 Good morning everyone. Sorry for being one minute and 16 seconds late but we were discussing something earlier. Thank you all very much for coming here today to the Social Security Committee. I just want to say welcome to the visitors as well as the people who are giving evidence and can remind everyone to turn off their mobile phones as they do felly mae'r cymdeithasol iawn yn ei gynhyrchu. 1. Mae'r ddechrau yn byw gwaith yn ffragoedd. 1. Mae'r ddechrau yn ffragoedd 3 i 4. A wnaeth yna gweithio'r amser? 2. Mae'r ddechrau yn ffragoedd mewn. Mae'n ffordd i'r holl o'r ffordd mewn. I welcome our witnesses here today, Rob Gowrens, Policy Officer of Systems Advice Scotland. Archie Campbell benefits representative muscle breast assistance advice for you, Rob, and it would be over the page. Kyna Reeves, individual advocacy worker, CAPS, independence advocacy. I'll just open it up to questions, if you don't mind. You don't have any opening statements. That's absolutely wonderful. I'll ask the first couple of questions, just sort of a probing question, and if you could answer, please, another member's no doubt will come in. I just wonder if you agree with the principles of universal credit and whether you feel that, in practice, universal credit is a positive change for claimants. So, whoever wants to answer first? Mr Campbell. In principle, yes, but it's so far removed from the principle, even as they envisaged it when they introduced it. They've been tweaking with it ever since. For instance, one of the policy statements in the introduction was, and it was on their website, simplifying the benefit system and making work pay. Now, I noticed they've taken that down from the website because, quite frankly, now it's a bad joke because neither of these statements are correct. They've withdrawn most of the work allowances. The rest of them, apart from one, which is somebody who's got limited capability for work, still get the same work allowance. Every other work allowance is cut or eradicated altogether. The benefits system is very complex now. We've got trouble with our advisers at Citizens Advice. To make it clear, they may come in maybe once a week. Quite frankly, they just can't cope with all the changes. Within universal credit, we've got three different systems running in parallel. We've got the full service, the digital service, which is slightly different, and you've got the gateway conditions. They've all got different eligibility, plus you've got the legacy benefits system also running in parallel. Our advisers have to understand that, to do benefits checks, what circumstances would trigger a universal credit claim, what circumstances wouldn't trigger a universal credit claim, and if so, would there be better remaining on legacy benefits, etc. There are all sorts of issues that make things much more complex. Generally speaking, apart from people who wouldn't have been eligible for working tax credits, because of the hours they worked, it doesn't meet work pay as well as much as working with the previous system. Thank you. I think that brings us neatly on to Rob McGoins. I think when universal credit was announced, Cass supported the principle simplifying the benefit system, making work pay worthy objectives. In practice, I think there's done a lot of difficulties and a lot of challenges, both in the initial limited roll-out to single claimants, to non-complex claims, both in terms of design issues, administration and transitional issues. In the full-service areas, Muscleborough, Inverness, Kirkntillac and soon-to-be Inverclyde, they've ranged more with the full-service universal credits, so replacing all the six benefits that it replaced. I think certainly for it to live up to its principles, then there are a lot of issues that would need to be addressed, both with the elements of the design of the system, including some of the changes that have made since its announcement, which has undermined the principle of making work pay, and also in terms of how we transition over to the new system and how it's administered. Yes, I think it's maybe not my place to give an organisational view on the principles of universal credit, because in advocacy, we're there to give voice to the people that we work with, and they may have very different views, so I can't give you on the principles, but in practice, I agree with what's been said already. If it was meant to simplify the system, I don't think that is working at the moment. It's certainly much more complicated for people that we work with. I don't think we've seen even the full implications of it yet, but even to get a claim off the ground is much harder for people now. They have to gather a lot of complex and diffuse information to get a claim started, so you may have to go to a GP to get a fit note. You may also have to go to open a bank account, which is an open email address that you have to provide, as well as getting evidence of your tenancy from a landlord, so there's a lot of different places you have to go to get the information required even to get a claim off the ground. That has been done in a short time frame, so it has made the process of applying much more complicated than it used to be under legacy benefits. Mr Campbell, you mentioned the fact about obviously the advisers and the very complex situation previously, and now even more complex. Would you say that possibly we need more training, more advisers? There's not enough advisers in that respect. Would that help in any way, or would they still have to go through a pronounciating properly now with Kina, where they still have to go through the same issues as Kina is saying? The problem with CAB and a lot of voluntary organisations is that we only have, the advisers only turn up once a week, maybe once a one afternoon a week for instance. We do try to train people that you have to understand that they're at different times, they're giving their time anyway freely. We have had advisers in for training and so they're given more time to come to the training. The other point is that they're dealing with all issues. Unless their training is reinforced next few times they come in, then they're going to forget it because it's very complex. We do give them handouts and things, but even that it's very difficult for them to keep the facts in mind because they are very complex and very contradictory within themselves a lot of the time. Just to pick up on one more point before I go to another member who has a question. Kina, you mentioned that, obviously, even before you start the claim, you've got to get perhaps a letter from your doctor. You've got to open a bank account, that type of thing. Do you have evidence that doctors charge for those letters? How difficult it is, I know how difficult it is for people to open bank accounts that they're not familiar with it. So what is a rough timescale? I mean people falling through the gap in that respect? Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I meant to get a fit note from a doctor if they're applying for limited capacity for work, part of universal credit, so not a letter as such. People do fall through the gap. Some of the most vulnerable people that we've worked with have had to start the claim again because it lapses after seven days if you haven't had disappointment because of difficulties opening bank accounts. Not everyone has, for example, the photographic ID that you need to open a bank account, so it can be difficult, yes. Thank you so much. Some of the other members wanted to come in. Adam Tomkins, I think you wanted to come in. Just a question about this issue about confusion of eligibility. There's some evidence, including, I think, from Cass and also a child poverty action group, that there is some confusion about eligibility criteria. I wonder if these are, in your view, design problems with universal credit or if they're transition problems in terms of the transition from the legacy benefits to universal credit or both. I wonder what lessons there might be that we need to learn in terms of social security devolution that's coming during the course of this Parliament in terms of managing as smoothly as possible eligibility criteria. I'm very concerned by this evidence that matters have become more complex, matters have become unnecessarily complex. I think it seems to many of us that it is necessarily going to be the case that the devolution of some of our social security system is going to add complexity rather than diminish it. I wonder if you could reflect on that. I think certainly in terms of the live service rollout which is available everywhere in Scotland, there's a long list of people, it runs to about two pages of different criteria that would exclude people from this point. That's made it very difficult to assess whether someone might be eligible for universal credit or for one of the legacy benefits. In addition, a problem we found when people are trying to apply is that they'll go on to the website and it will say universal credit is available in your area. You can't claim job seek allowance through this, you should claim universal credit. You go on to the universal credit website and fall foul of one of the criteria. For instance, if they've got a partner, if they're pregnant, if they've got family serving in the armed forces or if they've got a claim open for something else, so they're challenging a decision, you're not eligible, you should claim job seekers allowance and back and forth. At the initial stage, even when people were to phone them up, it would be unclear and would take in some cases several phone calls to verify which of the benefits they're entitled to. The phone number, incidentally, not being a free phone number, can be quite costly. As you heard from Archie and Keener, the process of applying for universal credit will involve having ID, having an email address, being able to open a claim online, which a substantial proportion of people are unable to do. That's before the stage of a six-week gap before people receive any payment. I'm not sure to what extent, at least at the moment, that it's simplified the system to a great degree. Briefly, where did this insistence that applications must be made online come from? Are you aware of what level that was discussed? Clearly, that is a barrier for a great many people. It was a policy that the government had, I think, around 2012-2013. Since then, we've been particularly concerned about it. I think the thinking behind it was twofold. One was that it would be an administrative saving. I think it was around and said that people would, to get a job, they would need some form of digital skills, so it was helping people in that way. There's an universal credit that, in some ways, it's supposed to replicate work, which the issue, that's to be where there are people who will either not be able to access an internet connection at home or a decent connection, there's people who have potentially never used a computer in their lives. There's people who are with literacy and numeracy, which can make it difficult to claim online. The process of my benefits is also difficult. We surveyed clients on a couple of occasions, and the most recent one was the basic one in five. I can't use a computer at all. One in five have never used the internet. 59% couldn't make a claim for benefits online without help. 54% couldn't apply for a job online without help, so I think there's still a long way to go before you could move to an online-only system. I think there's probably some sort of cautionary tales in that for developing a new, devolved Scottish system in terms of how people are able to make a claim. There's a couple of things that Mr Tomkins has made in the full service areas. The criteria for being put on to universal credit basically are a new claim for a means-tested legacy benefit or a change of circumstances that would trigger a new claim for a legacy benefit. For instance, if you make a new claim for a change of circumstances for housing benefit, and for instance, if you move to a new house within the local authority area, that's a change of circumstances, but it's not a change of circumstances that would trigger a new claim, so you can remain on the legacy benefits. Whereas if you move to another local authority, assuming that the local authority is in the full service, that would trigger a new claim. There's all sorts of confusions about that aspect of it. The other thing that you were talking about is transitional payments. That's a big problem for people who are sick and disabled who are losing their premiums. What's happening, we are finding, and it's the number one issue, is that people are being called up for a work capability assessment. They're already receiving employment support allowance. They're called up to be reassessed. They're found fit for work, and they must then, if they want money during the mandatory reconsideration period at all, they must then make a claim for universal credit otherwise. They can't claim employment and support allowance until their appeal is lodged, which can be six weeks, two months. It can be as long as the DWP is deemed as necessary. Now, once they make a claim for universal credit, they remain on universal credit. There's no way back. Once they're on universal credit, if, for instance, they were also getting personal independence payment, if they were getting a daily living award in personal independence payment, they would be entitled to premiums, if they were the only adult in the house, and if there was nobody claiming carers allowance for them, for instance, which is a substantial amount. It's about 62 pounds a week. They lose that. They can never get it back because there's no legislation in place for transitional payments. The legislation was put back to 2018. It's my understanding that it's been put back again to 2019. It's only envisaged that it's actually claimants that are moved by the DWP from a legacy benefit on to universal credit that are going to get that transitional protection anyway, so you're going to get thousands upon thousands of claimants claiming disability benefits, sickness benefits, who are going to lose out substantially. Keener, you wanted to come in on the back of that. Ben, you wanted to come in on that question as well. Sorry, Keener. I just wanted to add something to what Archie was talking about, about confusions about what change of circumstances would trigger a claim for universal credit. It's certainly true that that is a big issue. I think possibly because universal credit was before services rolled out so quickly to Musclewood Job Centre, we didn't have that much warning that maybe other people who work in other agencies weren't wholly clear on the circumstances that would trigger a claim in universal credit, so I've certainly worked with people who've been advised that moving within the local authority would mean they had to claim UC when in fact they don't, and it's only because we were able to support them to go and get further advice on that that meant that that was clarified, so I think that although it is, I think there might be an opportunity to mitigate that somehow in future roll-outs if it were rolled out more slowly or if there were more training for staff that would be involved in advising customers. Thank you so much. Ben Macpherson, you wanted to come in on the back of that. Thank you. A couple of supplementaries on a few of the points raised there. First of all, Rob Gowns, you spoke a bit about the online service. I just wondered if you or the other panellists wanted to speak in more detail about whether there's any support provided to those who are having difficulty with the online service and your assessment of whether that's adequate or effective and whether the digital service is causing any distinctive problems with the ones that you've already mentioned. Just slightly to the side of that, but also into related and noted Archie Campbell and your written evidence, thanks very much for that. You raised the point about multiple and expensive phone calls, and I just wondered if you wanted to comment further on the problems around that and particularly in relation to the online service. I can imagine that there are certainly from constituents that I've spoken to, there's a frustration about the online service and then you don't have enough support with that, so you try to make a phone call and then that's prohibitive and difficult to make communication that way. Also, I thought a really interesting point that was just made by Cairie Reeves about rolling out too quickly the system. I wondered if any of the other panellists wanted to make any further comment on that because that's certainly a criticism that I've heard before. Well, in terms of the digital support that was provided, I know that it was particularly difficult in East Lothian when it first rolled out, and potentially that there's Archie to say more on that. What I think is we potentially, even though we knew it was going to be a problem, we actually underestimated how many people would need support and its ongoing support as well. If people with no digital skills at all, then they don't need to be taken right through it from setting up an email to make you a claim and to managing the claim as well, which is going to take on going effort. One of the initial problems was not so much that there wasn't access to the computers themselves, there's computers in libraries, there's computers in the job centre as well, it's just getting people who are able to be there to teach them. It's something that we've niggly raised with the DWP and that they're trying to put arrangements in place with local authorities as it rolls out, but it's going to be a very substantial challenge and the amount of work that would need to put in to make that happen. In terms of the distinctive features of the full service compared with the compared with the live service, I think there's probably two things. One is that generally the claimants are from more vulnerable people. The live service was to a very limited amount of people and I think that in terms of both the volume of inquiries and the complexity of them seems to have increased. One of the other features that's cropped up in addition to the one that's been flagged up around ESA reassessments is to do with people who are in work but are paid weekly. Because universal credit's assessed on a monthly basis, you'll sometimes come to months where there's five weeks in a month and someone would receive five weekly payments. What can happen is that that might push them over the earnings limit and they would not be entitled to any universal credit for that month. What was happening under the previous system was happening but at least people would, their universal credit claim would stay open for six months so if they're earning stock below that then it would back onto it. What's going to happen now is that the universal credit claim is closed and they have to reapply which is potentially causing even more difficulties. I don't know if it's something that's quite, that's quite a feature of, I think probably should have been built into the system from the police official figures that 49% of people in low paid work are paid more frequently than once a month. Our colleagues at Citizen Advice England Wales looked into, did some work with clients and found that 60% of them weren't paid monthly before they start on the universal credit claim so it's, I think that's probably one of the answers that will be faced to get a good integrated in and out of work system is dealing with the frequency of payments and that everybody isn't paid monthly. In terms of being rolled out too quickly it's obviously been something that's been in development for a long time. It's announced in 2010, 2011. The first claims were taken in towards the tail end of 2013 so it's been a long roll out already. I think particularly in the slow thing there wasn't a lot of time between the announcement of it and it going live. I understand that the D-development policy is now to give at least six months warning which I think is better and hopefully it's learning from the experience of Muscleborough where there was limited time for the body including this at the local job centre to get ready for it. I just wanted to ask if there were other two witnesses anything to add to that because obviously we've got two lots of witnesses. This first lot we finish at 10.15 and the next lot to come in so we've still got a number of questions to get through. Kina, did you have anything quickly to add to that before we move on to the next question? The situation is somewhat worse than Rob made out there. It's not just weekly payments as people paid four weekly but also hardly anybody's paid in the calendar month or paid in the last Thursday of the month or whatever. Now if their assessment period happens to be towards the end of the month even those people will get two paydays twice in a year or something like that which means the two paydays will be taken into account for that assessment period. They'll get little or no universal credit for that then the next they'll get no payday so they'll get full universal credit. Now that isn't such a problem at the moment because apart from budgeting, apart from the fact that people expect the payment, it's not such a problem because there are actually a few pennies better off if you take it over a two month period. However in April 2014 they're going to introduce another bit of legislation called the excess earnings legislation so that means anything you are over the threshold will be taken into account in the next assessment period. So that means that all those people that Rob has indicated are going to be worse off and that means everybody that's on universal credit. They've just not thought this through at all. I think that this is incompetence rather than something that's been done on purpose. The other thing I wanted to make clear is that they talk about an online system, a digital by default system. Many clients are confused about that. They hear that and quite rightly think it is a digital system. However it's not, it's a hybrid system. You have to make a phone call within seven days at the end of the claim otherwise your claims close down. The IT system so badly designed that we find that people, even people that are IT literate and highly intelligent don't notice the link to take you on to tell you what the phone number is or to even tell you that there is a phone call required. So it's a mess. Thank you Mr Campbell. Did you want to come in and key that one? I just want to add a few more thoughts about the issues with the digital by default nature of universal credit. Just to make sure everyone knows, we offer independent advocacy to people with mental health issues. The people we work with maybe some of them may have issues with memory or concentration or motivation, learning new tasks, things like that. Those things that can make using the system particularly difficult. People are, as I said earlier, expected to have an email address which is often set up just for the purposes of the claim and manage a password which is quite long. I think it's 12 or 16 digits. It's a long password and the difficulties of that mean that people then are relying on external services to manage that for them and help them to remember what their password is and things and that obviously isn't particularly secure for people's claims. Other thing to say is that you can ask to have communication be by text rather than email. You have to ask. It's not offered to you, but even then you're expected to update your journal and make changes online. Again, I think it just makes people more aligned on external services for support with that when they maybe have no experience of systems that you have to use, digital systems. It's one of the biggest barriers that people face and one of the biggest changes from legacy benefits. Thank you very much for that. Pauline McNeill. Thank you very much. Good morning. I'd like to put on record as everyone else has just how valuable your evidence has been and thank you for the bit and additions. Firstly, I wanted to ask you about the impact of universal credit payments not being made on time or some of the other issues you've already talked about. What is the impact that you're seeing on claimants of delays? I think that one of the main issues is debt and it's going to be a huge issue and then going forward. To be fair, East Lothian Council was very good about this at the beginning. The eligibility criteria for crisis grants extended that slightly so that people who could get a crisis grant within that six-week period, this was when it was introduced. They're tightening up again and reverting back to the original eligibility criteria, which is if you got access to, for instance, a benefit advance, you won't get a crisis grant, which was the original way that the legislation was supposed to work. That's purely because they've run out of cash. They have been very helpful in that regard. The problem with these benefits advances is that they can be quite substantial. You're talking about a six-week period now before people get paid and that's assuming things go according to plan. We find that clients are already in debt by the time they get their first payment and bearing in mind that these are subsistence payments. It's not a good situation. All it is is that we get into more and more and more debt. If you couple with that, the problems that clients are finding on a regular basis with getting their house and cost element paid and another witness will be able to tell you more about that from the council. Again, it's not joined up thinking. It's going to cause a big problem for social services across the board. I think that the people who make these decisions in the first place forget that benefits are a very efficient way of distributing money for poverty reasons. All the cuts that are being made to benefits in the end will end up spending more money across the board, patching up the problems that it causes. I think that there's evidence to suggest that. As I say, I don't think that they've thought this through at all. I think that this is politically driven and I think that it's not—I mean what Rob was saying as well about maybe lessons will be learned. I'm even skeptical about that because the system was implementing—full service was implemented down in Croydon, down in Sutton, long before it was implemented in Musselborough. We're seeing the same problems that they had being exported up here. They had a long time to sort these problems out and nothing was done. People who are in debt because the waiting on their benefits are arriving in that six-week period so they'll have interest on top of that payback. The maths are never really—no, no, no—or you're talking about—I'm talking about benefit advances. You've already touched on some of this already about claimants struggling to manage universal credit. I wanted you just to address that specifically. Just as a point of information, we put this point to Damian Green, the minister who came to the committee last week, that when the Parliament gets its new powers there's a desire to move to fortnightly payments. I made this point myself that it would be helpful to be able to do that because I know that people will manage their money better. The figures that you've given us is quite helpful but I don't think that's widely understood that it's still merely 50% of people in work get paid more regularly than once a month. Anyway, that's just a point of information but we'd be helpful if you could just outline to the committee how claimants might struggle with universal credits. Maybe Keener could tell you a bit about vulnerable clients because we've had—there's a certain crossover between the work that we do and the work with CAHPS. We have a lot of clients from CAHPS and we're finding, for instance, a lot of clients maybe just have post office accounts. They don't like people with post office accounts or they don't dislike people with post office accounts. They just don't like post office accounts because they can't impose direct debits etc on post office accounts, apparently. I think that's the reason behind that. Clients, you can certainly start a claim with a post office account but very quickly they're advised that they must set up a bank account, a proper bank account. Now, this is very easy for clients or relatively easy for clients who aren't vulnerable but for a lot of clients that we see a lot of clients, I'm sure that I'll tell you about them, they really struggle. Their life is fairly chaotic and they've lost all their ID. First of all, we have to get them ID, which starts with going to register how he's getting a birth certificate. For vulnerable clients it just isn't working at all. I'm sure that there's going to be winners in the universal credit lottery, there's going to be people, for instance, that are IT literate, that are on zero-hours contracts and that's going to be fantastic for them because in the past basically they had nothing apart from working tax credits, which was very risky if you were on a zero-hours contract because you were meant to try and average out what your earnings were over any period and you were prone to get massive overpayments etc etc. You might still get overpayments in this situation but they're going to be manageable. For that small group it's going to make a positive difference for every other group though. I can just see it as a way of getting into debt. There's so many waging getting into debt through universal credit. They like overpayments, any changes of circumstances that they take into account for the whole assessment period. If you don't remember to inform them within that assessment period they'll claw the money back. The problem versus legacy benefits is the clawback of the money that you owe to the DWP through overpayments is clawed back at a much higher rate. Sorry, can I ask? Obviously we have another panel and I'm going to make this one run on another 10 minutes and I'll add a 10 minutes to the next panel. We have read a written submission that was sent in and it's been very good as the member said. Is there anything else that might be Keenah or Rob wanted to say in regards to that or can we move on? I know that there's two members that wanted to come in on that particular question. I'll bring the two members in and then perhaps Rob and Keenah can perhaps. Did you want to come back into that question, George, in that particular issue? Well no. I thought it was. I know that Gordon wanted to come into that particular issue. Just listening to Archie Campbell's comments, interesting is what are your proposed solutions to the situation, in particular with regard to the six-week period, for example, when a claim is lodged? How could the system be altered to address the problems that you have commented on? For example, if someone doesn't have a bank account, if that has to be set up, questions of ID, administrative difficulties, what is it that you would propose to specifically address these difficulties and perhaps the other panel members may have suggestions themselves? I suppose to touch on the point that Pauline McNeill might have called in her question at the same time. In terms of the monthly payments, as she outlined, these are very difficult for people to manage. We've done a bit of work with trying to understand how clients budget at the moment. It works reasonably between people who budget weekly, budget fortnightly, budget monthly. What we've suggested is that, as part of the flexibilities that are being devolved, in addition to giving people a choice of fortnightly monthly payments, they can be given a choice of weekly payments. When they prefer to receive their benefits, 55% prefer weekly, only about 13% prefer monthly, and the remainder prefer fortnightly, so we think it's an option that should be offered. In terms of trying to address the six-week gap at the start, I think there's a couple of things you could do. Firstly, remove the seven waiting days at the start of a claim. This is basically when somebody's applied the first seven days of their claim, they will receive no payment for it at any point. What we'd also suggest is that people would get a single payment, potentially halfway through the waiting period, that was not repayable. As you mentioned, the advance payments at the moment would need to be repaid out of future universal credit payments, so it would be receiving reduced payments for a while. I think that if a payment was made during the period, it would help to dive people over and give them some money upfront when it's needed, rather than six weeks later when they've been through, when they may have accumulated quite a lot of debt. I'm just wondering how that addresses the initial problems if they don't have a bank account, or if they don't have ID. There's administrative things to be gone through. I appreciate that that will address things on-going, but perhaps what about that initial period? I think that in terms of making things like post-office card accounts, simple payments where needs be, some of the things you can get universal credit made into a post-office card account, but I'm not sure whether it's changed recently, but it used to be quite difficult to do. I think probably that it's obviously not a good thing if everybody had bank accounts, but the reality is that we're not there yet, so I think that making it as easy as possible for it to be paid in ways that suit people when they require it. Kino, did you want to come out on that particular one before we move on to the next question? Yeah, so I think the experience of people that certainly we've worked with, have had, has been that you can't progress with the claim until you've provided all the information, and if you don't provide it, then the claim can lapse and you'll have to start again. So I think maybe if there was more time or a way to carry on with the rest of the claim, even if some information was incomplete and provide that later, things like getting a bank account, it can take time if you haven't got the ID that you need, but you would then have no access to benefits in that time while you're doing that. So if there was somewhere around that, it might take the pressure off people's experience of how to do it all very quickly. Thank you very much, Ruth Maguire. Thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. Thanks for being here. We heard evidence from DWP about the delay of six weeks being to replicate work, and you've laid out in your written evidence some of the things that you've told us this morning, some of the issues that that causes. Can I just ask a quite specific question about the ease that your clients have in accessing advanced payments, which are meant to be there to cushion that weight a bit, and also any thoughts you have on what more could be done to support claimants waiting for their first payment? Well, I don't know. I think that the idea that the council had given out crisis loans was a good one. Unfortunately, the pot of money is finite, and so that was only able to be instigated up to a point. So now, for instance, they're falling back onto the original eligibility criteria, which is basically if you've got access to any money, then you have to use that. Certainly, the suggestion that Rob made would be welcome if, for instance, within that six-week period, if they insist on the six-week period in the first place, which is not a good idea, they should have access to grants rather than loans, things that are non-repayable. The DWP might well think that it's replicating the world of work. It's not replicating the world of work. This is subsistence money. It's basically anybody that falls below that subsistence is in real trouble. So it doesn't resemble the world of work at all. I know that there's people on very low wages, et cetera, et cetera, but I would suggest that, in the past, there have been some safety nets. I think that the safety nets are being taken away, things like housing benefit, for instance. Rob, did you finish, Mr Campbell? Yes, sure. Sorry. Rob, did you want to come in on that particular point, or Keener? I think that it is, across the country, that I've seen people who have built pay for utility bills, wanting to rent arrears, council tax arrears, to borrow from friends and family, to go to food banks, and to the Scottish Welfare Fund, or in some cases, Section 12 or 22, social work payments. The Scottish Welfare Fund is very helpful where it exists, but this has been mentioned. It's only a limited part of money, and I think the six-week wait for a universal credit payment is going to place massive pressure on the Scottish Welfare Fund budget across the country. Keener, did you want to come in on that one before Ruth perhaps wants to come back in it? Just to say that, as well, in people's experience, the benefit advances that are available are not proactively offered. You have to ring up and ask for it, so that can be a barrier as well. Do you want to come back to the other one? Slightly, convener, to alternative payment arrangements, just to ask your reflections on how that's currently working, and thinking about moving forward when those responsibilities come to us, how we can, what lessons we can learn from that. We've taken evidence previously about the difficulty that a single household payment can cause, particularly to families that are vulnerable to violence, if there's domestic abuse in the home. There are obviously other issues as well, so just to hear your reflections on that. That's a good point that you made about the domestic abuse. There are all sorts of issues around that, because basically now, if people have partners, they have to claim together. They can't complete the claim without the partner, and as you say, if there's partners abusive, that creates real problems. There are some safeguards in place that are not nearly good enough. There was another thing. What was the second part of the question again? I've actually forgotten. That was quite a long question, wasn't it? No, I was just to hear how you feel it's working now, because obviously there are flexibilities available now, and just what lessons we can learn as that responsibility comes to us, how we can plan to do it better. Yeah. It's basically reverting back to what Rob said, the payment arrangements on legacy benefits, if they could do it then, and they can surely do it now, like things like simple payments, things like more regular payment periods, etc. I'm sure it's not beyond them to be able to do that, even if they have to do that outwith the digital system. Sorry, can I just briefly, convener? Are your clients aware that those flexibilities exist in the system? How easy is it for them to request them? It's not very flexible at the moment. We've tried, for instance, for getting vulnerable claimants to get their housing cost element paid directly to the landlord, but they're not keen to do that at all, we find. At the moment, it's difficult, hopefully, with the powers that you're getting to tweak the universal credit a bit, then that will change, because that's a major one, I think. Thank you. George, do you want to come in on that particular issue there? Oh, another issue. Right, okay. George, do you want to come in on that? Yep, thank you, convener, and good morning. I would just like to ask about individuals' journeys through the process, in particular people with ill health and disabilities, because in Musselborough CAB's submission, you've got a section in that where you talk about the fact that clients that have a live medical 3 stating that the claimant is not fit for work to go through the system and they end up automatically being assigned to actually being fit for work and made to look for employment. How is this happening? We've basically got a work coach that's making that decision, and how are they medically qualified to make that decision? You know what is the point now? Very big problem. The situation in the past, the situation in the past was this. If somebody made a claim for employment and support allowance, then they went through an assessment period at which time it was taken as given that they were sick, and so their benefit was paid, an assessment rate, which was basically the same rate as jobseekers allowance until they were assessed. However, that doesn't happen now. What happens is that the claimant will make a claim for universal credit, they'll take up a live med 3, then they'll be put on the full conditionality group to begin with. Now, within that, the work coach has got lots of discretion to say what their claimant commitment should be. The problem there is that a lot of medical conditions people could come across as quite normal, or for instance maybe somebody is having a good day in that particular day when they've been assessed in quotation marks by the work coach. It's completely wrong. Unfortunately, what we're talking about here is a reserved benefit, so I realise that the Scottish Government is quite limited in what it can do. However, one of the things that we'd like to see is the reintroduction of an assessment period for people who present a med 3. It's just not right that the work coaches—it's not right for the work coach themselves—it must be very stressful for them to try and make a decision, and then maybe somewhere down the line something goes wrong that they didn't envisage. That's a big problem. The assessment period now is—they're talking about it—should be for a month and then they should be assessed. I think that's their intention. I think that, like ESA, which used to be 13 weeks, I think that's going to be pushed further and further back as they get busier. I've already extended it for 10 minutes and I'm going to do it for another five, so that's 15 minutes, and it gives us less time for the rest. I just wanted to bring Keenan in, and then Rob, if you want to come in, and then George, if you want to come back in that, and then Mark. Could possibly be, thank you. Just wanted to add a little bit about the climate commitment. When we've supported people at the climate commitment interviews, which is to agree on what the commitment will be on the job search, the starting point is often high. It's often the full kind of job search, and you then have to negotiate down to what is manageable for the person who is supporting. That's something that's often quite difficult for people to do, to ask for that to be lower. Obviously, you're applying for benefit and you feel maybe pressure to agree to what's required. It's difficult for people. Rob, did you want to come in quickly? Yes. Obviously, that's going to be a massive challenge as universal credit rolls out. Previously, there were two different benefits, job search allowance and employment support allowance. It's alluded to it, placed a lot of pressure on the work coach to be able to through with on what would actually be appropriate and suitable. The concern is that if somebody doesn't mention something and gets in appropriate conditions, or as Geena said, they should try and do things. Is that that can lead to people being sanctioned? You can say that some very vulnerable people can face sanctions. I think that sanctions is a huge one. George, do you want to come in? I want to bring in Mark. We do have another session anyway with other witnesses. Do you want to follow up on that one? Just quickly, when Archie brought up the idea of ESA, you mentioned earlier on, basically, if you go through the process and you end up in universal credits, there ain't no going back. That's quite a terrifying idea for someone who may have a long-term condition, as you say, on that day. Surely it's not just a case that anything that we do or the Scottish Government does is just thinking about the universal credit system, which is a whole system, a flawed system at the moment? The whole system is a flawed system, but there is something—the thing is that they are assessed, and it's similar to employment and support allowance in the long run, once they are assessed and found unfit for work. It's similar, but minus the premiums. Can we move on to the next question, basically? I think that you're all in agreement with that. Mark Griffin, please. I wanted to talk about universal credit and earnings, and I know that I've pushed for time. You've already covered issues around people who have paid weekly or fortnightly, or four weekly. I wonder if you had any comments on those who have declared themselves self-employed, how they manage their month-to-month earnings, and balancing that with what they claim for through universal credit. Also, the issue where the DWP define anyone who is self-employed as earning the national minimum wage for their declared hours—as we know, people who are self-employed could far less than the national minimum wage for working those hours than just any experience of any difficulties of people who have come to you who have declared themselves self-employed. That's not been a huge issue up till now. I think it's going to be more of an issue further down the line as people come off working tax credits as self-employed people come off working tax credits. I think it will be a huge issue, because if they've been on working tax credits, of course, for more than a year, if they've been self-employed for more than a year, they're automatically, right away, subject to the minimum income floor, which I think is what you're alluding to, where they're deemed to be making the national minimum wage. As I say, we've not seen a lot. There are exemptions for certain people. We've seen a couple of people that would have been subject to the minimum income floor, but they were, for instance, they had limited capability for work, for example. So, there's exemptions for them. So, we've not seen a lot of it. It's probably not seen enough people to comment on it in any meaningful way up till now, yeah. Keena or Rob, do you want to come in quickly on that particular one? Yeah, I think that's the kind of the particular difficulty that's encountering. I don't think it's happened to a great extent yet, but for instance, if someone was self-employed, had incurred expenses, but wasn't to receive payment until the next month, because of the way the system works, they won't be fully compensated within universal credit. In terms of people who are on, I suppose, contractual situations such as we've seen recently with the case of the Uber drivers, where they may be self-employed or not. In theory, universal credit works well for fluctuating hours. It doesn't mean they're, like we've seen before, with zero-hours contract workers, that they jump between, they're not able to either claim, obviously, because that's a working tax credit. One of the things that I think all of this will rely on is, is it working well with the HMRC real-time information system, so that they're getting full information about people being paid? I think there's an awful lot of expectation on people to nearly make all the changes within the system and declare all the changes in any way. I'm sorry, I need to draw to a close at this moment. We've extended for 15 minutes, but I hope that I can extend that to the next panel as well. Thank you all very, very much. I just, you know, spend a meeting, well, not even spend a meeting, just to change over of witnesses for one or two minutes. Can I thank you all very, very much? We could have went on all day. I must admit that it was excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your patience, and hopefully I'll add the extra 15 minutes on to your time as well. It's a very interesting subject, and everyone, obviously, is desperate to get their questions and answers in there as well. So thank you very, very much for coming along. Under our second panel of witnesses today are Sheila McCandy, benefits and welfare manager of Highland Council, and Reena Hunter, service manager of health and social care partnership in the Clyde Council, and John Cunningham, service manager of benefits and financial assessments in the East Lothian Council. To be fair to not just witnesses, but to obviously the members, I know that Gordon Lindhurst didn't get an opportunity, so Gordon, if you want to read off the questions. Thank you very much, convener. What I'm interested in is the question of conditionality and sanctions. Now, some have suggested that there shouldn't be sanctions in relation to universal credit or other benefits. What I'm interested in asking you about is, first of all, can you envisage a system that had no sanctions at all built into the system as a sort of end-stop, as it were, a final resort? Second, what would such a system look like? Can you give some pointers on how that would operate and what the framework would be, assuming that you think that such a system could be designed? I suppose that we relate sanctions with the employability aspect of what's been achieved here, because if you bring in a system that lets universal credit, you have to have some way of making sure that people adhere to the rules. Respect in coming from a housing benefit background, we're all about making sure that people are only claiming what they're due and sticking to the principles involved. I'm not entirely against a sanctions regime, per se. I think that it's how it's actually deployed and whether it's being administered in a mature way, I guess, is the point that I would make. I think that the point around sanctions and conditionality is that a number of clients and claimants don't actually understand them. They don't understand that they have been, that there are conditions attached to their various benefits. I think that that's the point that we really need to strengthen, is that they need to have a much better understanding of what they're signing up to as part of their climate commitment and the understanding that, if they don't happen to be able to meet the climate commitment, there's obviously repercussions for that. I think that we need to be really, really clear that clients are aware of exactly what they're signing up to. I think that that's a key point that they're not always completely aware of of what that is, and I think that that's the point that we need to focus on. I was just going to get the other witness who wanted to come in. I was just wanting to come in on what has just been said. Do you have any ideas about how that can be better put across to claimants? I think that one of the conversations that we've tried to have locally with the number of clients is particularly for those clients that have mental health issues. We have had some thoughts that the agreement should perhaps be a three-way agreement, so it should be discussed and designed between the client, between the work coach, and with, for example, their caseworker if they're a mental health client. That means that that client is then signing up to a commitment that they're able to do, that their caseworker, keyworker, is able to actually help them understand that, and also give agreement that that would be a useful agreement for that client, rather than the client agreeing to a commitment that actually, with their particular condition, they've got absolutely no way of maintaining that. The committee may be aware that DWP do not publish sanctions for universal credit. Certainly in Highland we haven't had a very bad experience of sanctions. Between April 15 and March 16 in Highland there was 136 sanctions levied for job seekers allowance. One of the things that we've done in Highland is that we've made sure that housing support providers are encouraged to attend the job centre with their clients when they're signing up to their claimant commitment, and that means that there's more viable claimant commitments that are being signed up to. We also ensure that our welfare support officers are present in the job centre at least one day a week, and that's also been very helpful in achieving more viable and more achievable commitments. Hopefully that means that there will be fewer sanctions. I would, however, agree that you do need some sort of mechanism to ensure that people understand what their commitment is to receive money from the state and how that would help them move into employment. Ben Macpherson, do you want to come back in in this particular moment? To ask a separate question, can you? Thanks all. From your mentioned housing perspective, I wondered if you could comment on whether there has been a change in the level of rent arrears as a result of universal credit since it was initiated. Perhaps you could comment further on that, perhaps numbers or specific reasoning and repercussions. Rent arrears in East Lothian, although it had started at a high point even prior to the live service, there had been major inroads made last year, even through the period that the live service was operating. The live service was small volumes, and you could say that it wasn't really the step change that didn't really happen until the full service came in. I think that it's been apparent from the first session as well. What we are seeing now since the full service is in operation in East Lothian is that 82 per cent of council tenants who are in receipt of universal credit are involved in some level of arrears. I don't have the figures in front of me, but there is a higher average arrear that is higher by about £300 over the typical arrear in East Lothian. It is about £857. I will come in from an ever-clive perspective. We do not have any of our own housing stocks, so we work closely with our local RSLs. I will give some information from one of our RSLs of 70 claims for UC and remind committee that we have not gone to full service yet. That happens in two weeks' time in Inverclyde. We have 69 per cent of those claimants who are in arrears with an approximate arrears of £700 per claimant. We have live service and full service. We have full service in Inverness and live service elsewhere. Main stream tenants, the average rent arrears is £627, which is the equivalent of about eight weeks rent arrears. That is 367 tenants. For temporary accommodation under live service, there are 12 tenants and 100 per cent of those are in arrears. Full service, the picture worsens. Main stream tenants, the average rent arrears is £962, which is the equivalent of 12 weeks rent. For temporary accommodation, 100 per cent of tenants are in arrears with a receipt of universal credit, and the average rent arrears is £1,108. Significant changes between live and full service. Rwyf yn fyddodd, rwyf yn fawr i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'r arrears across the geographical areas. I appreciate the different levels of service in different areas, but perhaps you could comment from your anecdotal experience, are there aspects of universal credit that in your view have been consequential and have been the main reasoning behind the changes that you have seen? I would say under universal credit the housing element is the greatest challenge for DWP. I think that understanding how housing works, how important the payment to the landlord is and on time, I think that that is a huge challenge for them to understand and to actually overcome. APAs have been helpful, the kind of payment arrangements have been helpful. We are actually a trusted partner under universal credit, which means when we apply for an APA, it is acted upon good faith and it is paid automatically to us. The problem with APAs is that when the landlord applies for an APA, they do not know whether or not it is going to be successful and there could be very many reasons why it is not successful. You have a landlord waiting for their rent and not knowing whether or not that rent is going to come. Tenants also, certainly in council housing, have not been used to paying rent. They may have been in that tendency for 20 years and have never had to pay rent because it has always been paid automatically for them. They are finding it really, really difficult to almost ring fence that rent element from their universal credit payment to ensure that it is there to pay their landlord. There is going to be a huge learning curve there for claimants in receipt of housing element under universal credit. Do you believe that a resumption of direct payment to landlords would make a meaningful and significant difference? I think that we have got the evidence under housing benefit that happens and we do not have the same issues. If you think back to local housing allowance, which was introduced in 2008 in the social sector, sorry, in private sector, it is the same principle. The payment goes directly to the claimant but we do not have the same issues that are presenting under universal credit because we have got a very robust, all local authorities have got a very robust safeguard process in place whereby the landlord can apply very early on if there is a history of rent or use or if the tenant is vulnerable, they can apply for a direct payment, so I think that the direct payment will be very helpful. There is one big difference between Highland and Nice loading at this point in time, as Sheila mentioned, trusted partnership, which is a status that through their lives service was offered to a few authorities. It is something that we are looking into just now because of latterly, potentially a possibility to become trusted partner. However, now that we have had experience in the full service, I think that our general view within the council is that appas are not necessarily the panacea either. At this point in time, the appa process is not very efficient, so it is a case if you are going to accelerate the number of appas that you can apply for through a more easier route, it is a case if you are not going to improve the process to make sure that that is delivering the goods at the end as well. That has been our response. We did have an opportunity to say to Neil Cooleyn, the director general of universal credit, who visited us in Musselborough. My chief executive and myself were able to say that, and he was quite surprised when he was taken aback when I had the response about direct payments not being a panacea, but making sure that under the current arrangements, it is often a recovery rate of 20 per cent that will take that money back off of people. We would say, well, that is not a substitute for an early intervention by the council in a more lenient arrangement that leaves more money going into the household. It is that kind of cultural thing that councils would want to be doing in the right thing in a holistic fashion to make sure that we are getting a proper arrangement put in place rather than something that is going to cause potentially more hardship or more debt further down the road. Did you want to come in, Ms Hunter, before somebody has passed one of the things that we are trying to bring in, is a mandatory meeting to discuss budgeting where an app has been put in place. Obviously, as part of live service and in full service, we have the personal budgeting support that I will take of that. As I am sure, you will be aware that live service has been very poor, but in terms of appers, we are trying to make sure that a mandatory meeting is put in place. George Adamson, do you want to come in in the back of that? Thank you, convener. Good morning. I would like to continue on the repercussions, not just from your already discussed housing point of view, but it is not the case that Archie Campbell from Musselburgh CAB brought up the idea that the universal crisis system itself is creating problems elsewhere. When there is a six-week wait, they have to go to another agency to try and find a way to get themselves through that six-week period. Is it not the case that they are presenting themselves to places like yourself to try and say, right away, that they have problems with their rent, that they have a financial problem, that they go to the council? Is it not the case that Archie Campbell is right in what he said, that we are shifting problems from the fact that they cannot get their money and they are presenting themselves to agencies like yourself? It is probably self-evident that Archie Coatwood, the fact that he is loathing council, is making full use of its Scottish welfare budget. Full use will not last to 31 March at this rate, so we are holding—you are just trying to make resources stretched to cover as many people as you can make it. It is an inevitable consequence, I would feel, of the waiting period. Whatever the reason for the additional processing time, and whether it is to match the world of work or just capacity within the service centres to match what had previously been maybe a better performance by local authorities on housing benefit performance, averaging 23 days in Scotland or thereabouts, it just strikes me that these are the key things that would make a difference, but you are right in your assessment that, in the absence of that, they are going to come to anywhere that they can get help in local authorities amongst all their places and food banks, and what have you, are the alternatives, I guess? I think already we are able to see the difference in terms of how Scottish welfare fund has been used, in terms of the crisis grants. We can see a difference in the amount that has been awarded from those clients that are on UC to those that are not on UC, and obviously being in mind at the moment that is only for a certain percentage universal credit within the number cloud is obviously for single people, etc. And obviously once we start moving into families, we expect the level of the award of crisis grants to rapidly increase. 3,000 claims made so far through universal credit, and half of those are still on universal credit in terms of the information that we can access, and a third of those are in some form of employment. And through that period in the last year, we have helped 830 people with online support and personal budgeting support, so that is a level of support just in terms of handholding to get through the universal claim process. Never mind all the other support services that are being accessed through the local authority. Thank you. Adam Tomkins, do you want to come in on the back of that particular one? No, you didn't. Alison Johnstone, do you want to come in on that one? Yeah, thank you, convener. I would just like to focus more on this move from live to full service, and probably to Mr Cunningham in the first instance. In the East Lothian Council submission, it is noted that previously agreed data sharing protocols no longer apply under UC full service, curtailing council officers' ability to make telephone inquiries about universal claimants entitlement. It has also been pointed out to me that implicit consent whereby welfare support officers can act on behalf of tenants who vast them no longer can if the claimant itself is not there. That is clearly going to severely curtail the number of people who can be helped and just make the process quite unwieldy. I am just wondering why some of the lessons that were learned with the live service have not been transferred across. Mr Cunningham. Yeah, this is a recent development, so it is hot of the press, as it was in the paper, but the thing is that we have long had a relationship with the DWP through our days of administering housing benefit, where we do have that access to benefit processing centres to be able to support the claimant in that way. It has been enshrined in a memorandum of understanding that we have held which covers at least five different disciplines that we look after. The ability to seek that information has made this decision and I can only assume that it has been taken from a security perspective in that the sensitivities around security within universal credit have been quite keen. The original full start of universal credit and the restart of universal credit are probably associated with the security of the scheme itself. I think that they are very wary of how they go about that. There are certain things that we have asked for, such as hypertext links into local authority application forms and stuff like that, from within the universal credit application. It is a firm no based on a security argument, and I can only assume that it is the specific consent aspect that I know in the future under data commissioners changes that are coming down the road. I think that specific consent is going to be something that is going to be a part of that. We will need to see how that develops, but it may be that they are attempting to future proof themselves, whatever it is hard to say, but for whatever reason we are going to walk foot from this meeting to another one where we will be speaking to members of the universal credit project team and explaining why, as partners, when delivering universal credit it feels a wee bit more difficult to be that type of operating that partnership when you have things curtailing you in that fashion. Just in terms of thinking through some of the implications of that as you have started to allude to, it makes it very difficult for welfare rights advice workers to act on behalf of their clients. Within Ember Clyde, an example has been over the last 12 months. We have a triage advice line. We have taken nearly 12,000 calls to that line for a variety of benefits over the last 12 months. Only 3,000 of them have resulted in face-to-face appointments because we have managed to act to triage the call to give advice to act on the clients behalf over the phone. Some of that will be in resolving directly with DWP. If that facility is no longer available, the impact then on having to have face-to-face appointments and also having to phone and be in contact with DWP when you have the client in the room with you, when we are starting to experience three hour callbacks from DWP, it makes it very difficult to administer an advice service. Maureen Watt-McKinnon, do you want to comment on that as well? Yes, there are three strands for us. The direct number for landlords has been removed, so landlords can no longer phone the service, under full service, the landlords can no longer phone the service centre. For our own staff within revenues administering council tax reduction, they can no longer phone the service centre, so we cannot get information. We have to go back to the claimant, so that is going to delay payment of council tax reduction. Then for the claimant themselves, which is the most important individual here, particularly the geography that we have in Highland at the moment, it is very convenient for a client to phone us and our welfare support team for us then to act on their behalf with the service centre. We will not be able to do that in the future. What that means is that we will either have to do a home visit, or they will have to travel to us. The travel distances in Highland, as you all are aware, are extreme. That is building delay into that claimant's universal credit claim, and that could impinge on them quite detrimentally, so that there are quite large ramifications from that. As Joan has said, Joan and I are just going to a meeting after this meeting to meet with universal credit officials, and we will be raising this in very strong terms. I am glad to hear that, Alison. Do you want to go back in and we have a number of the issue? No, it just seems to me that, without implicit consent, I am not entirely sure who we are making the service work for, because it certainly does not seem that the person at the heart of it is going to be assisted in any way. I am just very surprised that that has been suggested at all. It will be a key aspect for any of the devolved powers for the Scottish Government. It is probably worth also adding that there was no discussion with local authorities regarding this. It did come out of the blue that it really did, and just a week and a half ago was when we found out about it, just very quickly. This is an area in which the Scottish Parliament could decide that it wanted to do something entirely different. You still have to have the DWP's agreement on that, I would guess, and that is what you would be up against that. Thank you very much. A number of members want to come in, but we certainly had DWP officials meeting the other week there. We were asking about how they were working together with the Scottish Government officials and DWP. We did not get a proper answer, so we are falling that up, because we need to make sure that they work together so that no one falls through the net in that respect. Ruth Maguire, do you want to come in in the back of some of the questions in? Yes, convener. I am astounded by what I have just heard. I think that perhaps it is something that the committee might want to do further probing on. Hearing all the effort both in terms of resource and finance that is going in to keep people afloat in terms of the Scottish welfare fund and the resources that local authorities are putting in, obviously we are very grateful that those are going in, but I am just quite conscious that that is all action and money to just stand still to keep people afloat and what we could do with it if we did not have to do that. My actual question is actually on the back of what John Cunningham said about the alternative payment arrangements. I just wondered if we could tease that out a bit more. I was just interested in hearing more of your views about it. When you say that it is not a panacea, it is something that we have been looking at and that could impact positively on our constituents when we had control, if there were different ways that we could do things. I think that my own views are that the appas are a tool and a key tool. The processes around them have to be improved and will be improved, no doubt. It is very much, we should remember, the whole project, universal credit is on a test and learn basis and the whole agile design approach that is being made to it is that I am quite sure that some of us as early authorities might benefit from some other ones down the road when the processes may be a wee bit more refined, but it has just been pragmatic about our watchword with rent arrears has always been to find the early intervention. There is no substitute for that and that has caused us to commit a lot more resource to rent arrears management and it has worked, but it is now facing a pressure that is pushing against that. Although the appas will remain one of the key tools in the bag, I think that we have to have more tools in that bag to make sure that we can support folk as early as possible with arrangements that are manageable that do not cause other problems either. Did any other witnesses want to answer that? I know that you did touch on that previous answer, but any other witnesses want to comment on that before we move on. Emphasising the point about automating the appa process, so at the moment it is very administratively cumbersome for local authorities and I think that is what John is alluding to. If that process was automated in some way, appas would be very, very helpful. About 25 per cent of our UC cases are currently unappet in police in Highland. Gordon Lenton, did you want to come in on that particular point? I wanted to come back in on it just a point very briefly from a previous point about the rent arrears and if those in receipt of benefits are used to rental being paid directly around them having to handle the money, the purpose of changing the system, as I understand, is so that people have the opportunity to understand their own finances and come to understand how it all fits together to encourage them to take responsibility for things. However, I am just wanting to, from a practical point of view, obviously that has presented problems at the outset. If one is introducing a system like that, would it make more sense to introduce a system like that for people who are new to the benefits system? In fact, they are not used to it being done a different way, whereas trying to explain to or change people's thinking who are used to it being done a different way is more difficult than bringing completely new people into the system, which would be a more gradual change over. What are your thoughts on that? I am not. The other thing to bear in mind is that the universal credit payment is not aligned with the weekly rent liability, so certainly for social tenants the rents are due in the council housing, the rents are due on a weekly basis, but getting paid four-weekly, again paid monthly, so aligning it to the rent period frequency would also be helpful. In a sense, the live service possibly featured more new claimants, is that fair? In many ways, the live service maybe gave a run-in on that to an extent, but probably what that did not tease out is the problems that might have been later faced in the full service, where it is all types of households, many of whom have culturally relied on direct payments through housing benefits for a number of years. I have no doubt that that will be a feature of what we are contending with now, which is like undoing a 30-year culture or longer of housing benefit direct payment, rent rebates. Just to add to that, what you are alluding to is trying to make sure that we have more preventative and early intervention methods. We really want to try to improve our community's financial capability. That is a key area that we need to work through other areas, through schools, through education and so on, just around trying to expand and help people to understand the need for them to be able to budget and have a much more rounded approach to managing their finances. Just to come on to the back of that, it is an initiative that is taking place in East Lothian. East Lothian is not probably launched before we understood that full service was coming into the county, but the East Lothian Poverty Commission is a piece of work that is just due to the report out about now. The key thing there is just what Andrina has shared. There are many things about understanding the causes of poverty within the county, understanding what it looks like, and we see a lot of those things like education through schools. In particular, community resilience has been a key thing. I think that what we are finding is whether you are a CAB or a local council office or whatever, is that there are a number of areas that people will naturally turn to. It is by strengthening communities and expanding the areas that people can get good-quality advice from, because I think that that is something that is going to be needed. I know that Alison Johnstone wants to come back in on that. On the direct payments point, we want to empower those who can to take control of their own budgets and decide what should happen and when. Is it your view that there are adequate safeguards in place for those who are more vulnerable, who need help with budgeting? Obviously, if housing associations and so on do not get paid, that has an impact on housing availability for all. Through universal credit, there is a personal budgeting support bill in this part of the delivery agreement. The uptake of that within Impliclide has been replicated in other areas is incredibly poor. For example, today we have had 835 UC claims within Impliclide and there has been no uptake in any personal budgeting support by any client within that time period. Obviously, that is dealing with a different client group to what we will be moving into when we move into full service. I think that my view is that there will always be a need for enhanced support for the really vulnerable members of our community. Mr Candide, you wanted to come in on that particular point. Yes, I was just going to make the point about safeguards and how it would be really important, even for new claimants, that there are safeguards in the system, recognising that some people are vulnerable and not everybody has got excellent and good, robust money skills. In Highland, we have supported 225 individuals through the personal budgeting support process, but there is a disconnect between the APA process and the personal budgeting support process, and Adriana referred earlier to making it mandatory. If we could somehow make that, maybe not mandatory, but if we could insist that individuals who were going through an APA process were offered the choice of PBS as an automatic, not as something that somebody might remember, I think that that would help to support people better than we are at the moment. Adam Tomkin, did you want to come in? Oh, okay, that's very good. I asked a question at the very beginning, and I'll ask it just now off you. I think that most people agree with the principles of universal credit, but whether you feel in practice universal credit is a positive change for claimants. I'll just throw it open to yourself, and certainly we've heard lots of different evidence here. I'd just like to have your thoughts on it. Yes or no, because it's a way to vice. I'll give confidence A. I think that, like the first session, I was heard that for a number of people who can deal with the system with either the technology or transiting through universal credit as an interim piece of their life, you know, that it will benefit a lot of people in that respect, and depending on their employment situations as well with the zero-time contracts, what have you. I have to say that a lot of the people that we are concerned with and the people that we deal with are often at the end that are struggling with it, and it has to support all, I guess, is the key. So, yes, the principles, basic principles, they can understand a lot of them and they're to be applauded, but in execution, I think, is the key. It has to have safeguards within it to support vulnerable people. Certainly what we're finding on the ground is for those people who, as John says, have the ability to conduct their business electronically, they can manage universal credit and it works well for them, where they've got variable air contracts in particular. What it's not working is where there's a housing element added into that mix. The housing element really is the challenge in universal credit. That's what we're finding on the ground and of course for vulnerable individuals, because under live service it was very managed, it was those newly unemployed, so people who had been in employment maybe have got more IT skills. Now that we're open under full service, there's real vulnerabilities coming through in terms of numeracy skills, literacy skills, confidence skills, connectivity challenges. You can't get online everywhere in Highland and that needs to be recognised within the system. I would like to comment on my colleagues' comments. I think that, in principle, we would agree universal credit was set up for the right reasons. I think that it is, as John said, the execution of it, the delivery of it and in terms of our really vulnerable clients. We know that a lot of people don't turn for help until the hit crisis point and I think that that's really one of the main issues. Would you say that perhaps this is probably just the last question that we've went on for extra 10 or 15 minutes? People have asked that it be stalled, halted, etc, until all of these issues are resolved. Will those issues ever be resolved when you've got the housing benefit part of it there as well? Would you say that it should be halted or stalled with the difficulties that are coming forward? I won't hold you to it, obviously, but from your professional experience. From us, with two weeks away from universal credit, full service roll-out, I think that if any of us could hit the pause button within Emberklyde at this point in time, we probably would ask to do so. We're learning as we've gone on, we've listened to our colleagues and the issues that they are having and we're trying to plan. We have a very good delivery plan in place for Emberklyde, however, all the problems that have already been allowed to us are there, so a pause button at this point would be quite nice. As I can say, after 29 years of essentially being a DWP agent within a local authority delivering housing benefit, I understand how these things happen. When DWP do introduce things, we've rolled to many changes that are being brought about by the DWP, so I suppose that we are pre-wired to make it happen. However, the roll-out could be something that Nick Mick could look at, particularly if there are things that are so obviously causing other forms of hardship and potentially just a look at the client groups that are being involved in it. I would echo that in terms of a pause. I think that lessons need to be learned. I think that DWP, they are listening, but they're just not able to keep a pace off their roll-out plans, which is published and learning, and then executing those in terms of improving their software. One of the other challenges is that, as local authorities, we're feeding in continuous improvement suggestions, we get no feedback from those suggestions, we don't know what the next authority has put in, so we don't have an overview as a local authority as to what the national picture looks like. DWP has got an overview of that, but it would be really helpful if they could share that with local authorities and other partners, because we could help to make that a success. I think that, eventually, it could be successful, but there are a lot of lessons to be learned and a lot of areas that can be improved significantly. Thank you very much, and I will certainly take that point up, because that did come forward from the trade unions and the workers who are pushing this fork, not pushing it, but having to extrapolate various pieces and deliver it as well. That's something that we will certainly take up with DWP and perhaps write a letter or speak to them in that respect. I just thank you so much for your evidence session. It's been excellent. I think that we've all certainly learned a lot and the previous witnesses also. I formally close this meeting and we'll go into private session.