 Good morning and a very warm welcome to the 12th meeting in 2018 of the Social Security Committee. I can remind everyone to turn mobile phones and other devices to silence so that they don't disrupt the meeting or the broadcasting. We've received apologies today from Jeremy Balfour MSP and today will be the last appearance in this committee of Mr Tomkins and I would like to thank him very much for his service to this committee and wish him all the best for his new parliamentary duties. It's a pleasure to work with you all, thank you. Our first agenda item is the decision to take item 3 and 4 in private and as the committee agreed to do so. Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on the Scottish Welfare Fund and I would like to welcome the panel this morning. We have John Dickey, director of child poverty action group in Scotland, CPAC, Jules Oldman, head of policy and operations for homeless action Scotland, Elodie Mignar, refugee integration services manager for the Scottish Refugee Council and Bill Scott, director of policy and inclusion Scotland and a very warm welcome and thank you to those who have provided briefings for today's meeting. I think that I'd just open by asking, asking the panel to look in a crystal ball a little bit and just to ask them what do they see as the challenges and pressures on the Scottish Welfare Fund going forward, and I don't know, I'll take Mr Dickey first, to realise. I think that there are increasing challenges on the fund, there's no question that more and more households and families are facing income crisis, are facing real pressures on their already very limited budgets and too often finding themselves without any money at all, never mind that additional money they need to meet exceptional pressures. We know from all the modelling that's been done by the commission by the Scottish Government, by student fiscal studies, increasing levels of poverty expected over the next few years, families under very severe pressures, we're already seeing through our own case evidence and through work that we're doing with poverty alliance in Oxfam through the menu for change project, increasing numbers of people affected by the roll-out of universal credit and finding themselves without income in part because of the waiting period built into universal credit but also due to administrative problems and failings associated with universal credit, so increasing pressures on individuals and on families and the Scottish Welfare Fund as the safety net there to provide support where people are facing crisis, facing emergency, clearly under, likely to be under increasing pressure as a result of that and already is. I suppose we want to make sure that it has been a hugely welcome development, the creation of the National Scottish Welfare Fund with national guidance, statutory underpinning and start contrast to what's happened elsewhere in the UK but we need to make sure that it's invested in and supported so it's fit for purpose to ensure that it's able to respond to the realities that individuals and families are going to be facing over the next few years. I'd like to echo a lot of what John Smith just said. I'm speaking to a community group in Glasgow on Tuesday night and they are dreading the introduction of full roll-out of universal credit because already amongst those who are subject to universal credit, they are finding that people are unable to manage and also the level of deductions being made from their benefit at around 40 per cent of the total, either to recover rent or in some cases sanctions. Because of the lengthy time that they are subject to that, they are less and less able to manage. The problem is that if they are given all of the money in one payment, they have to keep the rent money, otherwise they are evicted, but that means that they may not be able to eat or feed their families. If they are unable to eat or feed their families, they go for a crisis grant. If they use some of the rent money to do that, they end up being evicted and then they have to apply for a community care grant. The costs to local authorities of rehousing somebody who is being evicted are enormous, and we are estimated between £16,000 to £20,000 for each family. There will be increasing pressure on the fund, and we are fearful that that means that, because it is a discretionary fund, increasingly the pressure will be on officials to decide who are the deserving and who are the undeserving poor and who gets help and who does not get help. That puts them in an invidious position of making decisions that have fundamental impacts on people's lives because they are unable to help everybody that approaches the fund for help. Hi, we support newly granted refugees, so people who have been through the asylum system, which is a system that has been recognised to be inhuman, isolating and putting people in financial hardship, people when they receive a positive decision and become officially legally a refugee and become entitled to mainstream benefits, have a 28-day move-on period at the end of which asylum support from the home office is terminated. Newly granted refugees have only 28 days to ensure their first payment of benefits. We know from our evidence that we have published and that we have brought to this committee two years ago that this is not enough for people to have their benefits paid. That is under the legacy benefits. In September, we are going to face the roll-out of the universal credit, and I can only echo the concerns of CPAC Scotland and Inclusion Scotland about that. That will increase the destitution of newly granted refugees when we see that it takes four to six weeks for benefits to be processed. What it means is that when the crisis grant is supposed to be an exceptional payment to respond to crisis, it is now used to respond to a planned crisis in a way to circumstances that we know are happening for every newly granted refugee or almost newly granted refugees. We are very welcoming of the Scottish Welfare Fund that will be made available specifically for Reunited Families, who are also facing very strong financial hardship. Again, that is the use of a crisis payment to meet the needs of non-crisis needs, I would say, because we know that those families will be in such a situation. Our concern at the Scottish Refugee Council is what can be put in place for sustainable solutions for newly granted refugees, both individuals and families, and how can they be supported? How can they get access to advocacy services as well to enable them to go through that system? All of those needs have been recognised and are included in the new Scottish strategy under the employment and welfare rights action plan, so we need to work and find sustainable solutions. The need for services—the Scottish Refugee Council runs the Scottish Refugee integration service in partnership with the British Red Cross, and we assist every newly granted refugees and Reunited Families. That funding is terminating in October 2018, which matched the roll-out of the universal credit in Glasgow, so we have significant concerns on how that needs to be met. I want to echo what has been said on universal credit. I want to repeat that. We certainly have concerns around it. In addition to what has been mentioned, we have concerns where people have been self-employed and the owners upon them are really keeping constant contact with the DWP around their credit. We feel that there is going to be a new range of people who are going to be sanctioned or in difficulty with benefits and finances. On a slightly more positive note, but it has financial implications. We know that, through HRSAG, there is lots of work happening with temporary accommodation. The hope for that is that a lot of people are stuck in that bottleneck and temporary accommodation, but they are going to be moving into permanent tenancies, fingers crossed. Therefore, that has implications on the community care grant. The difference in somebody being in receipt of a community care grant and that tenancy succeeding is massive. We cannot underestimate that. If we are expecting those numbers to be moving on, there are 10,873 homes just now and some people in temporary accommodation. If we are expecting that to reduce and those people moving into permanent accommodation, the community care grant needs to have an element to be matching those people moving on so that those tenancies can be a success. Thank you. Mr MacPherson, you wanted to come in. Thank you, convener. Good morning panel. Bill Scott, why to pick up on some of your evidence related to what you opened with there. You talked about the increasing anxiety around delays or anticipated delays without the roll-out of universal credit. In your evidence, you also spoke about extra pressure on the fund due to increase in the portion of claimants subject to conditionality and sanctions, increased to the average length of sanctions and something that has particularly arisen in my constituency case work, the imposition of the benefit cap with its particular impact on larger families. I wondered if you wanted to comment on that. You know, Ben, that we have had contact with families in North Edinburgh with disabled children who have been evicted due to the benefit cap, and in some instances causing the separation apparent from the child because suitable housing could not be found in Edinburgh that met the needs of the child by the local authority. They had to go and stay where relative where their mother was rehoused in Fife. Those are the sort of things that are arising due to the benefit cap. It definitely must be creating additional pressure within the system in those areas, such as Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow, where there is quite high proportion of families affected and where rents are higher. We could see that that additional pressure feeding through into additional demand, and that certainly looks the case as far as Edinburgh is concerned where it is spent, more than to record its budget by the nine-month point and looks as though it is heading for an overspend over the course of the year. It has already put in additional funds over and above what the Scottish Government provides to try and meet that, so it looks as though the benefit cap is having a real effect. As I said, it adds to the other pressures. On universal credit, it is about the increase in conditionality. We have already heard that it affects self-employed people. It also affects carers. Carers are in a catch-22 situation where, if they claim universal credit, which they must do under full roll-out, they cannot work more than 16 hours a week without losing their carers allowance and their statuses carers. However, if they work under 16 hours, their subject to conditionality to increase their hours to over the 16-hour limit, that is putting carers in an impossible situation. Carers save the state billions of pounds each year by providing unpaid care. They have put them in a situation in which they are subject to losing money either because they continue to work under 16 hours to provide the care that is needed, or they work over 16 hours to lose their carers allowance and all the additional entitlements that that brings. What do they do? It is impossible for them to avoid losing money, I would suggest, under the system that is being brought in. It is just not being thought through what the impact on carers would be. Does anyone else want to come in on that point? Mr Adam has a further supplementary question. I have a quick supplementary question. Good morning. I just wanted to ask, in the back of what Ben Macpherson said, that every one of you mentioned there at the start that there is pressure on the funds because of universal credit in particular. Is it not that the Scottish Government, with a limited resource, keeps trying to mitigate against those things, but there comes a time when we all have to have a look at where the source problem is, and the source problem is the decisions that are being made by the Government and Westminster, which are effectively universal credit. One of the prime examples is a callous benefit change that can have made cause devastation in people's lifestyles. Surely, when we are having this debate, the whole way of summarising this whole discussion is that yes, there is responsibility here in this place, but responsibility needs to be taken up by those in Westminster as well, with the fact that they are the ones that are causing the human carnage, as we speak. Absolutely, the Scottish Government and the UK Government need to work together, and pressure needs to be brought to bear on the UK Government to ensure that the social security system that it is responsible for is fit for purpose and is providing income security for individuals and families in Scotland. There is absolutely no question that we need to keep the pressure on and ensure that action is taken to fixing the universal credit and making it fit for purpose and to ensure that it provides that financial stability that individuals and families need. In the meantime, the reality is that it is not in too many cases, and we see increasing numbers of people ending up at food banks when we have a scheme in Scotland, a Scottish welfare fund, established to meet the needs of people facing income crisis. We need to make the most of what we have in Scotland in that Scottish welfare fund, which is there to meet the needs of those people who are facing an income crisis. The reasons for that have changed over the years and have all changed in relation to the effectiveness of the overall social security system and wider pressures on family and individual incomes, but we need to make the most of it. It is there to provide support to individuals and families in relation to crisis grants facing crisis. Too many are now facing crisis, in part, driven by the failings of universal credit or the problems with universal credit and its roll-out. We should not take away attention from underlying drivers of that income security, but at the same time, we should not ignore what we can do here in Scotland to invest in and support the devolved social security system that we have now, the Scottish welfare fund, to provide that safety net, beneath the safety net, to ensure that people are not put at risk and that the health of them and their families are not put at risk because they have no money. We have an opportunity here to use the structure of the Scottish welfare fund to ensure that we stem the increasing reliance on charitable aid food banks as the response to income crisis. The more that we can do to support the Scottish welfare fund and ensure that it is working effectively, invest in it to respond to increasing demand and ensure that its value is, at the very least, upgraded in real terms. If we are thinking about how we can respond to the fact that we know so many people who are already out at food banks when they could be getting a crisis grant from the Scottish welfare fund, let us use the powers that we have to invest in that fund. I am like you. I want to fix a problem. We all came into politics to try and fix problems in our community, but sometimes you have to say that with the limited resource that we have available to us, if things were done properly with the benefit system down south, we could actually work in tandem and we could get something better. I am agreeing with you, in fact, that we need to find a way to make that work. It gets frustrating for me, and it has no doubt what it does for you working in the front line when you are having to deal with those issues. Absolutely. I suppose that there are practical things. There is potential in the Scottish welfare fund in the many local third areas that are already happening in terms of ensuring that there are positive relationships with DWP, with other services, to ensure that people, when they come to the Scottish welfare fund, are getting the support, advice, the referrals that they need to ensure that they are getting the financial support that they are entitled to, that mistakes and errors in the UK social security system are being challenged to ensure that people are getting what they are entitled to. The more we can do to build those links and ensure that, when people approach the Scottish welfare fund in a crisis, they do not just get a crisis grant, they get the support that they need to put themselves to get the financial support that they are entitled to on a more secure and sustainable basis. There are things that can be done at a practical local level to ensure that that happens, as well as that national advocacy and campaigning level for us to be ensuring that we fix the problems with universal credit. To follow on with that, we can also think of it as an opportunity to be engaging with people that we may not be on other circumstances and therefore it gives opportunity for income maximisation, working with people. You can be looking at whole stems of other prevention work within their lives and their households. What turns out per household or per person to be very small amounts, the opportunities that that offers you is really, really large when sometimes you will never actually meet with that family or that household for any other reason. The kind of knock-on effect, the domino effect that that allows, then even with everything being ironed out with DWP etc, I do not think that we want to lose that as an opportunity because it really can enhance people's lives with the knowledge from local authorities and what is available in their catchment areas. We cannot lose sight of that element of support that is available. Just to follow on from that, the support that is available and people understanding what their rights and entitlements are is critical. I know that I have already made that point but I cannot stress enough about how, especially with refugees, people have no idea about what their entitlements are. They do not even know that they can ask for some benefits or for some crisis grant payments unless they can come to our office and be advised about that. When we look at mitigating the impact, we need to think about what kind of resources are required and not only for refugees but across the country to make sure that people know about their rights and entitlements to that support. Very briefly to echo that, when we did a straw poll, about 20 people who responded said that they never heard of the Scottish welfare fund, and they are on benefits—four out of five of them anyway, one is a local councillor—but they did not know about the fund. Even a couple of those who did know about the fund said that the only way that they found out was through using a local community group or an advice agency to find out about it, so they did not know through the council's own information system. I think that that is something that definitely needs to be addressed. Mr Tomkins, you wanted to come in. I mean, the conversation has moved on a little bit, but I just wanted to go back to something that Bill Scott said a few moments ago, because I think it peaked the interest of a number of us. I think he said something that I do not think I was aware of, which is this 16-hour rule and the conflict between universal credit and carers allowance. Can you just explain that one more time so that I have understood it properly, and then I might have a question about it? To receive carers allowance, you have to keep your working hours if you have any work. You have to keep your working hours under 16 hours a week, otherwise you will lose entitlement. Conversely, with universal credit, if you work under 16 hours a week, you are subject to conditionality to increase the number of hours to over 16. The problem is for any carer, and it is not just those in receipt carers allowance, it is also those who have a nominal entitlement to it, but who essentially claim GSA or income support. They are nominally entitled to carers allowance, but they actually receive the other benefits. Again, they are subject to that 16-hour rule, so once they breach that, they have lost their carers allowance, and they would be subject to a reduction in benefits. Thank you for explaining that. That is very clear. Carers allowance is one of the 11 benefits that is being devolved in full. There is no question here of the Scottish Government being required to mitigate what Mr Adam just described as the carnage of DWP policy. Carers allowance is being devolved in full, so it would be up for the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to decide if it wishes to continue that 16-hour rule in the new devolved carers allowance. We have already made strong arguments that, in particular, young carers shouldn't be subject to that rule because it prevents them from getting into the world of work. It does not just apply to work, but it also applies to education. If you take more than a course of more than 16 hours in education, you can lose entitlement as well. It is certainly something that the Scottish Government can look at, but the problem is in the year now, obviously. The roll-out universal credit is continuing before those changes could be made. I would imagine that, if we go through the normal parliamentary process, it will be a year or 18 months before we will be able to see anything like that. Indeed, that is an argument for getting on with the job of delivering devolved carers allowance and not delaying it any further. It is also an argument for addressing the substance of the issue when it comes to designing carers allowance in Scotland under the powers that we now have. You said that you have made representations to the Scottish Government about that. What kind of response have you had to those representations? On it was particularly in relation to young carers. We had a very positive response, where they agreed to look at the regulations surrounding education in particular, but perhaps employment. We will have to wait and see what the eventual proposals are that are brought forward. We agree that there should be as quick an adoption of the new benefits as possible, but there has to be a system in place that can deliver those benefits to the people that need them. The problem would still be the interplay between the two. The Scottish Government could make it a rule that it could work more than 16 hours, which would free up some of that, but there will still be carers who probably are working under 16 hours, not because they do not want to earn more, but because that is all that they can physically or mentally cope with on top of the caring responsibilities. They will still be subject to the requirement that they have to look for working more than 16 hours, even if they are only working 10 hours a week. That is still there as an issue. The committee will want to have a look at when it comes to examining regulations about carers allowance in the future. Thank you very much. Just before we move on, as the MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw I am in North Lanarkshire area, you talked about lack of awareness and people not understanding what is happening, but North Lanarkshire has a very good referral system in that anyone presenting to a third sector organisation like a food bank or to cab or anybody else will have a referral directly to a welfare rights officer to get people in front of the right people to get them access to a crisis grant or a welfare fund. Is that a model that you could see would be beneficial to be used as a best-practice model? I mentioned earlier, which is a full benefit check, but I also refer to other agencies that can help, because people in a crisis situation are not just the money. For example, I have a leaflet here from Cope, a community group that I spoke to in Glasgow Tuesday night. That is to do with stress, which, as you can imagine, if you have no money to live on, is going to happen. It is that sort of thing where you have an integrated approach where people are referred to all the services that they need rather than just dealing with the immediate presenting issue, which will be of no money. How do I feed the kids? You need to think through what are the other underlying issues that could be affecting that approach, which could be, for example, debt. Mr Dickie? We would actively promote the North Lanarkshire approach for other local authorities to consider taking similar approaches. What is particularly effective about it is that it is looking at how we refer people to the Scottish welfare fund in the first place. All those agencies that would otherwise—in the past and to else elsewhere in Scotland—their first port of call is to refer people to the food bank. They have the information and the pathways to refer directly to the Scottish welfare fund. Around the Scottish welfare fund, as well as a swift decision-making being made around that person's eligibility and the provision of crisis grant, there is then that plug-in to the wider income maximisation, money advice, housing and what are the other things that need to be put in place to ensure a secure sustained income and to reduce the financial pressures that are facing that family. Real evidence is there that those food banks participating in that referral network are seeing a real deep decline in the number of food bank parcels that they are having to make out. On the other hand, an increase in the number of crisis grants that are being provided is a far more dignified, sustainable approach to meeting the needs of people in crisis than just continuing to see food banks as the first port of call, rather than the Scottish welfare fund. Ms Oldham, you wanted to— I think that there is also a possibility to expand that a little further and be thinking to GPs, to our farmers that know of this, to the nursery nurses that know of this, people who are less obvious within support organisations but very much who will know of somebody being under a lot of stress, as Bill has highlighted, or somebody is aware that a child is turning up to nursery, not with everything as prepared as should be. The people outwith, as we would think, the normal support organisations, I think that it would be useful if it could be extended to those bodies as well. Just to add a point about when you talk about best practice, another thing to consider would be the accessibility of the application process when, at the moment, it is either online or on the phone and if people have language barrier, interpreters are simply not provided. Simple things like that need to be looked at to ensure full accessibility when people know about it. Thank you for raising the mental health issues and mental health awareness week, very poignant for us. I am going to move on and bring in Ms McNeill. Thank you. Good morning. You know that the Scottish welfare fund is independent by legislative and statutory guidance with local authorities having some discretion, so this is a topic for a lot of examination. I would like to ask what your view about the balance should be and should be removed some of the discretion. Thank you to Chypog for the action group for a very extensive paper on this. I have noted that some of the points that we have highlighted in relation to the discretion for local authorities is that you say that some local authorities may be bettering the discretion to limit applications. That gives me cause for concern. You have suggested that there should be a look to see whether or not the national delivery of the scheme might be more appropriate. I think that I would be opposed to the national delivery, which I still think that local authorities should have a level of discretion. What I am interested in is that perhaps there should be a framework of rules that all local authorities should adopt. One area that you highlight, for example, is that if you are waiting in a DWP benefit, you cannot apply to the fund. That seems an obvious one to me. I would be interested to hear the panel's views on what you think the balance between statutory guidance and the discretion of local authorities should be if there was to be any consultation on it. It is a discretionary fund, so clearly there will be discretion applied. There is statutory guidance, so the important thing is that decision making has regard to that statutory guidance. As that statutory guidance evolves, there is consultation to ensure that it evolves in such a way that it is contributing to the overall aims of the fund, which is to provide the support that it aims to provide, rather than adding barriers or reducing in response to increasing demand and trying to contain that demand. There were examples, as we have set out in the paper, where concerns that the information that is provided on local authority websites is at odds with the statutory guidance and are suggesting that there is an eligibility where, in fact, there potentially would be if discretion was applied in line with the statutory guidance. The example that you gave there of where a local authority suggests on its website that no grant is available if someone is awaiting a DWP claim decision, whereas, in fact, the statutory guidance is quite clear that there is discretion to be able to give a grant in those circumstances. Clear situations where the information that is being provided on websites is at odds with the discretion that is available to local authorities to provide support. That is evolving in some ways. It is about containing a limited pot of resources, so that comes back to the other issue of the adequacy of the fund. Are we providing a fund that is adequate to meet the need that is there, rather than just evolving at local level in terms of local decision making and at national level in terms of the guidance that is evolving in ways that are there, but containing demand rather than in ways that are ensuring that people who are potentially eligible are getting support? I just want to ask you about that, John. In the sense that it does not matter if there is a limited, unlimited resource in the fund and the local authority said that you cannot apply under those circumstances, i.e. if you are waiting in the DWP benefit, it does not matter how big the fund is if it says that you cannot apply. What would the remedy be for a situation like that? The remedy is to ensure that all the information that is provided and the application process and the information on the web is in line with the statutory guidance and is at odds with it. There are too many examples where it appears to be at odds with the statutory guidance. The decision making process is too often seeming to be decisions being made in ways that are again at odds with the statutory guidance. We had some concern that, potentially, that is a result of, again, limited resources in terms of administering the decision making over reliance on the software that local authorities use rather than having direct regard to the statutory guidance and ensuring that the discretion that is there is used to fulfil the overall objectives of the fund, which is to support those people who are facing crisis, facing exceptional pressures. In that case that you mentioned, has that been resolved or how would you resolve it? I think that we need to change that. I suppose that there is an issue here about where the overall oversight of the fund is, who is taking responsibility for ensuring that local information that is provided and the local processes for accessing the Scottish Welfare Fund are in line with the statutory guidance so that those things are picked up and we are picking them up on an ad hoc basis, which is why we have not named particular local authorities because we have only picked them up here and there. I think that there is a job to be done to make sure that the overall picture is absolutely clear that local authorities are promoting the fund and are not providing information and are not making decisions in any way that is at odds with the statutory guidance. So would there be your view that perhaps national delivery of the scheme might resolve questions like that? Yes, I think that we are raising that potential. When the scheme was previously a DWP, when the DWP social fund was abolished, responsibility devolved to the Scottish Government. It is again very welcome to put additional money in and set up a national scheme very much different from what happened elsewhere in the UK. There was no national body or agency at that point. It would make sense to administer this element of social security. There is now being developed a national social security agency, so given the extraordinary variation that we are seeing across local authorities—and there will be variation because there is discretion in terms of decision making locally—the variation is quite extraordinary, both in terms of the number of applications, the number of successful awards, the levels of those awards, in order to build up a more consistent approach to decision making and perhaps support accountability. It might make it easier in terms of organisational learning and learning from the review decisions that are being made and the mistakes that are being picked up in terms of decision making if national delivery was considered. It is more putting out there consideration at this stage, but given the variation locally, I think that it is something that needs to be considered. Just lastly, is there any aspect of the scheme currently that is discretionary that you think should not be left at the discretion of any particular aspect? That is quite a big thing, but we need to go away. There is a problem with discretion—an important bit of social security being left to such discretion. The reality is that we want to see more investment in social security in terms of the adequacy and access to benefits to which people are entitled to so that they are not left in positions of such financial insecurity that a Scottish welfare fund is needed to pick up the pieces. Investment in entitlement social security that people are entitled to needs to be a priority. In the meantime, there are situations in which people are left in such unstable security and do not have income to meet exceptional pressures or situations where they are left with no money at all and that there is a need for a fund to deal with that. We would need to get greater consideration to whether there are elements of that that could potentially be not discretionary, but the entire basis of the fund at the moment is a discretionary fund. It is just to point out that the Parliament passed unanimously a bill less than a month ago that said that all claimants to the Scottish social security system should be treated with dignity and respect. That is primary legislation. That is binding, as far as I am concerned, on the Scottish welfare fund, and yet it is not happening. We have cited instances where somebody was assumed to be a drug user when they asked for help and refused it on that basis when, in fact, they were a disabled person. Another person who was blind was told that we do not provide help for people like you and treated nothing short of disgracefully. Third person who said that they were visited and told that because they got either the LA or PIP that they were entitled to help for a community care grant, wrong, not in guidance, not in regulations, and that they had to buy it themselves. They were very rude and unhelpful, and we would rather die than ask those, and I will not say it, but they made it very clear that they were treated totally without dignity and respect. When people have no money, the last thing that they have is their dignity and their respect, their self-respect. When somebody takes that away from them, they are damaged by it for a long, long time afterwards, and that is happening. Even if it is only isolated cases, it should be being addressed, and there should be a system of compensation for people who are not treated in line with dignity and respect because it allows local authorities to gatekeep in a fashion that is not in line with people's human rights. I want to go back to the issue of accessing the Scottish welfare fund. Some local authorities are still insisting that claims have to be made online. Learning disabled people, disabled people in general, one-third of disabled people are not in line at all, have no access to the internet and could not use it even if they had access. They are denying those people help by insisting that they claim online. I would argue that, under current law, even before the social security bill was passed, that was illegal because it is discriminatory against disabled people. However, once the social security bill was passed, as soon as it is given royal assent, accessible communication standards apply. Accessible communication means that you have to deal with that person in the communication form that they require to be communicated in, not the form that you impose on them. I have to see that the Scottish Government has responsibilities here. If it is going to say that advocacy will be regulated because we want to ensure that the standards that are given in advocacy provision have training, etc., have to meet certain standards, how is it that Scottish welfare fund staff are not trained to not see disabled people as less than human and treating people, anybody in poverty, without the dignity and respect that they are due? The courtesy that they are due, the politeness that they are due, is not right. It has to be dealt with by the Scottish Government because you are ultimately responsible for the laws. I would say that a national system, if that is not possible, at least regulate properly to ensure that local authorities are training their staff in disability equality and poverty awareness, and that when instances of complaints are made about staff who are in the Scottish welfare fund treating people less than the respect that they are due, that they are due compensation. That will remind local authorities what they have to do, because too many Scottish welfare fund workers are rightfully in one sense saying that this is public money, we are not giving it out willy nilly, but on the other hand it is not their money. That money was given to those local authorities to provide to the people who need it. The huge variation suggests that some local authorities are not getting that message, that people in desperate need, because something is going on when there is such a huge variation in the number of claims to the authority and the number of awards. That variation has to be dealt with as well. I would suggest that at least publishing the Scottish Public Service Ombudsman's findings so that some uniformity is being arrived at and the level of decision making would be a step towards that. We would not be looking for the scheme to be moved to become national, but we would like there to be opportunities for more consistency. To touch on the websites, for example, we had quite a look at those in response. In fact, we looked at those every few months to see how you can be approaching them. Some of the wording is off-putting to say the least, but when you have to be in a disaster and a crisis, it sounds like you are needing to be part of a superhero film to apply for a community care grant or a crisis grant. You do not always feel like you are in that bad a situation. You certainly, for such barriers to be put up with wording to put you off going for these grants, do not help. That seems to vary across the board, so it feels like there is a chance for some consistency there. Could we get it right once and then ask for every local authority across the country to have to use the same wording, and that would simply be that. I think that there is also opportunity for us to just improve the whole ethos. It is a prevention fund, and that does not seem to be how it is viewed. This is a way for the country to save so much money. Tenancy failure is anything around £25,000 per household, £600 per household for accessing a community care grant. If we really have people viewing this as the prevention fund, I think that that would change things. There needs to be substantial training across the local authorities on that, but with that level of consistency, not for it to be done time and time again in each and everyone's different ways. It is not for the scheme to become nationalised, but for it to be a bit more of a move to more consistency and that element of prevention to be very much high on the agenda, that this is not just to help somebody in the absolute needs of crisis. No, this is to prevent future things going wrong and this is for us to engage with somebody well and this is for us to demonstrate how good a country we can be and what we have on offer to really help that household. Just to add to the responses from the point of view of Scottish Refugee Council, the more we move away from discretion, the better, because refugees and reunited families who access the mostly crisis grant access it for the same reasons. As I said, there are expected crises at the moment. Most of those families and individuals are in Glasgow and we have a good relationship with Glasgow City Council and people do get a crisis grant, but if we could have more of an insurance that those families will have access to crisis grant until we can change the systems further and we have a stronger partnership between HOMOFIS, DWP and mainstream benefits are processed quicker, we need to have a stronger guarantee that people will be able to access crisis grant. Asylum dispersal is likely to go beyond Glasgow so we need to have other local authorities who have not had to deal with such acclaim from newly granted refugees to provide the support in a similar way. I have a number of members wanting to come in on this issue but I will go to Ms Ronson next. Thank you very much for your evidence this morning. It sounds like a very concerning picture. If we know that food bank use has increased massively but there is no such increase in applications for these grants, it sort of speaks to the fact that something is not working. Mr Scott, when you began this morning you were saying that it puts those in a position of deciding who does and does not qualify in a difficult position to put them mildly but it sounds as if a lot of applicants are being put in a very difficult position too. I am hearing different views from the panel with regards to how national, where the guidance should sit and just what sort of minimum standard there should be. You have probably all given evidence during the progression of the child poverty bill and local delivery plans are going to insist that local authorities have to let us know what they are doing. Do you think that that sort of information could be caught up in that? Yes, we declined this number of applications, we still make it impossible for people to apply in person. Do you think that there is a space there for this to be commented on at the very least? There is evidence that gatekeeping is going on before people make claims. That is what really worries me. Some of the information that is coming forward is that people are being dissuaded from making claims because they are told that they are not the right sort of person to make a claim. That should not be happening. Everybody should be allowed to make the claim and then discretion is applied. Discretion should not be applied before the person makes a claim. However, with any discretionary cash-limited fund, there is going to be pressure on staff to try and put people off who they think will not qualify. Thinking that they do not qualify and actually not qualifying are two different things. I see evidence of gatekeeping even within the statistics. It is quite evident that something is going on in terms of the level of claims. However, there are other problems such as the repeat claims. If somebody applies for a crisis grant more than three times, they are not going to get a fourth payment. Definitely not. The evidence is that the number of people applying who have made previous applications for crisis grants is increasing, but the number of people being awarded crisis grants who have previously applied is decreasing. That means that they have used up all their times. Where did they go then? That is why I am saying that the fund is under pressure, but that also means that, because they have been told after the fourth time that they are not going to get any more, that they are not going to apply again because they know that they are not going to get any money. There are a large number of people potentially out there who know that they cannot apply. The unmet need is not being measured. That is a problem as well. As far as I can see and from what I have said to local authority officials in the past, they apply the same rule to communicate grants more or less, even though they are technically in regulations that three strikes and you are out. In practice, I think that it probably is applied, which means that you are unlike you get, which means, for example, a women fleeing domestic violence who has to move house several times because your ex-partner finds out where she lives or whatever, they could apply for maybe a third community care grant having moved house a couple of times and not get it. Those are worrying things that are there within the existing rules and there will always be a cash-limited system, but we have to try and measure the unmet need to find out what is the true level that we should be supplying help at rather than the level that is being supplied at. I think that we are at the point where we should be looking to see who is being turned down and really looking at the nitty gritty of those applications, but also asking for a record where somebody has approached the local authority and not got as far as even making the application for that to be recorded and for reasons why no applications even being put forward in any way. For us to then be able to look at that and the outcomes of that and it might be that actually there has been misunderstanding, but it might be that actually there is just an element that needs to be re-looked at for how the grant moves forward. Ms McGuire, you wanted to come in. Get me to the point where we are getting pushed for time, but I will let Ms McGuire and Mr Adam with their supplementaries and then maybe come back to you, Mr Scott. Mr Scott and Ms Oldham picked up on the points that I was going to ask, so I will save you some time now. I will just be very quick this time, even though I said that last time and I was a wee bit longer than I expected. I was interested. I hadn't thought about it, John, until you mentioned it there, the national delivery of the Scottish welfare fund. I know that there are different opinions in the panel, but I was quite struck with it. I just want to ask it. Are you suggesting that that is a good way forward? If so, can you expand on the benefits that you see in doing it that way? I think that it is something that should be considered, given the extraordinary variation that we are seeing with local delivery. We ended up with local delivery, I think, because at the point at which the welfare fund or the devolution of the social fund took place, there was no obvious national agency. We now are moving towards having a national security agency, so I think that it is something that really needs to be thought about, as it is not fit better within that national security agency. Particularly given that agency will have a local presence supporting people to access devolved benefits. In terms of the benefits, I think that it is about ensuring consistency of decision making, consistency of ensuring that the decision makers are having regard to the statutory guidance. At the moment, that is a bit unclear what the accountability is. There are lots of examples of people who have picked up here where both the information provided publicly online is at odds with the statutory guidance and the decision making itself, too often not in line with what the statutory guidance would suggest. Having an expertise in decision making, developing within an organisation, being able to take account of reviews of decisions and build that into future decision making, I think that there are some real advantages to that. We have also got some examples of people falling between local authorities in terms of which local authority they should be getting support from or being told by both local authorities that are potentially the local authority responsible that they should go to the other one and find themselves with no local authority with no Scottish welfare fund support. I think that that is something that really should be considered quite seriously. In the meantime, we also need to be looking at why there is such variation across the country at the moment. Is it to do, to some extent, to do with an accurate recording of decisions or variations in how decisions and processes are being recorded? Is it to do with local gatekeeping? We would echo what others have said, that there is very real evidence of demand being contained through gatekeeping, not least in relation to the number of channels that you are able to access at Scottish welfare fund. The guidance is very clear that it should be at least three channels, online, face-to-face, telephone and practice people being told that they have to apply online, except in very exceptional circumstances. In summary, something that should be seriously considered as a way of trying to improve the quality of decision making and ensure greater consistency that wherever you live, discretion will be applied, but discretion has been applied in a consistent way across the country. I know that the local authorities believe that the amount that they are being provided to administer the fund is inadequate. There is a question as to whether that money, £5 million or so, might be better utilised at a national level where economies of scale are much easier to achieve. I agree with John that it is an accident in history in some ways that we have ended up with the Scottish welfare fund being administered by local authorities. The social fund was administered by the DWP, a national agency, and it could see all the review decisions and take them into account, whereas each local authority is only getting back the review decisions that are given to it and therefore is not able to learn from other local authorities who may have already made the same mistake and applied the guidance or regulations. There is certainly a case to be made to go to a national level, and it should be investigated whether that might be a more efficient way in delivering what will remain cash-limited funds for the foreseeable future. I am going to bring in Mr Griffin. Just to touch on the powerful points that Bill Scott made about how applicants are treated, I fully agree with that. That is why I moved amendments to the bill that would have brought the welfare fund under the Scottish Social Security System rules, which, unfortunately, were not accepted. However, there are still existing rules there that applicants should be treated with respect and that their dignity should be preserved to those of the existing rules. If you have examples that you can give to the committee that we can highlight with the minister, I think that that would be helpful. It may be isolated examples because it was only a straw pole. It is certainly not the main thing that we find when we do consultations around social security. Most of the concern is around work-capability assessments, PIP assessments and universal credit sanctions. However, for each individual that is affected, it is an enormous thing and it should not be happening, because it does not cost anything to be polite to somebody in Kirchis, and that is why it should happen. It is a human right whether it is on the face of the Scottish welfare reform legislation or not. It remains an aspect of the human rights act and that still applies. It should not be happening, but it is happening. The substantive questions that I wanted to ask were around the budget for the Scottish welfare fund. The budget has been frozen since April 2013, which represents a real-terms cut of £3 million. I wonder what members of the panel thought about a real-terms cut to the value of the Scottish welfare fund at a time when it has already been pointed out that the universal credit full service roll-out is having a real impact and whether you feel that the budget that is set aside for the welfare fund is adequate to meet the needs now and as we go forward with full service roll-out. Right away with universal credit, the sanctions figures suggest that only one third of the people affected by conditionality are currently on the universal credit claimant count, but 71 per cent of all the sanctions that are being imposed are on universal credit claimants, which my quick arithmetic suggests that you are about two and a half times as likely to be sanctioned on universal credit as you are on JSA or ESA. That means that a lot of people are going to lose 40 per cent of their benefit for two and a half times as long as the benefits of JSA or ESA they would lose it for because hardship payments under universal credit are loans that are recoverable and that are recovered from the benefit as soon as the person's sanctions finished. They lose 40 per cent of their benefit not for a month but for two and a half months, not for six months but for 15 months, et cetera, not for three years but for seven approaching eight years. It's going to create huge pressure on the fund as universal credit is rolled out if that level of sanctions continues. If new refugees were to apply for universal credit a week after their granted status, which is the soonest they can do because they need a biometric resident permit to do that, with the processing time of universal credit, they will need at least a crisis grant to sustain three weeks. We know that most new refugees will need a crisis grant for at least three weeks, because most refugees will apply the second or third week of their move-on period, just the time to get around to everything that they need to do during that move-on period, so that will have a serious increase of payment, mostly in Glasgow. We need to be increasing investment in the Scottish welfare fund as long as we are seeing people facing income crisis ending up having to use food banks when they could be eligible for support through the Scottish welfare fund. We need to be making sure that the fund is adequately resourced to meet its needs so that people aren't unnecessarily ending up reliant on charitable food aid. No question, we need to increase resourcing for the Scottish welfare fund. At the moment, I think that we've already discussed how demand is being contained rather than necessarily met needs met. One way of avoiding, given that it's a cash-limited discretionary fund at the moment, is avoiding a continued push towards reducing the numbers of people who are containing that demand. We need to be investing in it to ensure that we're able to meet people's needs. I'm repeating myself, but it is a preventative spend. Around the family reunion crisis grant, whether you feel that the £100,000 budget is adequate to cover the demand that might be put on that particular fund? It's a good step forward. It's very good to have this fund available, is the acknowledgement that the need is there, and it's great to see such funds put aside for reunited families. It's difficult to say in the sense that you don't know in advance how big the families will be in the next year. There could be people bringing just the spouse or one children, but there could be up to six or seven children in some instances, so it's difficult to give an estimate on that. Those families will also be hit by the universal credit. Most reunited families will be in Glasgow, so from September 2018, it's going to be very large families potentially needing a crisis grant for six weeks for the whole period of universal credit being processed. When they arrive, they've got no income at all, and they only rely on a single allowance of the sponsor who brought them here. I've not done the math before coming, but it will be important to monitor when this fund will be used. I'm going to bring Mr Rick Berson. Jules Olderman, I just wanted to ask some questions around your submission on the topic of homelessness. You state in your written evidence that you see it as an invaluable fund, the one that demonstrates that small amounts of money can be used to help to make a big difference. Perhaps you could elaborate on the differences from your experience that the fund has made in terms of preventing and mitigating homelessness. In relation to homelessness, the main element is community care grants. When somebody is moving on from temporary or supported accommodation, often with only a black bag—not even full of goods within that—to move into a new tenancy, they could be moving in without a community care grant to simply bear walls and nothing more. The community care grant enables them to have white goods, a bed to sleep on and a sofa. It is very much the absolute basics. I have put in my response that we could do a wee bit better on that, because it is taking things to that ever so slightly. A better level would make the difference in particular if you've got pure mental health than having the ability not to have a big bright light on in the middle of your room, but to have some lower-level lighting. The difference from a community care grant to not is really the difference between a tenancy succeeding or failing. We've also put into our response that the timing around that is also crucial. I think that there's a possibility for us to improve on that. Do not get me wrong that the timings have improved since it has come to Scotland by a long way, but there is a possibility to—as it stands just now, I should explain that we still have people moving into tenancies without the goods that they need, without a bed to sleep on in some cases as soon as they move in simply because not everything is processed quickly enough. Were we to change to allow somebody not to have an address where they went for a community care grant? For example, if somebody moved into supported or temporary accommodation at that point, if they could apply for a community care grant, it would be informed that, yes, we will be able to give you that unless you win the lottery or something in the meantime, or any other change in circumstances, you'll be allocated with whatever fund of money. On receipt of knowing which address that person is moving to, they sign to say something like, yes, I've not changed my circumstances, I haven't changed, and the funds are released immediately. That can make a huge difference because the fund really has the difference in making sure that there is a sustained tenancy or not. It is a case of having absolutely nothing, just the clothes that you're standing in, possibly another set of clothes, to having the start for a home, although we do have the possibility, I think, for actually taking that bit further, as I mentioned, because we're very much looking at just the bare bones and those little bits of difference can really change from being a house that's furnished to a home. On that, building on the benefits that those grants supply and trying to enhance that delivery, do you have empathy with what's been said already by some of the other panellists around if there were economies of scale and this was delivered through national, the social security agency, that there could be benefits in that? Are there issues with differentiation between local authorities that you've come across? Yeah, I mean, I think most local authorities have gone for sort of white good packages and I think there's a lot of similarities actually across the country. When I said that we wouldn't be asking for things to be moved nationally, it's not that we would be against that, it's just that that's not been one of the things that our members have actually put forward as one of their requests, but when it comes to procurement and actually being able to offer things on a broader scale, then yes, I mean that it's certainly something that could be looked at, it's not that we're against things moving to something becoming national, it's that we're a membership organisation for homelessness and it's not something that's arisen, it's been more that has come back to us, that actually there's been some positives in having the kind of locality taken into account, so maybe a relationship with some local suppliers and that sort of thing, so I guess we don't want to lose that element of it if it was to go national. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr Tomkins, did you want to go? I guess it's been covered, thank you very much. Could I just finally ask, I mean there's been a lot of discussion about different services from different areas and about training for local government members and things. Are any of you aware of any substantive work that COSLA has done in looking at the operation and the requirements of actually delivering the welfare fund in local authorities? Mr Scott? Yes, I mean I'm aware that COSLA has been involved, but our involvement I think at a national level probably ended about two years ago, but COSLA were definitely involved at that time in trying to set up training, which would alert local authority officials administering the fund to the needs of disabled people. We think that that was quite successful, but it's not continued, so turnover and the fact that only a very small number of local authority staff were even trained at that time would suggest to us that that sort of training isn't being provided even if COSLA and the Scottish Government thought it was worthwhile. It's not something we've been asked to do, so I know that there's no local authorities as far as I'm aware who've asked us to do that. Initially there was training and support to local authorities and a national network of local authority leads in relation to, I'm not certain, we've lost touch with what's happening there. I suppose all the focus on the so scoody bill has taken up a lot of attention probably at our end and also within Government, but I think that the committee's inquiry is actually a really good opportunity to revisit this. Is there adequate training support at national level to local authority leads and decision makers around the Scottish welfare fund and maybe revisiting some of the training that did happen initially where there was awareness training around poverty and the experience of what kind of experiences people would be coming to local decision makers behind them, as well as training, in fact we provided some training as well in terms of the detail of the regulations and the guidance, so I think it's time to revisit that and see if it's in place now, still adequate to provide support. It's also what we don't know about the fund as much as what we do know about the fund, that's a worry, because in the initial days, the first two or three years, figures were collected at a local authority level and I think they were inaccurate, but they gave us some indication people with vulnerabilities who applied to the fund and that included disabled people, so people were identified as learning disabled, mental health issues, physical impairment, sensory impairment, et cetera. That's not done now and one of our concerns, which we've identified, is that if you look at the graphs in terms of likely to be taken into care if a community care grant isn't awarded, that's going down like that and coming up to meet it is families under exceptional pressure. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, is that it's perhaps easier to fit the entitlement criteria for families under exceptional pressure than it is to get for being a disabled person likely being taken into care, but we don't know and it is worrying when you see those figures because we've no idea if the number of disabled people in their families who are being awarded community care grants is falling or not because it's not collected. The worry is that the numbers are falling because there's pressure on the fund, but we don't know. I thank you all for your attendance at committee this morning, it's been a really useful session and I'm going to suspend for five minutes to let the panel change over. Thank you. I welcome to committee this morning our second panel, Morag Johnson, director of financial and business services from Glasgow City Council, Craig Mason, senior manager, council advice services Dundee City Council and Sheila McCandy, benefits and welfare manager from Highland Council and a warm welcome to you this morning. I'd just like to open the same question I had for the first panel is what do you see as being the pressures on the welfare fund going forward? I would echo the comments that were made by the previous panel in terms of the pressures that are coming down the line, particularly with universal credit. Certainly for Glasgow, we are not yet at the stage of full service roll-out, that is something that will be happening from this September and that is something that we see is potentially significantly increasing pressure, particularly on our crisis grants and the submission that highlighted that our crisis grants applications have significantly increased since the start of the fund, particularly over the last few years. Our concern is that the roll-out of universal credit could significantly impact on that, which is one of the reasons that influenced the decision of the council to maintain its level of funding at the 17-18 level. I think that it is just that demand that is on local authorities to try and manage the budget that is allocated versus the demand that is there, so certainly universal credit is one of the challenges that we see. We are in full service now. Early signs are quite good, but that may well be because we have done a huge amount of preparation for universal credit, working with our DWP colleagues and also voluntary and statutory sector services. My thinking is that, longer term, there is a danger with the reduction in benefit levels generally. We are starting to see the slow burn of the change from RPI to CPI that happened a few years ago with welfare reform. That is something that has probably been missed this morning in some of the evidence. I think that low income levels are primarily the reason that people come back to Scottish welfare fund for crisis grants perhaps. In terms of the universal credit full service, we have seen perhaps an indication that people are taking up advanced payments when they are signing on for universal credit, and that that has led to a levelling off of our crisis grants, as well as the other work that we do in Dundee to try to help people at point of contact whenever they come up close to a crisis. Universal credit was first launched in Scotland in Highland and that was back in July 13. We were then moved to full service in June 16, so we have experienced universal credit for a long time. At the same time, the Scottish welfare fund came on stream in April 13. As of today, about 50 per cent of our caseload for crisis grants and community care grants are universal credit cases. We do not have any evidence of which of those universal credit claimants applied anyway under the legacy benefit system. We are not really seeing that pain through universal credit that others have described, but, as Craig has alluded to, all the work that has gone on in preparing for universal credit and ensuring that claimants are signposted and helped through the correct channels for help. There was a lot of talk this morning about the benefit cap and the Scottish welfare fund. The benefit cap is eased through discretionary housing payments, not through the Scottish welfare fund. That is certainly the approach in Highland. When an individual approaches the council, we look to see what is the correct avenue for that council. As welfare reform kicks in more dramatically and as local government funding cuts continue, we are going to come to a point where what do we do? There is real pressure coming down the line, and it is really important that we all work together to anticipate what those pressures are and to do whatever we can at local level to help our residents. We heard a bit about some of the poor experience that people had when applying, and I am sure that we would acknowledge that that can happen in any organisation. I wonder if you would like to say a bit about the benefits of local delivery of this type of assistance and given indication of whether, as was mentioned, you have managed to build up any relationships with suppliers, for example, that have made getting help to people quicker. I suppose that the first thing that I would comment on is hearing those comments about poor experience. I would certainly say that that is not something that we would want to support. Everybody that approaches the Scottish welfare fund should be treated with dignity and respect. In terms of training, there is regular training with staff in terms of how they engage with people. Certainly in Glasgow, one of the things that we have looked at over the last couple of years is that poverty awareness training, which is not developed just for the council but more broadly with a number of partners to ensure that when staff are dealing with claimants, they do not have any preconceived ideas in trying to deal with them. Obviously, unfortunately, sometimes that does emerge and we will try to deal with that through training. In terms of the benefits of local delivery, where that comes into play is because of the knowledge and local awareness and the particular issues that happen in different local authorities, you are better able to respond to them. Obviously, there was some discussion previously about refugees and that has been a particular issue that has affected Glasgow most closely and most acutely. That local knowledge has allowed the relationship to be built up with the Scottish Refugee Council to try to deal with that. You had specifically mentioned the benefits of local delivery. When the Scottish welfare fund was introduced in 2013, Glasgow decided to use its relationship with city building and Royal Stratford-Clive Blinkraft initiative, RSBI, which is a supported employment initiative in Glasgow, as one of the ways that we could deliver on our community care grants. What that has allowed us to do is to build a very close relationship with that organisation, which has broader community benefits because it supports disabled people in employment, and to make sure that we can deliver goods within the timeframes that are set out. Obviously, we have a close relationship with them and we can discuss with them, particularly where there have been budget pressures, about how we can work together to try and manage the cost of the goods and the type of goods that are being delivered. That has proven to be very beneficial. A couple of the other areas for Glasgow, we have the improving cancer journey project, which has now been rolled out across a number of local areas. That is one of the areas that the Scottish welfare fund staff have worked very closely with in ensuring that, if there is a need for financial support, the Scottish welfare fund is linked very closely with the workers there. There are just a couple of examples of where I think that local delivery has brought benefits. In Dundee, we initially started the Scottish welfare fund as a joint effort between our revenues and benefits service and our welfare rights service. At the beginning, I managed the welfare rights service at the time. There was a lot of talk about whether those two types of decision maker and those two types of disciplines worked together well. Our welfare rights team saw it as a great opportunity to try and help people at point of crisis. As a result of that, we worked alongside revenues and benefits. A couple of years ago, the service came fully into the council advice services. There was a restructuring. Essentially, we have a link within our service directly to welfare rights officers, to money advisers, to energy efficiency advisers, and employability services. We are all set in the same area. The decision maker's role is that there are Chinese walls almost between them. No pressure can be put on those decision makers. Essentially, we have a full complement of different types of advisers who are well aware of their colleagues in the Scottish welfare fund. They are well aware of what the grants can provide for, what kind of help is offered, while at the same time offering the help in their own individual disciplines or collectively, depending on the client's individual needs. In terms of training, we provide all our staff with poverty awareness training, which is run by Dundee healthy life initiative and the welfare rights team working together. It is a gateway in, from our point of view, to the Scottish welfare fund. All those individual services work to try to identify clients that they are working with who would benefit from a grant and make a direct referral. We have collectively a piece of work at the moment on the external services. We are trialling over the next two to three years a collective project with six other voluntary sector organisations, where we are working to collective targets in relation to budgeting and debt advice for clients who are looking for long-term support. Through that increased partnership work, we are getting more joint working in our traditional areas between those services. In terms of local delivery, Dundee is pretty good, I would suggest that voluntary sector and statutory sector are working together to the same aims. We have tried to bring in external agencies, invite them in on a Wednesday morning, meet the decision makers and get a sense of what the Scottish welfare fund is about and go through dummy cases with them, anonymised, to see how the decision maker would tackle that individual case and how it would make a decision for better understanding within those agencies. We like to see it as a type of spider's web. We have the main services within the council working together with the Scottish welfare fund in mind, but we also try to bring in external services. In terms of suppliers, we started initially working with a couple of social enterprises, so we worked with Dovetail Enterprises and Clean Close. We still have that relationship with Dovetail and they still supply most of our goods in relation to beds, bedding, sofas, etc. Clean Close was another social enterprise that we worked with. In terms of the delivery and perhaps the fitting of Carpets by the Clean Close company, we have developed that local relationship whereby they are aware of the client's needs when they are going into a household to lay carpeting or linoleum or whatever. We get a better service through having that relationship and putting an element of feedback from them on where we have a vulnerable client and how perhaps that vulnerable client might need special help to get the carpets laid or whatever, whether it be because of a disability or something else. Those link-up opportunities in Dundee have been hard work over the years, but we are now at the stage where we are working together and we are starting to work very closely with our housing department to look at those transitions into new tenancies and where we fit in. We have done it on an ad hoc basis, but we are trying to make it more efficient at present to see whether we can capitalise on the fact that their housing offices are now tenancy officers and have got more of a responsibility for making sure that the tenancy is sustainable. We are trying to work with them and offer the Scottish Welfare Fund community care grants at the right point of time. Certainly in Highland we have got the challenge of geography. We are 20 per cent larger than the size of Wales, so it is really important for us that services are local. How we achieve that is that we have teams based in each of our localities who work together. We have very close links within the councils. The councils services work very closely together to help to deliver the Scottish Welfare Fund. We have also got excellent links with the third sector, indeed with a number of contracts with the third sector for delivery of various services for us, including advice and information services. We invest £1.1 million in our local CAB to deliver that for us. In terms of local delivery of services for the Scottish Welfare Fund, we have got two local suppliers. One is New Start Highland, which is a local charity that provides lots of employment for people. They provide second hand goods for us and good quality second hand goods. We have also got the furnishing service, which are Glasgow based but have set up a depot locally with us and are creating employment opportunities. We have also got a very close eye on the localism agenda and how we deliver that and comply with the needs in the localism agenda. We think that local delivery is really important in Highland for all those reasons, but most importantly for the individual who is receiving our services and who needs to access our services. When somebody comes into the council, they are quite often the director to the welfare team who will look at all the entitlements and needs of that individual and then do warm referrals. What we mean by warm referrals is that the officer of the council will make their way to the service to ensure that the citizen receives that service rather than just signposting the citizen to whatever they need to go because quite often they do not get there. We think that it is really important that the local delivery is retained. I do not know whether it would be in terms of performance. We heard there was some concern that we might not have a picture of who was being accepted and who was being refused and how that information could be drilled into to see how uptake was and whether there were any issues. Can you tell me a little bit about how your local authority collects information on who is coming to you and what is going on? When the local authorities met initially, when the Scottish welfare fund was to transfer to them, there was talk of perhaps a single IT system for the Scottish welfare fund across all 32 local authorities. We gathered that because of the timescales that could not happen at that point in time. Therefore, we now have a situation where there are maybe three or four different main suppliers of IT systems to the Scottish welfare fund. Dundee has a system called Northgate, which we share with another four local authorities. All the information that is potentially in the systems is really the reporting back where we get requests on a monthly basis for our information that is published quarterly. The information that is potentially there is at a local level where we try to understand the data in terms of who is applying and who is perhaps missing out on applications, but within the team itself, those discussions are on-going. We have staff training groups within Dundee where we sit down and we look at decisions. In my submission, I said that the SPS will publish some sort of piece of information about individual decisions. We discussed those with our Scottish welfare fund decision maker to get better decision making across the piece. The information that is gathered will be the number of applications that have been made, and that is obviously monitored against the number of awards that are made. That is regularly monitored. On the issue that was raised in the previous evidence session, I think that what has been suggested is that there are people who do not even get to the stage of making an application because it is viewed that they are put off for various means. That is not information that we necessarily would be able to gather. I was thinking about how we could try and gather that type of information. Probably the only way would be to try and, in some way, monitor our telephone inquiries and see whether there is a way to do that, but it is only when an application is received that it would be registered at that point. With that information that you are gathering, can you drill into any vulnerabilities that people might have that are coming to you? I think that the specific ask was about people with disability. Yes, I picked up the point in the earlier session about the fact that it looks as if there were some detailed information gathered at the beginning of the scheme that is no longer gathered. As Craig has referred to, the systems that are used themselves mirror the data collection that is requested by the Scottish Government. I am not aware about why those particular areas were removed from the data gathering. That is something that we would need to take back and try and understand, whether it just did become too difficult, whether the information was not easily identifiable through the conversations with claimants. I am speculating at this point. At this point in time, if it is not requested by the Scottish Government, it is not something that we would necessarily be recording in Glasgow. I am going to move to Ms McNeill. Thank you very much. Good morning. We can see from your evidence so far that the importance of local delivery and for each local authority is going to be different, and it is pretty impressive to listen to. In the previous panel, we had an exchange about the level of discretion versus the national rules. You will have heard, for example, the evidence that there is extreme variation across the country, that some local authorities have been accused of gatekeeping. In one instance, the local authority had misinformed applicants about the grounds at which it could apply. Some interest in your views about whether or not there should be less discretion, I guess that you are going to say no to that. If that is your view, it would be interesting to hear and give any situation how we can make decisions and make them look a bit more consistent. It would also be helpful for me, certainly, to know that in each local authority you have your own internal guidelines about who qualifies and who does not, and that will be for every local authority to decide. That might be one of the reasons why there is quite a wide variation across the country. In Sunday, we go back to source, so we always go back to the national guidance in every single case. However, as I say, if SPSO has put in information on their website about particular cases, then we will discuss those. I do not recognise in our authority any gatekeeping issues. In fact, that was one of my bugbears about the previous system. At one point, you could not get an application for a crisis loan. You could not get the physical form for a crisis loan back then. You had to go through a gatekeeper, who would make those sorts of judgments. I see it as being that everyone has the right to make an application. Ultimately, it is the decision maker who makes that decision. If the person feels that it is the wrong decision, they can ask for a separate decision maker to look at that under the first-year review. The decision maker will obviously make the decision about whether someone needs a crisis loan or whatever. There will be some guidance at that decision maker who will use the criteria, and that would be particular to Dundee, for example. We would look at individual circumstances of the case and see whether they fit under the criteria. In Glasgow, it is the national guidance that is used to determine any criteria and award. The decision maker has to look at each case on its own merits. There has obviously been a reference for crisis grants for three awards, but there is evidence that, in a number of cases, people get more than three awards. That identifies that the decision makers have to look at each case on its own merits in terms of whether they are in crisis or not. It is very much going back to the national guidance, which is what the decision makers are encouraged to use. The issue of consistency is an important one, and that is something that will be discussed through feedback from SPSO decisions, which, again, Glasgow does get a significant number of referrals to the SPSO. Those decisions that are upheld are all reviewed and information from them investigated to see whether there is a particular issue or a systemic issue, one of a misunderstanding of the guidance or of training. In some cases, we will go back and speak to the SPSO to try and get a bit more information if we feel that there is a difference of opinion of the interpretation of that guidance. Probably the other thing to mention at this stage is the issue of gatekeeping. Everyone should be able to make an application. I think that one of the challenges that we have with the Scottish Welfare Fund is this issue of budgetary constraint. I had made the point that Glasgow had been engaging with third sector agencies to make them aware of the fact that Glasgow has effectively been a high priority for a number of years now because of budgetary constraint. That is not to say that people should not apply, but I think that that was trying to set an expectation. I think that that is one of the challenges that we have with the Scottish Welfare Fund because of budgetary constraint. It is about setting an expectation about what can and cannot be awarded in terms of the priority levels that we are at. I appreciate that that then becomes a tension and appears potentially seen as gatekeeping because you are almost putting people off applying before they do apply. I do not think that there is an easy answer. It is one of the difficulties that we have with the Scottish Welfare Fund. Are there scenarios where—I know that when you have three local authorities represented, it may be better put to cause, I suppose—are there any scenarios that you are aware of where a local authority has ran out of the fund that someone would have otherwise qualified? I think that there is an example of where local authorities have had to go to the level of high most compelling is how I think it is termed. We have not had that sort of scenario, but that is purely down to the budgetary constraints in those individual cases, I think. In terms of discretion, I think that discretion is really important. If we have a straight-jacket approach to this, it will not meet individual needs, so I think that it is really important that we pause and think about the question mark over discretion. We have seen systems in the past where it has been very rule-based and people's lives just do not fit into that. This is the most vulnerable people in society that we are talking about here, and we are trying to help and serve and help them through that crisis or that immediate need. In terms of highland, we have had 146 first-tier reviews in terms of Scottish welfare funds, so that is 0.02 per cent of the number of applications that we received. Of that 146, we overturned about 50 per cent of our decisions, because that is a different decision maker looking at the original decision and the application and the information that is before them. That is a very important point to stress. The guidance is very clear for local authorities. You make a decision on the information that is before you. You do not go chasing information and delay payment for people, because it is really important to make that payment as quickly as possible and to make the decision as quickly as possible, because if it is a refusal, it is really important that that individual can find some other way of meeting the need and meeting the immediate crisis. To try and identify the disparity in local authorities in the decision making that has been suggested, do you think that publishing information about things like who is applying for awards and the granting of awards might help to show the picture across the country and identify whether there might be unexplained variations? Clarity. I think that it has been as open as possible about the decision making. I had suggested in my submission that there might be scope for replicating some of the practice of the social funding spectrum, as it was laterally called the independent review service, which published almost digestive decisions. Under the old social fund decision makers had to take account of, but did not always have to follow. It was always risky for the old DWP social fund to take that line, because ultimately the social funding spectrum could overturn the decision. However, I think that there is scope to go a little bit further in publishing digestive decisions and having those, whether you want them to be binding or to be taken into account, it is an option to try and improve that consistency across the board. Transparency is very important here. We can all learn from being transparent about those things, and it can be a positive thing to put as much information as possible in the public domain. We will also be very good for SPSO to share more of the decisions that are made, because I think that we could all learn from those decisions. I am going to move on to Mr Griffin. Good morning. I just had some questions around the budget allocations for the Scottish welfare fund. I want to ask members of the panel where their respective local authorities are happy with the level of Scottish welfare fund that has been allocated and whether any of your local authorities have taken the decision to top up using their own funds. In my submission, Glasgow City Council's submission made the point about the allocation, and I think that it is fair to say that Glasgow has probably been most affected by the change in the distribution that was implemented at the beginning of 2016-17. Prior to when the fund was first introduced, the budget allocations of the £33 million were based on historic spend that had been experienced by the Department for Work and Pensions. At that point, Glasgow was actually allocated 25 per cent of the national budget. It was recognised at that time that it probably would need to be looked at in terms of going forward. The distribution methodology of SIMD, I do not think that you can actually challenge that, because it is meant to reflect obviously low income, and we know that this is a fund that helps people on low incomes. However, I think that what is evident is that the impact, certainly for Glasgow, is that we are seeing the allocation in 1819. It was a phased allocation, so 2016-17, over the three years that they are moving gradually, is that in 1819 Glasgow would have seen a 20 per cent reduction in its budget allocation. That can be seen in the statistics. That is something we have managed. In 2016-17, 17 and 18, there has been an overspend that Glasgow has contributed to from its own funds by about a quarter of a million pounds. Certainly, going into 1819, there was going to be a reduction of a further 700,000. The council took the decision that that was not something that it felt could be sustained. As part of its budget, it decided that the budget should remain at the 17-18 level, which I think will still be challenging in itself. Your question was, are we happy with the budget allocation? I am saying that I am not necessarily disagreeing with the basis of the distribution, but I think that the statistics and the evidence are showing that, certainly for Glasgow, the level of allocation that we have through the distribution model is not sufficient to meet demand. Mr Mason, do you want to... I think that Dundee City Council have also decided to supplement the core grand thinking by just under £200,000 this year, as well as last year, to keep it at the 2015-16 levels. I think that our council sees it as, as was mentioned earlier on, as spend to save. It really does assist people moving into new tenancies in particular, and potentially save money over time, both for the customer and for the council, potentially. From our point of view, again, I would echo Morag's comments about the SIMD. You cannot really argue against that, but we saw demand in those previous years, which we met, and we see the benefit in meeting those levels of demand in the future. Mr McCandy, in Highland, our budget is about £990,000. We anticipate that we will come in on budget. We will manage the budget in a way that we do. We also think that the SIMD is the right way to measure this and distribute the fund, because it meets the poverty levels and addresses people in need. At this point in the year, we have spent about 78 per cent of where we should be in terms of community care grants, and we are slightly over in terms of community crisis grants in terms of our spend against the profile to date, but we anticipate coming in on budget. Any member of the panel is aware of how common it is for other local authorities to be topping up or not? Across Scotland. It is quite variable across Scotland. I do not have exact figures, but I think that there is quite a mix. I do not know if you will be able to answer this question, whether it probably has a better place for cause. Previously, there was a concern about the administration section of the Scottish welfare fund budget, and I am concerned that that did not reflect the costs for local authorities. COSLA was undertaking a benchmarking exercise to give evidence to the Government as to why the administration budget was not enough to cover their costs. I do not know whether any member of the panel knows whether that exercise was completed and if anything was published that would allow the committee to take that to the Scottish Government. I am sorry, but I do not know what was ever published. In Highland, our funding is 60 per cent of our actual costs, so we are managing that. We are funding at 40 per cent, which is the same as what we are funding for housing benefit and council tax reduction. It is on similar levels. It is on par with what we get in terms of the funding levels that we get from DWP, as what we get from the Scottish Government for Scottish welfare fund. If demand continues to grow as we are anticipating, there needs to be a conversation. We cannot go on subsidising the administration of the scheme, but we are coping with it at the moment. We also subsidise the scheme in different ways. Although our administration grant does not cover staff costs completely within the Scottish welfare fund team, there is also the added cost of putting in this model. From an advice services point of view, we have almost linked our advice services into our Scottish welfare fund team to provide those hand-offs and to try and solve problems on a longer-term basis than rather than just meet the demand and be transactional at the point of crisis. There is a cost really in that, in putting services and linking those services up. In terms of Glasgow, the administration allocation at the very beginning was something that we worked with in and that was not really an issue, so we were not closely engaged with Closla in those discussions on administration. It did not affect Glasgow to the same extent that it affected other local authorities. I am pulling together what you have been talking about now and what was touched on at the beginning. I just wondered, Mr Mason and Ms Johnson, if you could just talk about how has demand increased over that period significantly? Have you had increased costs or are you able to touch on that? From our point of view, it is quite interesting because our Scottish welfare fund crisis grant levels have gone down and that is prior to the universal full service coming in to Dundee in November. We started to see a trend and we have asked the Scottish Government to perhaps make use of researchers to try to explain that, but we hope that it is due to the model and the fact that we are actually engaging with people on a longer-term basis and looking at income maximisation, which I think is—you cannot really, from my point of view, run a Scottish welfare fund without looking at income maximisation, particularly in crisis grant cases. The benefit of that, of course, is that we have been able to vire money into our community care grant budget and provide more help for people moving into new properties and setting up sustainable tenancies. I hesitate to say that it is working as we planned it, but that is the hope that we can see what the reasons are for those shifts in demand from crisis grants in particular. I hope that it is positive in the way that I have outlined. I think that the experience in Glasgow is different from Dundee. Obviously, we now have almost five years of trends, if you like, for the Scottish welfare fund, but I do not think that that is even enough now to try and interpret what is happening. Certainly, between 2015-16 and 2017, Glasgow saw a significant increase in the number of crisis grant applications. Our analysis of that suggested that, in the main, it was sanctions related. It was a number of sanctions that were being applied. There were also some as a result of asylum-seekers refugees, and it was also—I am sorry, I forgot what the third one was—it will come back to me. I think that, in terms of the sanctions issue, one of the things that we set up at that point was to try and address that, because some of the work that the welfare rights officers in Glasgow had done—I am sure that this was national as well—is recognising that lots of people who were sanctioned did not actually appeal their sanctions. Evidence showed that, if you did appeal your sanctions, you were very likely to be successful. One of the measures that we did put in place was, if someone did apply for a crisis grant and we were able to say that it was a result of a sanction, we would refer them to welfare rights advisers for them to take on, if you like, their sanctions case. However, even uptake on that was slow. It is something that we are continuing to do, but I think that that was slow. The third area, again, although we are not at full roll-out, we did see more people applying because of universal credit. As I said at the beginning, we are still quite concerned about universal credit and the impact that it might have because we saw that big increase over those two years. However, I think that there is this underlying increase in demand. It will be to the reasons that have been mentioned before in terms of low incomes. Separately, but linked, one of the things that Glasgow is doing is to prepare for universal credit roll-out is to look at that broad range of services that are available across the city that would support people moving into that new benefit and to try to link that up. The Scottish welfare fund will be a part of that, as will lots of the services that we provide, and the council is planning to invest £2 million in that service. It will be interesting to see when we will track what happens over the next six months, 18 months, with the roll-out of universal credit and how that impacts the Scottish welfare fund and whether those measures the council is putting in place elsewhere. I hope that we will have a positive impact that we will need to measure. Thank you. Are there any further questions from the committee? Thank you all for your attendance at the committee this morning. It is really useful for us in this on-going piece of work, so thank you very much. I will now move into private session.