 Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Our first item of business this morning is to decide whether we are taking item 3 in private and to consider pre-budget correspondence or its report in private at future meetings. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much. Before we turn to our main items of business today, I wanted to confirm to the committee that we have published our report on kinship care, and that is now available on our website. There's been some social media activity about it, so I would encourage you all to share that if you can. That would be fantastic. We now turn to our first item of business, which is the first of our pre-budget scrutiny sessions. The focus is on resource spending review and its impact on poverty, as well as the forthcoming equality and fair Scotland budget statement. I welcome to the meeting, panel 1, first off, who are Dr Alison Hosie, who is research officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission, and Sarah Cowan, who is the coordinator of the Scottish Women's Budget Group. Welcome to you both this morning. A few housekeeping points to mention before we kick off. Please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphones on before you start to speak. Make sure that you can see the chat box in the corner. Put an hour in that chat box. I've got it up on my screen here as well, so I can make sure that I bring you in as appropriate. We do have colleagues from the committee. We've got Natalie Don, who is remote as well, so I'll be keeping an eye on that as well. We've got around one hour this morning for this first panel. I'm now going to turn to members and invite them in to come in questions. To start us off this morning, I'm going to turn to my colleague Emma Roddick, who's going to come in on the theme of poverty as a rights violation. Over to you, Emma. Thank you, convener. Good morning. My first question is to Dr Alison. Thinking about the human rights approach to budgeting, I wondered what your take is on the Scottish Government directing support at the moment towards supporting Ukrainian refugees through housing, through access to social security, and whether you consider this a human rights approach. Dr Jose. Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak today, and thank you very much for your first question. What the Government has chosen to focus on are issues of human rights concern. I don't, however, think that we have taken a rights-based approach to the decisions that they have made, if that makes sense. The Scottish Government doesn't treat poverty currently as a rights violation, but there is growing acknowledgement of areas of concern, human rights concern and poverty, but it's not yet translating into meaningful accountability. In terms of, I suppose, taking the approach, we would like to see the Government thinking through the process of what their rights obligations are before they're coming to decisions around where they have to prioritise. In the current situation with Ukrainian refugees, this is an issue of a very timely situation. It's time-pressured decisions that have to be made in relation to the budget. Those decisions are well-meaning, but they aren't taking a structured approach. We don't have that particular type of approach in place at the moment. I'm thinking about the alternatives within the fixed budget. We have just seen the new programme for government. Is there anything in there that you consider to be gratuitous in terms of the money that should have been put towards tackling poverty? My first point is that I can't make an adequate assessment, because I don't know what the workings are in the margin. I haven't seen evidence of how those decisions have been made. Without knowing how the decisions have been made, knowing what the processes are that have been taken, we haven't got any way of giving a considered opinion about whether the choices were taken to a human rights-based approach. In the briefing that Spice produced, there was an example of the prioritisation of wage increases over spending on employability. In order to assess whether or not that was a correct decision, I would want to know what do the envisage employability spending being reinstated, who is going to be affected by that particular decision to cut employability focus rather than wage enhancement on the other? Who benefits from the employability spend? Women, parents, lone parents, people with disabilities? Are those same people the ones who are going to benefit from wage increases? I'm not preempting the answer to that. I don't know because I haven't seen the assessment of how they came to that decision. If it was done, nothing was published, and therefore we have to assume it's not in the public domain, it's not available to us, therefore it's not transparent. What other options were considered? That's your point of your question. We don't know what other options were considered, whether there are other areas of spend that could have been taken as a cut before those cuts were made. I know that it's difficult in Scotland, but I would say that one thing that we can consistently come back to in and around resources is looking at finding more of them in taxation. We don't use the maximum that we can at the moment. I'm sure that that's something that we'll come back to later on in relation to generation of resources, but one of the human rights obligations that we have is that we must look at all sources of resource generation before we make cuts. Again, it's about not knowing what the process was that the Government took to be able to make any considered opinion around whether there were other areas within the budget that we could have made different decisions with. Thank you, that's really helpful. Thanks for that, Emma, and thanks for your answer, Dr Hozi. I'll now turn to my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy to come in on this theme as well, Pam. Thank you, convener, and good morning to Alison and Sarah. Thank you for joining us. Thanks also for the information that you've submitted in advance. It's really helpful, as ever. My first question, I guess, is to Alison directly, but I think that Sarah, you may want to also come in on it. Do you believe that the Government has maximised its available resources to deliver on its human rights outcomes? I'm going to give a non-politician answer and say no, that's a straight one for you. I think that when you look, for example, at the recent review of the tax framework and putting in new principles, there was a missed opportunity there to have as a core principle that the Government must maximise its available resources in order to generate the resources that it needs. The way that we budget, we start with, here's the budget, all of the portfolio areas work out, how much budget they're going to have, it's divided up. Instead of starting with what are we trying to achieve, what outcomes does our budget want to service, what policies and programmes do we need to put in place to do that, how much are they going to cost, how are we going to generate the resources to meet that. And we don't take that process at the moment, so we don't start from thinking about, I always like to think about pie, is our pie big enough to start with, rather than here is your pie and that's your lot and slice. We have a lot of options, not as many, because of the reserved devolved nature of taxation, but we need to be more politically bold about taking the opportunity to review our tax options, particularly around local taxation. I'm amazed by the fact that our finance minister was one-year-old at the last-time council, tax bans were reviewed. We just need to, there's been lots of discussion around how we could do this better and we need to get on with it. We could be looking at how we tax wealth versus how we tax income, which is very different. We could be looking at local taxations. I'm not a tax expert, I'm not going to suggest that whichever policies are particularly best, but the Government should be looking at these issues and looking at them with their human rights obligations in mind. Thank you, Dr Hosey, that was really, really clear. Sarah, do you have anything to add to that? I agree very much with what Alison has been saying in terms of maximisation of resources. I suppose just to add the equality perspective on it as well. In Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, we have an unequal taxation of income rather than wealth, and this tends to represent a tax break for wealthy men. I think that there's been progress in Scotland in terms of income tax and a progressive look on income tax. We've seen that bringing more low-income women out of paying as much tax, but we need to look at what can be done, what further can be done in terms of potential wealth taxes, and, as Alison said, looking at local tax reform, because we see the regressive nature of that on households. Thank you very much. I have just one further question in this area. Thanks, convener. It's also again for you, Sarah, if this is okay. In your submission, you talk a lot about unpaid carers and the impact that the care economy can have on women's poverty. What support have you been able to identify from the budget that is there to support unpaid carers? In terms of the resource spending review or this year's budget? The spending review, actually. We've seen in the resource spending review a welcome prioritisation around health and social care and an announcement of an increased investment within health and social care. It could bring benefits to unpaid carers, but at the moment it's unclear how those funds will be spent and where they'll be prioritised within health and social care. There's not enough detail within the documents of the impact that's going to have when it comes to unpaid carers in particular, but across the board really on how that will impact people who are receiving support as well. I would say that, while it's really welcome to see a commitment for increased investment, that's come off the back of years of under-investment and under value in, as was said, the care economy and social care in particular. We believe that a lot more investment is going to be needed to make substantive impact for people's lives and to really reduce unpaid care that, as you mentioned, we've highlighted often falls to women. We are undertaking some research that we hope to be able to share with the committee in coming months, looking at what actual value we're talking about there in terms of how much more investment is needed so that we can put some figures to that as well and share what we think is needed to really change the dynamics. Our care system just now relies on unpaid care and we think there's a need to shift the dynamics so that we have a social care system that's there to support people and a choice for those who want to care alongside it. Thank you for that. I have no further questions in this area. Thanks for that, Pam. Can I actually ask you to go on to the next theme because you're up on my list as coming in on human rights and equalities budgeting in a crisis if you could kick us off with that? Oh, absolutely. Thank you. I was wondering whether either of you have been able to analyse the recent £53 million of cuts removed from employability support that was announced by the DFM, Deputy First Minister, and do you believe that those cuts could represent a retrogression? Do you have any concerns around that? I'm happy to come in. As was mentioned in an earlier answer as well, we haven't had a chance to do any further analysis on those cuts, but I think that the key concern is that there hasn't been any information about the analysis that's been conducted by Government in making that choice for cutting the employability costs. We would really welcome seeing that analysis from Government and do believe that in any budget decisions there should be transparency and accountability. Across all different budget documents we would like to see the quality impact assessments that have gone into making the decision. We would be concerned that particular groups of people will be impacted by the cutting employability who find it particularly difficult to be in the labour market. This will include groups of women including single parents, disabled people and carers as well. The concern would be that the decision to make that cut because the focus was on wages, is that there is a group of people for whom those wages may not be reaching as well. We need to see more analysis to understand how they'll be affected. I can see that Alison would like to come in as well on that. In addition to who doesn't benefit from that particular cut, I would like to add the concern that the child poverty strategy is helping to prevent poverty, not just to alleviate it. Supporting more parents back into employment and having more people contributing to the tax base is part of supporting people in the prevention of poverty. Audit Scotland's report this morning on child poverty and the fact that the absolute poverty for children is almost one in four, which is a shocking state of affairs. That was a figure prior to the pandemic and prior to the current cost of living. We've got targets of reducing absolute poverty to 18 per cent by the next budgetary cycle and it's currently at 23. The strategy is perhaps skewing and removing employability towards lifting people out of poverty, which, although important, is not helping to tackle the structural issues that are creating poverty in the first place and supporting people out of poverty, if that makes sense. Removing that employability support is removing a poverty prevention lever. Social security focus, we're inviting a higher burden on the Scottish Government through social security payments that are not covered by the Barnett formula, while possibly ensuring less taxes coming in because we're not focusing on helping people into employment. I think that what a human rights assessment would necessitate is an exploration of where there is funding that could be diverted away from other areas that aren't essential to not have made that cut. But, as Sarah said, we need more information to make that assessment. Thank you. That's definitely came across in what you've said and also, in fact, in the Audit Scotland report. My last question in this area is just to simply ask what engagement did you have with the Government in June in the spending review and also again with the DFM and their announcements last week? Alison? I would say that in terms of the spending review, with a very small team massively under capacity, we didn't have time to individually respond, but I responded through my involvement with the Equality Budget Advisory Group. It wasn't a brilliant process. We didn't have a great engagement. I don't think... We've done a lot of really good work with eBag over the last few years where there's been a lot of recognition from the Government about the needs to improve, for example, fiscal transparency and participation with the budget process, and we're waiting for their responses to recommendations that we made in July last year, which are due soon. There's been a lot of recognition from the Government that these are the right things that they need to do, but let's get through the resource spending review and then we'll think about it instead of the first review in 10 years actually applying some of that. It was a disappointing review. It didn't really connect with... The words human rights were mentioned once, and it wasn't in relation to the new legislation that is forthcoming in this Parliament. We're about to implement and incorporate human rights treaties, one of the biggest changes since devolution in the human rights landscape in Scotland. That's going to take significant resource in terms of capacity building with public bodies to ensure that there is implementation of this legislation, and that didn't feature at all. This is a spending review for the next to the end of Parliament, so it should have featured in there. It was disappointing from our perspective. Thank you. Do you have anything to add to that, Sarah? Thank you, Dr Hosey. I mean, just echoing the perspective as we're also members of the Costs Budget Advisory Group, so it was involved in those conversations, but echoing what Alison said in regards to them, we also contributed to the formal consultation around the resource spending review framework at the end of last year, beginning of this year. Beyond that sort of formal process, there wasn't any further engagement around the mid-term announcements that were made a couple of weeks ago. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Sarah. I'll now turn to our next theme, which is roundabout changes to the budget process. I'm going to bring in my colleague, Natalie Dawn, to kick us off on that, and she joins us remotely over to yourself, Natalie. Then we'll go to Foisal Choudry after that. Natalie. Thanks very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. Moving on to the budget process itself, there's a lot more budget information published now, so we've talked briefly this morning. You've got Scottish Fiscal Commission forecast, reports and benefit update, the medium-term financial strategy, fiscal framework, out-turn report, and the equality and freighter Scotland statement. Sarah, I believe in your submission that you make some reference to this, so I'm just wanting to ask both of you what extent you feel that this information has improved the budget process and where is there still room for improvement. Sorry, I'll go to Sarah first. A reference to you specifically. The more information we have, the better, basically. It is an improvement to see more publications, but we still feel that we're probably only putting it halfway there in what we'd like to see. I'll probably focus my answer particularly around the equality analysis dimensions and documents that we're keen to see on that and that would feed into the equality and freighter Scotland budget statement. As I was mentioning in one of the earlier answers, I think that being able to have transparency and accountability around how decisions are made are key. Seeing the equality and freighter Scotland statement as a process rather than an end output, but as a process to bring together the analysis that should be taking place as part of the decision making process from start to finish around the budget and other policy considerations is really important within that. We'd like to see, within that, a lot more access to information, particularly the equality impact assessments that are taking place around the decisions. There has been commitment within the resource spending review that they will be published from this budget onwards, and we will really welcome seeing that and really hope to see that in the next budget. I guess that I'm a little bit concerned because in the announcements a couple of weeks ago, there wasn't that information provided either, so we're hoping to see changes coming through in this budget that provides the information around that equality analysis. I think that that's really important, that that's coming through in each of the stages. As Alison said, it would be really great to see in the resource spending review because that will then feed into each on-going budget process and means it's a comative process rather than something that is seen at each time to be starting from scratch, but it can be a comative process that develops and the understanding develops around it as well. That's very helpful. Doctor Hosey, do you have anything to add to that? This is one of my favourite topics. No, data. It's difficult to measure the impact on the budget process so far of these particular documents because I've just been so recently. It's difficult to make that assessment, but there are positive steps and it is encouraging that the Government has listened to a lot of what EBA and the Commission has been saying over the last few years about the need to produce more data. But the piece of work that we did a few years ago reviewing the open budget survey, which is a global indicator of fiscal transparency, participation and accountability in the budget process. Scotland, as a subnational, can't be involved in it. It's the UK that is assessed, but it helped us to follow their very strict methodology to review Scotland against the global criteria. It showed that Scotland doesn't and still doesn't make available whether they actually do it internal or not. They're not publicly available. There are eight internationally recommended documents for fiscal transparency. We are missing on a regular citizens budget that is made prior to the budgetary decision to enable people to participate in decisions before decisions are decided in-year and mid-year reporting and also a pre-budget statement. We have the programme for government to a degree that it's not a great concern about the pre-budget statement, but we are. This is internationally recognised best practice in documentation for fiscal transparency. We would like to see the government commit to doing their own review of the open budget survey every couple of years, comparing themselves internationally to see where we stand in relation to our fiscal transparency. One of the things that Level 4 data is great and it's really good to have that information, but we can only ever see on a year-on-year what the changes are. We tried, as part of our project a few years ago, to look at the budget across the parliamentary cycle, across the four-five-year cycle, and all we could ever find was year-to-year. We literally had to do loss of manual manipulation of all these massive Excel seats. She's trying to put together where money which had moved because portfolios had changed, because committees had changed and we tried to match-up spend in year one to year five. For more than half the budget, we couldn't do it. Being able to follow a budget process through a parliamentary cycle to look at what impact those decisions have had is impossible. That's one of the areas that we would like to see is that time-trend data. Also, when you look at the data that's available, the real change versus cash change, it's important especially now in relation to inflation that we understand what the actual change in resources available to people are in real terms. On this year-on-year, you get often if there's no change, it's a flat line, but no change from one year to another, no change over five years every year is a massive change. So there's things that we can't easily see in terms of the way that the data is currently presented. What often matters most is what's factually spent. Has the Government spent the allocated funds that, if it's not, it hasn't made maximum available use of its resources? We need to know whether the Government has spent what it said it's going to spend things on in the coming year. If the allocated funds haven't been spent, where are they allocated? Was the reallocation process transparent, participative and accountable? For this analysis to be possible, we need to be able to easily access and track data on spent funds in the Government's budget. That's where you're in-year and mid-year reports that we don't have access to are important. I think that's probably enough for me on data, but that is an area where we understand that the Government's Scoreships General project is a big five-year project. We welcome that, but at the moment it's still very difficult to make good budget analysis. Thanks very much, both of you, for your answers. No, that's really helpful. There was a lot in there. It leads on to my next question as well. We've talked briefly again this morning about maximising budget resources and looking at different or alternative options for taxation and things like that. Again, Dr Hosey, I know that the SHRC recommended zero-based budgeting. Can you describe the scale of such an exercise and how that would take account of fixed costs within the Scottish budget, such as public sector pay and social security? I'll go to again Dr Hosey first and I'll bring you in and say that after, if you've anything to add. A zero-based budgeting exercise that is supposed to be by its very nature would require taking into account the whole budget process and would likely take several years to conduct that kind of process due to the amount of evidence on process and procedure that's required. The idea stems from the fact that the Scottish Government have had in place now the same budget cycle structure for the past 25 years and leaving it to no longer reflect the growing needs of Scottish society. Structural issues such as yearly budget cycles, insufficient input of data and evidence and budgetary decisions, a lack of cumulative impact reports, for example, they all give rise to the need for I think a new, modern approach to budgeting both at the national and the local level. But this isn't to say that some of the practice and areas of spend, including what we know will remain as fixed costs within a budget, it's not to say that they can't be maintained. At the heart of the budgeting exercise would dictate that we need to pull apart the current process, reassess what elements currently work well and serve to fulfil Scotland's published national outcomes and what within that process acts as a barrier to further fulfilment. So this kind of zero base exercise I think it could be really highly impactful but it would require a lot of time and sufficient analysis of the current budget cycle to take place and for this reason it could happen, it would need to happen alongside what is already in place and changes made incrementally. This would minimise disruption I caused whilst allowing a wider, holistic, more structural view to be taken matching up to Scotland's future interests and needs within the new budgetary process. It requires almost going back to the drawing board so the scale is big and I'm not denying that. It needs to be a three to five year project but you're actually looking at what parts of the Government budget fulfills our national outcomes and what parts of the process act as barriers but the idea would be that you run your current budget process at the same time and then slowly incrementally make those changes and as I said it doesn't mean that you throw out everything about fixed costs you've got to stay pay awards they stay the same. There are elements of what you're going to just have to say that works and we've got that in the right way but taking a step back and looking at the concept we're not going to get anywhere new we've been tinkering around with budget changes but I think that there is a need to take a wholesale look at what we do, find out what works what doesn't work and try to think about how we can do this better. Thank you. I'll bring Sarah in. Sorry, thanks. I've not too much more to add to this one but maybe just to highlight one of the eBag recommendations around building greater equalities in human rights into the budget process a key element of that was leadership and support for these kind of mechanisms so in order to start undertaking a process like Alison has just outlined it really needs to have strong backing to be able to undertake it and to commit the time and build the capacity of those across the board who would be working on it and to take on the variety of issues that we'd be looking at. All right, thank you. My last question is actually being answered in the previous question so I will pass back to the convener. Thank you. Thanks for that, Natalie. We'll now move over to Foisal Toudry for some questions on this area. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, panel. I think I'm going to put Dr Hozi on spotlight again. One thing this committee has heard again and again particularly when discussing matters of equality is that there is not enough data or data is not collected. How much progress has been made in improving data sources on equalities? I could put you on the spot but it's probably sadder that it's best placed to answer in relation to data. It's an area where from a rights perspective to really understand who are the most marginalised, who are the most in need. We don't regularly have the level of data available to us. I think the coronavirus finds, though does, very quickly massive inadequacies for example in relation to the minority ethnic groups and the lack of information that we have available to us to be able to make quick decisions. Some of the focus in the spice briefing today talked about the necessity to make quick decisions and the problems that that can create if you don't have already a good understanding through available data of what the current situations are to enable you to make those quick decisions. I will pass over to Sarah though I think she knows more on this one than I do. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, just building off what Alison said I think there is some progress and some core bits of data but what is really lacking is getting a full kind of intersectional look to be able to to do more details analysis. So we can see we can see some progress around getting some sex desegregated data and there has been a team within the Scottish Government who were looking at distributional analysis and within their work they were able to pull out that they could do that kind of analysis looking at the sectors of age and sex together and looking at potentially age, sex and disability but they said to look further what wouldn't look to be feasible is to look at religion, ethnicity and then into other protected characteristics so more needs to be done to get the fuller picture for people and as Alison has said it's particularly important in these times of crisis which we seem to be going through for years now moving from Covid into the rising cost of living because it's similarly marginalised groups that are being most hardest impacted by the crisis and we don't have enough data on these groups so particularly to have the data on ethnic minority women or disabled women who might be most marginalised by the impacts of the rising cost of living and we're also hardest hit by Covid. I'd also just add on top of needing the data which is crucial we need to then make sure it's used correctly and that the data goes on to be analysed fully. I have seen examples within equality impact assessments where there has been data on the point that has been considered for example workforce data but that data hasn't been used for the next step of analysis so there's some recognised statistics I'm referring to an impact assessment that was published alongside the national care service bill so there was workforce data there but the next step of analysis we didn't feel carried that data into what was needed for the impact assessment because it was recognised that the social workforce was majority of women in the workforce but the analysis led to saying no one was protected characteristics impacted because everyone would be impacted the same but the majority of the workforce is women means that any changes are going to have a gendered impact so it's both getting the data and also building the capacity around that analysis is crucial to make sure the data is appropriately used thank you very much I don't have any other question on this thanks very much for the question Faisal, and thanks for the answers so far I think everybody on this committee recognises that the mainstreaming of equalities and actually using that data but then applying it once decisions are made is something that we're continually hearing about and everybody knows that I will talk about gendered and disaggregated data until the cows come home in the need for it and how we apply that in an intersectional way as well I'm going to move on to the questions about council tax now and to take us through that theme I'll turn to my colleague Paul McLean I think it was just more mainly on tax I think generally on tax policy Alison, you touched on this in the importance of tax policy before and just in terms of that you said the Scottish Government's focus should be more effectively spent on seeking today's revenue rather than believing in closing the funding gap through efficiency it's really just to try and touch a bit more on that one I think we're obviously facing the position going into this budget we're facing £1.7 billion almost cut in the budget because of inflation which was no control over so obviously raising taxation is important and I think obviously mentioned as well the impact what you've said there's a need to embed human rights and equalities overarching priority for Scotland's public spending and revenue raising decisions and I'm keen to touch on the issues that he talked about for women obviously but I'll roll these questions on to one what principles should underline tax policies what kind of impact analysis would you expect to accompany the tax policy and are there any specific proposals you'd like to see in regards to tax for the 2023-24 budget Alison, I'll probably start with yourself I think as I said before that when we responded to the consultation we agreed with the principles that were there they weren't phrased from a rights-based perspective but they were grounded in the Government's rights obligations regarding participation and maximisation of available resources fairness, proportionality to pay but I felt that we could have had that explicit reference to maximising available resources is a current obligation because through the international convention on economic and social and cultural rights we are signed up to through the UK this is one of the treaties that's going to be incorporated through the new Scottish Human Rights legislation within that there is an obligation to maximise available resources so I think we don't immediately look to where could we raise additional resources I think the Government hides behind the limitations that do exist the genuine limitations in relation to the devolved context but I think we could be more politically bold so I think we need to challenge the Government to say have you looked at every possible available option before you think about cuts tax revenues are the main source of income for governments to facilitate the execution of their legal obligations to protect, respect and fulfil human rights and so taxation policy plays a key role in the progressive realisation of rights in order to maximise available resources the Government has to start by asking in every budget has every effort been made maximise our budget rather than just accepting that total they have to ask have all taxation options been looked at for the questions you are all the Government's current proposed tax options progressive the ones you've made the decision to look at different options where the resources generated from is it done fairly our particular groups impacted differently in addition to what has been done to tackle tax evasions and tax avoidance and that's a favourite hobby course of mine we I know that again is HMRC that is responsible for compliance issues around tax evasion but when we did our project a few years ago we looked at trying to extrapolate from UK data the approximate tax evasion cost to the Scottish budget and it was between £3 and £7 billion as a staggering amount of money and it dwarfs the amount of money that we're losing through inflation just now at the UK level it's like £30 to £70 billion so I think if we can have a discussion with HMRC about the service level agreement that they have around compliance issues in Scotland what can be done is of benefit to the UK budget as well as to ours I think there are good examples of work that's been done in other countries in Spain in particular to look at reducing the black market and the impact that that has on available taxation coming in and how that countered against the amount that they were cutting through their austerity budgets so that there's work there and I think that's important work to look at as well as what I mentioned earlier around looking at local taxation looking at how we tax income versus how we tax wealth looking at council tax we need to do something about council tax I think the analysis you mentioned there's some good guidance from the foreign former UN independent expert on foreign debt and rights like Juan Pablo Boazlaski who produced guiding principles for human rights impact assessments for economic reforms and I can send that information into the committee the aim of those guiding principles is to provide effective and practical guidance and tools for assessing economic reform policies and on the basis of human rights standard so there's some really really good concrete advice there about how to undertake that kind of process and the sorts of analysis that would be helpful in this particular situation Thanks Alison I just want to pick up one of the things that you said you mentioned about the genuine limitations of the devolved settlement and one prime example you gave was obviously HMRC we have no powers in Scotland to deal with that as tax evasion as you said £3 to £7 billion there's discussions we heard from the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the previous cabinet secretary Kate Forbes talking about the fiscal framework and then about flexibility for that many of the things we've argued for about having the abilities to borrow more within that fiscal framework and other discussions on going at the moment I don't know if you're aware of these but is there anything within the fiscal framework and given the flexibility to the Scottish Parliament within the devolved settlement that you think would be useful specifically around the approach that we're talking about, the budget around obviously social security Just in general terms it's the next one with the number of pre-budget scrutiny's that we've been looking at in the fiscal framework so that's my job for next week but I think the key issues around how the rest of the world has been dealing with the cost of living crisis and covering from the pandemic they've all been using borrowing powers and it is a significant limitation so I think it's a legitimate ask of the Government in the reassessment of the fiscal framework that borrowing powers is something that needs to be significantly improved Alison, thank you for that Sarah, just to yourself the same points just around what we've talked about before, as I said about the principles, the impact analysis and obviously any specific proposals and obviously looking in particular in terms of how that impacts on women Yeah Well I think as many of you know as an organisation a Scottish Women's Budget group has seeking gender equality through the process of gender budget analysis and that is both analysis of public spending but also revenue raising into any proposals and an intersectional gender analysis into any proposals so looking for a gender and distribution analysis on any proposed changes to tax would be needed so that we could consider the different impacts of the changes on women and men on those on low incomes across various ages for example and then this analysis would be key to developing the policies that would work towards equality and the tax system as well and they need to be as we said on other points around public spending established within the decision making process so that they are an on-going part of the process both at the design stage but also at implementation and then at review to see if potential assumptions that were made within the impact assessment process are borne out or if there was unexpected changes that require some kind of fix to them so for those it's necessary to have the data we were talking about in the previous answer but also do that kind of detailed analysis about where it goes and just to kind of echo the points that were being made I've made a little bit earlier as well that there was progress around income tax but looking at council taxes as a regressive space is a really important one the Office of National Statistics damaged its households in the bottom quintile pay 4.6% of their income on council tax whereas those in the top quintile pay 1.4% so looking at the different distributions and viewing of what can be done at a local tax base and then also essentially a longer term looking at how tax can also be used as an action to tackle things like the climate emergency and where there might be powers for progressive carbon taxes for example that could be designed to limit pollution and be part of a kind of what we would call for would be a feminist just transition on the point around borrowing powers in the fiscal framework is to add to that the borrowing powers within the fiscal framework they're quite limited and they're also limited to capital expenditure and should there be changes it would be key for us that wherever those powers lie that the form of the standard intersectional analysis comes into how they're used but we would be keen to see powers that allow borrowing for social infrastructure and by that meaning elements such as the care economy and into care services as part of vital social infrastructure and supporting jobs within social infrastructure and just to second the point that Alison was making around tax evasion and being able to avoid as much loss possible within the system Thank you very much We'll now move to our last theme of this panel this morning which is roundabout the equality and fair of Scotland budget statement and to start us with that I'm going to hand over to my colleague Jeremy Balfour and then over to Foisal Choudry Thank you, Gimmyna I found it very interesting and it's kind of led to two questions for me in regard to your answers so far I wonder if I can start with Dr Hosey in regard to my first question to any human rights based budgeting must because it's a fixed budget mean that somebody loses out so if I give more money to roads with disability am I taking money away from say people from gender issues I'm just wondering how do you balance that in practice how are you looking simply for that information to see how we came to the decisions how do you not end up always discriminating against somebody because of the way you set your budget That's a good question I mean it comes to the heart of what why do you do human rights budgeting it's not a silver bullet it doesn't it doesn't cure everything but it's about putting in place about your better systems and processes so that we can understand that what we are doing or at least predict to a degree the impact potential impact of the budgetary decisions that we are taking that they are grounded in the obligations the government has got obligations in relation to economic social culture rights and the realisation fulfilment of those rights we have what's called a minimum course a minimum level of those rights that we are meant to fulfil so from a rights perspective that's where I would start I would look at the evidence that exists are we meeting that minimum level and the budget whatever resources we have whatever crises we are in or times of good times we must meet that minimum level but it's a floor not a ceiling so we are then obliged to look at how we can continually improve how our services continually improve how our outcomes can continually improve so that part of the budgeting process over time is to see those improvements but we must always make sure that the most marginalised and the minimum core are satisfied and that we focus on the most vulnerable so that it provides a process through which to make transparent fair participative decisions and when you make decisions within that type of structure you are looking at all of the available evidence at where the need is greatest and where rights need to be respected and where priorities have to be made it makes those decisions they might still not be easy decisions but it makes them transparent so yes there will always be winners and losers in a budget but it's based on your obligations it's based on what you need to be doing rather than on arbitrary decisions we don't have necessarily that the evidence required to make those kind of decisions right now to take a rights based approach to the budget but this is something that as we've talked about in a lot of the evidence today that we want to see improving over time thank you Matt that leads me on nicely to my second question I suppose firstly you could be listening to this evidence today and think well that's all very good and it's a paper exercise but what difference does it make to a disabled person in Inverness or what difference does it make to somebody from an economic minority in Dumfries so I wonder if you could just maybe just give me a wee bit more on how this actually makes a difference to the average person and secondly Mrs Arken used to speculate as if it's intended to implement these human rights legislation into Scots law does it mean in future individuals could then challenge the budget in court if they haven't had their quality properly defined and do you see this ending up possible with legal cases against the Scottish budget I'll take the first question around impact I saw in the advice briefing how can we ensure impact assessments are more than just a paper exercise and I think the tone of the question is fair enough impact assessments it's a fair criticism to table that things like equality impact assessments and rights impact assessments and what difference does it make to people on the ground but I think it comes down to educational awareness raising culture change within decision making and ensuring that the tools are used effectively and how those conducting them do them and so it's about internal awareness raising throughout Parliament, throughout Government throughout the different public bodies that are going to be conducting these kind of assessments it's not just saying to public authorities with the new children's rights wellbeing impact assessments for example go away off you go and do that without any training or without any capacity building around it are we ever going to ensure impact assessment carried out is done perfectly? No but can we put in place the best kind of systems and training available to ensure that what we're doing and we're doing everything we can to try and reach that goal yes but it's like this is about culture change so again something that we should be raising much more of is what is the awareness of how to conduct impact assessments within Government within Parliament who on this committee would feel comfortable to go away and do an equality and human rights impact assessment I would want more training and I work in human rights it's important that we have a good understanding of how to undertake these kinds of processes to have impact for people and until it's understood that human rights and equalities impact a policy decisions and spend are critical to informing the decisions we take rather than as a siloed process that we have to do after the decisions are already made the perception of impact assessments as paper tick box exercises won't change I think when it can be understood that understanding the potential impact before decisions are made makes better decisions and this is when we'll be able to say that impact assessments are more than paper exercises if they're valued that is the culture change we need to see and good impact assessments engage with people with lived experience they involve people whose decisions are going to affect them and therefore better decisions are made I've now completely forgotten what your second question was I was asking you to speculate into the future about whoever this could then lead to deal cases against budgets one of the most distinctive features of a human rights based approach to poverty reduction is that it's based on the norms and values set out in international law that the rights and obligations demand accountability so when a Government talks about rights unless it's supported by a system of accountability they're no more than window dressing and currently this is where the gap is between Scotland between international and domestic legal protections there's this accountability gap so with the new legislation coming in this will bring with it hopefully access to justice so it's not just about court cases so the judicial remedies need to be there but there's also quasi judicial processes through ombudsments there's administrative routes through the preparation publication and scrutiny of impact assessments and there's political routes through parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary processes so the judicial route will be one aspect of access to justice and yes that theoretically that is one of the important aspects of having the domestic protections is that there is a legal backstop but it doesn't mean that we want everything to end up in court it's about improving the culture changing the culture improving the structures and processes so that that's not where we end up but that we end up with a budget that does take human rights and equalities into consideration in its development thank you thank you very much for that and now over to Foisal Toadu thank you convener my question will be how effective are impact assessment as an exercise how can we better ensure that they are taken seriously and not seen as just another hope to jump through will I start on that one I think building on what Alison has said it's about seeing them as integral to the budget decision making process rather than something that you do at the end I think that's where where a lot of challenges can be made that they're ineffective is when they're done retrofitted to a decision that's already been made but if they are used throughout the decision making process and information that's brought in the data that's brought in and where there's not data if it's possible to go to either civil society organisations or work on engagement directly with people with experience so around the issue then they become much more effective and that's why we really need to move into the process of using them in that way so that they both inform decisions to review them as well because being done at the end of a process does when a decision has already been made does lessen the impact it degrades the kind of whole process really because it's not taking the process as a serious part of the decision making but it's seeing it as just an add-on and I think that that means you know often existing structural inequalities become entrenched because it's not looking at how does this policy for example the decision to freeze train ferries how does this policy impact on men and women differently or disabled people differently who's using trains and how does the that's going into freezing trains ferries does that make a difference to those who are using bus services or is there going to be a similar additional investment in those using bus services because we know that women and disabled people are more likely to use bus services as a form of public transport so when they were making that decision how was the different uses of public transport brought into it so that we consider who benefits most in any existing inequalities thank you very much for that I'll now move on to a final question for the panel that I've got myself that we haven't picked up on yet the national performance framework is a very high level we know this and its 81 indicators are generally statistical measures that indicate broad trends and I'm wondering what's the best way to use the NPF to inform scrutiny of this year's budget decisions and even if you think about those budget decisions that will be taken as well as in this place and local authorities and their partners if you think about local improvement outcome plans and if you think about community planning partnerships how do we actually make sure that the NPF directs and informs those budgetary decisions at a much better level than currently is happening and I'll start with Alison if I can I think the quick answer to that question of the best way to use the NPF to inform scrutiny of this year's budget decisions is to actually link the NPF indicators to budgetary decisions currently there is no connection between the NPF and the Scottish budget as far as measuring progress goes we need to have a rethink and now the NPF is being reviewed is a good time to think about this what outcomes are we trying to achieve what are we putting in place to achieve that what resources are we putting in and how do we generate those resources that whole linkage and also how the national outcomes link to the programme for government all of that needs to be better linked to the actual budgetary decisions that are being made right now in the ESPS there are connections made in the portfolios talk about the national outcomes that are relevant to their area and the human rights that are relevant to their area but there's no depth to the analysis there's nothing further other than just mentioning that those areas are relevant to their portfolios and it's because the two frameworks are not connected so we need to connect budget decisions to the NPF outcomes that's a fantastic short answer thank you very much Sarah do you have anything to add to that no not really anything to add to that I think the national outcomes are supposed to be a demonstration of what we value as a society and the budget should be looking at how it spends in a way on our values so the connection is just by telling the second the points that are for me thank you very much for that and thank you both for coming along this morning and sharing your thoughts and your insight and giving us some evidence it's been very helpful I will now suspend briefly to allow the next panel of witnesses to change over thank you very much good morning and welcome back I now welcome to the meeting our second panel we've got Ed Fibas who's the policy and parliamentary officer for the child poverty action group CPEG and we have Morag trainer who is deputy chair of the poverty and equality commission and we also have Paul Bradley who's the policy and public affairs manager for the SCVO, the Scottish council coming along this morning and it was great to see you in in the first session to hear the evidence to be heard there as well we're going to turn to our first theme which is round about the impact of the cost of living on individuals and also on organisations and to start us off on this I'll turn to my colleague Emma Roddick then to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy over to yourself Emma, thank you thank you convener my first question is really for you Paul that either of you might want to jump in as well I've been seen across my region quite a lot of commercial businesses having to close their doors because of rising energy prices and I wondered if you could tell us how badly that is affecting third sector organisations at the moment yeah, of course just like businesses voluntary organisations haven't been able to access a price cap for their energy so that's been a big issue for organisations who are basically left exposed to the cost of energy clearly we welcome the UK Government's intervention that it announced a couple weeks back with more detail yesterday and that will make some difference to voluntary organisations and we now know through research from our third sector research tracker the rising costs and the number one challenge for voluntary organisations in Scotland and while that stretches across the boards a range of different things like transport costs suppliers and materials and rents the two big ones are where there are significant challenges around energy and around staffing costs as well around 53 per cent are reporting significant energy cost rises whereas in the spring it was around 30 something per cent so that has been a significant increase what's been quite interesting that we've been looking at is that those organisations that are struggling most with rising costs are also those organisations that are most likely to be seeing rising demand for their services and also those organisations most likely to be unable to meet that rising demand and not just the new demand but also they're now saying that they're unable to deliver all of their planned work originally set out for the year and in terms of what that means for individuals you have organisations that people and communities are relying upon the most to support them through this crisis and those organisations aren't able to provide the level of support that is needed and then just another link in terms of the impact on organisations and how that kind of leads on to affecting individuals the voluntary organisations employ over 135,000 people so that's 5 per cent of the Scottish workforce that's quite a significant percentage and we know that research recently published by a pro bono economics has shown that across the UK the voluntary set of the workforce is paid 7 per cent less compared with other fields and I think that gap that was in 2019 and I think Bank of England data shows that that gap is widened again by a couple of per cent and people in the voluntary sector already many were on low wages so I think around 12.5 per cent is estimated around 12.5 per cent of roles in the voluntary sector are paid below the real living wage which we've seen today has been increased and those people already struggling to make ends meet but now what you have is organisations unable to be able to support their staff properly they would want to because of years of static funding but also now they're seeing their funding massively devalued because of inflation or because of changing behaviours from the public as well because everyone's in a cost of living crisis too so that's how it's impacted in voluntary organisations and we're hopeful that the energy changes from the UK Government will prevent things from getting a whole lot worse but there needs to be a wider package of support that's made available to organisations as we make our way through the months ahead Thank you very much for that can I also dig a little deeper into the issues around energy policy because of course it is reserved so essentially a lot of action here is simply asking the UK Government to take action one of the things the Scottish Government has asked is for a price cap unfreased to be applied to businesses do you support that ask? So I think what I would say about the price cap is that it isn't the kind of silver bullet earlier on it's not the silver bullet that people think it is if we look at the price cap and what that's meant for households it hasn't had a huge impact on households being able to weather the storm and the prices that voluntary organisations are paying were already well above what households are paying even in terms of the current price cap that households are subjected to but of course anything that stops or prevents the significant daily changes and fluctuations upwards in the energy market is absolutely essential just now longer term I think there's a general agreement that the cap is not fit for purpose for households and it's not fit for purpose for businesses or for voluntary organisations we need to address energy completely and also we need to look at other ways in which we can secure cheaper greener energy and I know the Scottish Government and our members sitting around this table has worked with us recently to get some questions answered around the Scottish Government's procurement frameworks which are accessible to members of the Oscar the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator and members of SCVO and there is a natural gas and energy framework and that helps to bulk buy energy at cheaper costs and I believe it's greener energy too but there's a lack of awareness around that and it's not well promoted we weren't aware that SCVO members could access that until recently and I think there's a lot more to do in terms of looking at how we use that power of bulk buying in the future to ensure that it's not just going to the public sector but also voluntary organisations can access that because predictability is the most important thing Thank you very much Ed wants to come in on that as well Ed because it's a big impact on organisations and from a child poverty perspective as Paul has said that's the additional costs that organisations are facing means they can't do all the front line work they need to do and income maximisation is a key part of tackling child poverty making sure that people are getting their entitlements the social security system is inadequate but at least if you need to get what you can get and so the fear is that if they're having to spend money on their energy bills they're not going to be able to spend money on services there's not enough capacity in the advice service at the moment as it is and this is going to add extreme pressure to that and the other thing is that organisations that are meant to be supporting families with a wide range of supports and challenges are having to focus on these individuals immediate cash crisis and so maybe having to change the emphasis of their work and not getting that longer term support we'll talk about employability I'm sure later but families need to remain out of poverty because they're dealing with crisis so it's changing the workload that organisations are facing as well Morag, I think that you would like to come in Yes, thank you so we in the poverty and inequality commission have been making visits to third sector organisations to see how the cost of living crisis has been affecting them and affecting the people they aim to help and some of what they're reporting back to us is that they're seeing a change in the profile of the type of people needing to use their services people who are in work, people who are on pensions people who have never before come to a food bank or a food pantry are now accessing them they're seeing hungry children more and increasingly which is a new thing there's a perfect storm ahead for them because all of this is coming on the back of the pandemic where resources were already depleted energy was depleted and finance is depleted so the cost of living crisis is having a huge impact they have people reporting that they are trying to use colour gas heaters and camping stoves to do cooking and heating in their homes which is causing condensation but also is a massive fire risk and that's before we are even entering a Scottish winter so they're also seeing a huge increase in mental health crises among the people that are using services which was already the case as a cause of the pandemic in isolation and which has now been greatly exacerbated by the cost of living crisis so that's some of the things that the organisations are trying to deal with and the people using their services on top of the fact that they have no increase in their own funding flat funding, no inflationary rises as a consequence of the current cost of living crisis so they're struggling to retain volunteers they're struggling to attract volunteers the volunteers who for example we're offering to drive and deliver packages and care supports to people can no longer afford the fuel to even be volunteers for the third sector organisations so there's a lot of intricate interplay there of negative impacts and effects Thanks very much for that, Moragyn I think that that echoes what we've already heard in some of the previous evidence sessions into our inquiry on low income and debt and we know that those issues are going to be exacerbated but also newer people are going to be finding themselves in that situation Before I hand over to Pam we did hear from colleagues at the first session round about the fact that Scotland does have a fixed budget and trying to re-prioritise spending and submissions from the SCVO and from the poverty and inequality commission we did hear that there's a recognition that there needs to be more funding coming from the UK Government on that and I'm wondering if that's something that we need to actually see the cost of living crisis in the same light as the pandemic and actually have a response along those lines Yes, absolutely that's one of the points I would have made today and we made in our written submission that this crisis is of the same scale and the potential effects as the pandemic itself and it needs a response from the UK Government Thank you In terms of voluntary organisations, their ability to survive this could probably go beyond the pandemic I look at about 50% of organisations back in December were reporting the cases around financial hardship from individuals and now that level is at around 79% of organisations reporting that but I think that voluntary organisations themselves have their challenges in the funding that they have and their ability to support organisations and support people and I think that what we have is the cost of living crisis on its own is a huge challenge and it feels almost impossible for some organisations to be able to get through this without looking at increasing the level of funding they receive and targeted support but when you add this crisis on top of the pandemic and then austerity and organisations not receiving inflationary uplifts to the best part 10 years, sometimes 13 years you can see that this system that we have currently is just about getting by and I think we used the term perfect storm sector and I understand that because there is just crisis after crisis but I genuinely think that this is that moment because organisations can't continue to plug the gap any longer 60% of charities in Scotland have less than six months financial reserves now that's a problem in terms of legal obligation but I think government and public sector have been reliant on voluntary organisations for too long for topping up public services in that way and unfortunately we're at a point now where those reserves have been devalued and there's a question mark around whether they should be even used for that in the first place but I think we are at a moment where there's huge challenges but of course we need to recognise that as you say the Scottish Government works from a fixed budget and the UK Government has been too slow to act on this so it's not quite clear about that it needs to have the same scale of response that we saw during the pandemic a different type of response but definitely of that level there's several of us on the committee that come from the voluntary sector and really do understand the challenges that are there so it's good to hear that highlighted this morning I'll hand over to Pam Duncan-Glancy for some questions on this area as well thank you convener and thank you to the panel for your answers but also for the evidence that you submitted in advance and I'd like to take an opportunity to thank you for the work that you're doing not just because of the work that you've always been doing in this area but because of the context and what you've just set out as pretty grim so I know that doing that on a daily basis is going to be really really hard and listening to the stories of the people that you represent and provide services to so thank you I agree with much that's been said of course about the UK Government and their paralysis they're in action they've not met the scale of the challenge and they absolutely need to do more and I will reserve some of those comments for another moment but for now in terms of what we can do here in Scotland and in the Scottish Parliament and what the Scottish Government can do on the issue of organisations I know that the First Minister in June committed again at the gathering to multi-year funding for third sector organisations so I wonder if Paul, could you set out the sort of progress you've seen since the First Minister made that commitment of course, so always my favourite question to answer because as you will know SCB are consistently raising this as one of the issues that we would like to see by the Scottish Government in their budget and it's also while there is that additional call for inflationary uplift it is something that isn't about incurring significant additional costs it's about looking at how we improve the funding system to ensure that we're reducing waste in the system, that we're reducing staff time that's spent on annual applications and monitoring and it's unbelievable it's almost a kind of business in itself within Government and I always think that my brother's an accountant he always has to bill for every 15 minutes that he's working on a client's account and I think that if we broke down people's time like that and actually looked at what they were doing around everything to do with annual funding arrangements we'd soon see all the waste in the system I think that the general line has been recently that the Scottish Government's budget is annual from Westminster so therefore voluntary organisations budgets will need to be annual as well and there's no real room to manoeuvre there we were then told that the spending review would be the opportunity to address some of that and I think that the Cabinet Secretary spoke in front of a committee whether it was this one or the Quartus Committee and raised that as the area in which we would expect to see some progress made I don't think that we saw any progress in the spending review on this bar perhaps one fund relating to health and that's not a scale that we're looking for in terms of systemic change you were right that the First Minister committed again to ensuring that multi-year funding is delivered where possible but that was a commitment that was also made I believe back in 2015 or 16 and it's something that I raised in the submission on the spending review I I am surprised given the focus on multi-year funding that no one has come and sat down with us in the sector to discuss why it isn't possible to do it or understand from us what potential solutions there could be to kind of find a middle ground I think that that's the type of response that we would be wanting to see from Government rather than simply defending what they're already doing on multi-year funding or saying it's not possible I think the voluntary sector and SCU we're pragmatic and we understand the challenges it's very easy to criticise Government and we understand the challenges with the kind of arrangement of the budget they have and so on but at the same time our role is to we can do both we can recognise the challenges they face at the same time if we believe strongly about making a case of something we will continue to do that and that's what we're doing here with funding I think it's useful for us to remind ourselves why we're calling for multi-year funding it's about improving job security and reducing the number of redundancy notices in the sector it's about predictability and being able to plan over the long term being able to use that security to go and harness in resources from elsewhere whether it's through the public or independent funders and it's also about cutting out the waste and bureaucracy that exists so what I would expect to see is if multi-year funding is impossible to deliver then where's the discussion that's taking place about how do we get to those kind of outcomes and what's the middle ground the one thing I would say is that the Scottish Government receives its annual budget from Westminster but I would assume that there are a number of people within the Scottish Government that are on permanent contracts and have job security so if it's possible for the Scottish Government staff why is it not possible for staff who are also delivering public services elsewhere thank you for that did you want to come in just very briefly on one of the consequences of seeing all your funding we're hearing more and more evidence of advice services not only struggling with funding but struggling to recruit advisers because short term funding means they can't take on someone and train them up because the time that's done the funding's over and they've left there's a lack of trained advisers in advice services thank you you're both really really clear on that and thank you for that and the points about sitting down and actually explaining it I think are something that the committee I hope can take forward because that does seem like a sensible approach as opposed to a sort of nothing we can do about it given the impact you've just described I have a further question on the impact of the cost living on organisations and I know that the Government additional funding to advice services which I'm sure would have been welcomed but can you set out whether or not that has sort of met the demand I have to say given what you've already said I'm a bit sceptical about whether it has but like if it has then excellent if it hasn't can you give us an idea of the scale of the difference here and what the impact that's going to be on the ability of services to continue so that's welcome obviously additional funding to advice sector the short answer is we don't know it's hard to map the lack of service we are hearing for example Glasgow and Greater Cried NHS have just done some research around referral pathways and what we call for and income maximisation is warm referral pathways not a phrase I particularly like but so when someone presents a service referral to an advisor who can give them their income maximisation and debt advice and other supports and they are finding there isn't enough capacity at the end of that referral pathway or there's really long waits and then people aren't able to get the advice they need and if you can't maximise your income as I keep saying the social security system is inadequate to lift everyone out of poverty but at least you need to get your entitlements so we are hearing evidence that there's a lack of capacity once these services have been in place and it's hard for funding for those services what we don't know is how much additional funding is needed to meet that capacity because I'm not aware of there being a research across Scotland that can pick that up I guess as has been mentioned we're seeing an increasingly complex income maximisation process partly because of an increasingly complex social security system we've still got a full roll-out of universal credit in Scotland and we've still got a roll-out of the Scottish benefits, we've got new benefits but we're also seeing a huge amount of people that are accessing the system for the first time due to the cost of living crisis and so that needs trained and experienced advisors and that needs investment in the advice sector not only to provide the advice but also to train the advisors but it goes beyond advice as well if I look at our third sector research tracker which is representative of the voluntary sector as a whole 88 per cent of voluntary organisations are reporting worsening emerging needs in their communities so that's all types of voluntary organisations in Scotland and we know from our own funds that we managed so we managed some funds that are given to us by the Scottish Government to manage one fund we received at both of these funds while the funding goes to voluntary organisations it's about supporting individuals so it goes to individuals via voluntary organisations one fund just recently closed and had 206 applications and we can only fund 41 of those and the other fund has just closed with 214 applications totaling £2.1 million and that's for funding port and within those 214 probably fund around 30 to 40 of those so that's just some examples from our own funds that we managed but I wouldn't be surprised if across the board that is the type of scale of demand that we're seeing and I think that the challenge just now is there's a discussion or a decision to be made about whether or not you're funding new things and new needs that are emerging or whether you're channeling funding to the organisations and the projects that are already there that are struggling to stay afloat because they haven't got enough money to keep it going and they're also seeing rising demand and you are seeing some independent funders saying we're not going to fund new stuff but what we are going to do is we're going to put on a 10% annual uplift and we're going to cover some of your core costs which is extremely welcome that's the type of thing that we want to see and we'd like to see more of that from government but at the same time that's going to have an impact on other organisations that are looking to try and access funding for the first time or from different sources and it's back to that question or discussion that we were having in the earlier session about winners and losers and it's a difficult one and difficult decisions to be made whether it's about the employability thing and so on there is no easy answer but we are in a challenging situation Do you have a sense of what you would do in the balance of give enough funding to continue what is already being done and the uplift or start funding new projects and how could we as a committee and government try and address that? Yeah I don't want to get into trouble and come up with a policy of the hood but I would say is it is unsustainable to underfund services and underpay workers so if you haven't got the money there to do that then that is a real issue and in an ideal world getting funding out to lots of different organisations and we were doing that at an adequate level but Alison mentioned in the previous session it was on a slightly different focus but she mentioned minimum core and getting that right and if we aren't getting that right and we aren't funding that to the level that's needed then we don't have a vibrant sector that is able to go out and harness new opportunities from independent funders from the public sector, from businesses as well we're talking about maximising the spending envelope on public services it's not just about taxation it's about using other channels to be able to draw in additional resource which we have very little discussion about at all and the role the sector plays in that so I think it's just and that's why the discussion around things like the employability versus money versus the the wage increases I think it's really easy to sit here and criticise it and you know SCV have been involved in employability for many years and we still are to a certain extent but at the same time we need to ensure that people are being paid the right amount of money to ensure that people don't slip into poverty but I would really just echo the points that Alison made in the last session about I am not able to to determine whether or not the best decision was made in my opinion because there is no data there is no information around how that decision was made and so it's very hard to comment on something like that I appreciate that thank you very much for those answers I'll hand over to Foisel Troudry for a question the committee has been made aware of the impact of the cost of living crisis for single parent families is there enough concern about the vulnerability of this group to poverty including child poverty have we asked Ed that yeah I mean the first report that was published today is stark reading to say the least testimony from parents and one of the people you talked about is I feel I'm failing my children because I haven't got enough resources to support them and this is yeah we have to take a step back Scotland is one of the richest countries in the world yeah we have child poverty levels this way and particularly for lone parents of the groups that are far higher in child poverty so we're aware of that and we know the causes of child poverty two of the main causes are inadequate social security and inadequate income from wages and when he continued investment in both of those areas to lift these families out of poverty the £25 Scottish child payment that lone parents will be receiving from November 14th is incredibly welcome and will make a real difference to many families but it's not sufficient, it's not enough it needs to keep its real terms value so we've got inflation at 10% possibly higher and low income families have very interesting presentation from Fraser Valentine Institute yesterday that breaks down the rates of inflation for the different levels of income and the lowest 10% have far higher rates of inflation than others so the inflation rates in the Scottish child payment in April when the next up rating is due to ensure that it keeps its value and keeps supporting these we also have to make sure that that some of the penalties that the priority groups face in the current welfare system are fixed so a lot of lone parents are also young parents and young parents are hit by this under 25 penalty in universal credit they just get less money for being under 25 yet their energy bills are exactly the same two child limit larger families we know are much more likely to be in poverty because the UK welfare system caps the amount of support that you can get to only two children so of course that's going to drive larger families into poverty both of these need to be we've got rid of the Westminster but in the meantime the Scottish Government if they're to meet their child poverty targets you need to mitigate the impact of these in Scotland lone parents face particular issues as well again changes to the social security system over the last 10 years have meant that lone parents are particularly hard hit they've talked today at a UK level of increasing conditionality again for parents lone parents face conditionality from the age of their child was one when I started doing welfare rights a few years ago now lone parents weren't expected to be looking for work until they were 12 there was employability services to support them looking for work but it was accepted after your child and when you haven't got the employability services and the childcare available yet you've got a welfare system that penalises lone parents for not finding jobs which they can't take in because of the barriers they face to employment so a very welcome report from OPFS highlights the issues that families face and they are a key a key group but if the Scottish Government and Scotland are the whole it's child poverty targets need to get that support and that is additional additional investment in social security as I said and that support I'm sure we'll come on to employability more later that additional support to support them into higher paid jobs thank you very much for that and just to pick up on a little point with regards to you know seeing lone parents specifically penalised within the DWP system there was worrying announcements yesterday about those that are 10, 12, 13, 14 hour contracts being pushed and having to increase their hours or face penalties is that a worrying announcement for yourselves in SEPAG we know that we have evidence but strict conditionality doesn't help people find better jobs and better paid jobs and more hours and in fact poverty in and of itself is a barrier to people being employed so when you have a lone parent who's working a few hours who's still in poverty remember 60% of families who are in poverty are in work they're working to then penalise them for not finding more work is not the solution they need the support they need a decent social security system to lift them out of poverty time and the energy living in poverty your energy it sucks your time as well as being cash poor lifting people out of poverty particularly out of that deep poverty allows them the time and space to look at training opportunities look at additional employment opportunities but when you're having to go home to your child and make those decisions about there's another report from Save for Children you know telling your children you can't they're not able to have a bar tonight because there's not enough money in the meter when you're doing your 12 hours on your zero hours contract trying to find an extra five hours work is not your priority I mean when you've got the DWP telling you right if you don't find an extra five hours we're going to sanction that little bit of money you get that's not conducive to increasing employment and increasing income from employment because as I say there's two drivers you need the social security safety net but you also need parents to be able to get a decent income from work but that can only happen once you've lifted them above that safety net and at the moment they're way below that and being pushed even further by potential sanctions so no we're not pleased to hear that thank you very much Morag, did you want to come in on a previous point I've just remembered well I think Ed's probably made many of the points that I wanted to make but no that's grand but if you go back to 2008 the conditionality on lone parents in the welfare system was that their child had to be 16 their youngest child and the conditionality on finding employment and that's now one years old as I said the situation for lone parents is dire because they're doing the work of two parents and they have the stresses of two parents and the responsibilities of two parents and they're greatly underfunded this is a policy decision it is not inevitable that lone parents have to be so poor and so disadvantaged in the system and in other countries it's not the case what's an interesting consequence of when lone parents are treated so badly in the system is the effect that you get stigma and shame so we have a very stigmatised population of lone parents and the stigma comes from the fact that we treat them so badly in the first place there's a loop happening here and if we break that loop on how we treat single parents in the system and understand that they need additional financial support structural support to be able to access employment then we would also break some of that stigma and the internalising shame that lone parents fail as a consequence if you look at the employment over the last 10 to 12 years since the recession of 2008 you will see that the increase in employment there's more increase in employment in women and in lone parents their employment rates have increased largely really a lot in that time and what has happened though is that wages have not so wages are not keeping a pace with people's level of employment that's why we have a strange paradox in the UK and in Scotland where we have high levels of employment as everyone likes to emphasise but we have very low levels of productivity and very low levels of wages and this disproportionately affects women disproportionately affects lone parents disproportionately affects disabled workers too we talk about employability I would like to have a focus on employability because there's work that the Scottish Government can do with employers on how they make their employment more accessible either to people with disabilities to women with caring responsibilities to people with children and or other caring responsibilities lone parents also are more likely to have a long-term limiting health condition themselves or a disability or indeed to have a disabled child all of these things are interactive that's where the intersection comes in and that's the type of analysis and approach that we need in Scotland I've written down employability because I think that's something that we need to definitely chase up I'm going to move on to our next theme which is round about the impact of the reduction in spending that we're going to see in 2022-23 and to start us off with this I'll move to my colleague Jeremy Balfour and then over to Pam Duncan Glancy Jeremy If I can start really with a very direct question the community said a few moments ago that we have a fixed budget which is true to some extent but we also have tax-raising powers to raise tax by 3% The Deputy First Minister is due to give a statement before the October recess in regard to his response to the Government budget I would be interested to know from three organisations would you want to see the Government, Mr Swinney announce a tax increase which couldn't come into effect until the next financial year but his directional travel would be that way is that something that as organisations you would want to see happen to mitigate some of the issues that you have been raising and I'm happy to start with Edith that's okay that's fine I guess we're not experts on taxation but we have started to do more work on this and the overriding I think it was Alison I made a note of what she said before you make any cuts to budgets you need to first of all maximise available resources and I think you can even go even further than that there needs to be sufficient resources available to meet the child poverty targets there just has to be not having sufficient resources cannot be used as a reason for not meeting the targets we look at the spending resource for review we look at the programme for government are there sufficient resources in the system to ensure that we meet that target and the answer doesn't appear to be yes so there needs to be more resource now it's an obligation on the Scottish Government and on the UK Government to reduce child poverty so there's obligations across the board but it does appear that so he needs to use the powers over income tax particularly because that's the one that can be changed immediately for the next budget to ensure there is resources available to deliver and as you said that includes increases in the Scottish child payment in April to make sure it retains its real value plugging those gaps that means some families aren't going to fully benefit from it like because of things like the two-child limit but also the forecast I was trying to find the figures frantically on my phone earlier and I couldn't but the forecast from the Scottish Fiscal Commission isn't a 100% take up of Scottish child payment it's around 80% Scottish child payment isn't like universal credit where you've got a population, you can do modelling you can see how many people from incomes might be entitled exactly who in Scotland should be getting the Scottish child payment that information is held by the DWP and HMRC so there's no reason why every child in Scotland who is entitled to the Scottish child payment isn't getting it so the budget is set on an 80% or an 85% or 90% take up rate that should be an 100% take up rate so there needs to be more investment and it appears that there needs to be more resource raised from income tax in Scotland that investment that's needed and then in the longer term as Alison was earlier pointing out there needs to be this fundamental review of taxation in Scotland and how can we fully harness the income and the wealth in Scotland to meet the priorities of the Scottish Parliament but that work will take time and needs to start now as you say an announcement on tax rises today won't kick into April an announcement on a review of the Scottish tax powers that was to start today we're not going to be in a position for this budget to do anything about it and it's unlikely that even in next year's budget we would have done that work so that needs to start now where can we provide resource I'll make them on to it later but local taxation is one of those things wealth taxes is another of those things as I say we're not experts but we're starting to do more and more work on this to get on logic because we're aware that we need to be calling for we need to be saying fees are your responsibilities so the question is how do you fully resource from Do you have any time mark? Yes, we do have tax expertise in the poverty commission and indeed we have compiled a working group on tax and we will have a report ready by mid 2023 however an early paper was shared with me yesterday and there are a few points I'd like to make if I may from that paper the first is tax administration is tax policy I hear one of the MSPs stating earlier that tax policy resides with the UK Government and that's true but this is why we have to be more creative in our thinking in Scotland because all we ever say is that's reserved to Westminster and often we collect data based on what we've already collected before rather than on what do we need to collect now a way of thinking about this differently is about how tax was administered over the last 10 years resources have been taken out of HMRC for the analysis of tax evasion for the chasing down of tax evasion now there's no reason why the Scottish Government couldn't request to have a specific Scotland team, a Scottish team in HMRC working with Revenue Scotland to focus strictly on the high net worth of individuals and corporate tax evasion that we know is happening in Scotland as per Alison's estimate of £3 billion to £7 billion so we could do something about that by not changing the policy but by changing how tax is administered and by asking for a Scottish specific team to be located in HMRC because even the Scottish component of that team in HMRC has been reduced so it used to be there similarly we need and also if we look at the tax administration point again transparency drives compliance as long as people are able to not publish those types of reports, multinationals that may be based in Scotland but reporting profits elsewhere as long as that type of thing is not reported then compliance is lower so once we make this a far more transparent system that increases and I think that's really useful and of course the local I'm sure you'll come on to council tax but local taxes are key to this too but I'm getting you're going to ask about council tax I won't pre-empt that at the moment Paul McLean is probably quickly rewriting some of his questions or figuring out how he can truncate his questions when we get to that Paul Bradley, do you have anything to add to that? General taxation on public or something that SCBO would be able to comment on simply because we don't have that level of engagement with our members on that but I think any future review would be something that would be encouraging in terms of ensuring that our members can contribute to shaping the direction of tax policy in Scotland Thanks very much Second question is around the specific cut that's been made or announced by the Scottish Government in regard to employment and employability around getting people back into employment and that cut which is going to take place within this financial year I don't know if you've done any work particularly around disability and what effect that will have on employability around disability and is it your understanding that this will affect front line services particularly maybe third sector who have been working in that area a lot or where do you think which cut can be made or will be made and maybe start with Paul I'm going to follow on with what Alison said earlier on about the challenges of really understanding how the decision was made and therefore I'm going to try and avoid criticising the decision because I don't feel that I can, I don't have the evidence I don't think anyone would say that taking funding away from supporting those from the labour market into employment is a positive step I don't think that clearly as the Deputy First Minister said that I think the lines were it's not a decision that's been taken lightly I think to understand whether it's the right decision I think we need more information on what the cut is going to have an impact on I'm unsure whether voluntary organisations were engaged in a discussion about the cut that's coming I'm unsure if there is any discussion about the unintended consequences on different groups, on equalities I don't know from what's been published whether there's a plan for the reintroduction of that funding so it's it's not very clear to me on what the impact is going to be and given I also recognise that the decision was taken based on where the labour market is just now and low unemployment but we are on the way to a recession and while that recession won't necessarily look exactly like the last recession we had mass unemployment there is also that balancing between the short-term need but also making sure that there's the infrastructure in place to make sure that the fallout from any recession is not as bad as it would be I do wonder again around and this is simply based on I don't know the answer here but this is the problem with a lack of detail around how decisions are made and the impact because it then needs others to consider what other reasons are at play I know that SCVO when there was the shift to no one left behind strategy and the shift to local employability partnerships our concerns that local employability partnerships weren't ready to be able to deliver that level of employability programmes I don't know whether that's transpired or not but I wonder if there is a question around whether progress on that shift to no one left behind and local employability partnerships has been slower than was expected and therefore potentially the saving could be made in that it's not where it should be just now I don't know if that's the case but I think that those are the kind of questions that I'd be asking of that particular area of employability I think Ed, do you want to come in briefly on that for me? because we are starting to run out of time and we've got lots of questions to go through I guess that in the briefing that the question is posed as do you agree with that choice to prioritise wage increases and I guess we've got to remember that low wage is a key driver of poverty as well we need that investment in jobs particularly prioritising low earnings and predominantly female areas of employment but the child poverty delivery plan makes clear that employability has a key role in reducing child poverty by a certain number of people into work and reducing poverty by a certain amount so it's important to ensure that those results are achieved and we don't know what the impact is on investment but at the end of the day those results need to be achieved by employability strategy which may need further investment different policies, employability etc that's something that the committee is highly aware of because we've just recently launched and our next enquiry is into meeting child poverty targets employability so we are keenly aware Morag quickly The role of employability in tackling child poverty was highlighted in the previous child poverty delivery plan 2018-22 and we didn't get analysis on how that worked and what the outcomes were from that so there's a lack of detail and data from the first employability phase now we don't know why what the decision making was behind the reduction in value on this phase nor do we know what impact this reduction will have on the funding for 2023-24 will it revert will it not thank you Pam thank you convener actually a number of my questions have been answered in particular around the employability aspects but there's a couple of other areas I'd like to explore if that's okay and if possible I'd like to come to Megan first you highlight some concerns in your submission to us about the pace and scale of action if we're to meet the targets that have been set by Parliament can you tell us a bit more about what you would expect to see notwithstanding the comments that you've already made around there not being enough information for you to really know whether or not we're doing what we said they would or the Government are rather are doing what they said they would I think what we would like to see is quick action and evidence for the action that's being taken and an understanding that action being taken will be reviewed in a constant iteration and changed where necessary where it's not working because we understand some things are experimental the new pathways projects for example to change things that are not happening and to reinforce things support and resources when they are happening when things are happening slowly if you look at the spending review there's even those that have increased funding it's not until 2026, 2027 or 2025, 2026 which is after the interim child poverty targets are due to be met so the fact that a lot of it seems to be back loaded the child poverty money and it's not going to give us that pace and scale that we need it needed to be more front loaded to get things kickstarted fast and the types of analysis and monitoring and data collection put in place so that we can monitor and track what's happening in situ, in real time and make those changes and I'm not saying that thank you I really appreciate that on a slightly broader point have you been able to look at any sort of analysis at all of the flat cash settlement or things like local government education employability services have you been able to do any of that in detail no, not in detail okay, thank you the other question I had was around your concerns about concessionary travel and having seen the point you made about worries that perhaps it's made on a reduced patronage because of difficulties do you have any suggestions for how we could progress that, what we could do and how to address it so just to recap quickly what we said about the reduced money for concessionary travel appears to be in response to a new forecast for reduced demand and what we would like to know is why is there a forecast for reduced demand because what we are knowing from people on the ground from families is that the under 22 free concessionary bus pass many people have not been able to apply for it particularly people in poverty and deprivation who do not have the required documentation such as passports etc to be able to make the necessary application so what you are looking at already is an inequality in who has access to this now if the reduced forecasted demand is due to the fact that people who need it most are not able to access it but at present we do not have that analysis because it has not been made clear on what basis there is reduced forecast demand so we would just like some transparency and clarity on why there is reduced forecast demand and what could be done I believe some measures are already in place and I think this was responded to a bit but what could be done is children being able to access a concessionary bus pass on the basis of the fact that most of them are in school and do not have their identity clarified in school or in the doctors or in the dentist surgery rather than making them go through a process of having formal national levels of identification already so there are ways of doing that of piggybacking it on to other things they access whether it is free school meals, whether it is school clothing grant those things should be tied in together should not have to keep making applications that are really time consuming and difficult we need a more smooth system thank you that's really clear I have one final question in this area if I can just quite pick up on that point there I think there is some really good practice that's happening my own daughter's school, the school did it for all the children, didn't ask for any identification and I think that was a response to the fact that there was a low uptake so we know that that can happen and it's how we get that practice will doubt thank you I know that a number of schools in south Lanarkshire have done the same and I think that there are examples of where it can be done and so that is really helpful for you to have set that out in that way my final question in this area I guess touches a little bit on the organisational issue that we spoke about earlier on but some of the submissions that we've seen have said that local government when they're cashed at which they are tend to fund only that which they are required to fund through due to provision and my concern is therefore particularly for third sector organisations and the works that they do so I know it's early days but have you heard of any indication that some of those flat cash settlement may indeed have an impact on some of your organisations and do you have any plans to monitor it? Yes without, we haven't heard anything just yet in terms of the upcoming annual arrangements around funding but any static funding for local government is going to have an impact on voluntary sector organisations either through static levels of funding themselves and that's where we're seeing organisations perhaps not get an increase in 13 years that's where we see the worst of it taking place or services being cut all together because funding is needed ring fence areas and voluntary sector services are the ones that you can cut away quite quickly and especially staff on short term contracts and everything it just leads to the insecurity for voluntary organisations so what we say at a national level about how Scottish Government and other public bodies fund voluntary organisations I think it's very similar to how local government funds voluntary organisations too and I think what we would say is kind of a line quite similar to what the first interface network would say and we are going to be doing some joint work with them around messaging on funding soon I think the other issue that comes up and we might see more of is the use of the procurement system to be able to kind of strip away all the benefits that there are in terms of having voluntary sector organisations deliver the public services and use it as a way to kind of reduce costs and that feels kind of while I'm not hearing any more examples of that just now even though it obviously happens I feel like we're going into that direction where more cuts are going to be needed and how do you go about that rather than using procurement system to improve things like environmental, social and economic wellbeing using it as a way to reduce costs and we've seen that over many years organisations, you know, developing, setting up great services at a local level and been responsible for taking the lead on those and then local authorities turning around and saying we're going to actually bring that in retender and they can't retender on less funding and then that organisation has all the skills and the expertise deliver it can't then apply for it so I think that this is the way to keep an eye on it thank you very much for that and when I have experience of myself in terms of re-tendering and the devastation that caused at the time I'm going to hand over to Natalie Dawn for the next set of questions to be followed by Emma Roddick Natalie, can I hear you? That's me now, thank you and good morning to the panel and I'm very sorry that I couldn't join you this morning to discuss this morning while the Scottish Government are working on a largely fixed budget that means that increased spending in one area has to come from another area so thinking across the Scottish budget as a whole, are there any areas where the members of the panel feel that you think spending could be re-prioritised and I'm going to put that question to each member of the panel and I'll start off with Morag, please yes, sorry, thank you Natalie yes I understand that they're re-prioritising spending and they've already started that what we would say is that it's important that any re-prioritised spending isn't taken away from longer term action to reduce child poverty there has to be a balance made between helping families now with the immediate costs and cost of living and immediate pressures but also not taking the eye of the longer term ball to enable to meet those child poverty targets of 2023 and again in 2030 one of the areas that we think should be looked at though is the attainment challenge funding and how that has been used it's a £1 billion investment over the course of the Parliament and to tackle the poverty related attainment gap so let's see some increased focus on this funding and how perhaps that could be re-prioritised because children living in poverty are not going to have be able to reduce the gap in attainment until their poverty is reduced I think that people often focus on the words attainment gap and don't focus on the words poverty related and that's the key part of that phrase is poverty related children who are hungry and cold and stressed and worried and see their parents under tremendous pressure are not going to be able to function well in school so looking at how that money is spent how it plans to be spent and again data analysis transparency and seeing can that money be re-prioritised at least some of it in the short term to protect families incomes, their wellbeing and make sure to solve the poverty bit of the attainment gap so that's one of the areas we think should be re-prioritised that's very helpful can I turn next to Ed and then I'll take Paul last I guess as has already been mentioned both in this panel and in the previous panel there's an obligation on the Scottish Government to have sufficient resources to meet that bare minimum that core minimum and one of the commitments is to the child poverty targets so they have to have the resources to do that and if that means it is a fixed budget but there are tax-raising powers so there are opportunities to use that fixed budget if that's what's needed and further investment is needed and I guess again it comes back to that information we can't make decisions about that re-prioritisation because what's important is that every area of the budget is looked at to ensure it's working towards child poverty so it's not necessarily about re-prioritising budget from one space to another but it's ensuring that when that money is being spent analysis is being done before policy decisions are made before prioritising money so that you can understand the impact it will have on child poverty so procurement procurement across Government from Scottish Government to local authorities can be used to increase wages or to reduce barriers to employment by ensuring that firms are using best practice you know people like those budgetary people also close the gap there's best practice on having female friendly employment practices there's best practice on making sure that barriers to recruitment for people with disabilities aren't in place these don't cost anything but when you're spending huge amounts of money as the Scottish Government does on procurement you can insist that they're part of the process and that can help you know spending on net zero that has to be viewed for a child poverty lens are supports available to low income households what's the impact of the spending it's not just about taking money from the care part and putting it into the attainment challenge part or that it's about saying well we're spending this money in this area what can that have to meet and we come back to the national outcomes what can that have to meet the national outcomes but specifically these priorities of the Scottish Government of child poverty along with net zero as well which is obviously vitally important but it's making sure that all the spending is supporting these targets equality assessments fair Scotland assessments being done at that very early stage so decisions are made based on that assessment rather than the assessment coming afterwards to make sure there's no detrimental impact to any particular group I guess it's difficult because undoubtedly if you're looking at it from a human rights approach and a child poverty approach there may be aspects of the budget that don't necessarily impact on that so in terms of re-prioritisation it can be extremely difficult because I suppose there could be gop for budget for things to be re-prioritised and for something to no longer exist or something to no longer money to no longer get put in a certain pot as you say so there are difficulties there sorry I said I'll go to Paul and then I've got some further questions on this thank you thank you yeah might struggle to get away with re-prioritising without losing some of our members so I think I'll avoid that and I don't think it's probably our role as a membership body but the one thing that we have been saying and we've made clear in the programme for government our submission to the programme for government and to the finance committee as well is that organisations for us to play an effective role in the society we are and in the system that we're in we play a mature and positive partnership role with government on issues around budget development and so on there really needs to be transparent data so we're able to assess the positive negative or neutral impact that those decisions are having on different national outcomes and indicators and at the moment and I'll give you one example last year there was an £800,000 cut to the third sector resource budget line because there is no data about what that fund funds part from us knowing that SCBO is part of that and things like social enterprise action plan are part of that and some other intermediaries it's difficult to know what that £800,000 cut actually resulted in so we can't assess the positive negative or neutral impact of that and it's actually the same with a more positive example of the increase that's forecasted in the spending review of that budget line up to 27 and a half million if it's additional funding then that's a positive thing but we don't know if that's just money moving lines or and therefore we're unable to welcome something from government if it is a positive development and I just think that it's a real struggle, this is one example and it's not necessarily to the child poverty aspect but we need to have more open data that also tells the story about where funding is flowing to these different areas to be able to understand the impact and understand what needs to be reprioritised and the countries that have open budget portals I know the Scottish Government Exchequer team through their open government action plan is working on something similar and I think the committee should take very much an interest in their work on development of an open budget portal to ensure that it does deliver on some of these things that we're looking for and that it is useful because at the moment when I look at the budget I find it next to impossible to really be able to comment on whether it's beneficial or neutral or detrimental to the Scotland's voluntary sector I definitely wasn't putting you on the spot there and I'm not asking you to do the Government's job of reprioritising but it's good to hear your input on that because it's such a big issue so I guess much of my next question had actually been answered on to my last point I guess addressing child poverty is a clear national mission in Scotland but what do you think is needed to ensure that we don't lose sight of tackling poverty amongst those people who don't have children as well I think we all once live in a society where people are doing more than just surviving they're living in their enjoying life and that goes across Scotland so how do you feel that we don't lose sight of that and I guess I'll go to Ed for this one First of all, it's right to stress that tackling child poverty should be this national mission it should be our priority families of children are at much greater risk of poverty and the long-term consequences of poverty on children, it shapes the rest of their lives so it's great that we have that commitment in terms of wider poverty many things are talking about support all households removing barriers to employment so people with disabilities are far more likely to be in poverty whether or not they're parents and if we can remove those barriers to employment and this comes back to the employer ability why aren't all employers in Scotland, particularly those who are procuring for public services using that very best practice to remove barriers both for access to work and in terms of supporting once in work and that supports many people in poverty funding local services supports families but it also supports wider funding advice and information supports all people in poverty mitigating impacts of welfare reform incredibly welcome a benefit gap a bedroom tax mitigation that helps families but it also helps other people in poverty so many of these actions whilst helping meet the child poverty delivery plan also help far wider groups from that and there's not a kind of dividing line between families of children and adults in poverty the children who are living in poverty are more likely to become adults living in poverty so if we can deal with a poverty part of that less likely to be in poverty in the future the young adults who are currently in poverty may well go on to have families and become parents of children in poverty so again if we can deal with the employability of across the board particularly for these groups that face additional barriers and we haven't talked about the barriers that BME communities face into employment as well another priority group for child poverty but also poverty in general so it maps across we're not talking about it and I guess one of the other things is in that this moment of crisis which is hugely impacting on families in poverty but everyone in crisis is remembering that commitment we've got to approach to supporting households so the payments for example to people on bans of council tax and council tax reduction supports to the Scottish Welfare Fund these help families these are what we're calling for additional investment in the Scottish Welfare Fund including the administration of the Scottish Welfare Fund that helps families but it also hugely helps people who aren't in poverty and if you can help households regardless of whether you've got children or not but I mean over that crisis they can have the foundation to put things in place to ensure they stay out of poverty so investment in that cash first crisis support is vitally important as well for all households so often when we're talking about child poverty the remedies work on much wider level of society because I absolutely agree there's no point in tackling child poverty if when someone turns 18 we go right it's not a problem any more that you live in poverty because that's obviously not what we want to see thanks for those questions Natalie we are really pushed for time at the moment can it be very quick more because I do have two more people with questions very quickly Natalie everything that Ed said plus the thought that when we can't do anything about Westminster policies for people without children or what we can do again is some creative thinking around the edges so it's been reported to me by people who are working on the front line with the developing the young workforce for example that when a person is 18 and they're living in a benefit unit with the parents but they're now an adult technically because they're 18 their entry into employment or taking up an apprenticeship will have an adverse impact on their parents benefits and their parents housing benefit for example so what's been reported to me by these people in developing the young workforce is that young people are being unable to take up their offer of a modern apprenticeship because of the adverse impact it will have on their parents benefit so the young person's guarantee then becomes null and void because you can't guarantee it if they can't take it up because of this impact on their parents benefit now you can try and have influence over the UK benefits system because I'm sure I wouldn't like to think it's the intention to stop people doing good things and taking up employment at the age of 18 but what you could do is mitigate that impact and that's something we're not mitigating so these are the young people aged 18 who are being forced not to take employment because of their parents benefits situation so it's about what Ed said about preventing young people in poverty becoming adults in poverty that's one thing we could be doing right now is mitigating that by doing some analysis on what the numbers are in Scotland of young people who are in that age group who are in a benefit unit with their parents and how much it costs to mitigate it's a really simple sum that could be undertaken and that mitigation in place Thanks, Morriga, that was a very helpful example to give to us and I'll hand quickly to Emma Roddick for a question and then Paula Clennan is going to finish us off with a very short question I hope Emma? Thank you, convener Ed, I just wanted to ask quickly about CPAC's recommendations on spending there are quite a few if you are related to mitigation I wondered first of all is there a figure for mitigating the under 25 penalty that you've come to? No, not yet it's a short answer we have one for UK mitigation and we're doing analysis on it working with OPFS and also IPPR on that so short answer is not yet but we can probably give out to the committee within the week it's helpful and also just on mitigation in general Professor Philip Alston UN special reputation on extreme poverty in human rights who said mitigation comes at a price and is not sustainable and given the Scottish Government's current mitigation bill is already to be reported to be over half a billion do you accept that that is the case? Not lifting families out of poverty is not sustainable and the long-term costs far higher and fall on the Scottish society but we'll have to deal with it yes, we want particularly the two-child limit the under 25 penalty mitigated at source by the UK Government and we are campaigning on that relentlessly but in order for the Scottish Government to meet its targets we can do that with the drag on the priority groups because we've identified quite rightly the priority groups of larger families younger parents, young children BME communities which are more likely to be larger families and these two elements of welfare reform target these groups so it's no wonder we know that inadequate social security is what drives child poverty we know these groups are not getting sufficient social security because of these policies at a UK level so if the Scottish Government wants to meet the targets it needs to mitigate them and I understand there's a cost to that and hopefully we will get this mitigated at the UK level but in the meantime and in order to meet that target that interim target the money needs to be invested by the Scottish Government now and it needs to be seen as an investment because once you lift those families out of poverty these lone parents particularly younger parents with larger families if they're lifted out of poverty now a man can get that additional that gives them a bedrock to be able to find the employment or whatever is they going to do and so that is an investment now in the longer term that will save the Scottish Government money and as we were pointing out grow the tax base in Scotland when these parents are older than working so it's not sustainable not to deal with it as well there's a cost to not doing something as well as a cost to doing it and I guess this comes back to the analysis of the budget if you don't spend this money what cost is going to fall on the Scottish Government next year the year after in five years time in that 2030 target that you've got and if you're not helping those families now you're going to have to spend even more in five years time to meet that very ambitious but reachable target of 10 per cent of people less than 10 per cent by 2030 achievable that's kind of world beating but we're almost eradicating child poverty at that level and we can do it in Scotland but it needs investment and a plan now and that includes this immediate support for these families that are stuck in this position I was going to talk about taxation you've really touched on that I wanted to talk about the fiscal flexibility that you probably heard me talk about in the last panel one penny rise tax was £450 million even if we increased it by the three pens that we're allowed to do still wouldn't meet the £1.7 billion inflationary impact we're having this year so it's really important that we have the fiscal flexibility one of these key things is additional borrowing powers and one that could be moved from UK Government to Scottish Government is about allowances if we had the ability to raise allowances we could raise allowances from 12,000 to say 15,000, 16,000, 17,000 and take a lot of people out of taxation altogether so I suppose key question is more fiscal flexibility within that and about the two issues that are raised one around about allowances, two around about additional borrowing just very briefly in that edil see you can come on in that one and then I'll go across as I say, taxation isn't our area of expertise so I don't feel confident coming what we need is a review to open all this up and look at it and see what can be done and what can't but in terms of fiscal framework the resource has to be provided to tackle child poverty and the UK Government and Rockland or Ways in Scotland we don't care it needs to be that so I don't know what I would say is in the poverty and inequality commission we do have tax expertise we have a tax working group just forming we intend to report in the middle of next year and these are questions that we would be happy to tackle in that working group if you would like to get in contact with us we'd be very happy to do so I can't make any statement on it just now but I'm absolutely happy to work with you to answer some of these questions thank you, Paul I think we're having to make cuts to things that were a priority at the start of the year and that's because there isn't that flexibility and I would just like voluntary organisations we're calling for greater flexibility in our funding I imagine the same rings true for the Scottish Government and on the same lines as well thank you for being brief thank you very much all for your attendance this morning the evidence that you've given if there's anything you think that needs to be followed up please do that in writing but more I'm absolutely keen to tingate with yourselves in terms of what you just said out to Paul there thank you very much and I now close the public part of this meeting and we will move into a very quick private session thank you very much