 Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is consideration of motion number 11926 in the name of Nicholas Sturgeon on the appointment of a junior Scottish minister. Members should note that the question on this motion will be put immediately after this debate and not at decision time. at decysiwn time. Nicola Sturgeon, to move the motion first minister, about five minutes. I rise to speak to and move the motion in my name which asks that the parliament agrees that Fiona McLeod be appointed as a junior Scottish minister. As the chamber is aware, the reason for this appointment is that Aileen Campbell, the Minister for Children and Young People, is, as of today, going on maternity leave from her ministerial duties. I made it very clear, Presiding Officer, and I think that this is something that is supported across the chamber. The greater opportunities for women, indeed shattering the glass ceiling, is a priority for me during my tenure as First Minister, encouraging and supporting parental leave and especially maternity leave as a way of enabling working parents to care for young children and then return to the workplace, is an essential part of that. That is, I believe, the first occasion in the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament that a Scottish minister has taken maternity leave. However, going on maternity leave and having somebody else take over your duties is absolutely standard practice in other working environments. I really hope that Aileen's example contributes, in a small way, to making politics more normal. The chamber should never be exempt from what we see as good practice in other workplaces. Instead, I would argue that wherever possible, we should seek to set a clear example. I am therefore delighted, I am sure, on behalf of the whole chamber, to wish Aileen Fraser and Angus very well over the coming months. We very much look forward to seeing Aileen back next year. I can also confirm to Parliament this afternoon that Aileen has chosen to give up 59 per cent of her ministerial salary entitlement during her planned period of maternity leave. That means that she will receive, on an averaged out basis, the statutory maternity pay equivalent of her ministerial salary. Ninety per cent of salary for six weeks followed by a weekly payment of £138. Aileen has requested that the amount that she is forgoing should be allocated to the Scottish Government's children and families budget. For the period of Aileen's maternity leave, I am absolutely delighted to recommend Fiona McLeod for appointment as acting minister for children and young people. Fiona was a member of the First Parliament in 1999 when she served as shadow deputy minister for education, children and sport. Since returning to the Parliament in 2011, Fiona has served as a senior whip and served extremely well as a senior whip and as a member of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. Outside of her political work, Fiona was, among many other roles and achievements, one of the volunteer founders and youth workers at Westerton Junior Youth Club. She is an extremely experienced politician with a deep understanding of the challenges facing children, young people, parents and carers. I think that she will do an excellent job in her new portfolio. She will work very closely with all of her ministerial colleagues and, of course, she will work very closely with Angela Constance, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. All in all, Fiona is extremely qualified to stand in over the next few months for an extremely able minister. The appointment ensures that a highly able minister will be in place to look after an immensely important set of responsibilities during this period when Aileen Campbell is on maternity leave. I have also said since taking over as First Minister that opportunities for young people and making sure that we give young people the best start in life is extremely important. Therefore, it is vital that we have somebody steering those responsibilities with the capability of Fiona. Without further ado, it gives me enormous pleasure to move the motion in my name. I move that the Parliament agrees that Fiona McLeod be appointed as a junior Scottish minister. On behalf of Scottish Labour, I want to join the First Minister in supporting the motion welcoming Fiona McLeod to her position as a Scottish junior minister. Nicola Sturgeon said that this is quite a unique situation, but there is no doubt that it is the correct situation that the Scottish Government is taking forward here in showing leadership in this issue. Not only does it give Aileen Campbell the appropriate time to be with her family at this crucial time in her and her family's life, but it also ensures that another minister is in place to deal with the important issues that are required in this brief. I also want to put on record on behalf of Scottish Labour, wishing Aileen Campbell all the best at this time as she goes off in maternity leave. It is important that she has the time to spend with her husband Fraser and her son Angus and that everything goes well, and we wish her well in that regard. On behalf of Fiona McLeod, there is no doubt in moving in to this portfolio, albeit for a temporary time, there are important issues to address in terms of access to education, pushing up attainment and improving literacy levels. One of the things that Fiona McLeod frequently mentions when she speaks in Parliament is her experience as a librarian, and there is no doubt that in terms of reading books, either paper books or on kindles, that improves young people's vocabulary and improves their educational opportunity. I am quite sure that in her time in the role that Fiona McLeod will bring to bear her experience as a librarian and the importance of supporting books and reading. The other thing about Fiona McLeod is that she is a great supporter of the cross-party group in fair trade. We both serve on that committee. At a recent meeting, we were involved in the promotion of fair trade footballs and we had some high drinks with footballs. We were getting some good photographs taken, so I only hope that when Fiona McLeod takes up her position in her ministerial office, she does not try to keep up with the footballs. I might upset the staff and the civil servants. On behalf of Scottish Labour, I welcome the unique decision that the Scottish Government has taken. I wish Aileen Campbell all the best and her family in the period ahead. I welcome Fiona McLeod to her position and wish her all the best of good luck. I have to say that, in all candor, I thought that we had approved this appointment when we did the last series of ministerial appointments. I can understand that it may have been an oversight in the part of the First Minister. She might have been slightly distracted. She was, after all, at that point, right in the midst of her rock-scot-nachic stadia tour, where she was campaigning to become a cult. I watched that too with interest, because one of her MSP colleagues at the Hydro in Glasgow tweeted pictures of himself high up in the gallery, and I thought that that was so cruel for us, First Minister. How could Elvis be in the building but not be allowed to sing? It's tough, Chick. Of course, we wish Aileen Campbell every happiness and a very successful addition to the family in due course. Of course, one of the questions that arises from Fiona McLeod's appointment is who is going to be the official water bearer for the front bench in the Government. I hope that there is going to be some gender balance brought to this responsibility. I can't just surely be that because Fiona had the responsibility, this is to be dealt—I think that Joe Fitzpatrick. Joe, I think, looks to me like a champion water bearer, and I think that the responsibility should be formally allocated to him. I hope that we don't have to have an appointment session here in Parliament to confirm it, but it would be nice. Fiona, I do wish every success in the time that she's in office. She's been appointed as a temporary acting minister, not necessarily. Shine, Fiona. Shine. If you do, I pledge this. Scottish Conservatives will table a motion for debate with an X-factor vote as to who gets to stay. I know, Presiding Officer, you are looking for new procedures in this Parliament. I think that here is the opportunity to give Parliament that democratic extension of voice and opportunity to say which should stay, which should go. I hope that we are able to embrace that. I wish both Aileen Campbell and Fiona McLeod every success and, on this occasion, I wish the Government, colleagues and friends in Parliament a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. On every one of these occasions, somebody has got to follow Jackson Carlaw. I'm afraid you've got to sort of straw it out. I, too, would really like to add on behalf of the green indie group that our absolute congratulations to Aileen Campbell on a safe delivery and a happy Christmas. We all agree that you're standing for this time and Fiona McLeod couldn't be better. I mean, I was reading the list of the ministerial responsibilities that are here and I was imagining, Fiona, the reading list that you might put together for all of the people who are involved in each of these sectors. And it could be long, it could be comprehensive, but I think that your commitment to each of those areas will show. I really believe that you will see this job and take it incredibly seriously. It's one of the most important positions, I believe, that we have in the Scottish Government and in the Scottish Parliament, and I can't imagine anybody better to do it but yourself. Thank you. Thank you, Ms Urquhart. We now move to wind up. Mr Sturgeon, first minister. Be very, very brief, Presiding Officer. Thank you to James Kelly for his remarks. I have to say I was shocked to hear that Fiona McLeod is a librarian. I have never heard her talk about that ever before. I obviously jest, but can I endorse James Kelly's comments, particularly his comments about the importance of reading to the development of young minds. Thank you to Jackson Carlaw. I've considered already very carefully the issue of water bearer. I think that it is an important appointment. I've tried very hard since my appointment as First Minister to do things differently, so I've decided I've taken a decision today and I hope my ministerial colleagues will bear with me on this. I'm going to start getting my own water and hopefully they can follow suit. On your innovative proposal, I'd expect nothing less from Jackson Carlaw. I'm delighted that he was watching my tour. I know that it's probably the closest he'll get to a 12,000-seater stadium being filled, but when he suggested the next factor vote, Eileen and Fiona whispered to me that they're electing for a dance-off, so we'll go with that if it's okay. Jeane, thank you very much. I think I'll end by echoing your comments. I can think of nobody else better to fill this post than Fiona McLeod, so I hope the chamber will give her their unanimous support this afternoon. That concludes the debate on the appointment of our Scottish junior minister. We now move to the question on the motion. The question is that motion number 11926, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on the appointment of the Scottish junior minister, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. We are now moving to the next item of business. Could Mrs McLeod's hugs continue outside the chamber? The next item of business is a welfare reform committee debate on motion number 11840, in the name of Michael McMahon, on welfare reform and the Smith commission. Members who wish to take part in this debate should request to speak but now, and I call Michael McMahon to speak to and move the motion on behalf of the welfare reform committee. I will attempt to set the scene for this debate, which focuses on three interlinked topics. The welfare reform committee's report on the new, more severe sanctions regime operated by the Department of Work and Pensions, the committee's report on food banks and the link between the growth and food bank use and welfare reforms, and finally the Smith commission agreement on the further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament. Whilst this is the last debate before Christmas, I am afraid that some of what I have to say will not be very merry, the tone being perhaps a little decensian, more a Christmas carol than a Christmas cheer. Let us move first to look at the issue of sanctions and the view that the committee came to in its report. Before I start, I should say that the views that I will express were those agreed by the committee and published in the report, although you will be unsurprised to hear that committee member Alex Johnson demurred on the findings. In late 2012, a new benefit sanction regime was introduced by the Department of Work and Pensions, which increased the severity of sanctions for those on jobseeker allowance and employment support allowance. It means that claimants may now be sanctioned for a period of up to three years. You heard me right, up to three years. Before you think that it is just a notional level of sanction, I can tell you that the last time we checked the figures, 79 people in Scotland have been sanctioned for a period of three years. The new regime has led to significant increase in the number of sanctions applied, despite the fact that the number of the relevant benefits has dropped. The rate of sanctioning for jobseeker allowance increased very rapidly through 2013, from 3 per cent at the start of the year to 5.7 per cent at the end of it. As part of our inquiry, we invited a senior DWP official to give evidence on the views of the sanctions regime. In fact, we invited a DWP minister, but we have failed over the course of two years to convince any of them to give evidence in public to the committee. I have to say that that rather saddens me. Perhaps in the post referendum era we will be more successful. Anyway, we took evidence from Neil Culling, who is the most senior official in the UK responsible for job centres. I think that it would be fair to say that his evidence rather took us aback. He reported that many benefit recipients welcomed the jolt that a sanction can give them. Some people no doubt react very badly to being sanctioned. We see some very strong reactions, but others recognise that it is the wake-up call that they needed and it helps them get back into work. He further suggested that job centres receive thank-you cards from sanctioned claimants. Having taken significant evidence, including at first hand from those who have been sanctioned, the committee does not recognise the description of the current sanctions regime. Indeed, we see many weaknesses in the regime and its application. Those are leading to a climate of fear around job centres rather than one that encourages people to engage with them and find their way back to work. In our report, we lost seven weaknesses in the current system, and I will repeat them here. A consistent failure to tell people that they are being sanctioned and why, and I will come back to that. A lack of flexibility in the application of sanctions and indeed misapplication reducing the likelihood of people finding work. A failure to appreciate that many people and benefits do not have the necessary IT skills to use the DWP's universal job match facility, which is often a conditional benefit. A failure to make those sanctions the way of the availability of hardship payments, the DWP is apparently unable to provide figures for the number of people who receive hardship payments. The consistent triggering of a stop in housing benefit as a result of a sanction, which should not happen but does and can lead to significant debt being incurred even for a minor sanction. The lack of a deadline for decision making on DWP reconsiderations leading to delays in redressing wrong decisions. Finally, the shunting of the costs of dealing with sanction claimants on to other agencies, local authorities, health boards, third sector agencies etc. Perhaps the most serious of those weaknesses is the first, the failure to tell people that they have been sanctioned. We learn that it seems to be a common occurrence that the first time people realise that they have been sanctioned is when they go to a hole in the wall and it will not give them any money. It turns out that for some sanctions there is not even a duty to tell people that they will have been sanctioned. How on earth can sanctions work to encourage patterns of behaviour if people are not told that they have been sanctioned or why? The weaknesses of the current sanctions regime are reflected in the outcome of the reviews of sanctions decisions. The statistics can be read many ways, but on review, four in ten decisions to apply a sanction are overturned. There has been a debate about whether formal targets exist for the number of sanctions. Some people argue that they do. The DWP is clear that they do not. What is clear to the committee is that whether formal targets exist or not, there is now a deliberate policy to drive up the level of sanctions to previously unheard of levels through managerial pressure on job-centre staff. The committee is not automatically opposed to a benefit system that incorporates conditionality. However, we share the view expressed by Citizens Advice Scotland that sanctions must only be used as a last resort for those who have consistently and deliberately refused to engage with job seeking requirements without good reason. If sanctions are to be used, then we believe that they should be applied appropriately and consistently and with greater levels of discretion and support. We believe that the current operation of the sanctions regime is not in line with those principles. Sanctions are also disproportionately affecting some of the most vulnerable groups of claimants, particularly disabled single parents and young people, including those who have recently left care. In many cases, rather than being a driver to get people back into work, as claimed by the DWP, sanctions are actually getting in the way of people getting back to work. The committee makes a number of suggestions in its report for improvements to the operation of the sanctions regime, but more important than these is the need for a sea change in the culture of the policy from punitive to supportive. I will now turn to food banks. Another key aspect of our recent work has been food banks. We found that welfare reform is a significant cause of the rise in demand being experienced by providers of food aid. We strongly contest the UK Government's assertion that the growth in food banks is due solely to increase publicity and people choosing to use food banks as an economic choice. We found at the time that there had been a 400 per cent rise in people receiving assistance from food banks over the previous year. There were a staggering 71,000 people, over 49,000 adults and 22,000 children using Scottish Trussel Trust food banks. That is 22,000 children asking, please, sir, can I have some more? Our views have been supported by recent evidence. The Trussel Trust's most recent figures for Scotland, covering the period April to September 2014, show that food bank use has increased 124 per cent over the previous year's figure. Not only that, but benefit issues are a major contributor to that increase. 28 per cent of those who attend food banks did so because of benefit delays and 18 per cent because of benefit changes. That is almost half of the people attending Trussel Trust food banks in Scotland are doing so because of welfare issues. I thank the member for taking the intervention. I am just asking the member about the fund for European Aid to the most deprived from Europe, which Westminster refused to engage with. Would that have been a good idea if Westminster had, considering that Spain received £500 million that should have helped yours, food banks? I am sure that it is something that is worth considering, but, to be honest with you, Ms White, I cannot comment on that as the convener of the committee, because we did not take evidence on it, so anything that I would say in that regard would be a personal opinion. I cannot do that from this position, making this speech at the present time. The link must be acknowledged by the UK Government. I can no longer ignore the evidence that the Government has to recognise that people are struggling to meet their basic needs for food due to its direct actions. Again, I should be fair to Alex Johnson and mention that he was not supportive of that view. However, we, and that is all of us, do believe that it is important that food bank revisions does not creep into welfare state provision. Food banks should be recognised as a community charitable response for individuals in crisis. Food banks should not be welded into an infrastructure of the welfare state. They are a sign of a Dickensian model of welfare that should have no place in a prosperous nation. Ultimately, the necessity for food banks should be eliminated. Having said that, we have seen from visits to food banks in their local areas that the current need for this vital support for individuals who are often desperate, and we praise the dedication and commitment that is shown by food bank volunteers and support the actions taken by the Scottish Government to provide support through emergency food aid action plan. I want to introduce to Dennis Curran. Dennis runs loals and fishes that provides food aid in East Kilbride and Glasgow. Dennis is just one example of this dedication and commitment. He spoke passionately at the committee of the desperate need of those turning to food banks. He spoke of people with wee children coming to him after walking three or four miles in need of food. He told the committee that they are frightened and insecure and that they have no money. People in Scotland care about these things. There is a YouTube clip of Dennis's appearance at the welfare reform committee. Almost 200,000 people have now viewed it. I do not know if this is a record for a Scottish Parliament appearance, but it tells me that he is not the only one who feels passionately about this issue. Finally, I will move on to the Smith agreement. I do not want to say too much about the Smith agreement. I will leave it to others to talk about the ins and outs, and I am sure that there will be many views. The committee has yet to examine the Smith agreement and therefore does not have a view. However, it seems to us fruitless to have a debate about welfare in the Parliament without acknowledging the fact that the Smith agreement is likely to lead to substantial changes in this area and to greater responsibility for us as a body. We did take some evidence from welfare academics in November on the devolution of welfare benefits prior to the publication of the agreement. I would have to say that the academics views were very mixed. Some felt that devolving welfare benefits was an all or nothing proposition, while others felt that it would be possible to devolve areas of activity provided that they were thought through and coherent. I guess that we are about to test that proposition. In future, we will have responsibility for a range of benefits, including attendance allowance, carers allowance, personal independence payments, industrial injuries disabling allowance, severe disabling allowance, the regulated social fund and discretionary housing payments, but not of course the elephant, if I can call it that. That is the universal credit. Those new responsibilities will result in expenditure of £2.5 billion to £3 billion per year. That is equivalent to our current budget for education and lifelong learning. We have some major responsibilities to take on and some hard thinking to do in terms of how we manage them. I hope that this debate as well as looking back to some of the work that the welfare reform committee has undertaken will also look forward to the work that we will all have to do to make a success of our new welfare responsibilities. I am grateful to the members of the welfare reform committee for the work that they have done over the past year. Their evidence sessions have allowed us to hear directly from the front line about the damaging impact of UK Government welfare reforms. Very importantly, as Michael Maman talked about there, from people affected by the benefit changes. Because of that work, issues such as the rise in food banks and the unfairness of the sanctions regime have been brought into the public domain. As I previously told the chamber, the Scottish Government is doing everything that we can to tackle the inequalities that continue to blight our society and to ensure that everyone in Scotland has a chance to share in our country's economic growth. However, our efforts are being hampered by the UK Government's welfare reforms. We estimate that the price that Scotland has to pay as a result of those reforms is around £6 billion in the six years to 2015-16. That is £6 billion out of the pockets of some of our most vulnerable people. On top of that, our analysis indicates that the cuts have a disproportionate impact on groups such as disabled people and lone parents. Over £1 billion of those cuts will relate directly to children. If the cuts weren't enough, the UK Government has also seen fit to introduce an oppressive sanctions regime that is clearly—I think that Michael McMahon illustrated that very well—is clearly not fit for purpose. Last year, over 54,000 individuals and jobseekers allowance were sanctioned in Scotland, with some receiving multiple sanctions. In the year to June 2014, nearly 2,000 people and employment support allowance, and that is people who are ill, sick or disabled, were also sanctioned. Our analysis also shows that those who receive a sanction on average suffer a loss of income for four weeks, amounting to around £270. That is a huge amount of money for people who are already battling to survive in low incomes. As has already been said, in all too many cases, the first time a person is aware that they have been sanctioned is when they go to the bank and there is no money and they sometimes do not know why. That, to me, is totally unacceptable. Those cuts and punitive policies do absolutely nothing to tackle poverty and inequality. Instead, as the committee's report highlights, sanctions are leading to huge rises in the number of people using food banks. Over 51,000 people visited Trussell Trust's food banks between April and September this year, and, worryingly, more than 15,000 of those were children. It is a disgrace that so many people in Scotland are unable to put food on the table. That is why the Scottish Government set up the emergency food fund. The fund is providing over £500 million over two years to projects right across the country. Projects are not only providing emergency food but projects that help people to support each other in their own communities. In that way, the projects are building capacity to tackle the causes of food poverty and to develop solutions. That is only part of the Scottish Government's response to the UK Government's welfare reform agenda. We are working closely with our partners to do all that we can within the powers and resources that we have available to help those affected by the changes imposed by Westminster. In our draft budget for 2015-16, we focus on three key objectives to make Scotland a more prosperous country, to tackle inequalities and to protect and reform public services. In order to help us to tackle poverty and inequality that blights our society, we will maintain our spending on mitigating welfare reform at around £296 million over a three-year period to ease the worst impacts of the reforms. We will also continue our efforts to stop in-work poverty, including our commitment to the living wage, appoint an independent adviser on poverty and inequality who will engage with the people of Scotland to make recommendations to the Government on how we should collectively respond to those challenges and also to hold the Government to account. We will continue to lobby the UK Government for fairer welfare reform and to take action to ensure that safeguards are in place for those who need them most. That will include acknowledging the link between welfare reform and the increased use of food banks and quickly implementing the recommendations of the Oakley review on sanctions. It is because of issues such as those that we are discussing today that the Scottish Government wanted full control over all our social security system so that our ambition to move beyond mitigation could create something much more suited to Scottish needs. The Smith's commission has now made its recommendations. We are, of course, disappointed that it did not go as far as we or the majority of civic Scotland wanted. Organisations such as the STUC, SCVO, One Parent Families, Unison, Institute for Economic Affairs, Children in Scotland and Gender in Scotland have outlined exactly why the measures fall short of what is needed to tackle the big issues facing our country. The Smith's recommendations do not do enough to give us policy coherence over employment, the minimum wage and welfare to tackle the long-term issues facing our country and the deniers control over damaging policies such as sanctions. However, as the First Minister has made clear, we welcome all additional powers and Parliament should be assured that we will do all that we can within these new powers to ensure that they benefit the people of Scotland. Following the debate on the impact of the United Kingdom Government's welfare reforms on disabled people, I wrote to the Minister of State for Disabled People asking for the roll-out of personal independent payment or PIP to be halted in Scotland. Now that the Smith's commission has proposed that powers and disability come to this Parliament, it makes all the more pressing that this roll-out should be stopped. The Scottish Government is also clear that nobody should be adversely affected by the changes being brought forward by the Smith's commission. Disability benefits should be devolved to this Parliament and before the proposed £310 million budget cuts come into operation from the transfer of DLA to PIP. Clearly, that should be a matter of good faith for the UK Government, but equally those in receipt of benefits should not be penalised as a result of any changes brought forward by the Scottish Government. The financial rewards of any such measures should go to the individual or the family. In paragraph 55 of the Smith's commission report, it is critical that it outlines that any new benefits or discretionary payments introduced by the Scottish Parliament must provide additional income for a person or family and not result in an automatic offsetting reduction in their entitlement to other benefits. As we are aware, universal credit has not been devolved and we just want to make it absolutely clear at this stage that any benefits that are created by this Parliament should not be deducted from anyone's means-tested universal credit, and we should all unite behind that. We expect that to be honoured and full. I welcome the report from the welfare reform committee. It has helped to inform how we go forward. It has highlighted the issues in which Michael McMahon spoke about Dennis Curran and his appearance on YouTube in the number of hits that there has been in looking at that. However, I think that there is a real concern in Scotland just now about food banks, the people on food banks, the benefits sanction regime and I think that the welfare reform committee has done a lot to bring that into the public eye and I welcome that. However, I am pleased therefore to recognise the motion and the work of the committee in taking action on those issues. I want to start, if I may, with my own thanks to the welfare committee to members past and present and to the committee clerks in particular who have been very helpful and supportive. I am not entirely sure what will happen in the new year but this may prove to be my last contribution as a member. I just wanted to say how grateful I am to all my colleagues how much I appreciated working with them on such an important issue. I was going to say a particular thanks to the convener but our partnership is going to continue on Labour's front bench on this issue. On continuing that collaborative theme, I think that it's fair to say that Labour and SNP members are both united and frustrated in equal measure. I recognise that SNP members want to prevent the damage that the Tory reforms are wreaking on some of our most vulnerable citizens and they believe that only by removing those powers for Westminster can we protect Scottish communities. Labour members, on the other hand, are equally frustrated in that we also want to get rid of the Tories but believe that the election is the best place to do that. In the meantime, we should focus on using the powers that we have rather than excusing ourselves by pointing at those that we do not. I also recognise that those arguments will persist and those frustrations will continue. My hope is that we can now put the emphasis on what we have in common rather than on where we differ. The welfare reform committee exists because a range of powers over welfare have already been devolved, with more to follow, potentially to create new benefits now that the vow has been delivered through the Smith agreement. I believe that we can work together and that the people of Scotland expect us to. There is no doubting the urgent need that exists. None of us can have been left unmoved by the witnesses who have come before the committee or by the evidence that we have heard from them. Just this morning, my colleague Jackie Baillie and I met with the homeless charity The Pavement to discuss their project, Word on the Streets. One of the group, Caroline, told us how illness had led her to being sanctioned and having her benefits stopped for 15 months, leaving her on the brink of homelessness. The British Medical Association and the Scottish Association for Mental Health have both reported how living in fear and stress was having a devastating effect on the mental health of those who rely on benefits. The UK Government's own review noted that people with mental health conditions or learning difficulties make up 40 per cent of individuals going through a work capability assessment. On a different note, I still recall the young single mother, Jamie Hepburn, and I met at the Citizens Advice Bureau in Parkhead, who had to explain why going into labour was probably a justifiable reason for missing an appointment without being sanctioned. The range of experiences varies from the deadly serious to the almost laughable. What emerges from nearly all the witnesses who have testified is the sense of having to justify themselves and a double feeling of victimisation. There is the anxiety over their very real needs, over how they will feed themselves or look after themselves or, in most cases, how they will feed or look after those who depend on them, such as their children. Alongside that, there is a different anxiety, a feeling of being judged, a feeling threatened or even punished because of the unfortunate circumstances in which some welfare recipients find themselves, punished twice over, not through exercising any choice of their own but for finding themselves in difficulty and then being blamed for it. Our committee reports have pointed the finger directly at the Tory Government, concluding that benefit sanctions are one of the key factors leading to the huge increase in the need for food banks and demanding a sea change in sanctions policy. Alongside that, we need to ask what more can we do here? What can the Scottish Parliament do? I was very encouraged by some of the work of the Scottish Government's expert group on welfare in the run-up to the referendum. I recognise that ministers and all of us across this Parliament want a system based on the dignity and respect of individuals. Just earlier this week, Willie Rennie, among others, reminded us of the inherent complexity of the welfare system and how difficult it can be to translate good intentions into actions. Our welfare system is bitty, it is piecemeal, it is messy just as our lives are. We go in and out of work at different stages in our lives. We have times of dependency and times of self-sufficiency. Just to give one example of how difficult it is to practice what we preach, the debate in the Scottish Government's welfare funds bill on Tuesday, which is a very straightforward bill, just replacing the social fund, revealed that 80 per cent of crisis grants given out under the interim scheme have been awarded in kind rather than in cash. In other words, almost immediately, we are making judgments. We are no longer leaving decisions to the choice of the individual. We are denuding individual choice rather than building people's resilience. None of us here in this chamber gets paid in furniture. Most Scots do not get to pay or expect to pay their bills with vouchers or get told which shops and which choices they have to make. We do not need to justify or explain our everyday actions, so why should we expect this of those in welfare? On a broader point, our debate should not just be about benefits. We need to change the way we approach the growing numbers of those in work but still in poverty, those who are simply not getting paid enough. One of the reasons that cost our rising is because housing benefit is getting paid to those in employment. There are many new challenges facing us, but so many families are working harder than ever and finding themselves deeper in debt. It is not just about poverty. It is about rising inequality. The answer does not necessarily lie or solely lie with welfare reform. It lies about how we tackle wages and wealth at the top, alongside how we reward those at the bottom. It is about what we are doing about the living wage, about wage differentials and about tax. I believe that the Scottish Government's response to the welfare reforms and the exercise of the powers at its disposal has been quite conservative with a small c. It has replaced the social fund, it has replaced council tax benefit, it has effectively overruled the bedroom tax. I am not criticising the Government for any of those measures because Labour has supported and in fact called for those. However, there has been no attempt so far to reform welfare or to take a different approach here in Scotland. I believe that there is agreement in Parliament that we do not want to keep people in benefits. We are not trying to create a welfare society but a system that supports each of us in our time of need in a non-judgmental way. With more powers coming, which allows us to create entirely new benefits, I believe that we need to work together to use that power to build that fairer society. I hope that in that note we can do so. I am pleased to take part in the debate. I have to say that, as a very recent arrival to the committee, my colleague Mr Johnson will cover the reports to which he contributed as a committee member. However, let me say that I look forward to being in the committee and working with Mr McMahon. He may not know what to expect from me, but he might find himself pleasantly surprised. I hope that I can make a positive contribution to the work of the committee. I have to say that the committee, in my opinion, has done and is doing very important work. I think that it is identifying important issues. I think that one of the great roles of the committees of this Parliament is when work is done, when evidence is produced, what can be done to use that leverage or discovery to try to influence change. That is where the committee, Mr McMahon, may have a very important role to play. What I want to focus on is the Smith commission report, which I am a little more familiar with than the work of the welfare committee. As Mr McMahon himself said, that report implies substantial changes. It is three weeks to the days since the report was published. I have to say that, in tune with the new theme of consensus in this Parliament, I have enjoyed the positive response to the report, which has been obvious from all the five political parties in the chamber. I quite accept that the ministers' party doesn't go far enough. At the same time, her colleague Nicola Sturgeon has gone out of her way to say that she thinks that what has been delivered by Smith is positive. I remember that, Presiding Officer, when I came to this Parliament, there was a huge sense of excitement and optimism about how the Parliament would operate and how it would use its new powers. I detect the same feelings brewing in the Holyrood air now—a mixture of excitement, anticipation and ambition—because we are all asking ourselves, and we are asking one another, what can we do with those new powers to improve life in Scotland? It is timely, as we talked today about the welfare reform committee's latest reports, to look at those Smith proposals and ask what can the committee and the Parliament look forward to achieving with those new powers. As we know, some element of devolution and welfare has already occurred arising out of the welfare reform act of 2012, because the Parliament debated on Tuesday stage one of the welfare fund Scotland bill, a debate to which my colleague Mr Johnson contributed. I think that it is good that the Parliament has taken the opportunity to put that interim arrangement on to a statutory footing. I know that not everyone is going to agree with me already from the contributions that we have heard. That is pretty clear, but I have to say that the welfare reform act was to try and bring reform to the benefit system and to introduce a new system that is fairer, simpler and more affordable. While I accept that not every aspect of the reforms has been well received and that is pretty clear, I have to say to every Presiding Officer that it is an important point to make. It would be hard to find opposition anywhere to the principle of the system needing reform. Most of the knowledge reform was necessary and overdue. I fully acknowledge that the issues then become issues of implement and management of change. That is where I think the committee, Mr McMahon, is doing very important work. However, the whole point of the reform is to try and help people to get back into work, to try and reduce dependency in the state and, also, in tandem with the increased personal allowances with changes to the tax system, enable people to make individual choices about what they do with their money instead of simply having to hand it back to the taxman to be given back in the form of prescribed benefits. I know that the chamber does not all see eye to eye with Westminster, but beyond the rhetoric is an important point. The political landscape and, more importantly, our electros here in Scotland do have a different set of needs. I recognise that. They do have different preferences to other members of that family of nations, which is the United Kingdom. Between now and the delivery of this Parliament's new power, it is when I think that the hard work should be starting, we should now be debating how we design a system of welfare for Scotland within the United Kingdom bearing in mind that we voted to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom back in September. My party will contribute to that debate. I want to see a system that is compassionate and flexible. I want to see a system that is effective in helping people into work, and I want to see a system that does not measure itself by the size of the welfare bill, but measures itself on how many people are helped back to work and able to support themselves and contribute to the broader economy. I am excited about how the Parliament will manage its new competencies. If you look at what is proposed in the Smith agreement, disability living allowances, PIPs, regulated social fund, ability to top up existing benefits, ability to create new benefits, those are real, exciting and important choices. Am I right in reading of paragraphs 55 and 56 of the Smith commission that any top-up benefits that the Scottish Parliament now decides to implement, as she has just suggested, will not be offset? Indeed, we won't have a repetition of the attendance allowance and free personal care situation. Am I reading that correctly? My understanding, Dr Simpson, is the spirit behind the Smith commission to which the five parties were all in agreement, is that top up means what it says. You cannot top up something that is not there already. The understanding is that top up will be an additional and supplementary support. In addition to that, of course, when the work programme and the work choice contracts expire, we are going to have a very significant capacity for helping the most vulnerable, not only to find work and share in the wealth of a growing economy, but also to contribute to that economy. I think that the Smith commission has done a very good job in trying to balance responsibility and obligation. I think that it means that we are protected against economic shocks, which is one of the difficulties of being overly dependent on having to be responsible for expenditure in one part of the UK. I think that the recent fall of oil prices has shown that an economic shock in one corner of the United Kingdom will not imperil a large proportion of a nation's tax base of welfare spending. I think that many members of the chamber have been calling for more devolution of welfare to Holyrood for a long time. Now that the Smith agreement is out, it is clear that it has reflected those calls. I want Deputy Presiding Officer to move this debate on. Let's now talk about what we are going to achieve with these new powers rather than lament the ones that we do not have. We can innovate, we can create effective new policies and we can get away from stale left-wing dogma. We can improve the welfare system in Scotland instead of blaming the existing one. Deputy Presiding Officer, I want to think that the blame game is, in this respect, something in the past. Thank you. We now turn to the open debate speeches of a maximum of six minutes, please. Kevin Stewart to be followed by Cara Helton. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about welfare for the second time this week. I may repeat some of the things that have already been said by the convener, and I may be a bit repetitive in what I said on Tuesday, but I think that repetition is worthwhile. The committee, in terms of sanctions, noted that a consistent failure to notify people that they are being sanctioned was a major problem. That a lack of flexibility and misapplication of sanctions reducing the likelihood of people finding work was prevalent. A failure to appreciate that many people and benefits do not have the necessary IT skills at day one to utilise the DWP's universal job-match facility or other IT technology was a major problem. We have a situation whereby, according to inclusion Scotland, in Scotland we had 132,074 sanctions applied. Over 33,463 of those were between January and March this year. They suggest that nearly 30,000 JSA sanctions will have been applied against disabled people in Scotland. That, Presiding Officer, is a huge amount of people affected by the sanctions regime. On 9 December, the committee heard from two witnesses about their experiences of the welfare system. One of the gentlemen who was there, John Lindsay, had never actually been sanctioned, but had a great fear of being sanctioned. At one point, he moved to Aberdeen to seek work because he was so scared of being sanctioned. That is what he had to say. It kind of finished me off. After that, I was really down, depressed and anxious. It was the final straw. Within a week or two, I got a sick note from the doctor and went on to employment and support allowance. What happened really pushed me over the edge. I had to go up to Aberdeen, away from my family. When I was told at the interview that I had the job, I was told also what it would be like and that the accommodation would be great and so on, but it was an absolute disgrace. When I went there and saw that and when I heard the stories from other people, I could not have stayed in the house any longer. I had to get away the next day and go home. It really pushed me over the edge. After that, I was just so anxious all the time about getting sanctioned. Mr Lindsay suffers from mental health problems and has done from a young age. He went on during the course of his evidence and said, and I quote, "...it builds up if a person has depression, anxiety or whatever and somebody talks to them as if they are a piece of dirt, they will take it personally, think about it and obsess about it and before they know it within a day or two, they are a complete nut job. They just do not function right, they end up obsessing about the matter and then get really ill. That is what I am like anyway." And he had a real fear of sanctions even though he had never been sanctioned. The other witness that day was Mr James Nesbit and he had this to say to the committee and I quote, "...when I first came off ESA and was having a problem getting back on JSA, I went in on the first day with my wife because I did not feel comfortable going back in to sign on and the assessor saw the two of us together. I had not been sat down for 10 minutes when she was setting the sanctions. I said, what are you going to sanction me for? She said, you're not doing enough job searches. I said, I've only just started a can of work computer and that's why I ended up having to go on a computer course for nine months. I do not know what has happened now, perhaps Westminster is taking the pressure off, but Atos were like the Gestapo. I do not know whether I should say that. These are real people and how they have been affected by the regime that is currently in place. That's why it is so upsetting that real people are not being listened to by DWP ministers and DWP ministers won't appear in front of our committee to hear about real people. We've already heard from the convener about Neil Cooleyng of the DWP's attitude. After he said that food banks were down to an increase in supply rather than an increase in demand due to the rise in sanctions, I said that he was talking claptrap and living in Cloud Cuckooland. I have to say, Presiding Officer, that many of my constituents have said much worse. I wish that Neil Cooleyng and others would go and talk to Barry at the Trussell Trust in Aberdeen or Christine at Sea Fine or Sophie, an instant neighbour, who, along with volunteers, are running those food banks, because then I think they would get a true idea of what is actually going on out there. The expert group on welfare, the Scottish Government's expert group on welfare, produced a report on rethinking welfare, fair, personal and simple. A very good document. What we have from the Westminster Government is something that is unfair, impersonal and simplistic, and I hope that we can change that. Many thanks. I now call Cara Hilton to be followed by Christina McKelvie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I begin by welcoming the welfare reform committee's interim report, Tough Love or Tough Luck? I agree with its findings that the sanctions regime pioneered by the Government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg is unfair, unjust and unacceptable. It is a regime that penalises the poorest and has had a devastating effect for many people in our communities right across Scotland. I apologise to Alex Johnson in advance for the left-wing dogma, but I believe that it is part of an austerity agenda, which has seen benefits and tax credits changed and cut, which has hit in the sick, the vulnerable and the poorest families hardest. At the same time, we have seen tax cuts for the richest millionaire. We have seen a blind eye being turned to tax evasion by individuals in multinational companies and a blind eye to bankers' bonuses. We have already seen £18 billion cut from out-of-work benefits and from tax credits, driving people on to debt, poverty and to destitution, forcing thousands to resort to food banks, to feed their families, to pay day lenders and loan sharks to make their money last months and to other desperate measures just to get by, putting their tenancies, their homes and their debt repayments at risk, impacting on their health and wellbeing of individuals in their families both now and in the future. Reforms that have hit the youngest hardest with 39 per cent of sanctions applied to young people aged 18 to 24. The briefing for today's debate, which is divided by citizens advice, highlights the harsh impact of the sanction regime and the direct link between sanctions and the use of food banks. Across Scotland, at least 71,000 people relied on a trussel trus food bank to eat last year, and, in my constituency of Donferman, 1,300 food bank vouchers have been issued since April, a staggering 400 per cent increase five times as many as last year, a figure that is growing day by day, week by week. Homestar estimates that around 30,000 children in Scotland live in families who cannot afford to eat properly. They say that one in four adults has skimped on food in the past year so that others in their household can eat. The committee's report highlights cases where people living in Scotland have had so many miles to get to the nearest food bank. Until recently, in West Fife, many clients of Donferman food bank were walking not just two or three miles but over 12 miles to get the food parcel. To solve the problem, satellite centres have now opened in Recife, Ember Keithan and Benarty. The food bank certainly has not been short of volunteers or donations, but that is just as well because they predict that client numbers will double over the next year. Donferman food bank has now got more than 180 volunteers across its four centres and its warehouse, and the commitment of those volunteers is outstanding. Their hard work and dedication is commended to be commended by us all. Over the last week, I understand that donations from the public have gone through the roof, shown the strength of community spirit, but also the genuine anger that people in 21st century Scotland are going hungry. John Riley, who runs Donferman food bank, is doing an absolutely brilliant job, and when I told him I would be speaking in this debate today, he told me that, apart from his usual Christmas wish that no one should go hungry in West Fife or in Scotland, he would like to see everyone who uses food banks be given free transport to get there and back, and I hope that this is something that the Scottish Government will look into. At Donferman food bank, a staggering 53 per cent of people claiming food parcels in the past nine months, the reason that they are there is due to benefit delay or sanctions. People who have got nowhere else to turn to yet the food bank can only help for a few days and on a few occasions. What happens when someone is being sanctioned for months or even, as Michael McMan mentioned, for three years? How are they supposed to put food on the table? Never mind get money to pay for their bus fare to seek work. Never mind hope to eat their homes, keep a roof over their heads, put shoes in a warm jacket on their children, put presents under the Christmas tree. Yet, to most of us, the links between sanctions, welfare reform and food bank use is glaringly obvious. It sums up how, out of touch, the coalition Government are. When Tory ministers continue to believe that there's no link between welfare reform, between sanctions and the use of food banks, they're clearly living on a different planet to the rest of us. It's simply unacceptable that in a country as wealthy as Scotland that any individual or any family has got to return to a food bank. While we all applaud the dedication of the volunteers who run them and provide this emergency lifeline, our goal must be their elimination, as the committee has concluded. As Scotland, where no family is forced to return to a food bank to put tea on the table, where no one is forced to go hungry, a welfare system that ensures that every Scot has a decent standard of living, distributed fairly and which supports people to escape from poverty and destitution in which the current welfare agenda is placing them. It was Labour who created the welfare state, and I think that it's one of the real benefits of the union, which pulls and shares resources and risks across the UK. The majority of Scots voted to stay part of the UK, but on the doorsteps there is certainly an appetite for change and voters told us they wanted more control up here in Scotland. I'm confident that the Smith commission report, which all of the Scottish political parties signed up to, will deliver that change, although it clearly doesn't go as far as some of us would like. In Scottish Labour, I'd hoped it would go further too in respect of house and benefit. It does offer many opportunities and it allows Scotland the possibility to shape much of our own welfare system. We'll recognise them too that some things are best delivered at UK level. Given Scotland the power to create new benefits, to top up existing benefits and to mitigate the unfair effects of welfare reforms. Real powers will make a real difference to individuals and families right across Scotland. The power to top up child benefit, the power to reform and improve carers allowance, the power to totally redesign the work programme, to create us the new Scottish welfare at no time. The city town needs here in Scotland that treats every Scot with respecting dignity, but ultimately this debate isn't and shouldn't be about powers. This is political will. It's our actions that can ensure protect our citizens from poverty, not constitutions. It's our actions that can and will end child poverty that will ensure our pensioners can stay warm this winter, that can make work fairer and extend a living wage to make work pay for more workers. I look forward to the Scottish Government using the powers it has and the powers on its way to transform people's lives, to tackle inequality, make Scotland fairer and more inclusive and let's all work together to end the scandal of food banks and ensure that Scotland is genuinely the best place to grow up for every single child and that no family in Scotland goes hungry. The people of Scotland, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, are being battered and assaulted by benefit cuts, confronted by the bedroom tax and trying to battle the frequently bizarre decisions that were made at ATOS assessments. One of the wealthiest countries in the world, 22,000 children used food banks last year. That is what Ian Duncan-Smith refers to as welfare reform. His concept has more in common with the old reform skills that it has with welfare. In fact, the entire coalition view of welfare and benefits bears a terrifyingly close resemblance to the Victorian approach to welfare as punishment and effect. If people are so careless, so self-indulgent that they become a charge on the state, then they ought to expect to live in misery as a result. So far, Ian Duncan-Smith has managed to create a complete fiasco of the universal credit and PIP programmes, even the Public Audit Committee has recognised that. Although we welcome any extension of devolved powers to Scotland, the Smith package, not delivered yet, because it has definitely not been delivered yet, falls very, very far short of this Government's ambition for all the people of Scotland. I will not itemise the carefully wrapped package contents. I want only to remind everyone of the fundamental principle behind this Smith report. The rules ensure that neither the Scottish Government nor the UK Government will lose or gain financially from the act of transfer of power. 85 per cent of devolved powers over welfare remain reserved to Westminster. In other words, and in real terms, no change. Westminster rule, not home rule. Without meaningful control over our national budget, and by that I mean that the elected Government enjoys the genuine freedom to raise and spend its own money for the betterment of all, we continue to be constrained by the choices of Westminster, however inappropriate those choices are for Scotland. On welfare, we could get control of over £2.5 billion out of a total of £17.5 billion in spending. For me, that is just tinkering at the edges. It is not enough to allow us to change a broken system and turn it into an effective one that meets the needs of the Scottish people, recording those who achieve but never punishing those whose circumstances limit their options. Why is welfare turned into a bad word? A criticism? An accusation? Welfare is wellbeing. Welfare is living your life in as full a way as possible for you. If you are severely autistic, if you suffer from bipolar disorder, if you are wheelchair bound and or suffering from a long term, perhaps life limiting or even terminal condition, you have the absolute right to enjoy life to the full. I thought the notion of deserving poor had died with dickens, but obviously not. As a result of reforms announced during 2010 to 2015, let us not forget where the welfare reform act came from 2010 to 2015. Households with both disabled children and adults are facing the highest total reduction in income. In terms of percentage of annual income, their loss is around three times the average reduction in income faced by non-disabled households. As a new member of the welfare reform committee, I have been both moved and shocked by the evidence that we have received, listening to the accounts of people subjected to sometimes brittle and even offensive questioning without any supportive expert available. My colleague Kevin Stewart gave the perfect example of the testimonies of the people that we heard from last week. That left them confused and unclear about how to go forward and not just a daily, but an hourly issue in my constituency. In the briefing from Agenda, it has explained that, since 2010, 85 per cent of cuts to benefits, tax credits and paying pensions have been taken from women's incomes. Together with recent announcements in the autumn statement, that amounts to £22 billion from a total of £26 billion. £22 billion of those cuts shouldered by women. Existing inequalities mean that women have fewer financial assets and less access to occupational pension. They are still paid less than men—13 per cent of Scotland for full-time workers and 34 per cent less for part-time workers—who are all largely women. Then there is all the unpaid caring work of bringing up the children and looking after other relatives and what we can call the motherhood penalty. As Agenda has pointed out, those reforms are a move backwards towards greater misogyny and, apparently, the desire to remove benefits from disabled people and their families. By now, no one should be surprised to learn that the greatest losers are women with a disability. Citizen vice-scotland is all too aware of the problems that the current system continues to spawn. Yes, people are literally starving as a result of sanctions and sudden withdrawal of benefits. As they face Christmas, it is likely to be with the help of a food bank and the notion of armfuls of presence is not going to figure. Locally, for some of the monitoring that I have done, it seems to be young men who are presenting themselves more often, young men with few family ties, young men with additional problems, the same young men who, percentage-wise, are the ones who commit suicide. On Sunday politics, Ian Duncan-Smith told us that food banks were just fine. There are lots of them in Germany. He said that it was nonsense that the current welfare system was pushing people towards food banks. Mr Duncan-Smith, I have some news for you. The people in my constituency are going to food banks because they have no alternative. They need to feed themselves and their children and, without welfare support, they cannot do it. I hope that you are very proud of that achievement. Where from here? We ensure that Scotland is a real and loud voice in Westminster in next year's elections. We need those voices who are genuinely committed to a fair of society to overwhelm those who are committed only to their own self-interest. We will fight the ridiculous measures such as the bedroom tax so that Scotland can move forward making its own decisions. Our control now is limited. In an independent Scotland, we will have the freedom to make those choices, but we cannot do that now. If there is one refrain that unites the Scottish Parliament, I hope that it would be this one. Let us do our absolute best for all the sovereign people of this land and let us deliver for them a fair and equitable society that does not want to identify people as rejects or the underserving poor. I am pleased to be taking part in this afternoon's debate. I wish to add my thanks to the welfare committee for not only publishing this report and tabling a debate in the matter, but for the commitment that they have shown for the last two years to this issue. I believe that the work of the committee has done, and the dedication of the members and their convener, Mike McMahon, have shown to the subject matter is a fantastic example to other committees in the Parliament on what can be achieved. The report that has been published, of course, talks about the marked increase in the use of food bikes in our country. In order to get a true sense of what we are discussing, I thought that it was important to look at the history of the establishment of food banks across the world. It was in America in 1967 that John Van Hengel, a volunteer with the St Vincent de Paul Society, first established the concept. Mr Van Hengel saw a widow and her 10 children looking through rubbish behind grocery stores for food. As a result, he helped her find edible food and asked the store owners to give them the products they would have thrown out so that he could distribute them to the needy. It was in 1984 that the first food bank was established in Europe, and that was followed by the establishment of the European Federation of Food Banks in 1986. The UK and welfare nations did not set up food banks until later. Since 2004, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the UK, Lithuania and Serbia have joined the network, followed in 2010 and 2011 by the Netherlands, Switzerland, Estonia and Denmark and 2013 by Bulgaria and Ukraine. Of course, the issue is not that food banks exist because, as I have demonstrated, they have existed for some time across the world. The issue is the growing reliance of these banks in our society. The Trussell Trust, a Christian-based charity that had just two food banks in 2004, now has 423 food banks. That example shows just how reliant many in society have become on this type of provision. In a few short years, people of my age and younger have become aware of food banks not only in a historic way but have seen them as an integral part of their communities. That is the most disappointing thing for me. Pupils from St Andrews High School in Coatbridge, the area from the Deputy Presiding Officer, were visited in Parliament today and told me that only last week the day raised £1,000 for their local food bank. Of course, the young people should be congratulated for raising such a fantastic amount of money. However, the fact that they had to do this in order that someone, maybe their own fellow classmates, would get a meal this Christmas, should embarrass not only those of us in the chamber today but embarrass and shame the coalition Government all the more. The findings of the welfare reform committee make for uncomfortable reading and could not be clearer. The measures introduced by the UK Government are creating the reliance on food banks. It is as simple as that. With £14.9 billion worth of cuts having been made to benefits, tax credits, pay and pensions since 2010, what other outcome could there be? Not only have people seen a cut to their benefit or for that benefit to be stopped altogether, many have faced the intolerable sanctions on top of this. The UK Government may say that sanctions have been designed to promote the correct and proper use of the welfare system, to rightly enable the effective and efficient use of resources that support people on the path back to work and ultimately out of poverty. However, what we find and as the report demonstrates is that sanctions are being used to punish people and in some cases leave the most in need without money for up to three years. That was a point made repeatedly in several briefings that we received for today's debate, in particular the briefing from Inclusion Scotland. From the briefings, we learned that, since October 2013, Claimants wishing to challenge a decision by the DWP to refuse an awarded benefit or to impose a sanction must request a mandatory reconsideration before they can appeal to the tribunal. Nearly 25 per cent of GSA sanctions have been subject to mandatory reconsiderations and over half of those have seen the sanction overturned. For ASA claimants, nearly half of decisions to impose sanctions have gone to mandatory reconsideration, and of those, nearly half have been successful. Further, the DWP has still not published any statistics on mandatory reconsiderations introduced on October 2013. However, mandatory reconsiderations appear to have caused an almost total collapse in appeals to tribunals. Only 23 GSA or ASA sanctions have gone to tribunal appeal decisions and are recorded for all of April June, compared with a usual figure of at least 1,000 per month. Although the UK Government claimed that sanctions are a last resort, it is evident that they are being imposed almost as a matter, of course, with no opportunity for the claimant to give reasonable cause for the failure that leads to the sanction. That is the impact that the so-called welfare reforms have brought to many people's doors across Scotland and the UK. It is no wonder, then, that more and more people are finding it harder to feed themselves or indeed their families. People must be supported in the hour of need by the state. I therefore welcome the Smith's Agreement welfare powers and the ability of this Parliament to create new and additional benefits, as well as top-up existing benefits. I believe that that will give us an opportunity to address some of the many issues affecting our constituents today, in particular women. As in gender point out in their briefing for today's debate, the UK social security system is a facet of gender inequality, as demonstrated by the highly gendered impact of welfare reform, which is seeing women and their children at increased risk of poverty, abuse, violence and physical and mental health issues. They go on to say that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament must therefore use the opportunity of new powers over social security to ensure that those patterns are re-addressed where possible. I couldn't agree more and I hope that the Government will use every power coming their way to help rebuild the people's trust in the welfare system, because, at the moment, that trust has been lost. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I speak today as a former member of the welfare reform committee. I want to welcome particularly, convener Michael Mann's contribution today in opening the debate, because it is certainly the content that was in the spirit of what I felt was the opinion generally within the welfare reform committee when I was a member of that. I am pleased to speak to you in the motion because I was involved in some of the work that was done towards the two reports, one on food banks and one on the sanctions regime. I would like to say a few words about both of those things. Certainly what the committee felt, I would say, is that the sanctions regime, as operated, is overly punitive and there are many errors. It was interesting to look at the citizens advice Scotland briefing, which said that, in the year up to June 2014, there were over 200 job seekers allowing sanctions per day, which is a lot. However, what really got to me was that, since the start of that regime in October 2012, there have been over 3,800 sanctions that were high-level, which means a sanction of at least 13 weeks. Just the very thought of that, 13 weeks is a heck of a lot of time to have your money stopped for, especially if it is in error, especially if you have not received notice of the sanction, if it is being imposed where you have a good reason for not meeting the requirements, or if you are unaware of your right to challenge the decision. That was something that citizens advice Scotland found to be fairly common. That brings me on to the other report, which is food banks. No wonder there has been such a growth in food banks when you have such a punitive welfare regime. I said all the arguments that came from David Mundell, Ian Duncan-Smith, all of them about how people are taking advantage of food banks and if you provide something, people will turn up for it, all of that. Sorry, I would rather listen to the man that Michael McMahon talked about, which is Dennis Curran, who, in East Kilbride, has been operating food bank distribution work with a homeless for 20-plus years. Dennis knows a lot more about it than Ian Duncan-Smith does, let me tell you. Dennis will tell you that there will always be the need for charitable organisations that help people out now and then, or that may be longer-term help people. However, what he has seen over the past few years is unprecedented and it is immoral and non-ethical, in my opinion. One of the things that I feel bad about is that Dennis keeps saying to me, and he will say it again to me tomorrow, probably. Are there your way of talking again? What are you going to do about it? That feeling of helplessness is ridiculous because there are people who have been working on this for so long and they just want to do something. Siobhan was quite right. What is now happening is that we are mainstreaming food distribution as part of our welfare system. That is starting to happen, and it is absolutely appalling. He sees all sorts of examples of that, and I was absolutely horrified to see that the co-op of all places is marketing their own brand as ideal for the food banks. What on earth are we doing when things like that are happening in our society? It is easy to talk about the figures, but I believe that every single one of us in this Parliament must have examples of constituents who have been hit by this. I am not going to name anyone, certainly not, but we had a chap who had been sanctioned, who had not had any money for weeks, and he phoned our office crying. He was a man who had worked for most of his life and had lost his job and ended up sanctioned by mistake. I may add that we won that case. That man was crying because he was hungry and because he could not bring himself to turn up at the food bank. It was only because we organised something with Dennis Curran that that chap ended up getting some tea over the weekend. I am just disgusted. I am living in a society and that kind of thing becomes the norm. Let's get on to the Smith commission. I was, I guess you could call it, privileged to be part of that. What we were into that with was wanting a cohesion, a cohesive set of powers that would allow us to stop these things happening. I am not convinced that we have that. Neither is much of civic Scotland. I suspect Members of the Welfare Reform Committee are a bit sceptical about that. That is not to do down what we hope will come out of it, but I do not think that we should get too carried away by thinking that it is a big answer to the big problems that we have got here when you have Governments and Westminster that are applying the kind of welfare reforms that are just alien to what many of us believe in. It is still to go to the Westminster Parliament, and even if those who believe that regardless of the result of the next UK election, their recommendations will be enacted, there are issues yet to be ironed out. There are very technical ones about adjustment formula to the block grant, but there is also the thing about the effects and overall income adjustment, where top ups and new benefits may apply. I was delighted that Richard Simpson intervened on Annabelle Goldie to put our understanding of that. However, there are those who are already saying that that is not their understanding. I am very worried that, in the passage through Westminster, those things will change because we do not have the earnings taper. I will stop here. What I would say to everyone in here is back to what Dennis Curran says when he is going to do something about it. If we can do nothing else, we can shout about it to our respective people in Westminster. We can call jointly across this Parliament for early transfer of things like DLA so that we can stop PIP roll-out. If we really want Scotland to be a fairer society, that is what we have to do. Let us start here. I do not believe, as the new leader of Labour says, that we can be the fairest country on earth if we do not have control over the things that allow us to become so, but surely we can make small differences as a way to move forward. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to have the opportunity again this week to contribute to the debate on welfare, reform and Smith commission. I welcome the findings of the committee, enter the report and thank the committee for all their hard work that they have done to date. As I am sure members across the chamber will agree, welfare and its challenges are among the most common conversations that we have with our constituents. The welfare state was founded as a safety net for the most vulnerable in our society. It is a great shame that, in 2014 and nearly 2015, we are still having discussions about hungry children and their families having to turn to food banks in order to survive. Sadly, that seems to be a problem that is not going to disappear soon. I welcome the welfare proposals that have been put forward by the Smith commission, allowing the Scottish Parliament to provide greater support to our nation's most vulnerable. I welcome, in principle, the efforts of the Scottish Government's welfare funds Scotland's bill in trying to alleviate those problems, whilst also raising some concerns with aspects of the bill that I mentioned in my speech earlier on this week. I also welcome my party's commitment to ensure that welfare and work programmes are devolved not just to Holyrood but to the towns and cities of Scotland. It is apparent to me that local authorities, charities and third sector groups who are embedded in their communities can make better decisions around getting people back into work and breaking the dependency cycle than someone sitting here, either here in Edinburgh or in Westminster. One of the most common issues raised by my constituents are benefit sanctions. Indeed, just this week, a constituent I spoke to had no idea that her benefits were being sanctioned until her payment did not make her bank account. She expressed her frustration that no one seemed to speak her language and that left her with no alternative but to turn to the food bank. Although I welcome the proposals in the welfare fund Scotland bill, it is clear that, without the appropriate awareness raising, training and advertisement, as well as materials being provided to the job centre plus and the third sector agencies, many initiatives such as the Scottish welfare fund and the community care grant will not be widely known to most vulnerable and will remain shockingly underspent. It also strikes me that, in drafting new proposals, there is one group that we simply do not consult enough. Those most vulnerable who, unfortunately, rely on this system surely have a role to play and ensure that it is as stress-free and as simple as possible. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises access to food as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, yet the committee's report found that the use of food banks had increased by 400 per cent since 2012. In many cases, people who are sanctioned wrongly have their house and benefit stopped, relatively few people sanctioned receive hardship payments. The committee's report highlighted cases where people living in Scotland had walked up to 12 miles to get a food bank. It also noted that some users had to refuse food provided because they could not afford to turn their oven on to cook it. Through its welfare reforms, the coalition Government denied that right to the 71,000 people in Scotland who are dependent upon food banks. As I suggested in my speech on welfare funds earlier this week, anonymous case studies could be used to allow organisations involved in getting people back into work and living a full and independent life to get a better grasp of the needs of our most vulnerable and to be able to explain it to them as clearly as possible. In conclusion, it is not the job of us here in the Scottish Parliament to simply acknowledge welfare challenges. It is incredibly easy to simply note those concerns and say that we have done our duty. As I am sure all members across the chamber will agree, that is simply not enough. If we are not here to challenge, then we are wasting our time. If we are not here to listen, then we are not doing our job. If we are not here to change, then we have lost all hope. I am now a member of the welfare committee. I was not at the time that those reports were produced, but I would like to pay tribute to the MSPs who were involved and to the committee clerks and all those organisations and individuals who gave evidence. The two reports are comprehensive pieces of work, and they have raised awareness and understanding of extreme poverty and its causes. With regard to the Food Bank report, I agree wholeheartedly with its conclusion that UK ministers are quite wrong to deny a link between welfare reform and the rising use of food banks. The distressing evidence taken by the committee demonstrated that the link did exist, and it is a strong one. Benefit sanctions and benefit delays were referenced repeatedly by witnesses in both written and oral evidence as reasons for the increase in the use of food banks. As others have mentioned, the Barrett bear is repeating, the Trussell Trust said in evidence that the three main problems that led people to Scottish food banks in 2013-14 were benefit delays, changes to benefits, including sanctions and low income generally. The rise in the use of sanctions by the Department of Work and Pensions is quite simply a moral outrage, as it leaves people completely destitute. Others have talked about the figures that show how sanctions have risen, so I will not repeat them. However, I want to repeat one piece of evidence that was taken by the committee that shows the absurdity and cruelty of the sanctions. It concerns Ann Marie, who was sanctioned in December 2012 for four weeks for failing to do the requisite number of job searches. She applied for 27 jobs instead of 28 within a two-week period. That left Ann Marie without the money that she needed to heat her home or to be able to buy food. Ann Marie could not access the hardship fund until the 15th day of her sanction, leaving her with no money for over two weeks. She felt that her only option was to borrow money through a payday loan, enabling her to buy food as well as small Christmas gifts for her family. Fortunately, Ann Marie was able to access seasonal part-time work to assist her throughout this time. Of course, she is still paying back the loan 12 months after the initial sanction. That, Presiding Officer, is just one example of this absurd and cruel regime. Perhaps it was not surprising that the Tustal Trust found that 19 per cent of the users of its food bank did so because of changes to benefits, but the same proportion of users to food banks did so because of low income. That was confirmed by Mark Ballard of Barnadows, who told the committee that the driver of food poverty was not just low and delayed benefits but also the decline in the value of real wages. Carlann Alcorn of Fair Share and Edinburgh Syrenians said that working people on low incomes cannot meet the rising cost of rent, food and fuel. That has certainly been my experience when I helped volunteers at the first-based charity in Dumfries, who distributed food parcels in Dumfries and Galloway. Others have mentioned that, but a large number of people asked us to make up parcels that did not require cooking because they simply could not find the cash for gas and electricity. I note the first hand, and it was repeated in evidence to the committee. The work-first base is remarkable. Other people have talked about their local food banks, and I would like to pay tribute to First Base in Dumfries. His director, Mark Franklin, writes a blog, and if anyone would like to know more about the hard-working effort that it takes to keep those lifeline services going, I would direct them to his blog, Mark Franklin. His current posting is titled The December Day in the Life of a Scottish Food Bank, and it makes for a very poignant read. He has to be at the back door of Greggs for 8am every Monday morning to take delivery of 50 loafs, and he ended one of his days last week in Kirkcwbry Harbour, where a trawler had taken a particularly good catch and had donated a large part of it to scallops, not for the food bank, but to sell, to buy food to distribute. At this point, can I pay tribute to the generosity of those who contribute to food banks? Local businesses, in particular, and in our area, church congregations, are particularly generous, and Mondays at the food bank are very busy as volunteers drop off collections made during Sunday services. In Mark Franklin's blog, he talks about last week opening a Christmas card with a £200 cheque inside it, and it was from two pensioners who had decided to donate their winter fuel allowance, feeling that others were more need of it than they did. Mark mentions that those pensioners were his fellow travellers for the Yes campaign, and while people from all political backgrounds donate to food banks and run food banks, I would like to put on record the Yes movements action in this regard, particularly since the referendum all over Scotland, local Yes groups, who were deeply disappointed with the result of the referendum, wanted to channel their energy into making a positive difference to their communities, and addressing food poverty is a very tangible way to do that. My own branch of the SNP in Dumfries East last weekend set up a food collection stall in the centre of town, at the suggestion of two of our younger and new members. By the end of the day, we collected £600 worth of food and £200 worth of cash donations for First Base. I think that there is a good reason why people who were part of the independence campaign want to throw their energy into this particular type of activity, as has been discussed, welfare is a reserved matter. The two specific aspects of welfare that will stay reserved are sanctions, which cause many people to go hungry. Low wages and, of course, the Smith commission quite specifically keeps the sanction regime in London and prevents us from setting a minimum wage here in Scotland. While I welcome the reforms that the Smith commission suggests, clearly, the key aspects of food poverty will remain reserved to Westminster, and I think that that is deeply disappointing. We now move to closing speeches, and I call on Alex Johnson in the six minutes, please. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. We in Scotland are extremely lucky to be part of the United Kingdom, an economy that is now growing faster than any other economy in the developed world. Contrary to the policies that were adopted by many of our European colleagues, particularly those within the Eurozone, we have decided to follow a policy that is, through the United Kingdom and here in Scotland, creating jobs and economic growth at a time when many of our European neighbours would kill for that opportunity. However, we have a problem that is persistent. Here in Scotland, there are many areas, perhaps all areas, where there is a desperate labour shortage. However, when those jobs are created, they are filled largely through immigrants. I am one of those Conservatives who does not oppose immigration, particularly immigration within the European Union. However, it concerns me still that we do so badly when it comes to getting our unemployed into the jobs that we are now creating. However, the consequences of that failure are very obvious, and they are clearly stated in the two reports that we have in front of us today. Let me address the issues specifically. When it comes to sanctions, there is obviously a problem. The sanctions regime seems to be attacking the same people time and time again. However, I want to take a step back and look at sanctions with a broader view. First of all, I would like to refute the suggestion that sanctions are somehow the invention of the current coalition government. Sanctions were introduced some time ago under the previous Labour Government. In fact, only in the past 12 months have the level of sanctions gone past the peak that was achieved in 2007, when Frank Field was the minister responsible. Let us take no lessons from the previous Government on the implementation of sanctions. However, there are problems relating to sanctions as they are applied today. However, there is a broad understanding that if we are to have a welfare regime and a benefit system, then some kind of enforcement and some kind of disciplinary measures will be necessary. In fact, this report, Rethinking Welfare, Fair, Personal and Simple, does not go so far as to suggest that we do not need a disciplinary and enforcement mechanism. Yet for many of the individuals who have experienced sanctions, it is a very difficult circumstance to find themselves in. Many of them do not understand why sanctions have been applied. Many more, a great many at least, have gone through that process where they have had their mandatory reconsideration and the sanction threat has been withdrawn. There is an appeals procedure and, like many appeals procedures in the welfare system, there is a surprisingly high success rate in appeals. However, that is symptomatic of a system that is not, in my view, being appropriately administered, but not necessarily a system that itself is inappropriate. If we move on to the other reports, we have heard a number of times today people who believe that the demand for food banks is entirely caused by the implementation of sanctions, but we have also heard others suggest that low wages are a large cause. In fact, we heard a brief mention a moment or two ago about the evidence that was provided by Mark Ballard on behalf of his employers who did it go to some length to try and explain what the causes of demand for food banks were. They understood, of course, that the drivers include high food prices. We have been through a five-year period where food prices have peaked at a very high level. High fuel prices have also been a driver. Of course, if you are a food bank, no one is giving away free electricity, so free food may be the option that you choose. Also, sadly, we have seen extremely high transport costs contribute to family difficulty. As we have heard on more than one occasion during this debate, there are people who have been unable to travel to food banks or have had to walk many miles in order to take advantage of that service. Food banks as a whole balance people's opinions, and we have to be careful of what we say about food banks. I agree with everybody here that it is unfortunate that food banks are currently necessary. However, food banks are a wonderful example of how human beings can pull together and work together for the benefit of all when a need is identified. I would like to pay tribute at this stage to everyone who is working within a food bank, large or small, or making contributions to a food bank to keep that essential service in place while it is necessary. However, our challenge is to work to ensure that it is not necessary forever. The opportunity that is presented to us by the agreement that is achieved by the Smith commission is one that I think is being underestimated by the Scottish Government. I think that the opportunities presented by universal credit are extremely positive, and I believe that the universal credit system administered from the Westminster Government will contribute enormously to the simplification and the efficient provision of support in the main benefit areas. However, the Smith commission gives us huge new opportunities to top up benefits or to create new benefits and systems of support that we can deliver here in Scotland. However, the challenge is to achieve the political consensus that is necessary to do that. We can, in effect, pay any benefit that we like as long as we raise the money through taxation here in Scotland. There is the challenge, and there is where we must all pull together and work together to argue a case that is acceptable, not only to those who will take advantage of the systems that are provided, but to those who will pay for them, too. That challenge is a challenge that will keep us thinking for many years to come. Many thanks. I call Dr Richard Simpson. I welcome the opportunity to make some concluding remarks for the Labour Party on this committee-initiated debate on an excellent report. I think that there is much common ground. I think that most of us would agree that the Liberal Democrat conservative coalition policies and welfare, whatever their original good intentions, has become uncaring and unjust, as Kara Hilton said. No, I haven't even got started yet, Kevin, so if you don't... Mr Stewart, sorry if I don't mind. Whoever would have been in power had to make difficult and often unpopular decisions and choices at the UK, Scottish and local authority levels, but there should be no doubt that the coalition has perhaps inadvertently punished the most vulnerable while rewarding, certainly deliberately, the most affluent with tax cuts. I think that one of the phrases that will be living memory in most people's lives of this generation as laughable is, we are all in this together. When the rich get richer, the CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies awarded themselves a 14 per cent increase in wages last year, bankers' bonuses continue to just don't get it. At the same time, we have low pay, which, as Alex Johnson says, is contributing towards the use of food banks. We have part-time working, we have poorly rewarded self-employment, and we have zero-hours contracts. As Ken Macintosh said, we need to address the rich as well as the poverty wages, and the Labour Government will take some tough decisions on this, including restoring the 50p rate of tax, introducing a banker's bonus tax again, a mansion tax and a tobacco producers tax. Of course, that can only happen if Labour is the largest party and we shall see what happens in May. If any doubt about the consequences of five more years of Tory rule, I think that the recent vote on the bedroom tax supported by 35 Liberal Democrats and the statements that some Tories made in the food bank debate made clear where we will head if there is a Tory Government after May. A state, as the OBR said, whose size will be reduced to the same proportions as the 1930s—not the same, but the same proportions. That is still highly relevant with expectations today. Alex Johnson is right. Sanctions have always been part of our benefit system. As a GP in the 70s, I dealt with the problems associated with what was called stop-down, but the new sanctions regime, as Michael McLaren made clear on behalf of the committee, is excessive and counterproductive. What has become apparent is that no-one is off limits for the coalition's implementation of the welfare system. The Inclusion Scotland briefing highlighted just how much of the most vulnerable has been hard-hit, with 132,000 sanctions being applied, as Linda Fabiana said, and 3,000 at a high level, more than 13 weeks. Can anyone imagine actually doing without benefits for 13 weeks? Just think of it. How do you actually cope? Without food banks, we would be nowhere. As Anne McTaggart and others have said, and even Alex Johnson has admitted, many of them do not know that they are being sanctioned and, indeed, on appeal, find that they have been the victims of maladministration. The so-called hardship funds are normally only payable after 15 days. Joan McAlpine's good illustration of this, I think, demonstrated what that meant to people. Sam H has been, I think, useful in providing us with a lot of information, and I do not have time, Presiding Officer, to go through the statistics. However, I am particularly concerned, as a health minister and a previous doctor, about the effects upon those with mental health. This rather crude system of welfare that we have introduced is particularly damaging in its implementation on those with mental health. Mental health can be something continuous, but it is often something highly variable. Indeed, what we have done with this system in its implementation is often kill the aspirations of many people with mental health to get back into work. My experience is that they wanted to work, but I was having often to counsel them and say, look, go canny. You have just been through a hard time. You have been through a depressive illness, or you have bipolar disease, or your schizophrenia is just under control. Go into voluntary work first, find out how you cope, move forward gradually, and yet we found that 98 per cent of the respondents to the Sam H survey said that their mental health had suffered as a result of the system that was being employed with increased stress and anxiety. There are many other statistics that I do not have time to give, but I think that Kevin Stewart graphically illustrated the effect of even the fear of sanctions have on individuals. The bedroom tax is an illustration of really what is wrong with our system. As a minister, I remember having good ideas and watching them actually when I was out of power and a consultant psychiatrist being implemented on the job that I was then trying to do in such a way that actually added hugely to the bureaucracy and administration of my work. I was appalled that, as a minister, I could have possibly actually envisaged that. I didn't. It wasn't my intention. I think that this is what is happening often with things like the bedroom tax. Under occupancy is something where there are people wanting homes that might be valid, but actually the way it has been applied where people with disabilities don't have the room to store their equipment or can't sleep separately from their wife who has disturbed nights when she is very disabled, are cruel, cruel things to be happening. Food banks are perhaps the epitome of it. So many of the speakers today have said that. The usage is massive. The fact that the history that was given us by Siobhan McMahon shows that we have always had food banks, but only 40,000 in the UK were using them in 2010. It is nearly a million today. That has to be irrefutably a consequence of the welfare reforms, because, as Alex Johnson said, employment has increased. Presiding Officer, I realise that I am running out of time. I don't have time to deal with the Smith commission, but I will say this, that no matter the fact that this is never going to satisfy our colleagues on the SNP benches, I think that the list of powers of additional things coming to us gives us an opportunity that the Scottish people will not forgive us if we do not use those effectively. As many members have said, the work must start now to create the additional model of Scottish welfare that achieves the fairer society that we all want, and griping about what we do not have will not be sufficient. It may have a certain political advantage, but it will not be forgiven by the Scottish people. The work starts now. Mary, thanks. I now call on Margaret Burgess, seven minutes, so thereby please minister. Okay, thank you, Presiding Officer. I think that today's this afternoon's debate has been very clear and what we've listened to, that there is a real understanding in this chamber about how the welfare reforms are affecting people in all our communities. I think that that's the message that we should be sending out, we know how the impact this is having on you. There have been a lot of talk about sanctions and the punitive sanction regime, and it is punitive and it is not helping people back into work. No matter what has been said, the evidence does not say that. I think that the illustration that Kevin Stewart gave in his contribution highlights that. The fear of sanction is not in itself making it more difficult for people to get into work because it is affecting their mental health. I think that we have seen that. Richard Simpson also alluded to that. People are not deliberately not complying with what the job centre are asking them to do. Many people don't understand what they're being asked to do and they're not being supported in doing it. I think that we've got to say that. For me, in sanctions, the biggest regret for me is that we still have no powers over sanctions in this Parliament. We are not getting any powers that we can take any action in sanctions and make it easier for our people. I think that that is a regret. That is something that I would have liked to have seen devolved to Scotland—full welfare powers—and we could have looked at something that was much more proportionate to any so-called offence that someone claiming benefit is alleged to have committed. That is a regret. We have also talked a lot about food banks. It is very clear that there is a link between food banks and benefit reforms and benefit delays, as well as low income. Again, that is something that we are not going to be able to have any control over. We are not getting powers over the minimum wage. We are not getting powers to grow our own economy. Again, that is sad that that is not happening. There was real opportunity to do that. It is not just the Government that is saying that. We have also got Unison, who said that as well. They are very disappointed because there are some positive elements in the proposals that I accept. However, they fall short of the aspirations with particularly regard to job creation, employment regulation, equalities and minimum wage. Those are things that help to make the fairer society that we want. There is nothing coming in the powers that will allow Scotland to create a new welfare state. There are certainly powers that are coming that we can use and that we will use to benefit the people of Scotland, but they will not allow us to create a new welfare state, which is what I think many and most of civic Scotland wanted to see, with 75 per cent of the people wanting that. A number of things were mentioned during the debate that the Scottish Government is not taking action now. We are taking action within the current powers that we have. We are taking direct action in doing what we can to support people and organisations throughout Scotland in what is clearly very difficult times. The Scottish welfare fund that we establish shows what we can achieve when we deliver welfare here in Scotland. The last official statistics show that, between April 2013 and June 2014, more than 100,000 households in Scotland have received at least one award. That is a total of around £38 million. By working alongside local authorities, we have been responsive to the needs of vulnerable people. I will pick up a couple of points that were made by Ken Macintosh when he talked about goods as opposed to cash. I said that during the debate in Tuesday. I will say again that the bulk of the crisis grants that are paid out—that is when people have got no money for food or fuel or whatever—is paid out in cash. In many cases, the goods when it is community care grants, when it is the bigger items of expenditure, in many cases it is paid out in goods or in some cases it is vouchers. The evidence that was given to the welfare reform committee was quite clear that many people and organisations appreciate the goods, and they have some say and they also have a say in what goods are provided. I would be like others and not agree that it would be just appropriate to provide any goods, but what people require and need in discussion with the individual, and they have very much appreciated in many cases goods. We will also listen to stakeholders about the impact of the DWP sanctions and some of the bulk. I will take an intervention. I made this point in Tuesday as well as today that there can be an argument, but will the minister recognise that she does not get paid in goods and that none of us get paid in goods? We do not get paid in furniture. By doing so, we are definitely making a choice on behalf of welfare recipients. I was making the point that, by denuding choice, you are not building your resilience. Do you accept that argument? I do not accept that we are not building the resilience in many of the people who are getting the goods. They are getting the opportunity. They are very vulnerable people. There have been stories of those people going with a support worker or an organisation to choose their own goods to pick their colour scheme and to have them delivered into their home, have the windows measured for the curtains and a full service being provided. For very vulnerable people, just taking part in that exercise that they might never have done before is helping them. In cases and for many local authorities, the goods allow them to stretch the fund further. That has also got to be looked at. The Scottish welfare fund has that flexibility in local authority areas and, yes, I am not saying that it is perfect yet, but we can work on that, but that flexibility, I believe, should remain there. We will listen to the concerns about sanctions and change the guidance in the Scottish welfare fund to make it clear that an application for someone who is sanctioned by the DWP should be considered the same as any other application. We are doing what we can to make sure that that is a vital safety net that remains in place, but we recognise that no single organisation or area of government can own Scotland's overall response to the UK Government's welfare reform programme. That is why we are working closely with all our partners to ensure that we do what is the best within our existing resources to help those affected. We also know that it puts significant pressure on local government. I want to say a bit about the Smith commission and to make it absolutely clear in response to what Richard Simpson said. The Scottish Government will work with our stakeholders and with the people of Scotland to make the very best use of any powers that are coming to this Parliament. I accept that it is not the powers that we wanted, but that whatever powers come to this Parliament, the Government will work closely with Civic Scotland, with our stakeholders and across the chamber to ensure that the people of Scotland get the best benefit from any powers that come. I now call on Claire Adamson to wind up the debate on behalf of the committee. We have nine minutes or thereby. I welcome this opportunity to contribute to my first committee debate and my role as deputy convener of the welfare reform committee. I thank the previous members for their very hard work in producing both the reports that we are discussing today. I may be new to the post, but certainly not new to the concerns and the issues around welfare reform. We are hearing similar stories in our constituencies about the hardships that people are facing. There cannot be an MSP or any councillor in Scotland who does not understand the level of problems as our surgeries and mailboxes are full of people seeking help. In the debate earlier this week, I referenced the citizens of East Scotland briefing for this week's debates on welfare, where they talked about the need for food banks and the level of poverty being a destitution that goes beyond poverty. As I get up to speed with the work of the committee, there are some things that have really struck me in the evidence. Michael McMathner, committee convener, mentioned his open speech, the severity of the new sanctions regime. I would like to raise a point about proportionality. As the committee heard in oral evidence from Dr David Webster of Glasgow University, the loss of income that sanctions can lead to is now twice the maximum that can be imposed by the fines in our courts. He said that the GSA's scale of fines runs higher than that which is available to our mainstream courts, yet claimants have none of the protections that an accused in a mainstream court would have. He was referring to the presumption of innocence, the entitlement to legal representation and the fact that, as mentioned in his submission, in a mainstream court, before someone is sentenced, the sheriff will call for reports so that the sentence is appropriate. We have also heard about the DWP shifting the social responsibility and the costs of dealing with the effects of welfare reform and particularly sanctioned claimants. One of the areas that the cost has been clearly put out is in the area of food banks and to the third sector, but the DWP argues that there is no causal link between the increase in food bank use and welfare reforms, but the committee heard differently during its oral evidence. Dr Philips Sosensko of Heriot-Watt University told the committee that the strongest evidence for a link between welfare reform and the demand for food aid was the growth of that food aid at a faster rate post-April 2013. As we know, April 2013 was a time when significant changes were made to the welfare system, including the so-called bedroom tax, the uprated 1 per cent rather than an inline with inflation and benefits, the reassessment of people on disability living allowance and the benefit cap for very significant changes to the welfare system. Bringing that down to a local level, community food moray said in its written submission that the impact of welfare reform was evident almost overnight. It pointed to an increase in referrals post-April 2013, as an increasing from 10 per month to an average of 15 per week. I would now like to address some of the issues raised by my colleagues during the debate this afternoon. In our opening speech, the minister framed the Government's approach to welfare reform with three main priorities—the priority of making a prosperous Scotland, the priority of tackling inequality and the priority of protecting and reforming public services. I think that she very ably brought to light some of the work that the Scottish Government is already doing with the powers that we have. Indeed, Luke Smith had hoped that the Smith commission would give a significant opportunity to move away from a mitigation of the welfare reform to a system that suited Scotland's needs, but, in the minister's own assessment, that was a missed opportunity. Ken Macintosh almost broke out consensus in the chamber this afternoon, and he very ably highlighted the payment charity work and the report work on the streets, and he highlighted the plight of Caroline, who had 15 months under sanctions. I think that it was a very apt example of some of the problems that people are experiencing at the moment. He also referenced the committee's visit to the citizens vice and park heads, which I'm sure was extremely informative and helped the work of the report. We had two esteemed members of the Smith commission speaking in the debate this afternoon, Andy Bill Goldie and Linda Fabiani, and Ms Goldie, while she looked to the future and the action and the influence of change, and actually seeking that we actually move in the area of mitigating that. I do share Dr Simpson's concerns about 55 and 56 paragraphs of the Smith commission, which looks at top-up benefits and whether or not they may be offset in the future, and something that Ms Fabiani also mentioned as a concern going forward. Mr Stewart, in his contribution this afternoon, highlighted the number of disabled people who had been affected by this and also referenced two very moving pieces of evidence to the committee from John Lindsay and James Nesbitt, who very ably gave evidence on their experiences of people suffering from mental health, going through the system and having to deal with what they called were quite punitive and often insulting questions that they had to deal with at that time. Ms Hilton brought forward the thanks and the work of the volunteers who work in the food bank sector. She mentioned that we should all regret the need for the food banks, spoke of the great work of volunteers across Scotland and I know that there is indeed a food bank drive in my constituency in Central's region on Saturday morning that I hope to take part in and I hope that that is a success and this was also highlighted by John McAlpine in her own area in South of Scotland. Christina McKelvie reminded us all about the disproportionate effect that the welfare reform has had on women's incomes, with an estimated £23 billion out of the £26 billion cuts so far being shouldered by women, many of whom were also disabled women and I pointed to how this was unequal and gave further discrimination against women in our society. Siobhan McMashon gave us a very informed history of the establishment and the growth of food banks in the world and also I think Mr McMahan as well in his opening speech. Siobhan McMahan also mentioned the three years that people can be sanctioned up to as being a completely disproportionate and punitive length of time for the sanctions to apply to and also reminded the chamber that about this idea that food bank use and third sector use to deal with areas that should be lie within the area of the DWP should not be normalized and not be accepted as the way forward for our society and that these were societal burdens that should lie within the responsibility of the DWP. Ms Fabiani also talked about the growth in food banks and highlighted the work of both her constituents and his co-bride constituent Dennis Curran who has worked in food banks for a large number of years and said that his experience made it almost impossible to understand how anyone could deny the link between austerity from Westminster and the welfare reforms with the rise in food banks and their use at the moment. McTaggart has spoken passionately about the wider aspects of fuel poverty and the complications of poverty and Jolma Calpine in her contribution also highlighted the particular case of Ann Marie who saw sanctions apply to her but left her in debt for a large number of years because of the problems. Mr Johnson is summing up. I was very interested in the use of language throughout this. When you hear the other members in the chamber using words like punitive, inhumane, it is quite difficult to not share some of their concerns about how indeed inhumane the sanctions reform is but I hope that going forward the consensus that he talked about and that willingness to move forward will work across the chamber and in my work in the committee I hope that I'll be working with all the members there to try and solve some of these very difficult problems. You can wind up, Ms Adams. Thank you Presiding Officer. I say my first opportunity speak on behalf of the committee and I hope I've reflected the debate this afternoon and look forward to continuing that work with him. Thank you. That concludes the welfare reform committee debate on welfare reform on the Smith commission. We now move to the next item of business. May I invite the Minister for Parliamentary Business to move a motion without notice to bring forward decision time to now? I wish you and the rest of the chamber a very merry Christmas. Thank you minister. The question is that decision time be brought forward to now. Are we all agreed? I thought you might be. There's only one question we put as a result of today's business. The question is that motion number 11840 in the ninth of Michael McMahon on welfare reform and the Smith commission be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. Can I just take this opportunity to wish all members a peaceful happy Christmas and a good new year? It's been a momentous year both for Scotland and for the Scottish Parliament and I hope that you take the opportunity that is given to you over these next two weeks to have a bit of rest and time with your own families. All the best.