 Gwelyn Hart Getrick. Welcome to 14th meeting of The Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have received apologies from Natalie Dawn, Miles Bregzend and Emma Roddick. Evelyn Tweed is attending this morning as Emma is substituted. Our first item of business is a decision to take item 3 in Private. Are we all agreed? Yes. We now turn to our next item of business, which is an evidence session for our inquiry into low package, income and debt problems. Inぼ으em na fymgol, we met with a group of people who are experiencing problem debt… …what they told us during that meeting has formed the basis of this inquiry, and we are now delving further into the issues raised. We thank the.... … الذן y gwir i werthiau yr achił a'r cy研 ond we look forward to continuing to engage with them throughout this work. I would also like to put on my record with my thanks to everyone who took time to respond to these committee's call for written views. We really do appreciate the work that goes into those submissions. Felly, we will hear from two panels. Firstly, we will take evidence from front-line advisers who work directly with people experiencing debt problems. I welcome to the meeting Alan Macintosh, approved money adviser with advice talks limited. Charlene Kane, arm services advice project regional support officer with Jenny and Denipis, citizen advice bureau. Matthew Irvin, money adviser, advice direct Scotland. Jim McPate, debt adviser with North Lanarkshire, council. A few housekeeping points just before we kick off. I know for some of you this was maybe the first time that you've given evidence. Others maybe not. But as you're all remote, if you could keep an eye on the chat bar, on your blue jeans screen, if you want to come in on a point, please type an R in there for me. I will be keeping my eye on that channel. Also, we do have about an hour this morning for this session. Don't feel as if you have to answer every single question, but if you do have something that you want us to hear, please type an R in the chat box. Please give our broadcasting colleagues a wee second to turn your microphone on before you start to speak. I'm going to start us off this morning. I'm going to ask each of you in turn if you can advise us just about how long you've been doing this type of work, how long you've been working as a debt adviser and briefly what your biggest concerns are for the next 12 months. I'll start with the order that I can see you on the screen. So I'll start with Alan, then Sharlene, Jim and then Matthew. Over to you, Alan. Hi, sorry. My name is Alan McClush. I've been working as a debt adviser for over 20 years now in various roles as a money adviser, a trainer, a policy officer. I've also been a senior money adviser and at the moment I'm also the service manager for South Lanarkshire Council's Money Matters Advice Service, but also as I'm here today, I'm the managing director of my own company, which provides specialist training to money advisers and also is approved for the debt arrangement scheme. My biggest concern, probably over the next 12 months, is ultimately that the cost of living crisis that we're currently facing, especially community Covid, is going to really have quite a severe impact on a lot of people's and a lot of families about it to survive. I would say that the resilience was quite low, financial resilience was quite low before the Covid crisis. It also became a lot lower as a result of the Covid crisis. Unfortunately, as we go into this cost of living crisis, as we come out of the Covid crisis, I just think that there's very little resilience left on most people. People are going to be left with really harsh decisions to make between whether they're paying their rent, buying food, paying for travel. People's finances have changed a lot over the past 20 years since I started Money Advice, so people are more and more dependent now on credit. A lot of those decisions have to make will eventually lead to them having problem debts. Thank you very much for that, Alan. Can we now hear from Charlene? Good morning. I have been working with CAHPS for seven years now, and my Money Advice role only started around three years ago. I have then advanced into the armed services advice project, however I remain an accredited money adviser because part of our funding is to give free money advice to veterans. I have to agree with everything Alan just said. Over the past three years, I have seen a significant change in the cost of living for every single person. People are now choosing between eating and heating. It's really very difficult to help people in that situation because there is no resilience. There is no disposable income anywhere. We are now relying on charities to help those people out, whether that be food banks, staff, a poppy Scotland or various other charities in the community. I don't know how sustainable that will be for those charities going forward. Thank you very much for that, Charlene. Can we now hear from Jim? Good morning, everybody. My name is Jim McPake. I am currently employed as a debt advisor with North Lanarkshire Council. I have been involved in debt advice in various guises for somewhere between 23 and 24 years. Primarily through the local authority, I have also set up and managed my own non-fee charging debt advice company. I was senior manager within the private sector of a non-fee charging debt advice company. My experiences are similar to what has already been mentioned by Alan and Charlene. I have seen a marked change in the type of client that we are being involved with. I am seeing a change in the length of time that it takes to find resolution for clients. My biggest concern moving forward is the same as what has already been mentioned. I hear a lot of sound bites and eat their heat. I get said an awful lot on the television. I am hoping that something will happen very quickly to try to alleviate the problem that that genuinely represents. I have concerns about the impact of the financial crisis as we move forward, not just financially on people but on people's mental health and wellbeing. I have concerns about the way that we are set up to try to deal with the problem that is growing exponentially on an almost daily or weekly basis. My name is Matthew Irvine. I have been working in the care debt sector and doing money advice for around the last two years. Previous to that, I have done the other side of it. I have dealt with debt for maybe around three or four years now. The main concern that the previous panelist has already brought up is the rising living costs and so on, as well as the rising number of people who are seeking debt advice. At the moment, we are getting quite a lot through who are struggling with what has already been mentioned with their income. Just trying to pay their day-to-day bills has been a real concern at the moment. Thank you very much to everybody for helping to set the scene this morning. I think that all of us do recognise the resilience issue. I think that when we think about the level of income for people who are really on the margins, there is no space. They do not have any resilience left. When we think about debt solutions, it is sometimes difficult to find out that there is no disposable income for people. Even if they end up in that bankruptcy situation, if they are in that situation due to essentials, that is something that is going to happen again straight afterwards. We are absolutely alive to that in this committee. We are going to go into questions from members now. On our first theme, which is roundabout the delivery of money advice services, I will bring my colleague Paul McClellan in first, followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy. Over to you, Paul. Thank you, convener. Can I just refer to my register of interest? I am a serving councillor and anesleding councillor for one more week. Fifteen years of experience in anesleding councillor. I think that I have seen the problem over the last year or so. It has become much more than it has been in that time before. A couple of questions for me and a big into specifics. At the moment, is your service able to meet the current demand for money advice? Where do you see this going from the pandemic, which is obviously two years in? Where do we go now with the cost living crisis? It is more specific questions around local delivery, but these are the first questions just on where do you see things now, where do you see the services being delivered in the future? I will probably go to yourself first of all, Alan, if that is okay. I have got two roles that I can speak about that I am currently involved in. In terms of my website, I am seeing a rise in a number of people coming online to get advice. A lot is relating to diligence like bank arrestments, earners arrestments. You do see a lot of people coming on for that. That has increased over the past 12 months. For a while, I did have a web chat on it. What surprised me quite a lot about that was the amount of people that we contacted me after 10 o'clock. Almost nobody contacted me during the day, but most people would contact me after 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 o'clock at night. Sometimes, people would contact me even on the web chat early hours in the morning. What it showed me was that people were worrying, or, alternatively, first thing in the morning, like 6 or 7 in the morning. It was worrying people that I was not sleeping because of it. We have always said that in my advice, but that was proof to me that that was happening, or people were waiting until they were getting their kids down and they were going online and trying to find things. It shows to me that people are definitely searching for solutions. It is something that is worrying people and the thing that I find quite disturbing sometimes is times that people are trying to contact you or sending you emails to demonstrate that it might affect their mental health or that they are sleeping. In terms of local delivery, I think that everybody in their cross-advis sector is working south Lanarkshire as well. We have all went from having almost a default position of doing face-to-face over the past couple of years, prior to south Lanarkshire, and it is true for that as well. We have went from a default position of doing face-to-face to having to find other ways to deliver services. Through the Covid period, we did go down to a better level because of the order forbearance that no creditors were shown to people and the fact that lockdown affected their ability to collect it. Since we have come out of that, we have started to see a really sharp increase, and we have really started to see that since mid-October. There is no just, obviously, that the services that are involved in our work closely with the other local citizens advice bureaus in the south Lanarkshire area, and what they are saying is exactly the same. We have seen a massive increase in the number of people who contact us for newtility, such as gas and electricity. Once the ABA was speaking to yesterday in Coysdale, they were saying that it went from maybe 3 to 4 per cent up to 15 per cent of their workload. We are now in what we are also seeing. I do not want to take up too much of your time, because I know that there are other people who want to speak, but the other thing that we are seeing—and I think that my other colleagues will hopefully agree with us—a sharp increase in the amount of diligence that has been done is almost as if the sheriff officers are making up for lost time. I would not surprise me when the diligence statistics have released if the numbers are higher than they were in 2019 when they were eventually reported. Alan, thank you for that. If you want to come in next, I mean the same question. I want to echo everything Alan said first of all again. I feel like I will just echo Alan O'Day today, however. However, what I need you to understand for us as well is that we are seeing people come to us before they are in debt. They realise that there is a problem, and they realise that they need to budget better, cut back where they can, which is not always possible. They are coming to us earlier. That leaves us in a situation in which we may miss people who have an emergency debt that has to be dealt with—a bank arrestment, for example. We are trying to prioritise people in what their needs are. It is becoming increasingly difficult for one person as a money adviser in the bureau. I do not know what the answer is to it, rather than, of course, more funding for every money advice sector. Our money advisers are burnt out. That includes myself. We are burnt out by dealing with creditors on a daily basis who do not understand the impact of what we are seeing here in black and white. Throughout Covid, we had to adapt to deliver a service that was remote, but we never stopped giving face-to-face advice. We fitted screens in our bureau, we wore PPE, and every single person who could not access a statutory service was being directed to us because we were open. That was what was happening. We thought that that would fall away when things started to come back to normal, but, like I said, we are seeing more and more people that are accessing the service much more quickly, which is great because I believe that immigration prevention is better than cure. However, again, it is not sustainable for one or two members of staff. This is a small bureau and a small area that we cover, but probably about 75 per cent of our cases are all dead. I cannot hear the transfer, but I apologise. To take the questions as they came, working for North Lanarkshire Council, I have got the advantage of being in a bigger organisation, the disadvantage of covering a bigger area with a bigger populace. Is the system that I work in robust enough to deal with the demand that is coming in at the moment? We are probably firefighting just now and hanging on with our fingernails. Advisors are feeling the effect of the type of cases that we are being presented with. They are coming in in greater numbers. We have had a 42 per cent increase since the start of the year in the feralge coming into our service. We do not have increased staff. Hope with that, if anything, the staff numbers are down because of the way that we have had to realign the service, because of staff moving on, because of on-going Covid absences, which everyone is having to deal with. The type of cases that we are seeing is alarming now. Historically, over the many years I have done debt and money advice, we would easily have said credit cards and perhaps online loans would have been a very demanding area. Our biggest demanding area now are rent, council tax and fuel costs. The area is that individuals must pay. We are finding ourselves probably similar to what Charmaine said about doing much more budgeting advice than we ever did before. It is very difficult to try and help someone to budget when they have no money effectively to budget with. They have no disposable income for us to deal with. As a result of that, we are finding ourselves perhaps handholding clients more than we ever did. We are finding clients cases being open for longer periods of time, as we tried desperately to find a solution. We probably say prayers at night, hoping that a solution for those individuals is further down the line, not to be sure whether that is possible and practical. I similarly to Charmaine have concerns about burnout within the actual delivery of the service itself. I think that the service has to be more robust. I think that we will probably come on to that later within the hour. Overall, we have to adapt to the way that the service is delivered. Face-to-face is something that we quite simply cannot cope with any more because of the numbers. We have also operated a system of screens for individuals to contact. There is not so much within GUROS but on people's own tablets and on phones. The take-up on it has been minimal for a number of reasons, which we will probably come on to later within the hour. I know that concerns and changes are just no more dealing with it just now, but I am frightened about what is coming in the very near months ahead. I think that I will mention the same thing that you mentioned about fuel poverty. There are other advice services out there that specifically target advice for fuel poverty. Is there an element of duplication there? Is there an element of requiring more training in that area? As you said, some of the cases and some of the increases that we have seen and there is more to come in October. I think that the latest hit in April is still to hit us when people start to get bills this month. What are your thoughts on that, particularly about the fuel poverty issue? Is there more training required within your team in general? Is there more coordination required between yourselves and energy efficiency? Charities, if you like to look at that. Training is always welcome. Whether we are receiving it or whether we are delivering it, I think that it is a good thing for everybody moving forward. I think that collaborative working has got to be the way forward, not just in the advice, but in all walks of life. Within the council, we are now working much more closely with Home Energy Scotland, for example, on a number of charitable organisations. We are trying desperately to engage with fuel companies on more than an individual basis. It is a very difficult thing to get fuel companies to talk to you about individual's debts. It is a great challenge for us, perhaps education within that side of the sector, to let them know what is outside of their own service delivery and to see the pressures that we are under to help people. The quick answer is yes, more collaborative work and more training and a bigger spread of knowledge base would be welcome. No, Jim, thank you for that. I think that that is really important my way for the committee to take away, is how we deal with energy companies and how the energy companies deal with debt advice services and that regard. That is maybe something that the committee will pick up. I will discuss that with my colleagues, but I thank you for that. Matthew, again, it is the same thing. If it is fuel poverty and, again, thinking about the local aspect, I think that I have picked up on that as well. Yes. Obviously, my previous colleagues have already explained everything that I was probably going to explain as well, so they went around that. We are more of a national service, so we deliver across the full of Scotland digitally. Now, we are seeing a huge geographical spread of people seeking debt advice, and it is more coming from rural areas. It is going up in urban centres for us and the rising numbers are not really sustainable, so we are just managing at the moment. Obviously, we are expecting a bigger increase over the next 12 months. Keter is touching on what was mentioned to do with the fuel poverty. We have our own energy team, so we have energyadvice.scot, as well as we do a home heating grant, which in the last 12 months we delivered £4 million of funding to people in fuel poverty. I mentioned that there is a lot of a crossover between customers who have contacted us to seek debt advice. Those who are calling us to get a real sorted for the fuel are then coming over to our debt team. At that point, we are certain that there may be a council tax debt and other kinds of debt as well. At the moment, we are hanging on, but we do see an increasing over the next 12 months, definitely. Thank you very much for that. I will now move to Pam Duncan Glancy, who will be followed by Evelyn Pam. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. Thank you for all the information that you have shared in advance and for the work that you are doing this year. I hear how hard that has been. It is really hard to hear some of what you are saying. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to deliver the service that you have had to deliver over the past year. Thank you for doing it. I am genuinely terrified for people just now. I do not know how they are going to meet their bills. I do not know how they are going to pay for food or basics, as you have said. We really need to do much more than we already are. I want to ask a question on the support that your organisations get and need. You have touched a little bit on the financial pressures that your organisations have and what they mean, but could you say a little bit more about the pressures that you are under and whether or not the Government has been in touch with you to talk about how to manage the demand that is going forward? If that could be Sharlene and Matthew, you could answer that. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. In terms of our bureau, like every other bureau, we have to apply for funding. You can imagine right now the amount of organisations that are applying for the same funding. I like to think that our manager does a great job when making these applications, but there are far too many people who need it. Maybe there are around 150 or 200 organisations that are applying for the funding, so it falls on the Scottish Government to say, what can we do? What can we fund? We will still remain an impartial service. There have been sections of funding from the Scottish Government to our bureau, and we have always remained impartial anyway. In order for this to work for the people, we need to see much more funding coming to bureaus and other organisations. I am sorry, it sounds very curt, but there is no other solution, I am afraid. Did you direct it to Matthew? That's fine, can you hear me okay? So, similar to what Sharlene said, we are in the exact same boat. When it comes to funding with the Scottish Government, it is very competitive, it is very cutthroat and what we can get. There is only so much funding available to all these different providers who give support to people in need of it. I would definitely say that the funding is absolutely needed for us to continue the work that we do here, and to continue to take on more clients to help them as well as providing its impartial service that we do. The kind of funding is definitely needed, I would say. Thank you for that. I visited one of the citizens of ice bureaus in Canvass Lang and they were just rushed off their feet. I couldn't believe the amount of work that they were having to do. I should put on record my thanks to the work that the bureaus there have done across the country. What is the impact? Can you say a little bit more about the impact of the way that you are having to deal with so much demand and the fact that I was really stuck by the fact that, I think that it was Jim who said this, it is not credit that you are working with now, it is literally can you pay your bills, can you pay your rent, it is stuff that they have to pay. Could you give us a bit of an understanding of the impact that that is having on the advisers? Who do you want to direct that to? Maybe Jim and Charlene, if that is okay? Jim? Yeah, no problem. Thank you very much, Pam, for directing this way. The impact is relatively straightforward. We have to prioritise what people have to pay and we are working on people's budgets, which in some instances are basically non-existent. If we are prioritising keeping people in their home, they have to pay their rent, they have to pay their council tax, they have to heat the home, they have to light the home. By the time we prioritise those outgoings, there is no money left to deal with what we would call mainline credit. There is no money left for individuals to pay credit cards and pay bank loans and all the other things that they have to pay because there is no money left for people to buy the level of food that they would previously have bought. The numbers of people that are being forced to go down charitable routes is marked to say the least. It is highlighted daily in the press. The impact is straightforward. We are firefighting. We cannot help people to pay traditional debts because we are trying to advise people how to retain their house and how to put food in their mouth. It is that alarming. On your question earlier about the reverse of the service and the funding of the service, the council operates similarly to the bureau in many ways. We provide a service similar to that. In my area, we provide services at a different level, so there are a lot of referrals into local authority because it is a different level of debt advice that we have accreditation in the national standards to provide. However, we are as busy and as impartial as elsewhere, but we have the additional problem that the funding to the councils is a bigger picture for us in where but a small fish within the council's bigger budget. We are not a mandatory service, which I think is alarming. It has been alarming for more than 10 years. It is particularly alarming now. There are areas within the council that simply must be funded. We do not have that protection and because we do not have that protection, we have an alarming number of staff who are term-funded, project-funded and funded to deal with specific challenges, which limits the number of staff who can deal with the bigger picture, but it also prevents forward planning. We cannot forward plan to deliver a service. We do not know what the staffing levels are. We have no budget whatsoever to be a proactive service. We are a reactive service, which is a big, big fear. We are not impacting on people's lives the way that we should by going out in advance to help them because we do not have the funding to market ourselves and we do not have the bodies to support it. Can we now hear from Charlene on that as well, please? I echo again everything that Jim has said there. Our funding lasts for one year. That means that you have 12 months to help as many people as possible, whilst hanging over your head as whether you have a job at the end of this year. The staff in the bureau have the same anxieties as what our clients do. We also go to bed worrying at night, as Arlan was saying. We will be worried as there is a solution for this client. Is that family going to be hungry? Is there anything else that I can do? Is there somebody else who can support them? I have those anxieties every night for my clients. It is not good to take your job home, but people need to understand that, when I say that the money advisers are burned out, they really are burned out, they are just keeping their heads above water right now. That will impact on the bureau because, like every organisation, when the staff are burned out, they have to take time off. It is getting close to our staff having to take sick leave now because of the impact of the people coming in. It is a little support that is available. We are literally begging people now for help. I want to share a story with you that has just happened to me in the past few days. I had a veteran referred to me via Safa because Safa was at a loss of what to do with him. He came to me because he needs an operation to remove cancer from his esophagus. However, he lost his job in March and he is due to start a new one in May. Because of his mortgage, he cannot afford not to work, so he has put off having the operation until he has been in that job for six months and he can earn himself some sick pay. That is the kind of situations that we are dealing with every single day. It is hard for it not to impact us mentally. We are overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed, because there are no solutions. I went to everyone begging for help for this guy, saying that this is the difference between him possibly having a secondary cancer or not. Now we are approaching the Royal Navy because that is where he served to say, please, is there anything that you can help with in order that this guy can have the operation? He is burnt to me. It is okay, Sharlene. I have life insurance. My wife will be okay. I did not have the heart to tell him that there is a possibility that his life insurance is not paying out if he has refused treatment. That is the horrific situations that we are dealing with day in and day out. It is not a sob story. That is the true reality of what our advisors will have to deal with and people need to understand the impact that has on us. Thank you for sharing that, Sharlene. That was really powerful for us to hear this morning. As a former women's aid worker who ended up experiencing burnout myself, because you do carry everybody that you work with, you carry them with you, I fully understand how that is going to be affecting yourself. Pam, do you have any further questions at this point? No, just to say thank you. I will now move on to a question from my colleague Evelyn Tweed. He will be followed by Demi Balfour. Good morning, panel, and thank you for sharing those quite difficult personal stories with us about your clients. I am finding what you have said quite difficult to deal with, but I will move on. Thank you for all that you are doing. You are doing an amazing job. Can you share with us what additional barriers people with mental health issues face, and what can you do? How do you support people with mental health issues? If I could maybe ask Sharlene first, and if anyone else wants to come in. I am a mental health first-aider. I took that additional training on, because you can imagine as a money adviser, most people will be experiencing ill mental health. Maybe not initially, but because of debt. There is always that anxiety, stress and depression for the situation therein. I often rely on GP surgeries or CPNs if available to complete a debt mental health evidence form, and that allows us to go back to the creditor and say, listen, this is the situation with this client. They were perfectly fine up until Covid, now they are agoraphobic, unable to work, unable to leave their own home. You are phoning them five times a day to ask for £250 for a debt. Five times a day, I am not exaggerating. We just really need you to stop, because we have already went through the moratorium phase, so that has run out. We are not allowed to revisit that again, unlike when Covid was here. We were allowed to revisit it. We are then relying on a GP surgery or a CPN, a health professional to complete a debt mental health evidence form, to take back to creditors and say, this is the situation with my patient. However, they do not understand what we need to say, so how will this impact on them? Usually we just get them completing the first page to say what the diagnosis is and who they are, which is an area of difficulty, but we need to work in partnership with every organisation. We cannot then go back to a GP or a health professional and say, I actually need much more from you, especially when we are asking them to do it free of charge. It is a chargeable application here in Scotland, but it is not in England. I think that that has to be closely looked at as well, because that becomes a barrier. If somebody has no disposable income, how can they pay £25 for a GP to complete a form? We have come across GPs who refuse to complete it completely, or they say, I will do it for £25. The GPs have worked as well. You cannot blame them. If I was to send a debt mental health evidence form for every client that I have and there are 89 of them currently, they would not really get any work done. You cannot blame them, but I think that having someone who has rolled that up is to go through a patient records and complete that, even if they train someone within the GP surgery and definitely take away the cost for completion, because, as I said, you do not have to pay in England. I would like to put this out to all the panel, because you have all been given as examples of how your job is so difficult just now and the issues that you are dealing with. It is a very open question, but what do you want us to look at in terms of changes to better support your clients? That can be to the law, to processes, procedures, anything that you think we should consider to help if we can. Sorry, I missed and my screen did not refresh for some reason. I have Alan that wants to come in, if that is okay. I want to take this opportunity. There are two specific changes that I think that the Parliament could make. They could make a real significant difference to people's lives in Scotland. The first of these relates to what we call bank arrestments or the legal names and action of the arrestment of first coming in Scotland. In 2010, there was about 111,000 days each year in Scotland. However, in 2019, there was about 218,000, so there was almost a massive increase over a period of 10 years. The way that bank arrestment basically works is that it arrests all the money in your bank account, effectively, but leaving you only what is called a protected minimum balance, which is currently about £566. The rest of the money gets taken effectively now. That is £566. It does not matter if you are a single person. It does not matter if you are a mother of four children. It has a really disproportionate effect on families. It really does mean that people being left with having to decide whether to pay rent, buy food or go to work. Also, a lot of the time, because it is arresting the money in the bank account, it does not discriminate from the source of the funds, so it can arrest universal credit, it can arrest housing costs and childcare costs that are paid part of universal credit. To one proposal, I would like to ask that Parliament should look at the matter of the urgency. It is looking at increasing that protected minimum balance and bank arrestments from the current £566 up to £1,000, which is the amount that you would be allowed to keep in your bank account if you were a bankrupt. That is a relatively simple change. It is referring to the legislative pillar of this Parliament to do it. I think that it would make a significant difference. I will remember, as I said, about 218,000 days in 2019. I think that there are similar numbers just now. It really is plunging families into crisis. The other thing that I would like to ask that you consider doing is looking at the airman's arrestments, which is when people get their wages arrested. Currently in Scotland, there are about seven different types of wage arrests that can take place—some in the UK, some in the Scottish. It can actually mean that you can have multiple claims by creditors on somebody's income at the same time. There are some rules about how those arrests rank against each other, but there are some grey areas as well. A lot of the time what happens is that people get their wages arrested, so there may be a number of different arrestments operating at the same time, but equally, some people might get their wages arrested and they cannot pay their current council tax, so they may be getting their wages arrested for council tax, but they cannot pay their current council tax. The default on that goes to somebody's warrant, and they end up in a strusher cycle, where their council tax is constantly becoming impasto for the sheriff's officers. At the moment, there are no powers for a creditor, even if they wanted to vary a wage arrestment in Scotland. At the moment, the amount that they can take is a minimum balance per 100 per cent, and it is fixed. We should look at making wage arrests more flexible by allowing a money adviser or a client to contact a creditor to propose a variation, but the creditor can agree that they might reduce the amount that they are taking each month. That could be done when people have multiple arrests on their wages at the same time, equally it could be done if somebody says that it has come to march and what is that paying my current council tax, so that I can get myself out of this strusher cycle and the creditor can then agree that we are going to do a variation. That is the two things that I think this Parliament could do that would have really an immediate effect on people in this course of the living crisis and would make a significant difference. I also have a dim that wants to come in as well, please. Yes, I would endorse everything that Alan has said. He is a very clever man. I would look at another couple of things that have been highlighted historically. One that I have already mentioned is that we are not a mandatory service. It takes away the ability to plan. It takes away security. I think that steps should be taken so that the advice that is seen as a mandatory service is delivered within each local authority and whatever way the local authority sees practical. I am not talking about taking funding away from bureaus to make it mandatory within a local authority, but to make the delivery of the service mandatory in itself would be a positive thing. Another thing is that during Covid there were changes made to the application fees for bankruptcy or sequestration, as some of us referred to as. I think that that should be taken a little bit further. There is a logical question to ask, because if someone is in that situation where they have to apply for personal bankruptcy, why do they have to pay a fee? There is acceptance that, if an individual is a benefit recipient, they do not have to pay the fee. However, there are many, many, many people out there that do not qualify for benefits. It can be a difficult thing to qualify for, but the current climate has no disposable income. I would suggest that, if we can prove in a black and white calculation that there is no disposable income, there should be no fee for applying for sequestration regardless of the individual's background. A third thing is perhaps a little bit more personal. Debt advisers are dealing more and more with a scheme called the Debt Arrangement Scheme. It is a fantastic scheme that is administered by the Government. We are finding more and more issues with creditors who are in a scheme. An individual has a creditor listed within their Debt Arrangement Scheme. The creditor is either selling or transferring the collection procedure for that debt to another organisation, a third party organisation. The creditor is not telling anyone when they are doing it, so the money advisor is oblivious. The client is oblivious until the new organisation starts contacting them. Perhaps more importantly, the accountant in bankruptcy service who administered the scheme is oblivious to what is happening. The work that that causes internally and externally is huge, which takes us away from dealing with other clients. A simple solution would be that, once a creditor is party to a debt arrangement scheme for an individual, they cannot transfer the debt. It is a simple change to make. It would save a lot of work for the accountant in bankruptcy. It would save a lot of work for the money advisers or take away a lot of pressure from clients being contacted unnecessarily. However, it would also take away a lot of work for the creditors themselves who do not have to go through the procedure of transferring debts in and out of different companies, as we argue, for the non-transfer or the reverse of the transfer. That would be an additional three, but I would add them to what Alan has said. I fully endorse what Alan said in the first place. Thank you very much for that. We are starting to run a wee bit tight on time, so I am going to move on to questions from Jeremy Balgler. Thank you so far for what you have said. I am pleased to say that my first lot of questions have just been covered. I have only got one question. I may start with Charlene, but if others want to jump in. That is in regard to the Scottish welfare fund and the administration of that, where you are locally. In the previous Parliament, we took a bit of evidence from different charities around whether the welfare fund should be more centralised or whether it does work within the local authorities, or whether there needs to be greater guidance on how the money is spent. We are aware that some local authorities spend their budgets very quickly, others seem to have money left over at the end of a financial year. I am just wondering from your personal experience how easy it is to access the welfare fund. Would you like to see more guidance on how the money should be spent nationally, but still delivered locally? I often use the Scottish welfare fund because, in order for me to approach charities for veterans, I have to have exhausted the statutory options first of all. I will be honest with you. I think that they are spending their money more quickly because more people are relying on that crisis grant. I do not think that it is a case of giving it out willy-nilly. I think that they are doing their diligence, but there is just not enough. Certainly, in my local authority, I just think that there is not enough to cover. We obviously have refusals, which you can appeal, but that takes time. It takes 40 hours for them to make a decision on a crisis grant. That is 40 hours that somebody does not have food, gas or electricity. I do not know if there is a way for that to be done quicker. I suppose that it would be employing more staff within the councils to work there. However, when somebody is in crisis, they are in crisis. The crisis is not in 40 hours. In order to help my clients, we would look at what is available to turn that around much quicker. Is there some sort of interim grant that can be paid an emergency grant in order that that person cannot hop up their gas or electric or buy some food that does not have to be cooked? What do we prioritise here? Do we prioritise on eating or do we prioritise on heating? Something might be entered into them, although to make a decision would be ideal. I have never heard of a council. I have worked with many cabs, and I have never heard of a council having any money left at the end of the financial year for people in crisis yet, although I am open to being changed of mind there. If we can be here from Jim's perspective on that from being within the local authority. Working within the local authority, we see my job as reacting to the referrals that the Scottish welfare fund presents to us. We engage with the Scottish welfare fund staff. I think that the administration side of it should certainly be retained on a local basis for the simple reason that it takes local people to identify other local services that can help the individuals that present to the Scottish welfare fund. Whether control of the overall budget is better to be centralised or not, I do not have enough knowledge to comment on. What I can say is that, similar to Charlene, we can see that the numbers accessing the service are increasing. We can see that the service does a tremendous job because it identifies not just the primary presenting problem, but it goes more in depth with the client to get more of a background to what is causing that problem, which invariably comes down to finance, which invariably links into our service. There is a knowledge base there that has been built up over a period of time that it would be silly to remove. I would say that it should be maintained locally to administer it. Local authority having responsibility for it is logical because it is more answerable to not to central government. Whether the overall budget is administered locally, as I said, is a decision for someone else to take. I will move on to final questions from Pam Duncan-Glancy. I have one quick follow-up on the welfare fund and then two very brief questions. Are you seeing people using the Scottish welfare fund multiple times to supplement low income? About a third of the welfare fund's refusals were because of a previous application, so are people using it to try to supplement their low income? Yes, that is exactly correct. People are using it as an advance now on their benefits or the wages or the combination of both, not because it is an easy out, just because they do not have any resilience there, two weeks into being paid. They have another two weeks before they are paid again, and they are correct. They are allowed to make free applications in the year. Falkirk Council here has to be strict with that, because there are people who have not accessed it, who would be refused if not. I do not envy the people who have to make those decisions, but all of my clients are using it for cost of living, gas, electricity and buying food. They are still in debt anyway. It is a sticky plaster. We understand that, but it is something that is accessible. It is something that we can do for them at that time. Thanks for that, Charlene. When it was set up, it probably was not envisaged to be quite such a sticky plaster that we are seeing just now. I know that Jim wants to come in on this. I would say what I was planning to say. We see multiple applications to the fund. We see the applications multiply sometimes on a weekly basis. The restriction on the help that people can be given must be horrendous. We have to make those decisions. I have spoken already about debt advisors and money advisors feeling the pressure. Someone administering that fund must be a terrible thing to have to do. People are accessing it to pay for their rent, to pay their council tax, to pay their fuel, and they are accessing it to buy food. You cannot avoid paying your rent. There are ramifications that can be dealt with. Likewise, council tax and likewise, fuel, you cannot not buy food. The number of people who are presenting for those emergencies on a multiple basis is probably more than 50 per cent of the people who are presenting to the fund. In North Lanarkshire, we work closely with the fund, so we get referrals into us to try to alleviate the multiple representation by giving budget and advice and trying to deal with creditor issues and what have you. However, as I mentioned earlier, the challenges that we are dealing with now are more front-line costs rather than creditors. There is nowhere for them to come, so, yes, people are using it simply to survive. Thank you for that. That leads into my next question. Jim, you said earlier that you are hearing slogans of people who are choosing to have to eat or heat, and you are waiting for action behind that from government. The response in Scotland has been the £150 of the council tax bill, which works out something like £4 a week. Can you comment on that response? I think that you don't mute, but can you comment on that response and say what else is needed? To me, it just feels like money off a bill is quite a different thing to actually getting money in your pocket. Is the solution to find a way to deal with the pressure under the current financial constraint that an individual has, or is there a way to increase the funds that people have? The reality is that, unless we increase what is in someone's purse wallet, handbag or household, we are not going to find a solution. It is just not going to be there. The Reduction in the Universal Credit Award, for example, people politicians talk about it all the time, should it have been reduced? Of course it should not have been reduced because the cost of living has increased more than what it was at the time that it was put in. Was it put in on a permanent basis? It was not. There is an argument that people could and should have been pre-planning for that removal, but the truth of the matter is that it was impossible and impractical to do it. That would be a logical and sensible solution to try to increase funds that are in people's pockets. The £150 grant is tremendous for those who received it. Speaking personally, I did not receive it, but my house is financially challenged on a daily basis. I think that there is a forgotten element in the community, and I am not taking anything away from people who are most definitely in greater need than other people, but there is a large volume in the community that happens to seek any help and do not qualify for any help. However, if you look at percentage increases in costs, their costs might have been higher initially because of the way they live, through no fault of their own, and they cannot change the way that they live. Families do not change size, food still has to get eaten. I think that there are a lot of things that have been done that have been welcomed. The increase in the £10 to the £20 grant to the £25 grant for children, increasing the age barrier for that award are all very, very positive. I am not a politician. I am not in charge of the country's finances. We tend to find money for things in emergency situations. I think that it is time to start finding bigger chances of money to help people who are simply not going to survive. I do not know how you are going to do it, but, quite simply, it has to be done. What we have done has been positive, but it is not enough, and we are missing sections of the community that need help. They have been forgotten. I agree with absolutely everything Jim has just said. That has to be sorted at government level, because we are all out of options here. As money debt advisors, there is no options. That does not mean that we are not doing our best and we are not trying to find solutions, but we are really out of options now. I agree that there always seems to be funding for emergency situations, and I deemed that to be an emergency situation. I think that the £20 a week was great. I also think that it should have remained and then increased when the cost of living increased. To give you a quick personal budget for somebody in receipt of universal credit, £77 a week, £20 on gas and electricity. That will start to fall out with the gas over a summer months fair enough, £20 a week on food, £7 to their water and sewage, because even if you are in receipt of council to act reduction, you are still liable for the water and sewage of that. They need a mobile phone for their universal credit, say £5 a week, £20 a month. Then you have to consider toiletries, lovin, but you can see already that we are in a deficit, that it is not enough. Unless the Government is going to be in touch with these energy companies or take back ownership of the energy companies and say, no, we will set the rates because energy companies are not struggling to feed and heat the homes. The CEOs there are not struggling. The people who work for them, probably the lower-down ones, are struggling just the same. However, we need somebody to interject here and say that this is not acceptable if 50 per cent rise in energy is not acceptable with an additional 50 per cent. I can assure you that those 53 per cent that we were assured that would be, they have more than doubled with most of my clients, so people who get away will be putting a five or a week on, now can't. Similarly, an energy company can set the amount of debt they take back. If somebody is in a rears, they put a pre-payment meter in and say that, for every £10 that they put in, we are going to take £5 of that back, whereas if we were using fuel direct, it would be set at a flat rate of, I think, about £3.70 a week. We need the Scottish Government to do something about what is happening with the energy crisis as well as the food poverty that is happening. Thank you very much to everybody, all of our witnesses, this morning for taking part and for sharing your worked and lived experience with us. I am now going to suspend briefly while we change panels and give members a short comfort break. Thank you very much. Welcome back everyone and thank you members for getting back in time. I welcome our second panel to the meeting. We've got Laurie Morgan Klein, who's Public Affairs Officer at Tip Change. We have Heather Rook, Digital Transformation Lead Money Advice Scotland, David McNeill, Director of Development, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Connor Forbes, who's the Head of Business Development and Policy, Advice Direct Scotland and Susie Fitton, who's a Policy Manager at Inclusion Scotland. This session is primarily focused on digital inclusion or exclusion, but I also recognise that panel members might want to contribute after hearing some of the evidence this morning further beyond digital inclusion. We have round about an hour or so for the panel, and what I'd like to do is kick us off. I'll just go round the screen in the order that I see people. In your estimation, what are the key factors and drivers behind digital exclusion? I think that digital exclusion relates to problem debt. There are a few different ways that it breaks. One of the main challenges is the fact that creditors in the main now have a digital first point of contact. As we've seen with a lot of back branch closures up and down the country in recent years, creditors are much more moving to not just a telephone first approach but to an online based one. I think that there's a problem around that, around the digital exclusion aspect of it. One thing, and it's been a double-edged sword with the pandemic, is that it's forced some new ways of working for creditors as well. I know for us, we are a telephone and online based service, but initially to manage the level of demand that we were getting, we moved to an online first approach, partly to just help us to deal with the volume of people that we're needing support. I think that the key point around exclusion is that, one, some people are excluded because they simply aren't able to access whether it's an issue of finance. Some people, through personal choice, choose to be digital excluded, which I think is worth bringing in mind, so that's a very small part of that. The other crucial part, especially as it relates to problem debt, is that it's well over 80 per cent of consumers now who have digital access. It's important to acknowledge that, while we have a cute problem with digital access, problem debt is so widespread that we did polling. That was pre-pandemic. It showed that there was over 1.1 million Scots that were experiencing financial harm to at least some extent, and goodness knows what that figure would show now. It's really right across society, so it's important that we view the money advice aspect right around and don't lose sight of that impact while focusing on the aspects around digital inclusion. It's how services are right from universal credit, which came up in the previous panel around your phone access and internet access as part of that process. It's really important that we ensure that there are really good multi-channel options for people to get address, whether it's online, telephone or crucially face-to-face, as points were made eloquently in the last panel. The responses that were provided to the inquiry summed up well when it was looking at kit connectivity and skills being fundamental issues contributing to digital exclusion. One thing that I would highlight is that digital exclusion is also experienced by advice agencies themselves, so that should not be acknowledged by the development of digital services and the digital infrastructure that advice agencies have. Those are exacerbating issues that, when we look at kit connectivity and skills, are quite long-term issues. It will take a long time to address them and we need to start acting a bit sooner, let's be honest. We are looking at developing services in that respect to try to dampen or mitigate or what I would say is need more than halfway to try and bridge that gap. What is clear, as Laurie said, is that digital approach that is taken by creditors is further exacerbating what I would call the digital underclass, where those who do not have access, whether it be connectivity or device or skills, are waiting longer to access support and secure meaningful outcomes. Push in people in low income, people who are vulnerable and live in rural areas to experience potentially full-longed financial dress, digital underclass that we are seeing, and it is growing day by day. It encompasses a number of key groups and communities who are, by proxy, suffering a disproportionate consequence to their financial health and wellbeing. Those are three broad issues, but within Parliament and the committee, we are looking at what are the short-term and longer-term approaches that we can take to addressing those three key factors. Thanks for that, Heather. It is always good for us to be reminded about the fact that advice agencies themselves are sometimes digitally excluded. Now, we have here from David and then Connor. Thank you, convener. We have been working on digital exclusion at SCVO for around 10 years, supporting the front-line charities and public bodies that provide support. I think that we talk about digital exclusion having three key driving factors. One is the confidence and motivation to go online. I suppose that that particularly affects older age groups who might not see the benefits of getting online and are perhaps a bit resistant to do that or worried about doing that. The second factor being the affordability piece. That is both the affordability of internet connectivity, particularly in the house and access to the right device because we know that a smartphone, which a lot of low-income households have, is not the best way or not the suitable device to do things like apply for jobs. You need the right device and an internet connection, and that costs money. The third factor being the essential digital skills that you need to be able to use that connectivity and that device in the right way. We know that lots of people may have that connectivity, but they just participate in social media or get entertainment. That does not necessarily mean that they are able to fill out forms, fill out applications, apply for jobs that you might expect. I think that there is lots of evidence to show, particularly from citizens advice research in the past about their clients, about the significant proportion of their clients who really struggle to use a computer effectively. In terms of low-income and problem debt, all those factors affect different groups and different ways, but they have a direct impact on the income that people have. First, linking back to Laurie's point, there is the poverty premium. People pay more for services bought online, and most service providers and most utilities. Everybody expects you to engage digitally, and if you have to call, if you have to access a face-to-face service, it is more expensive. That also affects your ability to earn. Lloyd's research shows that people in the same jobs with a higher level of digital skills earn more—£421 per year—£420 more per month—than the least digitally-engaged workers. People with low skills or digital skills earn less, even in the same manual roles. It also affects your ability to access support from services, as we have talked about. The first panel talked about having face-to-face services still available, but lots of services and advice are still provided online. Finally, internet connectivity is really innocent, and the right device is an essential utility. You need it to apply for universal credit and benefits to do job search. If you do not have that, if you do not have the right device and the right connection, it will cost you money to get the money that you need to earn. It is a real challenge. Thanks for that, David. If we can finally hear from Conor and then Susie on this, then I will open up to questions from other members. I would echo all the other panel's success so far in regards to the issues that people are facing. One of the key things is the fact that the first point of contact for creditors is the digital forum. As an organisation that delivers our services digitally on a national scale, digital exclusion is something that we have been focusing on over the past two years. That is tied in with the pandemic, which is really interesting. We have seen people seeking dead advice for the first time from different communities and backgrounds that we have not really experienced in the same scale before. For example, what you will see is people in their 20s now who are seeking dead advice or financial advice for them for the first time. Those are people who may be more digitally savvy and confident of using digital devices to access advice. The great work that we have done in Scotland over the past few years is making sure that the most vulnerable people have access to digital devices and are more confident of using them. There is definitely an issue here with regard to the most vulnerable people in Scotland, not just their access to digital devices and access to online services, but also the confidence in using them. There is a geographical issue here with regard to rural communities. A lot of the people who are digitally excluded in Scotland are from rural backgrounds. The issue that we have is that if they cannot access services digitally, there is also a lack of face-to-face services that are available in these communities, and that is a huge concern. All the other panellists have mentioned that there is an issue here with the cost of living. You already have people who are digitally connected and are confident of using digital devices to access advice, but the problem is that if those households are not having to make really difficult decisions with regard to their utility bills, their grocery shop, one of the first things that will go before that is your digital access and your broadband payments and things like that. There is a real concern here that we need to make sure that those households can maintain access to digital devices and online accessibility, because otherwise the problems that they have will end up being compounded by that lack of access. Thanks very much for that, Connor. Finally, before I move on to questions from Pam Sussie. Hi, Sussie. Can you hear us? Hi, sorry there. I just had some problems. I'm muting. Good morning, panel, and thank you for the invitation to speak today. The Scottish Government's household survey shows that 29 per cent of disabled people do not use the internet and, in practical terms, others who may technically have access via smartphones can have huge difficulties in using a mobile phone to complete forms or access services such as online banking or social security or council services, both in terms of affording the data to download information or in the accessibility of websites and online information. The failure by many public bodies, including the DWP, but we've also talked about creditors in the context of debt. Public services and other service providers to provide suitable alternatives to digital communication and services really exclude disabled people in many cases. We know that Inclusion Scotland has heard reports of disabled people in receipt of universal credit, for example, being sanctioned for struggling to complete their online journal. Evidence from the CAB in April 2019 showed that as many as one in three people seeking CAB help with universal credit did so because they could not access the internet. During the pandemic, 82 per cent of the 2000 surveyed members of Glasgow Disability Alliance, a member organisation of Inclusion Scotland, said that social isolation had been a major concern for them during the pandemic, with 60 per cent lacking the technology and connectivity or confidence to get online. In agreement with the previous speakers, I would say that digital exclusion for disabled people is both a cause and an effect of poverty, social isolation, barriers to information and services and barriers to accessing opportunities. In seeking to address the digital poverty gap for disabled people, it is also really important to bear in mind that devices and internet access are obviously dependent on electricity. For many living in the poorest households, disabled people are disproportionately likely to be living in poverty, which I will hopefully speak about in a bit more detail later on. Lack of access to the internet intersects with fuel poverty. We see that digital exclusion can compound disabled people's financial exclusion. It can widen inequality and make accessing education, employment, social security and public services difficult and increase social isolation for disabled people. The fall-out of the exclusion will be long-term, with many effects emerging downstream such as mental health implications and loss of income or the ability to manage finances and debt. We would say in agreement with others that disabled people on low incomes without access to online services are affected by the poverty premium. They end up paying more basic goods and services. Those who need health and care services are most likely to be able to use digital health services. Without tackling digital exclusion among disabled people, there is a real risk that digital transformation will widen inequalities for disabled people rather than narrowing them. The increased use of the internet for accessing key services, social security, banking, Government and Council services has implications for those who are not equipped, unable or the small cohort of disabled people who are unwilling to use digital technology or disabled people who have impairment-related barriers that make using digital technology impossible. People with digital skills and access to the internet—we have talked about this before today—have increased earnings, they have higher employability, cheaper shopping, improved communication and they have saved time through online services. Many disabled people on a low income who cannot afford a home computer or a broadband connection or they do not have the support to acquire digital skills are simply excluded from many of those benefits. Thank you very much for that, Susie. That really helps to set the scene for us. I am going to move on to questions from Pam and everyone to read after that. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. Thank you for the information that you have shared with us just now but also the information that you have shared in advance and also for the work that you have done with the people that you represent over the past couple of years, which have been really, really, really hard. Those of you who would have been listening to the previous panel will have heard some stories about the effect of this. I would like to start there if that is okay, convener, before I move on specifically to digital exclusion. My first question is also to mention that today is international workers memorial day. I think that it is important for us all to remember that everything has an impact on people and their jobs and it should not be that we go to our jobs and get sick or stressed or take them home or it affects our mental health. That is an unacceptable experience for everybody in the workplace. I would be keen if it is possible to know from David, if you are hearing from the organisations that you represent, the sorts of pressures that they are under, what is the demand on their services now, front-line services specifically, and have there been any attempts by Government or others to try and support that demand and increase resources for it? As you might expect, a lot of people have been talking about the pressures that they are under, like we have heard from the direct evidence from the advice services on panel 1. There is a huge demand on services and I think that the staff burnout issue, the pandemic, has been a really challenging two years as people have struggled to adapt how they deliver services and moved it online. Now they are returning to face-to-face delivery. We have the cost-of-living crisis that is affecting workers as well as placing additional pressures on people who support them. It is a very challenging time for all those delivering services for people working in poverty. I think that we have a sense of it in panel 1. The complete lack of the helplessness that people are feeling about how to help people is not about being able to provide help to people who are around budgeting because they have no money to budget with. They are living on such low incomes and, without increasing costs, it is a huge pressure. In terms of the support from Government, we have heard lots from organisations that have very short-term funding arrangements, one-year funding arrangements, both from central government and local government. That places huge challenges on people with staff constantly at risk of redundancy, having to apply for funding and put time into funding applications rather than delivering services. That has added pressures, and it takes time away from delivering services. We have heard positive intentions in the programme from Government around multi-year funding, but we want to see more of that in practice. Those warm words become reality. On specifically the Connecting Scotland project that the SVO led on, can you tell us a bit about the sort of demand that you have had for that service? What the impact might be of a more online or phone-based service for money advice across Scotland? And a bit about the numbers of devices that you have been able to give out and whether or not there is unmet need there? It has been a huge project. The Connecting Scotland project started from the pandemic. It initially had a target of reaching 9,000 people who were shielding and clinically vulnerable to support them around social isolation at the start of the pandemic. The target groups and the funding groups then tackle families to target care leavers, and then people who were more widely digitally excluded. We have reached over 60,000 households over the past two years, providing them with a combination of a device and an internet connection if they needed it, and training and support to use it effectively. That support is being provided by the organisations that are working with them already. That might be an employability organisation, a mental health organisation and homelessness project. All those front-line services are providing that digital skills support in the context of the issues that those people are facing, because it is really about helping them to achieve whatever outcome they need to, not just develop digital skills for the sake of it. We have worked with more than 4,000 projects from 1,000 unique organisations in the public sector and the third sector to reach those 60,000 households. However, those 60,000 households are the tip of the iceberg. Connecting Scotland is unprecedented in its scale, tackling digital exclusion across the UK and the world. However, we know that there are at least 200,000 households in Scotland that cannot afford the internet connection in the house. There are 800,000 people who do not have digital skills, so it is a large challenge. We have really welcomed the opportunity to deliver something at a scale, but there is more work to be done. The first question that I would like to ask is about remote money advice services, particularly in relation to step change and advice direct Scotland. Can you tell us about what you do and whether you feel that there are differences between the advice that you give in this context and advice in traditional agencies? I was quite interested in the comments that Connor made about younger people, rural areas, so maybe tell us a bit about your client groups as well. If you feel that they are different, thank you. Maybe to Connor first. The differences between a remote model and face-to-face statutory solutions that are provided are pretty much the same. I think that the key difference between them, particularly at the minute, is the ability to both meet volume but also meet volume without delays. One of the main issues that we have seen since the very start of the pandemic and, to be honest, even before that was extremely long waiting times for people who have really serious financial issues. You are talking maybe three or four weeks waiting times for certain local authorities in terms of people getting a first meeting with an adviser. The ability for digital services to scale up means that it has been capable of meeting that rise in demand for advice. On the advice that can be delivered, the ability to provide multiple channels, whether you are providing advice over a telephone, via email or even something like the set-up that we have just now, whether it is a virtual face-to-face model for certain customers, that variety means that you can meet the variety of circumstances that people will have and the variety of circumstances that they face. In terms of the range of people that we have been seeing over the past two years, I have mentioned younger people. There certainly is a lot of younger people, late teens, early twenties, a lot of people who have maybe just gone on the property ladder for the first time but experienced an income shock, largely maybe as a result of Covid or the cost of living crisis. You are seeking not just dead advice for the first time but advice for the first time. It reflects the confidence that younger generations have in terms of accessing services digitally. That is normally the method that they will contact us by. There is definitely a preference there with the younger generation in terms of even if their first point of contact with a dead adviser is via web chat, eventually if the problem is complex and it requires a more formal solution, it might need to move on to a telephone call with that adviser but their initial point of contact and what they feel confident in accessing advice initially through is normally a digital channel, social media or web chat. One of the interesting things that we have been doing over the last two years is trying to engage with front line services like food banks. One of the things that we have heard for years and years, particularly from rural communities, is the sense of shame and the misplaced sense of shame that people, particularly in rural communities, have in terms of accessing dead advice. It is a lot more visible in rural communities if you access dead advice, so whether that may be a cab, there are a lot of areas in Scotland where there are cabs available, so it could be a community centre or a library. We have seen tons and tons of examples of people over the years who have put off going to get that advice because there is a sense of shame that maybe their neighbour will see them or something. There is definitely an appetite there in rural communities for that digital access. In terms of the work that we have been doing with food banks, that is really for the most vulnerable people. Those are people who are digitally excluded, whether that be because they cannot afford the cost of digital connectivity or lack of confidence or skills to access digital services. Something that is really, really important that we need to consider is trust that people are putting in these services and advice services. It takes a long time to build up that trust. What we have seen with food banks is that, if people are going to a food bank, there is already quite a high level of trust there with that food bank. Most of the people who go into these food banks that transpires have financial issues or debts that have been resolved. Working with food banks and facilitating digital accessibility through food banks and front line services means that that level of trust has already been built up and it is much easier to get the individual to engage with their debt recovery journey at that point. It also ticks the box for making sure that those people who have fallen through the net, if they go into a food bank and ask for support, there is also the option there for them to be digitally connected to an advisor because you will see people who are living in rural areas and it might take them an hour and a half on public transport to make it to the nearest face-to-face advice centre. They do not really have them even afford that public transport. I would say that they are the key points. I think that we can bring Laurie in as well, please. Thank you. Just to echo a lot of Connor's points there, I think that we are very well made. I think in general that there is not really a difference in terms of solution and advice. We offer first-time advice, welfare advice and then we will support the client with the solution that is recommended from that advice. We will take them right through to being debt-free at that point. One of the things that we certainly have seen, and I think that that was a really good point on the rural point, is that sometimes people feel a little bit hesitant to go down to a local high street and walk into an advice office or access centre so that there is a bit of a challenge there around stigma. Anything that enhances the shame and stigma impact that that has causing delay for people to seek advice is crucial. That delay where we have people who maybe know that they need to get some help and get some advice, they want to do it, but that societal sense of pressure that people have is really big there. One of those things, especially those of our online service, behind that is that I think that it maybe provides a bit more distance to an individual and sometimes that can be a bit comforting in the sense that they are sitting on their phone or on the computer and they are going through an advice process rather than sitting with a human being and having that discussion now. Obviously, that will work differently for other people, and that, to reiterate my point around, is really important. It has got to be a horses for courses approach. There has got to be an online offering, a telephone offering and a face-to-face offering. All those need to be robust, especially given that we know the capacity issues in Connor mentioned the waiting time that face-to-face services have, which do not really affect national services like ours in the same way. Certainly, services can be very busy. Pam made a very good point about it being international workers memorial day. Acknowledging the burnout and stress that advisers are facing is crucial as well. There are some really eloquent points in panel 1 made by Charlene and Jim. It is really important that we recognise that. At the same time, we have moved from a hybrid model of working now, where a lot of people are working from home. That pressure on advisers is the same for advisers who work for remote services like ours. They are setting in their workspace that they have at home, and they have a really challenging and difficult call. They are in their place of relaxation at that same point. It is really important to recognise that that pressure on advisers is right across the sector, and it is really concerning. I am interested in the future role of the remote delivery of services. I think that Heather had touched on this earlier. I would like to direct it to Heather first as to how she feels that we can do that well, and what her views are on how we do it in the future, better. Maybe start with Heather and then open it up to others. Thank you very much, Evelyn. It is a difficult one. I think that, again, Phil Panas, I have mentioned that it is about not doing what creditors have so often done and having that digital first approach, there is always going to need to be those multi-channel options working in tandem. It is about recognising and looking at communities in smaller areas, because we cannot just have one broad way of approaching it. However, to be using digital and harnessing it at the right times and where it is going to be most effective, both for getting the clients engaged and for that often long delay between making an appointment and going to seek advice. If we can make digital work there to keep the ball going, because what we find with a lot of services is that client will make an appointment and say it several weeks before they see an advice service, but in that time there are expectations for them to gather evidence, bank statements, credit reports, letters, etc. For a lot of people, having opened those emails or letters left in the void with some ownership to take on tasks that are just frankly very overwhelming. By the time that it comes to appointment time, there are knock-on effects where facts are ill-prepared and their appointment is delayed or prolonged or there are multiple appointments needed to get to a point where you are starting to assess options. That is where you see the disengagement, the drop-off and the knock-on impact capacity, because you have advice services with sometimes one to two debt advisers and their time is being taken up by missed appointments, extra appointments. There is no silver bill, unfortunately, but I will give you some examples of what we are doing at Money Advice Scotland. We are currently developing an online tool with an existing supplier called IE Hub, which is allowing an online account where people can enter their IE manually or using tools like Open Banking. We are developing this tool to be Scotland-centric and mirror the CFS, but we are using it as a way for clients to confill in their IE and be able to share that directly with either creditors or Money Advice services as a way of being able to have that online account. There is no ownership of having to download things or upload it as that manual entry. With our service we are a front-line service, but we are not providing that advice. We are more like a triage service, information guidance and signposting. The role that we will be taking on is using digital because we are a digital-only service for those clients who may not be able, because of all the points, to look at a small screen to try to enter data is very difficult. Sometimes people do need a little bit of handholding and that confidence building to walk through. Our advisers will be using screen sharing functionality to go on to that account with the client so that we can help them to fill it in. That is fairly time-consuming and we are a small service, but we are hoping that over the course of this project year, if we can see how those types of interjections and ways of supporting people will pay dividends, will that help the better preparation for clients? That might alleviate some of the burden for local services because clients will be better prepared to try and minimise the length of time that they are in that state of financial crisis. Those meaningful outcomes, those debt solutions can be a little bit closer on the horizon. It really needs a digital audit that advice agencies can undertake with support from those who are leading within the sector that understand where, in their core functions internally and back of house, where can they be introducing digital ways of working so that clients who do not use digital do not have to because the advisers and the agencies are doing their part to lift them up to meet, as I said previously, not just meet halfway, but meet 75 per cent of the way so that clients who can use digital have a much smoother process and more time can be focused on those who will be digitally excluded for one reason or other. We cannot support just yet because it is a little bit longer to achieve those goals. I have a request to add to that from Connor in the chat and I think it might be helpful to hear from Susie as well, from an Inclusion Scotland perspective. Connor, just briefly if we can. Thank you. Just to add on what Heller said, I do agree with everything that he did say. I think that if we are looking at it realistically, financial services in general are moving towards a digital model and, inevitably, the same will happen with regards to the principles of financial inclusion. Some of the things that Heller mentioned, such as Open Banking, are there to ease the process, not just for the organisation providing advice but also for the customer itself. In order to maximise the input that we can get and the outputs from customers' access and advice, it needs to be as streamlined as possible. I honestly think that technology is the best way to do that. There is a huge appetite in Scotland, particularly through organisations such as Fintech Scotland and the great work that they do to promote financial inclusion and social good through technology. If that stays at pace with the work that is being done in order to increase digital inclusion in Scotland, it can solve some of the issues that we are currently seeing. Thanks for that, Connor. Susie, do you have anything that you want to add from your perspective? Sure. We need public services and other service providers in Scotland to commit to providing suitably supported offline options to help disabled people to access provisions such as telephone support that includes BSL support. We need text, phone and SMS messaging for those who cannot use voice calls or face-to-face support for people who cannot use other support, as well as home visits. We believe that those options should be available to all, but we think that they should be specifically targeted at disabled people who are digitally excluded. We know that there are some really good examples of embedding skills training for disabled people who are digitally excluded in local organisations that are trusted by disabled people. Connecting Scotland's funding for Glasgow Disability Alliances Connect programme has been extremely successful because disabled people are already connected to GDA who have sourced, set up and distributed over 200 devices—things such as iPads, tablets, laptops and smartphones—to disabled people. They have also included support with digital skills so that disabled people can learn how to use the kit. They have equipped disabled people with internet access and they have delivered phone coaching and support over the phone to over 300 disabled people. However, it is also important to realise that they have provided additional pieces of equipment such as webcams or headphones or Bluetooth speakers and disability-related equipment such as wheelchair clamps or external keyboards or assistive technology—magnification software or voice-activated software—to meet disabled people's digital access needs. They have also engaged interpreters to support disabled people for whom English is not their first language, signposted to other organisations for literacy support and engaged a specialist coach to support visually impaired learners with assistive technology. That is a very good example of a community development approach that builds confidence through coaching and distributes kit and assistive additions and strengthens connectivity with wi-fi and data packages. It has allowed a DPO to address the high levels of digital exclusion among disabled people. It is a really good example of where digital exclusion among disabled people can be addressed by an organisation of disabled people. That would be a key point that I would make if we are going to tackle the digital exclusion of disabled people. We need to involve disabled people's organisations in that effort. Thank you very much for that, Susan. I think that that really does explain just clearly how an organisation like GDA is actually really well placed to deliver that inclusion work using the Connecting Scotland funding that is available. Evelin, is that you? That's me through me now. Thank you very much. I'll move on to questions from Jeremy and then back to Pam. Thank you. I was going to say that my questions I had were actually covered there, so I have nothing else. That's very handy. Pam, I'll move on to yourself. Thank you, convener, and thanks again to the panel for your answers so far. I'd also just like to put on record my thanks to Glasgow Disability Alliance, so I know I've done a power of work. In particular, through the Connecting Scotland support fund that, in the way that Susie has outlined, I just want to put that on record. I want to move on, if it's all right, to talk a bit about the impact of debt on low-income families and how it's having an impact on different groups of people. The first question that I have is around public sector debt collecting. We've heard and we've seen in the evidence that public sector debt collection seems to be faster and harsher than private sector debt collection, which, in some senses, should be either quick or harsh, but you would expect it possibly to be the other way around. Can you tell us a little bit about that, why you think it is and what is the solution that we could, as a committee, seek to pursue? Who do you want to direct that to first? Either Connor or Laurie, please. Put your hand up if you want to come in first, who is going to come in? I think that that's a really crucial question to all of this, especially because what we've been seeing in the problem debt world, if you will, over a number of years, has been post-2008, when there was a big personal debt crisis. What we've begun to see is the real shift in recent years towards years on essential bills, things such as utilities, council tax, especially as all the rest of it. I think that some of the points that panel 1 made this morning were really good on that, some of the impacts around council tax debt collection, specifically. That's not to say that local authorities are in a difficult place here because they are legislatively required to pursue those debts. Sometimes, I think that Alan certainly was suggesting that the way in which those debts are pursued can be a bit restrictive, so that local authorities are obliged to pursue the debt and collect the tax. What ends up happening is that you end up in the cycles of non-payment and collection activity, which ends up increasing the costs for the local authority and increasing the huge pressure on the individual concerned. Those years aren't collected effectively, so we really need to look at how we do that. One way forward with that might be a collaborative approach. We have worked with Scotland, the Improvement Service and the RRV to create a best-practice guide for the collection of council tax debt. We were hoping that local authorities would adopt that best-practice guide. That guide is to focus on collaboration between advice agencies and collection teams. Some local authorities are ahead of the curve on that and have done that. We are seeing positive results from mixing their own collection team directly with their advice team, so that their own local authorities' advice is involved early at that initial point when someone falls into difficulty. I think that giving someone the opportunities to get advice that is impartial from organisations such as RRV Scotland or local bureaus and others is crucial so that we can begin to see that one of the things is that it is never one thing with problem debt. It is a whole full spectrum issue that needs to be addressed for an individual. You can take out the council tax, you can rent and try to support them, but they might still be facing enforcement action from a creditor. Say that they make an informal arrangement on their council tax, if an earning arrestment has come in from a creditor taking enforcement action on another debt, that voluntary arrangement cannot work. We would like to take the opportunity to mention some of the other legislative points that came up. We had the protected minimum balance that was talked about. It is crucial that we look at increasing that, as Alan was saying in panel 1. We are in a situation in which someone might have a relatively low amount of debt, so they are ineligible for a statutory solution, such as the mental asset process, because their debt threshold is too low. They do not have enough debt to become bankrupt or tent of the debt arrangement scheme and receive the protections from those solutions. They are in this cycle of creditor enforcement action, and the forms of diligence that take that money away from them. What we are needing to think about is that this group that is having a low and inverted commas amount of debt does not have protections available for them. They are just in this endless cycle until they are in enough debt to qualify for a solution or something terrible goes wrong for the individual. I think that there are some really important points there. I think that a collaborative approach is crucial in looking at what we can do around our bank requirements and increasing that minimum protected balance. We really love that. Especially now, where we have, for instance, benefit payments go directly into bank accounts, and they can be arrested. It is a different world there, and people are experiencing their detriment as a result. If we can bring Heather in, because I can see from the chat, Heather, you would like to contribute to this point. Thank you. That was just an excellent point again that was made by Laurie. I think that it was also discussed within panel 1 when we are looking at what the socials are and what the eligibility criteria are to even consider them, perhaps rather than putting a figure on the amount of debt. Of course, that would need to be well thought out, but looking at the proportion of debt compared to income and looking at that or a percentage of that has been a criteria. As Laurie said, someone might have £800 of debt, high interest debt, which would make them an elder role, but if there are not other solutions available, they are going to be in that cycle. However, compared to their income and their outcomes, they might just be, if we are looking at it in a percentage way, just as indebted as someone else who has got £13,000 of debt. I wanted to make one comment on talking about a collaborative approach, and it is something that may potentially be easier to adopt through local authorities and social creditors versus consumer creditors. However, when it comes to debt recovery and where money advisers will try to ask for breeding space—which they do—to give time in between making appointments, gathering and so on, could there be concessions made that where clients or evidence has been digitally excluded can get an additional X number of weeks or months as part of that breeding space because of their digital exclusion, because of their circumstances, which would be acknowledged by social creditors and hopefully consumer creditors to buy more time because they will and are disproportionately affected by delays and waiting times for all the reasons that we have discussed so far. I can see from the chat as well that Laurie wants to come back in for a brief point on this, if we can, because I know that Pam has got a couple more questions. Thank you. I just wanted to add to that. We also have an issue around—this also relates to digital exclusion on this—creditor compliance with statutory solutions. It is an endless problem where we support a lot of clients in the debt arrangement scheme. Those protections are supposed to through online portals and all their creditors have access and they should know that the client receives protections that the client has an arrangement in place. However, one of the things that we have to continually revisit is cases in which the creditor is—whether it is teams within the creditor that are not talking within themselves—perhaps, if I do not want to make too bold a point, the committee as part of this inquiry might look to speak to creditors on this issue, because it would be useful to see what they have to say about how they can ensure that they are fully complying with Scottish legislation in this case, because it seems that we have the Scottish Parliament that has put the debt arrangement scheme in place where a number of years led reading across the UK. The UK has now got a breathing space scheme that was partially based on many of our learnings with the debt arrangement scheme and our moratorium process. However, it seems that we now need to make sure that we have the creditors that are actually complying with that legislation. That is a very interesting point. There are a lot of aham moments and nodding heads around the table that I am seeing from colleagues around that. Pam, do you still have a further question? I do, thank you. The point about creditors, after this session, I share that view. I think that the committee should consider speaking to creditors and, for the record, energy companies. I think that it is worth us speaking to them, too. My final area of questioning, if it is okay, is for Suzy. Hi, Suzy. It is nice to see you again. It is around disabled people their experience of low income right now, as we are in the middle of the cost of living crisis, but also of debt. The specific question that I have around debt is what are you hearing, are the types of debt that disabled people are getting into? Is there something that is specifically disability related and what could we do to address that? A broader question on fuel costs for disabled people. We know that it costs disabled people more in fuel for lots of reasons that all of us all know. Is there more that can be done? Has the support that has already come from the UK Government and the same scheme by the Scottish Government to deduct money from a council tax bill? Will that specifically help disabled people or what more could we be doing here in Scotland? I would say that we have heard fairly terrifying evidence about the wholesale rise in living costs over the past year. We know that that is driven by inflation and energy price hikes. We are hearing that disabled people on a low income are currently having to make those appalling choices that we have talked about a lot. Everybody has talked about it today, this eating or heating homes. In relation to disabled people, what we need to think about is the relationship between poverty and disability, which I will talk about in a minute, but also the additional impairment-related energy costs for things like disabled people running life-saving equipment such as dialysis machines and respirators that have high energy input or simply keeping a house warm enough to manage a chronic pain condition or a neurological condition or to keep a disabled child well. We know that all the evidence that has been done on disability-related expenditure and the extra costs that disabled people face, simply living as disabled people, suggests that the extra costs can be extremely high. Scope did some research in 2019 that suggested that, on average, disabled people spent £632 a month on disability-related expenses, and that can include energy costs, increased costs of heating, for example, but it also includes the costs of special equipment such as aids and adaptations or the costs of care charges and the costs of, for example, using taxis when public transport may not be accessible. We know that that research found that Scots disabled people faced the highest excess costs in the UK and that one in five disabled people and one in four families with disabled children faced extra costs of more than £1,000 a month. That is really terrifying because all households in Scotland have been impacted by the cost of living prices, but disabled people are much more likely to be living in poverty anyway. The statistics around disability in poverty are stark. Nearly half, 49 per cent of those living in poverty in the UK are either disabled people or live in a household containing a disabled person. It is vital to recognise the official measure of poverty, so households living on less than 60 per cent of median income fails to take into account the additional costs associated with living with a disability that I have talked about. Once those costs of living are fully taken into account, half a million—500,000 Scots disabled people and their families—are living in poverty, and 48 per cent of the total of all people in Scotland living in poverty, despite only making up 22 per cent of the population. Disabled people are disproportionately already without any of those costs of living crises or wholesale rises in energy costs. Without any of that being taken into account, disabled people are disproportionately likely to be living in poverty. In terms of what we do, it is not for Inclusion Scotland to necessarily advise for a windfall tax in terms of energy companies, but we need targeted support for disabled people who are struggling to meet their energy costs and their debt in relation to meeting energy costs. I think that we also need a raft of measures to tackle the poverty experienced by households, including a disabled person. We know that families with disabled children and the children of disabled parents are at increased risk of poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that half of all those living in poverty in the UK live in a household containing a disabled adult or child. We think that to avoid hardship, debt and destitution falling disproportionately on disabled people and their families, more has to be done to address the needs of families with school-age children. We warmly welcome the doubling of the Scottish child payment from £10 to £20 a week and the rise to £25 a week by the end of the year, and the benefit will be extended to under-16s. However, we think that the Scottish Government could also use existing delivery mechanisms at a local authority level to deliver additional targeted help to families with school-age children. We think that that in and of itself would go some way to supporting families of disabled children and households that include a disabled adult with meeting the additional costs of living. We think that the current level of the school clothing grant could, for example, be raised substantially. We think that we could double it, and that would require little, if any, additional administrative resources at either national or local government level. We accept that an increase would not reach all the families in need, but it would reach a substantial proportion of them and it would provide temporary assistance at a time when tens of thousands of household incomes have fallen substantially. We think that it would be well targeted on low-income households and that it would disproportionately benefit child poverty delivery plan priority groups such as disabled children, children of disabled parents, but also lone-parent families and minority ethnic households. That is because those groups are more likely to be in receipt of means-tested low-income benefits, so the passborded benefits for receipt of the school clothing grant. We know that there are barriers and limits to what the Scottish Government can do. We know that they have already committed to addressing the poverty experience by disabled people. However, in the current context and in the situation where disabled people have experienced significant financial shocks as a result of the pandemic, more needs to be done. I am going to give you that opportunity to make the point that you want to make before we close the session. I agree with everything that has been said, and it has been a healthy dialogue today with everyone from the same page. I want to take the opportunity to ask Parliament to consider exploring what mobile firms can offer to customers in terms of free online access to credible verified sources of support. In March 2020, the NHS worked with the likes of O2, 3E and other leading providers to allow people to access NHS information about Covid without using a data allowance or credit. Could something like that not be considered or replicated even now that we are in a cost of living crisis, which in itself is a pandemic of its own? There are other examples that I am aware of in the UK, such as HM. I think that the UK Government had a gigabyte voucher scheme to help to install broadband in rural areas. However, if we could particularly focus on the first point, can we make sites such as the local authority website, citizens advice bureaus, charities and credible sources of information, can we make this available? If we could do it during the pandemic, I would die the question, why can't we do it now? At least from a standpoint of people, are those devices still an issue, confidence is still an issue, but we could start to try and bridge those issues at least by starting point of having access to the committee together. Thank you for allowing me to put that forth. Thank you, Heather. I think that that was a very important point to bring to our attention and a great way to end the session. I would like to thank the witnesses for their evidence this morning. Some of it was quite difficult to hear, but it would have been difficult to deliver to us as well. If there is anything that you feel that has been missing this morning, please feel free to follow up in writing. The committee will not meet next week as its council elections on Thursday 5 May. Like Paul McClellan, I will cease to be a local councillor on that day and Evelyn. We will be back on 12 May to continue taking evidence on this inquiry. I now close the public part of this meeting for the committee to move into private session. Thank you very much, everybody.