. People come to our service to get support with appealing, with application, and then they come back because there's either a deduction taken off that they don't understand, or the level of deduction is putting them into hardship, and there's sanctions possibly. The complexity around universal credit is something that we've not seen before in terms of the advice sector. The change to universal credit has it had a marked impact in terms of the problems associated with rivality? It certainly has in Highland. I can only speak from a Highland perspective. It has in terms of delivering the service because its universal credit, of course, is modelled on digital by default, and DWP have lost that terminology, but it is still digital by default. As I've said before, there's real connectivity issues, there's the skills issues, there's the affordability issues, there's the accessing local services challenges in Highland, so there's real rural challenges, which DWP have tried to work with us on, and you'll be aware of the Skype facilities that have been put into Highland, and we've got that in one of the Highland Council's local service points, this is our one-stop shop, and in our Kinloch barfices and advice, a tremendous facility, and I'd love to see it rolled out much further. We do need to support that, so our welfare adviser is in our service point office where the Skype facility is, and we do support clients through the whole process, but it's a fantastic facility, and our local job centre, where we're servicing that Skype facility, very positive feedback from them as well. On Alistair, I'm conscious that she has an expertise in relation to rural issues, but we've also now enjoyed by Sandra Stewart. Sandra, lovely to see you and I know you had some challenges getting here this morning. I just remind you to commit to Sandra's advice work with Family Advice and Information Resource, and you've not really had the opportunity to put anything on the record yet, even if it's not particularly specific to Alistair Allen's line of questioning. Obviously, he was interrogating barriers to accessing service issues around explicit and implicit consent. Rurality doesn't have to necessarily be around that, but I just want to afford you the opportunity to put some remarks to the committee this morning. Thank you. We work fair with people with learning disability and their carers and family members, universal credit. For us, it has been incredibly problematic because of the type of client group that we work with. We're fortunate enough in that most of our clients are still on legacy benefits and will probably remain there for some time and hopefully be managed migrations, but the difficulties that we have are things like, you know, we have clients who don't read or write, so normally if they received a letter, they would take it to us, we would phone up and we would speak to someone from the DWP about it. That's been so difficult. Clients are unable to remember passwords, so I'm even speaking to someone on a telephone. Most of our claims so far have been phone claims, I've not been online claims, because our clients can't use technology. Most of them won't have mobile phones, they tend to lose mobile phones even if they do have them. I think that we've probably got about 10 clients so far on universal credit. The time that has taken us to deal with those clients has tripled. Their clients need quite a lot of support, generally anyway, but the time involved is now just increased dramatically. Have you noticed—I just want to give the opportunity to some of this on the record for about 25 minutes or so left of this evidence session—a much more challenging time period in the past few months in relation to the interpretation of data protection rules by the DWP? Can you say a little bit about that and maybe what would be helpful in making it easier and more accessible for the individuals that you represent? I think that the easiest thing would be either to go back to implicit consent so that we can actually speak to someone or to have paper authorisation so that we can get someone to sign. We have lots of clients who will have a dual diagnosis earlier in disability and osism who suffer from severe anxiety and can't speak on telephones. Even speaking to someone to say that they give their consent for us to speak on their behalf is really difficult for them. They can sign a bit of paper, so mandates were really useful for us or implicit consent where we didn't even really need to have the client with us. We have had associations where we have got clients to say that they want us to speak on their behalf and that it has been pinned to the system and it has been ignored. DWP has continued to send text messages to people who can't read so they haven't come in with phones to get us to read the phone. I want to give the opportunity to put that on the record. We will continue with the lines of questioning that we have been having but I just didn't want you to miss out on your opportunity to make sure that the official report caught some of that. We will move to Keith Brown MSP now. I see that the commissioners mentioned the unduly restrictive nature of explicit consent and particularly the situation regarding MSPs now not being able to access this. I was interested in the point that Mr Gass made earlier on about if the person was there with the advisor, in this case I am talking about MSPs and other staff, and that would often be sufficient. Whereas in the experience of my offices that doesn't work, we've had constituents very distressed, perhaps haven't been refused, sitting with me or a member of staff and DWP refusing that, so the system doesn't seem to be working for them. I was wondered given what's been said and the attempts that have been made to try to overcome this both from within the Parliament, I think Linda Fabiani and others, what your view on it is on the restriction on MSPs being involved and also in the context of both. The UK Government regularly says that the Government should work together, the Parliament should work together. Is this serving the people that lead those services? My view is that the elected members from either Scotland or the UK Parliament should both have the same right to explicit consent. Our preference would be for that to be extended to advisers too, but I can see no reason why they would not allow an MSP to have implicit consent. When we are going to have more devolved benefits in the Scottish Parliament, MPs would presumably wish to have implicit consent, so I can't see why, how people are served by only having certain elected members able to make use of this. I don't see the justification at all for excluding MSPs from that, but I would also roll it out further and say that local authority councillors should also be included as elected representatives. Invariably, in terms of the work that we do with MPs, it does get delegated to their incredibly hard-working staff, and I'm sure you and the MSPs have the same hard-working staff who would put a good deal of effort. It does prove incredibly fruitful because MPs can get a level of detail of response from the department for work and pensions that they just wouldn't respond in that depth to us. It allows us to get a full case overview of what's going on and then we can intervene with our advice, representation and expertise of social security law to take forward any potential challenges and hopefully get a successful outcome for a person in terms of their claim to benefits. It's like bias here. Obviously, I'm a local authority wealthy rights officer. If it was extended to local authority councillors, we could perhaps then say, well, we were actually staffed to the councillors, therefore implicit consent would also apply to us, but yes, it just makes no sense. It's of no support to people who need vital help there and then. DWP to regulations 22 and 23 of the DPA 2018 act. The same provisions existed in the act before that, which clearly states that an elected representative, whether at UK level, Scottish level or local level, should be treated the same and should have the same access rights when it comes to processing data. We think that the provisions are there, we think that the rights are there, and we think that it's DWP who are misapplying those regulations. We tend to use MPs as a last resort when we're really struggling with cases, and that's always been fruitful. If that's no longer there, it's going to just make our job much harder. Keith, do you want to follow up on that? I'm just really interested in the point that was made about the existing provisions, which really begs the question as to why this restrictive approach has now been adopted, what the purpose is or the idea behind it is, and if the idea—let's be charitable and say it was for generally in regard for the data of the individuals—strikes me so hard, I've written to the UK Government recently on a reserve matter and they passed my letter and I have my constituents to the MP, which my constituents specifically did not want. So their protection of data, and without wandering too far away, if you look at MI5 and MI6 that they've been doing in the last week or so, then protection of data doesn't seem to be a strong point, but on the point that's made about councillors, I understand and I would support that. Although it would not be the case that the councillors would tend to—I suppose DWP in any Government agency has to have some ability to regulate where the data goes. Would the point of access from councillors be through people like yourself? If the officers within the council's money advice services were known to, if they were accredited almost by the DWP, then the councillors would go through that acknowledged and trusted route. The way that I would envisage at working would be in terms of the obviously, because you're looking at for you guys when you've got constituents coming to you with problems, as do MPs, as do councillors, then that case would then be, as you would do, referred to your staff or as MPs would do, referred to their staff, the local councillor, and as they do and have done since I've been working in local authority, they would pass that query on to the people who can get it resolved. That would be the channel rather than the councillor, MP or MSP, being bypassed. It would go to the constituent and would be going to them in the first instance, and then the staff would be doing the follow-up work. There was a bid for supplementaries on this specific point. The next theme of question will be Alison, just to give you heads up on that, but if it's on this specific point, I saw Alistair, Alan and Shona Robison, so to Alistair and Shona. Okay, thank you, convener. It was really just to observe that the Scottish Government have made representations about this issue, and it doesn't sound from what's been said today as if the DWP are responding to that very actively, but I'm just interested in one of the things that was said there earlier on about some of the vulnerable groups who are accessing services. There seems to be an assumption that people will be so interested and versed in the Scotland Act that they will know which benefits are devolved and which ones are reserved in terms of who they actually go to. Is it a reasonable idea that people should go to an elected representative on the basis that they know which parts of the Scotland Act devolve which benefits? That's a loaded question. I think that, via the power of mime, I was able to ascertain that all the witnesses agree with you with their body movements and shaking their heads is any additional questions. That's one other issue that we've overlooked in respect to the points that you were making in connection with the preserved date of claims. It could be that we've overlooked it. I know that we're going to look more at vulnerable constituents in members' society shortly and how the system does or doesn't work for them. Shona Robison used a supplementary on that specific point as well. Yes, I note that the response from Damain Greene in 2017, trying to justify the exception for MPs and not others, is that he said, we can offer this because of our pre-existing relationships between MPs, offices, district managers and their teams. This is something that cannot pertain for inquiries from other sources. I know that my office in Dundee has a very good relationship with the local DWP office and staff. That is a relationship going back a number of years. I've been an MSP for 20 years now, so it's a long-standing relationship. Apart from that being an extremely challengeable statement from Damain Greene, I think that I would want to put on the record that the local staff still try and accommodate inquiries for the sake of the constituent. It appears to me that the thwarting of that is certainly not coming from local staff who are trying to work with us, but certainly from higher up. I think that it's important to make that distinction that this is a political decision that appears to have been made against the wishes often of local staff. I think that that's good to put on the record, not that there's a question, but we're just putting that stuff on the record. Before we move on, I think that it's also worth putting on the record in my experience in relation to all elected representatives in this place. It's not about a tough war between different elected representatives or a status or hierarchy. It's actually about the individuals that come to see us and about trust and relationship building, and it really doesn't matter from my point of view. If there's a councillor, an MP or an MSP, if you've got the trust and you've got the relationship, then you should be able to have that implicit implied consent and just get on with helping people as best you can. I know there's not a tough war issue amongst the elected representatives that I see, but we just want to help people when we feel that there's barriers to that, just now that are not justifiable. I thank you for your support in relation to the comments that you've made in relation to Alison Johnstone. There has been quite rightly a focus on the impact that this might have on particularly vulnerable members of society. I have a strong impression from this morning's evidence that all of your organisations are now finding it more difficult to help people with their claims and particularly vulnerable people. You probably are aware that the information commissioner's office in April gave a view on the DWP's approach, which said that the DWP appears to be taking an unduly restrictive view, which has been mentioned, of the definition of consent under data protection, and that there hasn't been given enough importance given to ensuring that vulnerable persons aren't prejudiced as a result of the interpretation of the DWP's policy on this topic. I just wonder if you could give your views on the information commissioner's office's on that intervention. We'd like to think that that might be helpful in turning things around on the negative impact that it has on vulnerable people and whether there are sufficient safeguards in place to ensure that they are not any more negatively impacted than they already are. You would support the comments from the information commissioner that the DWP should not be so restrictive. The reason why folk are coming to advice services in the first place is by and large because of a vulnerability that they cannot navigate the benefit system confidently on their own to require another person, so we shouldn't have artificial barriers in the way to them engaging the service. The more vulnerable a person is, they might not especially relish and enjoy their time with their adviser, they might just want it to be, look, I can't deal with this, I've given you the information, please sort it out and not have to come back. The more vulnerable somebody is, the lack of ability for advisers to do their job is something that I think we should all unite to overcome. I actually think that we will have clients who are completely disengaged with the benefits system because it's going to be so difficult for them now and also because we can't advocate on their behalf. We'll have clients who, as I said, can't speak on telephones, can't use technology. That system just isn't suitable at all for people with their type of needs. Are there any exceptions being applied to take account of this? Should there not be some sort of marker or an individual's record where this clearly isn't going to work? That set out very similar safeguards that local authorities have in place for discretionary housing payments, so it looks like things like learning difficulties, drug addiction dependencies, it looks at all of that. I think that the difficulty is the application of that. It's very generic. The service centre staff, again, going back to this confidence thing, they don't have the confidence to always apply it, so we quite often get into long discussions with DWP about when the safeguards should apply. At the very basic level, somebody in rent areas is vulnerable because they are at risk of losing their home. Where do those safeguards stop and start? How are they applied? What's the consistency of application? Yes, there are provisions that DWP have put in place for safeguarding. It's the application of them that's throwing up the difficulties. CPAC, in its submission—I know that we don't have a child poverty action group with us this morning, but they've got a couple of quite concerning examples. A lone parent suffering from stress and depression, her baby has been admitted to hospital for failure to thrive, they're at risk of eviction and the client would like payments to be made to her renteriers by direct deduction from her universal credit, but she's not able to engage with the DWP because of everything that's going on in her life and the solicitor trying to avert the eviction has been unable to converse with DWP on her behalf as they won't accept implicit consent. That's just one of a couple of examples that they've given, which are hugely concerning. What can we do as a committee to try and prevent this kind of unnecessary suffering? I think that it's taking the ICO recommendations and somebody monitoring that and whether or not DWP has actually applied and reviewed and listened to what DWP has said, because as you'll see from the ICO, they're monitoring it, but they're not expecting a formal response to come back from DWP to say, you know, in terms of an audit, when we have an audit, we have to respond to that audit. DWP don't have to do that in this case, so I think that if the committee could somehow track and keep checking and lazing with the ICO, I think that that would be very helpful. So we need to be recording the instances where this is having that impact and acting on them. I think that that's all from me, convener. Okay. Can I just check with fellow committee members? I don't actually see any other bids for questions, so I'll have a little bit of time in hand to thank you, Michelle. I was waiting, because obviously, I know you're late this morning. It was unavoidable, so it's good to see you here. And apologies for my letting us. I had an issue I had to deal with. Thank you very much for your evidence so far. I just wanted to clarify a couple of things for my own understanding. You talked about, I think, Mr Bailey, you talked about the fact that previously you would just get somebody to sign a mandate, and I think that you referred to the same thing, and that was easy. My understanding is that consent can still be given in writing, so, in effect, the same process can still be used. So I just wondered whether you are doing that, whether you have done that, and what is the fundamental difference, because, Mr Bailey, you referred to the fact that you would just get somebody to sign it, and you'd send it off, and it could take a couple of weeks to get lost in Wolverhampton. But presumably, you can still get somebody to sign it. You can still send it off. Have you been doing that, and, if so, has it worked? Can I say? You can still get someone to type in an online journal that they give explicit consent for you to act on their behalf. But, as I said before, we have clients who can't use technology, so they don't have online journals. These are telephone claims. Can you write in, as opposed to digitally? You can write in. He's not been able to do that, I'm afraid. No, because it's not been accepted. Have you tried doing it? We have tried doing it, but we haven't been successful with it. We haven't got lots of cases, but often mandates now aren't successful anyway. Although a client has said that they give you authority to act on their behalf, DWP often just don't recognise that anyway at the moment, but they will give them implicit consent, so that's fine. How many cases has the mandate been refused? Well, as I'm saying, we don't have a lot of cases that you see at the moment because of the type of client group that we work with. I only know one case that's been refused so far. So, when you say often, you mean one? Well, yeah, we'll have rid one. Okay. I'm just kidding. I think that they should accept it in writing, but there are still those structural issues, i.e., the length of time of the mandate, and obviously the mandate would have to be adjusted to say, well, look, we're dealing with this particular issue and obviously nothing else. And again, as has been explained earlier, issues can roll on for many months and they can also involve multiple problems. Not just the original query that the person comes in with, it can be a bit like peeling an onion, there are many layers to it. So that would be, yes, you can still do it in writing, we still seek a mandate and which we can and is being submitted. I haven't come across any examples of it being refused, but it's still bound by the limitations on explicit consent, whether it's done on the journal, whether it's done on writing or whether it's done over the telephone. So the real issue is around having to renew it in order to deal with an on-going complaint, and then you said also about the time lag in terms of when you do it in writing the time lag to get that. Has that got worse than done for legacy benefits then, or is it similar, or what's the scenario there? I couldn't particularly comment in terms of comparing with legacy benefits to universal credit, but as I said, as much as I would be continually advocating for implicit consent, as I think all of us would, it wasn't a perfect system, and maybe something can be put together that would be a combination of both in terms of the ease of submitting consent, but also having that given it implicitly to have lost the train of thought there, sorry. That will pass. Our experience of explicit consent is quite time limited as well, often just to 24 hours. We've been told that at long last for 24 hours, and I don't know if that's to do with the fact that there are phone claims or what, that they're not typed down, but we have had that experience as well. Is that anybody else's experience? Certainly not our experience, but as I say, in Highland we have been working with universal credit for a number of years now, so our teams are very practised in terms of the consent. We advise our clients exactly what to say, because we now know what to say to ensure that that consent is valid for the period, but then quite often the case takes another direction, and that's when the consent doesn't cover that part, so a deduction is taken off, for example, that you weren't aware of when you set the consent with the claimant, so that's where the challenge comes in for us, but we've not experienced a 24-hour expiry date. We've not experienced anything about 24 hours, I'm not sure why you've been given that. That does seem a bit weird. But I think that's down to as well, that it's a new system in Edinburgh, and we are getting mixed messages about what we can and can't do. I forgot my other one, can I come back if I remember what it was? I will fully burst if for 30 seconds you can come back in, Michelle. I've got a bit of time in hand. I think that Michelle's line of questioning was really interesting in two fronts. One is that a lot of the data is not captured on this, so that Sandra Stewart's reply about with a small but incredibly vulnerable cohort, you've got one specific example, but you've heard anecdotally from other agencies that it's happening elsewhere, but there's no number crunching in relation to exactly how much, because I suppose you're too busy helping vulnerable people rather than being counting how many times that this is all happening, plus earlier in the session we heard about some really good examples of practice in the DWP, but an inconsistency across the country in relation to it, and that just gives, I think, some context. I was actually fully busting for you, Michelle Ballantyne, because you missed that earlier exchange, so that kind of fills in a wee bit on that, Michelle. Old brain, you say, it gets fuzzy. I just wanted to come back to something that you were talking about, Sheila, when you were talking about implementing Skype as a support mechanism, and I was rather fascinated by that, because obviously that's a digital solution to a digital problem. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about that, because if you were talking about the rurality issues and the fact that people couldn't access face-to-face support but equally had a real problem with their digital support, so how is the implementation of a digital solution to that digital problem being done to overcome that digital lack of capability? We worked very closely with the national DWP team on introducing Skype, and what we did was, we deliberately chose, the offices we chose, we have got two sites in Highland, we've got one in Kinloff Berfey, which is extreme rural, but it's in the Citizens Advice Bureau. The other facility is in our local authority, one-stop shop, what we call a service point. In both instances there are welfare advisers to support and claimants need support on each and every time they access that, so the digital solution is with support, so it's with special support. If you were to put it into a booth somewhere in the middle of the Princess Street without that support, I'm not sure it would be so successful, so there is a cost to administering this from a local authority and Citizens Advice perspective. What happened with these vulnerable clients previously, how did they get that direct support previously? Is it just a question of needing multiple contact support or is there something different going on in that first sort of support? What it has done, the one-stop shop in Galsby, so Galsby, the closest job centre is 50 miles away, so it's 100 mile trip and public transport links means you may not get there and back in a day. What we were doing previously was my team were going out to people's homes and supporting them in their homes, so that has reduced in that particular locality in terms of Galsby itself, but of course Sutherland is the largest geographical area in Highland and we're servicing the rest of Sutherland by going into people's homes, so it's complementing existing services. It hasn't eradicated existing services. People in Galsby now can come to a point rather than you going out to them. Are there any other questions from members? I think that the little bit of time we've got in hand will be moving on to the next agenda item shortly. If there's anything any of our witnesses today feel that there's a line of questioning that you just expected and it hasn't happened and therefore you have not had the opportunity to put on the official report something that you really wanted to convey today. You've got an opportunity to do that now. You don't really have to, but the opportunity is there. Oh, Sheila is coming straight away for a bid to do that, so why don't you make the comments that you would like to make? Sheila, and that gives us all the opportunity to consider whether there's something that they want to put on the record as well before we close this particular session. Thank you very much, convener. Explicit consent, when DWP have been challenged over explicit consent, Neil Cooley has been very consistent in his response. What he has said is that under legacy benefits they collected a set of personal data. Under universal credit, they are collecting more personal data. I don't understand what that additional personal data is and I think to be very helpful for the committee and for ourselves as practitioners to understand what that additional data is that has been collected that requires us to shift to such an extreme position of where we've got explicit consent, because perhaps if we all understood it, we could work with DWP to overcome some of the barriers that are present in itself. I just don't understand what the additional data is because what we've done is we've fed, as the committee knows very well, we have fed a number of benefits into universal credit, so we were already collecting all of that data and we were operating under implicit consent. I don't understand why we've had to have the shift to explicit consent, because Mr Cooley hasn't been very explicit in explaining that to us. You can do it, only because I have time constraints, Michelle, but very brief. Did you have implicit consent to deal with HMRC? Was that the same access? Do you have working tax credits? Yes. I told you it was quick. It was very quick, yes. Let's go from my right to left, which we will take you at the end, Sandra, so you get the final word in relation to the session. Richard Bailey. Yes, I think that just following up on that, it's a really important point that she lives made. The DWP has already made it clear about the information that they won't disclose. They won't disclose your address, your date of birth, your national insurance number, your bank details, your sort code, your telephone number, the names of your household members. I could go on. If that is clear for now, it's that I do not see why they can't use implicit consent. If improvements—I want to say very much, I'm going to be saying that, I think that we would all agree that we want implicit consent for universal credit, and if that's your intervention, and that's a message, I'm glad about that. If there were to be improvements—and I think that was one of your questions to explicit consent—it would be, and it would take Richard's point as well, actually, because when people do come to see us, they don't want to spend time with us. So the type of consent that the person actually wants is to help me with my benefits from now and this day forward for all issues. That's the type of consent that people want, and if we want to restore agency to people, I would say that that's what we should be doing, but nonetheless I would agree that we are at least day to break chews. I think that explicit consent—again, it's the DWP deciding what's right and wrong for claimants and not the aim, and I think that I would finally say that, in terms of explicit consent, it would appear to support claimants in the way that a barbed wire chair would support your back. Okay, thank you. Richard Gass? Yeah, final point on the Apollo list, which is a list of staff who have a right to access certain information without client consent for the purposes of what's laid down in legislation for things like administration of housing benefit for entitled working out of the eligibility for Scottish welfare fund to ensure they're getting the right charge for a residential or non-residential care charge. Our staff have found the degree of difficulty using the Apollo list to gain information about universal credit, being advised that, no, you can't do it, the client would need to put information on the journal. We do within the council have access to CIS, the client index system for DWP, and again, it's for very strict purposes, but there seems to be within universal credit just a misunderstanding about what information can be shared and when, and I don't know if that's driven just from the fear that was raised earlier on, that it's how do they process the amount of work that they've got to process and that they're pushing things off their table. Okay, thank you. Sandra Short, I did promise to give you the last word, so let me just put one thing on the record, so you actually do get the last word. I've just received a reply from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in relation to protected data claim. I can't really speak on behalf of the committee because they've not seen it yet. I would prefer to describe it as woefully inadequate, but I'll make sure that that correspondence is put on our website as early as possible so that others can see that correspondence that we've received. I've now put that on the record, so you do have the last word now, Sandra Short. Just to agree with my colleagues on the panel that not having implicit consent is just creating more barriers for our clients and making our job much more difficult. Okay, on that note, we will leave it. I didn't say that, but that would be the last word. I call all four witnesses for your support today in relation to this evidence session. As always in these situations, if you're on the way back to Glasgow or Edinburgh or up to the highlands, you go, I should have raised that point. This doesn't end with consideration of these matters. We'll be taking a consideration of the evidence that we've heard in private later this morning, but if there's anything else that you want to draw to your attention, please do that through the clerking team, and we very much appreciate you coming along this morning. Thank you very much. That ends that particular evidence session, and we now move to agenda item 3. Actually, I said that we should suspend briefly into witnesses' leave, so we'll just do that. Let's suspend briefly before we move to agenda item 3. Subordinate legislation, and can I refer members to paper 3, note by the clerk? The committee is invited to consider the welfare foods best start, Food Scotland regulations 2019, SSI number 193, forward slash 2019, which are subject to the negative procedure. The DPLR committee considered the regulations that is meeting on 18 June. It has drawn these regulations to the attention of the Parliament and the grounds that the meaning of regulations 18 could be clearer. It requires more clarity. The Scottish Government is undertaken to bring forward an instrument shortly to rectify this issue, and this has been welcomed by the DPLR committee. As the Scottish Government is attending to the matter that our sister committee has raised, before I say the committee content just to note the instrument, which is the question that I'm going to ask, are there any comments that members may wish to make in the first instance? I know Mr Griffin in the comments, I'll take Mr Griffin and I'll take Mr Brown. Thanks, convener. I mean, I think there's a lot of good things in this instrument, particularly the increase of the funding from £3.10 a week to £4.25 a week. The no recovery of unintentional overpayments is something that I think should be warmly welcomed as well as the transitional protection with the eligibility reducing from 4-year-old to 3-year-old as welcome to. That brings me on to some of the concerns that I have. I would like to hear from the Government more about why they felt that the eligibility should reduce from 4-year-old to 3-year-old, while they still have been able to fund that transitional protection. That raises the question as to why the funding could not be provided on an on-going basis to maintain that level of eligibility to 4-year-olds. On a process question, the legislative route for this instrument is through the Social Security Act 1988 and not the Social Security Scotland Act 2018, which means that it's not covered by some of the things that this committee worked very hard to put in place and in particular think about the Scottish Government's take-up strategy to ensure maximum uptake. My final point was just on another thing that the committee has been working hard on, and that is on automation. I would like some clarification from the Government as well as the why people who will be moving on to this new system will be invited to apply, rather than automatically transfer them, which is something that's been close to that of a lot of committee members. I thank the committee for the opportunity to put some of those queries on the record. I thank you for putting that on the record. I will take Mr Brown and Ms Johnson in a second. I should also put on the record—absolutely valid—that the SSI was circulated to members two weeks ago. If there were any detailed issues in relation to this particular SSI, we were asked if they could be raised in advance to allow us to do something more meaningful in relation to some of those points. Obviously, no one got back in relation to that, but rather than skirt around some of the points that have been made. I wonder whether I'm just looking at members there. In relation to taking up automation, we're already in correspondence with the Government in looking at potential lines of work for this committee in relation to that, so hopefully we'll be dealing with that in due course as a committee. There was another point that you raised with a budgetary and the criteria for qualifying for the moneys. We will, of course, be looking at budget scrutiny as a committee as well, and that might be an opportunity to return to some of that. I'm just trying to be helpful in where we could, as a committee, move forward in relation to some of the issues that you raised, Mark. You've put them on the record, which is absolutely right and the right thing to do, because you felt strongly about it, Keith Brown. Thank you, convener. From my own point of view, the points that I've been raised with Mark Griffin, I'm happy if it was to be a case of writing to the Government to ask about those things. I wouldn't be in favour of delaying going ahead with this. I'm happy to note that. My concern is about paragraph 6 where it said that the commencement date—the reason for this having to be agreed now is that the commencement date is 12 August, and for that reason it's not possible to lay the instrument 40 days before. I don't think that that is a reason. I think that they work out what the commencement date is, and they should work back from that to do it 40 days in advance. That's not a reason. There might be a reason, and I think that my own view is that we should ask them what the reason is, not just stating this, but I don't think that that's sufficient for us not to, in my view anyway, agree even with the questions that Mark has raised for us to go forward, and it's important that it does. I've made a couple of suggestions in a second, but let's wrap up all the various comments that we've got, because a number of members want to make comments. I'm content that it goes ahead, but just on the record, I'd like to raise the issue that the child poverty action group do with regard to pre-payment cards and the stigma that this can have, and that we should always be looking towards a cash payment wherever possible, because a lot of smaller shops, particularly in poorer communities and rural areas, don't accept such cards. I just think that, as a matter of course, when we're dealing with issues like this, it would be helpful if the Scottish Government could advise what their position is on operating and operating in line with the cost of food, which does change. What provision there is for those who do not, for whatever reason, allergies or otherwise, are unable to have cow's milk or formula or eggs—what the alternatives might be. I just think that those are things that could be included, as a matter of course. Okay, thank you. Is Henry Balfour? Thank you. I think that Mark has shown you with Arsenal and Keith. I don't think that we should delay this, but I do think that we should write to the Government with Mark's questions, asking for clarification on them. I also think that we do want to put down as a marker to committee and I agree with Keith. I think that we don't want to get to the stage that things are coming to us absolutely last minute, and we're having to chase our tails to do this. I do think that we need to say to the Government that we do need to see these as well as possible. I take your point that we were asked to look at them two weeks ago, and we're circling two weeks ago, but this is the first time that we've had a public session on it to be able to raise these. I do think that going forward with regulations that will follow in the autumn and next year, we need to give ourselves time as a committee to be able to reflect on them and calling the appropriate witnesses if required. So I think that we should put that in a letter along with Mark's questions to the Government, but I'm content not to delay this because there are more positives than negatives. I'll make a suggestion around what you've said at the end. Mr Balfour, that's very helpful. I think that I'm probably going to echo a lot of what's been said already, because it is a negative instrument that I could not see when it was sent out to us two weeks ago. I didn't see it as objecting to it as such, but that doesn't mean that there are some concerns around the timing of it and certainly around some of the points in it that I would like to understand or have some clarification as we go forward. I did want to hear what other members thought about it as well so that we could have a consolidated question list. One that hasn't been mentioned that I did have a concern about, and that's with the removal of four-year-olds on the assumption that they will all be in early years care and therefore will get their lunch in early years care. Talking to people, my sense is that not all of them will be for various reasons and I am concerned therefore that some will lose out as a result of that. I would like some clarification from the Government on the evidence base that they use to make the assumption that the removal of four-year-olds wouldn't have any detriment to vulnerable families. Are there any other comments before I make a suggestion? There have been no other comments. I think that it might be helpful to talk about why I mentioned the two weeks previous about members being aware of this. It wasn't to not have this detail put on the record this morning, but it might have afforded clarsed the opportunity to have a structured approach by the committee ready for this morning to help to support our discussions. That would be the only reason for that. I have captured—I want to just make sure that I've got this right—three central points from what I have heard. We have heard about the up-breeding going forward. That came out quite clearly. We have heard about the qualifying criteria and how it was arrived at, and in particular around the four-year-olds issue. We have heard about that, and we have heard issues more generally around the uptake. That said, I think that everyone is actually whether explicitly or implicitly given our last evidence session, I think that we are welcoming this from what I can see, but that does not mean that we should not still scrutinise the details of it. So, if members are content, I would be keen to write to the minister in relation to up-breeding, in relation to qualifying criteria and particularly mentioning issues around four-year-olds, and in relation to uptake more generally, but also to indicate that that is a matter more widely we are looking to look at as a committee anyway. Would members be content that I write to the minister on the 40 days as well? However, the DPLR is dealing with that matter also. I would imagine that I would try not to duplicate it. We could mention the 40 days, but I am just trying to be focused on what we are writing about, so let's mention the 40 days as well. If people are content with that, we can be keen not to open up a wider debate, but I do not want to curtail it either, so let's take those comments briefly, because we have still got to finalise what we are doing with one more agenda item. Keith Brown and then Mark Griffin. Very briefly, I am convening that. The point that I am making is not about the fact that it is late, obviously, but it might be completely unavoidable. It is just that there is not a reason to give it for it, so I am just looking to try to get the reason for that, just to clarify that. I am fine with what you proposed. Yes, absolutely. We will check with the DPLR committee on that as well, Mark. Just briefly, can you give me if we could just ask the question as to why it has been brought forward through the Social Security Act 1988 and not the one that we passed recently? Okay, happy to do that. I think that the discussion is helpful, because when we go away from this meeting, we have to draft a letter that is reflective of the mood of the committee, so that does actually help. That said, we welcome the fact that we are looking at what has, hopefully, progress been made by the Scottish Government, but we still have to scrutinise it robustly. The question that I said we were going to ask is that, is the committee content to simply, with the caveats mentioned, simply to note the instrument? Okay, thank you. As previously agreed, we now move to agenda item 4, universal credit consent provisions, which we have agreed to take in private, so we are now moving to private session.