 Welcome to the 20th meeting of the welfare reform committee for 2015, could everyone make sure that their mobile phones and other electronic devices are silent and switched to airplane mode? The first item on our agenda today is an evidence session on the future delivery of social security in Scotland and we are going to split the session into two parts. We have a panel with us for the first part to discuss issues around the regulated social fund and then the second panel will discuss some of the wider practical issues around the devolution of some uncertain benefits. Today we have Ross Hampton, who is the advice officer from Eternity Action. John McAllian, formerly of this parish, an executive committee Scottish pensioners forum. Fraser Sutherland, the policy officer of Citizen Advice Scotland. Nicola Sutherland, the team leader of the welfare rights and welfare fund Perthyn-Kinross council. Mark Willis, welfare rights worker child poverty action group Scotland. Derek Young, policy officer of Age Scotland. Before I move into questions, does any of the panel have any introductory comments that they wish to make? What would be the fundamental principles that you and your organisations would see for any new welfare system in Scotland? Clearly a lot of people are unhappy with what's happening at Westminster. They believe that we should have more responsibility for setting benefits but there are obviously responsibilities attached to that. If you're setting out what you think a system should look like, what would be your fundamental principles? John? I think that one of the most basic principles that the Scottish pensioners forum would put forward would be to defend universal benefits where they exist, like the winter fuel payment. We understand the argument of those who say that benefits like this should be targeted on those who are in greatest need, but it's certainly our position that instead of targeting the benefit in those with greatest need, the effect of means testing is to deter often those who are in greatest needs. For example, the pension's credit system has more than a third of the people who are entitled to it don't claim it, so we would defend the universality of benefits and think that's very important in the way ahead. We also think that benefit levels should be a level that allows people a decent standard of living, whether it's in retirement or in any other form of basis. All benefits should be universal? Would you realise that's utopia? No, but in principle, do you think that all benefits should be universal? I would certainly see no problem with that, no. Right. What about housing benefit? Should everyone who rents a house get housing benefit? No, I was thinking in terms of the wider benefits. Out of what benefits are things like that? Housing benefit is... Well, I don't think we have an official position as a Scottish Pensioners Forum. My position would be the cost of housing. Housing benefit goes mainly to landlords rather than to individuals who are in receipt of it. It's an issue that should be tackled in the future of the Scottish Parliament. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about when first housing, when I got married, I was in the Scottish special house. My wife and I were both working. Should we have got full housing benefit? I wouldn't think so, no. But you said that you wanted all benefits to be universal? I was strictly thinking of the general benefits system, which is out-of-work benefits and so on. Should be set at a level in which other work is entitled to and so on, that kind of thing. But the benefits that you mentioned earlier, a lot of people in work would be entitled to them. You and I, when you were an elected member, we would be entitled to interfueal payments. That's not an out-of-work benefit. I see nothing wrong with that at all. I'm not clear, John, what you're saying. One of the great problems with means testing, which we're really speaking about here, is that if you devise benefits that are purely for poor people, then inevitably they turn out to be poor benefits. The middle classes and so on have to be bought into welfare systems. The NHS is the classic example. Everyone's entitled to free medical care in this country, in respect of their actual income. That's why the NHS is a success. It was less of a success if it was means tested. You had to pay for it some other way. You did say that out-of-work benefits shouldn't be means tested, but then you said that there are certain benefits that are available to those in work and you don't think that they should be means tested either. Which benefits shouldn't be means tested and which benefits should be means tested? Maybe stick with it. What ones should be means tested? The housing benefit in its present state should be means tested. The problem is not the people who are on housing benefit. The problem is the cost of housing and the fact that most people can no longer afford decent housing in this country. When you and I were young, there used to be housing support grant and rate support grant to enable local authorities to provide public housing, which was affordable for the vast bulk of the country. That's no longer the case. The withdrawal of these subsidies has in effect put housing beyond the reach of many people and therefore it then becomes necessary to provide housing benefits so that they can afford them. And universality should apply to most benefits. Are there any cost restrictions? How would you pay for them all? What's your prescription for finding the money once we get devolution of responsibility? Is it through general taxation? I don't have any problem with the issue of raising taxes. The fact that people who have very high incomes are able to access universal benefits should be compensated by the fact that when it comes to the tax system they are taxed on the basis of their income and in that sense they actually pay for it in the longer term. One of the great problems that faces not just this country Scotland but throughout the United Kingdom and many western countries is the aversion to paying tax, which has developed over the past decades. People forget that Mrs Thatcher, who was no socialist, had a top rate of tax of £0.60 for nine of the 11 years in which she was in power. It was normal to pay higher taxes back then and no be able to accuse Mrs Thatcher of further bedding the poor. In fact, I don't think that any party is actually committing to bring taxes back at that kind of level that she had for most of the time she was in power. But the pensioners for them is? Well, we're not in power, we just represent the views of people. No, but you would like to see that brought back? I would like to see taxes brought back. Progressive taxation is a fundamental building block of any decent civilised society. Okay, anyone else? Nicola? I would take John's point about universalism. However, I would prefer a target approach to the benefits system and one that is automated where it can be indefinitely rights-based. I think that the barriers that people face at the moment in terms of the DWP benefits is that they have to ask the right question to get the right answer and a more holistic approach should be taken to look at the person, have a person-centred approach to advice and to make access as readily available as possible. One of the tensions that we've heard from other witnesses in a different evidence session is a tension between a national system and local decision making. Some people believe... In fact, I think that there's a very strong view, I think that most people would share it, but there's an antipathy towards what people would describe as postcode lottery for health, for benefits and so on that everybody should have an entitlement across the country. We heard from some people that they would like to see a national system of benefit, service and delivery, but local decision making. How do you reconcile those two if the local people are not responsible for the budget and they can sign off whatever they want? How has that tension resolved? We already have an example of that in council tax reduction. It's a national scheme, a national eligibility criteria and it's delivered by local authorities. I think that there must be some kind of way, probably no the best person to ask, to reconcile budgets after the financial year if it's an entitlement rather than a demand-led budget. There is an example that you can look at that the committee considered about a year or so ago, which is the welfare funds legislation. That is a scheme that operates nationally, the criteria set down in legislation and guidance, but it is administered by local authorities. One of the pieces of legislation that was considered and then added was to have an appeal mechanism which was national. Through the Public Service Ombudsman's office there is the possibility that as they make decisions, as they build up a case load of decisions that are available for local authority decision makers to look at, you can start to bring out a greater level of consistency even though you have local authorities administering the fund. That was certainly the hope that we and other organisations who gave evidence at that time would have. On your more general point about national consistency versus local decision making, at the moment there are dozens of volumes of decision maker manuals that people who work in the job centres and who make decisions about benefits have to apply. Those set out in very detailed terms the criteria that are applied. Obviously if you have different people making decisions, they may apply that criteria in different ways. So long as you have an appeal mechanism that allows for decisions to be re-examined and then tested against the criteria against national understanding's national case law, then that affords the ability to have the sort of consistency you are looking for. I think that the problem that we perceive and perhaps other organisations have said something similar is not so much that there is local decision making that creates a problem. It's the decision makers themselves that there is a culture within the benefit agencies that seem to want to suppress the amount of social security payments that are paid out. In some senses there might be individuals working there who are almost kind of expected or rewarded even for their success in limiting payouts. That's actually not a problem in terms of who makes the decision, it's a problem around the culture of what surrounds the atmosphere in which they make those decisions. Would you say those local decision makers being employees of a national agency or would it be best left to councils? Obviously that's a fundamental question for which the Scottish institutions will have to decide. I mean, I think that it was assumed when the Smith commission was making its decisions that there would be an argument for having a transitional period where you would have the DWP job centre plus institutions acting as a sort of agent on behalf of the Scottish Government, continuing to administer payments. As we've looked at things like winterfuellment payment is a very good example, their data systems are not set up in such a way that makes it very easy to tweak in response to a policy change that the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament might decide upon. So there might be a very large and impractical administrative cost for them to administer that, which under the Smith arrangements, as I understand it, the cost of that administrative change would then be borne by the Scottish Government, so it might make that kind of change prohibitive. So clearly you'd be looking in the medium to long term for a Scottish-based solution. At the moment the only welfare powers really that are handled by local authorities are housing benefit and the welfare funds, as far as I know. So it would certainly be a great increase if they were to be made primarily responsible in their administrative burden to be resourced and they would have to be training and regulation and all that. But equally it might be prohibitively expensive to set up a brand new agency. So in the longer term, if the Scottish Government wants to be able effectively to implement the discretion around policy, it would have to come up with some working system in Scotland but I just don't know exactly what that looks like. Okay, anyone else before I bring in? Kevin, and then Claire? Thank you, convener. I want to look at a specific area around about funeral costs and the funeral grant and a number of you have made submissions on that front. Many of the smaller companies and possibly some of the local authorities in Scotland benchmark themselves against companies like Dignity and the Co-operative. For Dignity, we're told that the underlying operating profit from crematoria from 2010 to 2014 rose from £19.9 million to £29.1 million, a 46 per cent increase. For funeral services, those profits in the same period rose from £49.3 million to £66.3 million, an increase of 34 per cent. Obviously, in the submissions, we've seen difficulties with funeral costs. We are about to embark on the burials and cremations bill here, but in questioning officers at the local government committee last week, they said that we would be unable to do anything about costs in those bills because of the reserved matters under schedule 5, including areas such as consumer protection. Do you think that in order to tackle some of those costs, as well as dealing with the grant aspect in terms of capping companies and local authorities, or should I say burial authorities, that we should take control of those powers to get this absolutely right so that people don't end up worrying about funeral costs? Mr Sutherland, first, because of CAS, a fair amount to say on that. You've stepped on the point that I really wanted to make quite clearly, which is that you can look at how the funeral grant is funded and look at increasing that to bring the costs up to meeting the basic costs of a funeral, all you're doing is increasing the bill. One of the problems is that we see the price of funerals increasing year on year well above inflation. For example, last year, burial charges in Scotland increased on average by 10 per cent in one year alone. One council, Aberdeenshire, increased their fees by 42 per cent in one year. 42 per cent, comparing one year on a next year for Barry and the Loved One, is a huge increase for families. Cremation charges don't increase quite as much, but they do increase by about 5 per cent a year. Of course, you've got the other side of the funeral costs, which is the funeral directors, and we know that they increase year on year as well. There's a wide variety of charges that are charged by funeral directors. They can vary by thousands of pounds for exactly the same service. There is a question there about people finding the best deal, but the situation that people who are in when they're organised in a funeral, shop around and go around all the different funeral directors and ask for what cheapest one is from a granny's funeral. They're not in that right set of mind. They're not going to do that. Quite often, what we find is that people's loyalty is with a particular funeral director because that's the one that the family have already used. That might not actually be the best deal for them. It could be the only one in a more rural setting. Unfortunately, some of the bigger organisations have bought up the smaller independent funeral directors, but continued trading as a small independent director's name, which, to a certain extent, hides what's going on in the sector, because people have a brand loyalty and they don't realise that it's being owned by a much larger multinational company. When you look at the funeral costs, I would hope that, under the burial and cremation bill, something is looked at around controlling costs because costs have spiralled. You made the point for crematorium, for example. Costs are absolutely compared with the private sector. Perth and Cynros council charge more than half of the private crematorium in Scotland. Some councils are charging more than what you would get at a private crematorium. In some areas, around Dundee, for example, there is only a private crematorium option. You don't have the option of going to a cheaper local authority one. There is a whole load of consumer issues about choice that you don't have when you are organising a funeral that you may have for other sectors. You also have a huge postcode lottery. A convener mentioned a postcode lottery of benefits, but there is a huge postcode lottery in burial and cremation charges. You compare the highest burial in Scotland compared to the cheapest at a period of £2,000. That is £2,000 at a family in Easton-Bartonshire, which is the highest. It has to find that they do not, in the West Niles, which is the cheapest. There is a massive difference there depending on what local authority live in and the families have to find that money. Is it wise for us to be allowed to legislate on these consumer protection issues to deal with the burials and cremations bill as an all-encompassing piece of legislation to deal with all aspects of that area? There are already powers here to deal with the local authority costs, so there are issues that could be done around that as well. I would be keen to see the minister introduce changes into the bill to control the local authority costs as well as looking at what can be done around regulation of funeral directors. I know that that is something that has been put into and consulted on how they look at licensing schemes or whatever else. I think that that is something that could be welcomed. Okay. Mr McAllian. I mean, I actually come from Dundee, where there is no choice. It is Dignity PLC who runs the crematoria there. I think that it is one of the second highest level of commission fees anywhere in Scotland. Controlling local authorities is fine. When I think that one of the pressures on local authorities is a massive cuts at the moment. Dundee, for example, has to find 28 million pounds of cuts over the next two years. That puts pressure on any administration to look for ways in which they can maximise their income. That may be one of the areas through which they try to do it. There is a whole underlying problem there as well about local authority funding. I think that Age Scotland's call for a standardised charge for cremation and burial fees is a very good thing. Whether it is devolved or reserved, somebody should be implementing that. It is a kind of wild west in terms of funeral provision in this country. Dignity PLC is a big business. Many dozens of crematoria and funeral businesses all across the UK are making big money out of this and are taking advantage of a situation where nobody, either in Scotland or at the UK level, seems to want to control this business. We would certainly want to see it controlled, standardised charges introduced and something done about funeral payments as well because they are almost as chaotic as the other side with costs rising. To see us have the power to be able to do all of that. Whoever has the power, somebody should be doing it. Do you think that if the funeral grant was to rise, that the likes of dignity would just raise their costs in areas like Dundee where they seem to have a monopoly? They will always raise their costs if they let them, but you would have to try to stop them doing that. One of the suggestions that was made is that anyone in the receipt of a funeral grant should have a limit on what the actual charges can be levied upon them so that they can stop that happening. Companies like Dignity take advantage of a higher grant, for example. Thank you. Mr Yell. I'm not sure if it would be legally clearer to amend the schedule 5 of the Scotland Act in terms of consumer protection to try to achieve the ambition that you've postulated. At the moment, for example, on care home fees, the majority of care home providers are independent private companies. Still, there is national regulation of what they can charge for a care home fee place. That's administered through regulations promulgated by the Scottish Government every year, but also by a national care home contract that's arranged between the providers and the local authorities and the Scottish Government. There may be ways to do it without necessarily tinkering constitutionally to try to make that more straightforward. We have identified, and I'm pleased that John McAllion has made my point for me, that because of the wide variation you can at least look at the local authority element of burial and cremation charges and try to make that much fairer because of the wide disparity between one local authority and another, where, as Fraser said, one is four times the cost of another. Two separate issues here. One issue is that the difference between burial costs and care homes is that there's a very large element of the care home fees are actually paid either by local authorities or through the Scottish Government. What we are largely talking about is a private market dealing with private individuals. The other issue that Fraser Sutherland has raised is that you've touched on it as well. Again, that brings us back to attention. I remember, John McAllion will remember the discussion ahead of the creation of the Scottish Parliament that we were assured that this wasn't about sucking powers from local decision makers into Edinburgh, but you're suggesting that the power should be removed from councils to make local decisions and that that should be centralised? Actually, what does strike me is that there's a crying need here for a not-for-profit organisation, a social enterprise, set up by maybe a number of the charities to actually provide an affordable service that's not driven by profit. It's almost like taking the service into public ownership rather than leave it at the mercy of those that seek to maximise profits. Fraser, how would you answer this question about local decision making being eroded and more decisions being made then in Edinburgh? John McAllion mentioned that in some councils have said in their budget papers that they have increased funeral charges in order to offset other budget areas that they are struggling to meet costs because of their funding situations. The question that I would throw back to you is, is it fair that a bereaved family has to make that shortfall? I'm not entirely sure that that's the appropriate way to raise taxation in unbrew families by increasing their costs. I don't think that that's entirely fair that those people are left to foot the bill of shortfalls elsewhere because there's a whole load of situations that we're aware of in the cab clients that we see. It can make their grief much more complicated and much more difficult to deal with if there's a massive debt that hangs over from that person's funeral. I think that they've had to bury or cremate and yet, for years, maybe there's a debt hanging over their head because they can't afford to pay it. I think that there is a question really around who should take the decision, but if we're talking about four times the difference in the price, there's clearly something wrong with the local decision making that allows one local authority to charge four times what another does for exactly the same service. In relation to any decision that a local authority makes, I can point you to differences. My constituency covers two different local authority areas and I can point to differences in charging between those two local authority areas merely a matter of miles away. That happens across the board. I think that there is a bigger problem that Kevin Stewart and others have identified about the outrageous costs of burials and you made the accurate point that when you're dealing with a funeral for a loved one, you're not going to shop around for the best deal. You just want to get that done with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of dignity and respect. Sorry, Clare. I'm actually returning back to the previous point of that cake. It was just on the issue earlier that we were talking about universal services as opposed to means testing. One of the great benefits of universal services is that they are, by nature, universal and available to everyone. As a young you talked about, some of the costs associated with minor tweaks and IT systems and all these things and unintended costs that can arise when you introduce some sort of means testing into it. When the committee visited Highland Council, which is a pilot for universal credit, one of the concerns they had was about the underclaiming, particularly of council tax reduction. I was just wondering if, particularly Ms Llyrland, you mentioned council tax reduction. Do you have any figures about the underclaiming of that entitlement? Unfortunately, no. I don't have any figures to hand, but we do know that there has been a steady decline since 2013, and that's across the piece. That's in Scotland generally, from the council tax benefits scheme. Is that the concern to any of the other witnesses about underclaiming of benefits at the moment? For example, we do a lot of meetings that go out to pension organisations, but there are no clubs in various places across Scotland where older people get together for various purposes. We go there to try to talk about pensions and benefits and so on and that kind of thing. When you come on to means testing, you sense the change of atmosphere because some of the people in the room are on means tested benefits and go quiet and become withdrawn. Other people who are just above the supplementary level become more agitated and angry because they are feeding means tested benefit. It is socially very divisive the whole means testing system. We certainly believe that, as far as possible, it should be ended in this country. Just before I say anything more, I should have put in apologies for Neil Findlay, so I neglected to do that. You're coming back to this issue, John, about means testing. As far as I recall, you were an MP at the time when pensioner credits were introduced. That was probably the single most effective measure in taking poor pensioners out of poverty that this country has ever seen. Are you suggesting that that shouldn't have been done? It could have been done better. For example, over a third of those who are entitled to claim it don't claim it. I don't see that as a success. Perhaps you do, I don't know. Obviously, people have a problem with means tested benefits. They always have that. In fact, I think that it was Naid Bevan who spent most of his political life trying to eliminate means testing. I remember that he resigned over one of the six charging prescription phasers, whatever it was. The principle of universality was in the welfare state when it first began back in the 1940s in the post-war period, and it's gradually been eroded ever since. Pensioners credits may have done good for those people who were in receipt of it, but for the third over a third who didn't claim it, their situation was even worse than it would have been otherwise. That can't be the kind of system that we want to see perpetuated in Scotland. Derek mentioned earlier that the approach that the benefits agency took at that time was about seeking out people who would be entitled. There was a completely different approach taken when the pension service changed the terminology from claimant to customer. There was no capital limit for pensioners who claim pension credit, and that often encourages people to uptake the benefit. However, there is still a means test, but the DWP actively sought people out and they visit people. The range of services is just completely different to people who are working age and who claim benefits. That's possibly something that Scotland should adopt with any new agencies, the proactive and preventative way of delivering benefits. Derek and then Kevin. Very briefly on this point, this is the first time that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are going to have to consider the issue of universalism as a broad principle. Our position is that we would like to see benefits being effective. That means testing is a challenge to that effectiveness. It doesn't mean that it's always unjustifiable because they also have to be affordable, but it does challenge some of the effectiveness. Some of the points have already been made. However, there are human dynamics here. People don't like to disclose their financial details to a public authority unless it's absolutely necessary. The thing about universalism is that it places everyone on a level playing field. It has a preventative effect because people can automatically receive, for example, winter fuel payment even if they don't know that it exists, because they might be one of a qualifying benefit like state pension, which means that it comes to them automatically. The point that Nicola made was about the pension service. It certainly seemed to have far less of difficulties with their perception in terms of how they administer the benefits for which they are responsible. I think that that does belie the culture point that was made before. Thank you, convener. I want to go back to Nicola's point because I remember that there was a pilot in Aberdeen at one point where the DWP put one guy into a particular area to try and find out exactly what folks entitlements were. In a very short period of time, I think that he found over £2 million of additional income over a matter of a couple of months. The service was, of course, withdrawn, but the realities quite simply were that that additional income stopped folks slipping into crisis and calling upon other services because they had the income to deal with certain things. Do the panellists think that taking that approach, that progressive approach, that preventative approach, can save the state huge amounts of money? Beyond that, where it is possible to create that universal element, because we know that any form of means testing adds to the bureaucratic load and costs a lot of money? Come in on that. Rose? From a maternity point of view, we're here to say that the maternity grant is a really important benefit to stay. It's on those grounds that it plugs a gap families on maternity leave are losing income because of maternity pay. They're increasing their cost because they're having a baby. To have people who can identify the pots of money like a short start maternity grant that can then be used to help them to manage one-off time in their working lives, helps them to not have to go back to work so soon after maternity leave, enables them to take longer to go back to work, to be given back to the economy by working longer term. From our point of view, as a specialist advice service, we would love to see in Scotland that women families at that particular time can get across-the-board advice to make sure that they're not missing out on their entitlements and can plug gaps in as many different forms of support, particularly the maternity grant for families as a kind of one-off, spend it on whatever they need amount of money. Okay, anyone else? Christina? On this key theme, because it seems to be a theme through everybody's evidence and good morning, and I'm sorry for running a bit late this morning, the traffic and the way there was against me, but there seems to be a key theme in all the evidence that's been produced thus far your evidence to committee today, evidence that we've had on many other aspects of the welfare of reforms and a possible new security, social security system for Scotland. A key theme seems to be about decision making and good decision making, and it ties into what Kevin Stewart was saying there about how do you make the best out of a system that doesn't make the best out of the money that it's got? I think that it's a child poverty action group in their early warning system that suggests that about 40 per cent of cases are due to delay in error, rather than substantive changes to their actual conditionality or eligibility. My question really is how do we make that system work better? Because we all know there's no going to be extra money. So how do we work? We've got what we've got, and we make the best decisions, and it's not just in issues like this. It's the best decisions in PIP assessments and work capability assessments, and the amount of those things that go back to appeal and are then overturned on appeal is huge. It's over 50 per cent. So how do we design a system that makes sure that we make the right decisions and the good, best decisions at the very start? Because for me that's the key element to preventative spend. Mark. I think that it comes back to the first question about the basic principles of the social security system. I think putting compassion and dignity at the heart of that and the idea that the system is there for what it's needed for, rather than there to always have that constant pressure of cutting expenditure, reducing expenditure, because I think that filters through all levels of decision making. And secondly, you also need to simplify the system quite a lot, I think. A lot of the decisions are due to the complexity of the system. But yeah, the other side of that is you do need welfare rights services. Their job is to go out, as you mentioned, to increase income, increase take-up, and that money is then used in local communities. So it's not wasted. It's used for what it's needed for and obviously to protect people from poverty. So yeah, simplifying the system, but the role of the welfare rights service also does involve checks and balances in the system. I think you're always going to need that to some extent. Could I ask... One of the things that we've heard some kind of contradictory evidence on winter fuel payments called weather payments, some people suggest that they should be merged. Some people have said that winter fuel payment eligibility should be extended. Age Scotland said that any changes would need to be sanctioned by older people themselves in winter fuel payments. Rights Advice Scotland said that cold weather payments should be abolished. What's your thoughts on how that system to help people through the vagaries of a Scottish winter should be addressed, Derek? Well, as you alluded to, convener, in our additional submission, which the committee has, we've given quite detailed evidence and statistics about how both of those payments are used. In principle, we don't agree that cold weather payments should be abolished because there clearly is an identifiable greater need for spending on your heating cost when ambient temperatures fall. There's a legitimate argument to say should it be a qualifying period be shorter than seven days or should it be less or more than zero? As far as I can see, these are technical aspects of it. I'm not sure how you could as easily implement one of the witnesses who gave out to you talked about the wind chill factor to be taken into account. Temperature is a statistical fact that's recorded by meteorological stations around the country. Wind chill seems to be much more subjective or subject to interpretation. One of the benefits of the way that the cold weather payments operates at the moment is that the criteria are clear, they're fair, they're understandable. If you wanted to tweak them, that would be fine, but you'd want to retain those elements. In particular, we've called for the cash payment element of it to be retained because of the number of Scottish properties that are off-grid, so you couldn't have a fuel bill discount in the same way for people who have heat their homes to peat or the bottle gas or oil or coal. It seems to work well, it's certainly popular amongst the people whom we know who receive it, and it's not a major element of spend, actually. In the last year, tens of thousands of pounds were spent because we had a milder winter. For the broader point about winter fuel payment, it's understandable that we made this point and John's alluded to it. It's the most significant element of the regulated social fund spend. It's £186 million per year. Given that, as Ms McKelvie has pointed out, there is not a lot of additional resources going to be available, there's not a lot of flexibility built in the suite of benefits that are coming under the Scotland Bill arrangement. It's not surprising that this is one of the ones that the Scottish Government is looking at to say could that level of investment achieve more? However, if you were to try and design a system like that which emphasised prevention perhaps by improving people's insulation heating systems and so on to save money and perhaps even save on your climate change through heat leakage, you'd have to do it in such a way that people didn't feel they were losing out where they were the sort of people who were the benefit that was designed to help in the first place because heating costs are such a large element of household bills, that's been increasing despite the fact that household incomes have remained fairly static and they are particularly static for pensioners because their incomes are fixed. John. First of all, on cold weather payments I very much agree they should be kept and retained. I just wonder about what's the evidence base for picking seven days of zero or below zero temperatures? Is that based on any medical or scientific criteria? Is it based on any look back over the weather statistics for Scotland to see how long, how many periods for seven days? It doesn't seem to be based on anything. Just an arbitrary figure that's pulled out of the air and perhaps somebody could do some kind of work on to find that. On winter fuel payments I think you've got to remember the value of these payments have been dreadfully eroded since 2001 when it was frozen in 2001 and of course since then, heating costs have doubled but the winter fuel payment has stayed absolutely the same. Moreover, the qualifying age for winter fuel payments which was 60 when it was first introduced in 1997 is now 63, it's about to go up to 65. We'll go up to 66, 67. The Westminster Parliament has offered a five-yearly review of retirement age. It could be 70 before you qualify for winter fuel payments at some point in the future. So the cost of the winter fuel payments is coming down just simply by changing the criteria on those who are eligible to receive it. I was very interested in what Age Scotland said about it would have to be sanctioned by older people. I mean, how do older people sanction a proposal by Government? Is there going to be a ballot of the over 63s to see whether they support it or not? I think not. Perhaps using older people's organisation as a kind of sounding board about any proposed changes would be a good idea. Ourselfs, the Scottish Pencillers Forum obviously are autonomous and we would take our own position in that. But there are other older people's groups of Scottish senior alliance, the National Pencillers Convention Scotland, the Scottish older people's assembly. Maybe they should be involved in discussions around this to decide what their view would be to any proposed changes from the Government. Certainly you would have to involve them, I think it would be a mistake not to involve them. Age would you suggest that winter fuel payments should start and are you also suggesting that there should be increases by the Scottish Government in that? I mean, any kind of changes in that direction. I mean, if we went back to 60, for example, as it was to begin with, then obviously there would be cost implications. If we stay where we are at the moment at 63, it would carry on much the same as it is at the moment. But if you don't increase the value of it from £100 to £100, £300 and so on, then the value of that to the actual person who received it is getting eroded year on, year on. Particularly as heating costs are going up much well above inflation and the actual winter fuel payment is staying the same. There are cost implications. It's not that you can't just wave a magic wand and let everybody get it, but you've got to try and find a way of making the system better and making sure that those people who need to get access to these payments get those access to those payments and that they do make a difference to their ability to heat their own homes because there was a big increase in excess winter deaths this year. I know there's all kinds of reasons why that may have happened to it, but the weather must have been a factor in that as well. John McAlpine? I just wanted to return to some of the discussion that we've maybe heard about fuel poverty and whether it's worth talking about diverting some of the money towards making homes warmer. I can see difficulties in that because I sit on the energy committee and in terms of the schemes that we have currently for alleviating fuel poverty, it can be difficult to get those people who are at the extreme end dealt with, you know, that it's been quite a blanket approach. I just wondered whether you wanted to reflect on that and whether you thought that there was a trade-off or whether it would be just too much of a challenge. Well, I think you're right, Mr McAlpine. The point that we were trying to make in our evidence was that there was an ambition stated in legislation to eradicate fuel poverty in Scotland by the end of next year. It's clear to us that I don't think that that's not going to happen. We're not on track to meet it. In fact, in some respect, we're actually going in the wrong direction. The benefit of the winter fuel payments offsets some of the increased cost and it's nearly universal. 96 per cent of people who are entitled to it get it automatically because they receive a qualifying benefit or a pension. So, if you were to try and seek to replace one element of it with a more preventative approach, for which there is an incredible argument in trying to do that, you would have to phase it in in such a way that the people who needed it the most didn't lose out. That's essentially the principle we're trying to, you know, thinking about how that could be done. And it's not easy because, as you've alluded to, there are already schemes to try and improve people's insulation or improve their heating systems, the green deal and the warm deal, for example. And the take-up rates for both of those schemes has not been as high as people wanted when those schemes were created. So, you could have a renewed focus in trying to increase the take-up rates. You could improve public information to try and spread public awareness. You could do all of these things. But if you simply say to people, we're stopping the winter fuel payment or we're cutting it back drastically and there's an availability of a better boiler or insulation but you're not going to get it, then that sounds like a very pure deal for the individual concerned. And that's our principle concern that we're trying to articulate and then also see if you can build in a way of meeting that concern in whatever system you design. Thanks, convener. I think that there is room to maybe link the programmes up a bit because there's the home energy efficiency programme and then there's the cold weather payments and the winter fuel payments and obviously there's different criteria for different ones. The home energy extends to low-income families with a child under 16. There's the cold weather payments with a child under five. I mean, I think if it was just more consistent, we'd obviously say a child under 16 would be better to extend it rather than cut it back when you make it more consistent. But yeah, I think it's very confusing for people, am I eligible for this or that or should it just be made automatically like the winter fuel payment? I think it's maybe worth saying that in terms of the evidence that we took on fuel poverty at the energy committee last week is that even in the most successful schemes where houses are properly insulated, bills don't necessarily go down. It just means that for the money that people are spending, they're not freezing. So it doesn't necessarily save the individual money even in the most successful cases. John, were you suggesting that cold weather payments should be extended to everyone who is in receipt of winter fuel payments? I was just suggesting that there should really be some kind of evidential basis for the seven-day period. It seems to me that it just was pulled out there as a seven-day period. On that point about putting a new heating system into somebody's house, it doesn't necessarily solve fuel poverty. I remember when I was in the Scottish Parliament in its first session, we took evidence from many groups and represented people. At that time, there was a scheme to put in new heating systems. They said that the problem is that people can't afford to run the heating systems once they're in because the bills are too high and they turn it off. We've got to get down to that kind of level of understanding of people who are in fuel poverty. What do they want? They want enough money to meet the bills that are coming through the door so that they can keep their heating on. Just taking money away from winter fuel payments to invest in energy efficiency. How much energy efficiency are you going to get in part of £186 million a year? Not a lot, I would suggest. You would put a lot of people at risk by doing that by removing that payment problem and reducing it as well. Why didn't you support the extension of cold weather payments to all those in the city of winter fuel payment? Because you said earlier on that you were against the next test. I would do it, but I'm realistic. The Scottish Parliament are not going to suddenly be giving an extra millions of pounds on their budget from Westminster. They're going to have to work within the budget they get. Plus, you've all got to get re-elected in 2016, and I'm sure that very few will be going to their polls arguing for higher taxes for everybody all around to fund this new utopian welfare system that you're going to bring in. Realistically, there will be a cost attached to extending those things. If you're going to do it, you really have to do your sums and find where the money is going to come from in the first place. Kevin Stewart. I want to change the topic if possible and refer to the written submission by CPag on the work programme. They say that the policy and operation of the work programme will be restricted by UK sanctions regime. They gave a very good example of someone who was on the work programme and was restricted from going into a one-year apprenticeship. I wonder if we could hear more from Mr Willis about CPag's view on that. The sanctions regime is primarily part of jobseekers allowance. It's also in employment and support allowance and income support, and they're not being devolved, so they're reserved. People still have to meet those conditions, and if they're deemed not to be meeting those conditions, then obviously they can be sanctioned. Power over the work programme might change that to some extent, but ultimately the final decision would still be with the DWP about whether to impose a sanction or not. As we've seen, they are imposed quite unfairly in a lot of cases, a lot of overturned. There's huge concerns, a lot of evidence about the inappropriate use of sanctions. One that you highlight is an apprenticeship case in which somebody was offered a one-year apprenticeship to allow them to come off of JSA through the Glasgow City Council Commonwealth Jobs Fund, and yet the job centre said that they couldn't go on that because they had to stay on the work programme for two years. All of that seems somewhat illogical to me because apprenticeship normally leads to greater opportunity, but we've seen from evidence that we've received in the past few weeks that the work programme in the bulk of cases does not. Does all of that strike you as being completely illogical? Is it illogical for Westminster to devolve the work programme and then keep the sanctioning regime in place so that we can take these decisions and put common sense into play? Ultimately, yes. I dealt with that particular case. It seemed to be one where bureaucracy had just taken over. The job centre seemed to be, you have to do this, you have to complete this, and they didn't look at anything else. The fact that that individual had found something by themselves that they wanted to do, they were left with the choice of just walking away from the job centre and saying, I'm going to do it anyway and then running the risk of future sanctions and so on if they were to come back. It was just eventually a question of the person who was helping to arrange the place, talking to the person at the job centre and, as you say, using some common sense. It's amountable, but I think it's part of the current climate. The pressures on DWP staff and job centre staff are so great that there's very little room for common sense at the moment, but that system could be improved is perhaps the other way of looking at it. It could be improved even more if the conditionality aspects were devolved as well so that we can put in a system that is more illogical than the current one. That would be one way of doing it, yeah? Thank you. Would you suggest that, in cases where in Scotland or through whatever the benefit agency is in Scotland, you perceive that a benefit sanction from DWP is inappropriate, that the Scottish Government should use its powers to then recompense that person who's lost benefit as a result? That would be one way of doing it. It might not be a very satisfactory way. The crisis grant can, as it is at the moment under the Scottish welfare fund, step in for very short periods of time, but I think the other way of dealing with it would be to try and change the UK-wide programme of sanctions and the rules around sanctions, which, yeah, obviously isn't in our power directly here, but, yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, generally, I think sanctions are often inappropriate and it would be better to use a carrot approach rather than a stick, but that's... Yeah, no, we've heard evidence that sanctions are inappropriate. They seem to be target-driven, quite cruel in their effect, but I was just wondering whether, if we perceive anyone did lose out as we perceived it unfairly, whether we should use our new powers to then make sure that that person suffers no loss of income as a result? Yeah, that would seem not a good idea. Okay, clear. I'm just a little bit interested in your last comments. We've taken... We had an informal discussion with Pretty Patel recently who told us that the system is person-centred and the DWP is absolutely focused on the individual in these cases, but he talked about the pressures on DWP staff. Now, we were constantly told there's no targets. There aren't any there. Could you just maybe explain to us, maybe the other panel members, what their understanding of those pressures are? Well, whether or not there's formal targets, I think there is a name to get people off jobseekers allowance one way or another to reduce the numbers, but that doesn't necessarily mean people are into work. People often seem to be slipping through the net and the kind of cases that we hear are... Yeah, you certainly find a lot of people with significant health problems who claim in jobseekers allowance because they haven't met the criteria for employment and support allowance, but then they often find that those health problems are not properly taken into account and they haven't been able to do something because of their health problems that they're not adequately protected. Even though, yes, in the policy, in the regulations, there should be some protection if you look at it very closely and you know it very well, but as he mentioned, there's volumes of GDP staff and they do have quite high turnover and they move to different areas of responsibility. The pressure's obviously also, whether it's political pressure or whether it's just of their workload and the fact that they're very busy and new to certain areas that a sanction seems like perhaps the easiest option, rather than sitting down and trying to talk to someone a bit more and find out about their personal issues. Thank you. Do you have a case in Perth and Cymru? Where we had one chap approached the Scottish Welfare Fund and he'd been sanctioned for three years. When we had a welfare rights person also can interview the guy and it turned out that it had a high function or not as I mean he shouldn't have been on jobseekers allowance in the first place. So we obviously put steps in place where challenged the decision mandatory reconsideration and that was overturned and we got them on the right benefit employment and support allowance. Mark made the point really well. We call it the sanction limbo in the office. People who can't meet the conditions for jobseekers allowance who also aren't ill enough to pass the test for employment and support allowance and the ping pong between ourselves and the Scottish Welfare Fund for Crisis Grant being sanctioned and being refused benefit employment and support allowance and there's nowhere for these people, they don't fit. Assurances it's a person-centred approach we have a situation where we have sanctioned limbo. In that case, yes. Do you tell me three years that that is unbelievable? How did that person survive during that period? The sanction was for three years but had just got the decision he hadn't actually been on a sanction for three years. The decision was that the service allowance was stopped and it would be stopped for three years. The decision was to suspend for three years? Yeah. That I think since October 2012 when the sanction regime changed there have been 79 three-year sanctions in Scotland. Right, okay. Mark and then Christina. Yeah, I was just going to add there the three years are the maximum and that's for a repeat when someone's done something wrong usually three times. Also there are hardship payments which are set at 60% of the basic allowance. You have to know about them you have to ask for them. Some people are left with nothing. Last question Christina. Thanks very much and it leads on to this and it's directed at Mark because it's a clear element of the evidence and it talks about those people that are caught in limbo that are between GISA and ESA and they then go through the appeal process and I see Mark from your evidence that you said a client looked for medical evidence for ESA appeal. The medical council in South Lanarkshire have told GPs not to provide letters for patients for benefit purposes. Is that still the case? I don't know if it's still the case in that particular area but it is certainly common that it varies a lot between even just individual GP practices whether they charge for doing that whether they have a policy of not doing it unless the DWP or the tribunal request it. Sometimes what they said in that case they'd only do it if it was requested by the DWP or the tribunal not by the individual or an advice agency. Sort of a back-up evidence that I took when I went on a visit for the committee to the Amina women's project and some of them were saying no, my GP will give me a letter and others will say that my GP won't do it at all. Is that inconsistency that you are talking about the most vulnerable people here? That medical evidence is absolutely rightful for a number of different reasons. It could be related to getting a claimant commitment about taking their condition into account when they are job seeking or it could be about disability benefits and employment support allowance and just having the basic entitlement conditions met. OK, thank you. I'll leave the last word to our panel members. Anyone, Derek? Yes, I just wanted to come in on the question that's been raised of sanctions and conditionalities. Obviously, those apply in the main to working age benefits as they're defined but one thing to note, as the and John's mentioned this, as the definition of the state pension age is increasing the definition of working age is also increasing and one of the things that's in our original evidence and John's outcomes for older job seekers are actually considerably worse. There isn't much expertise about trying to help a 62, 63, 64-year-old back into work. It used to be the case that the benefit of the social security regime had an element of understanding of that and that seems to have been reducing with the effect of the 2012 welfare reforms. One thing I'll also say is there's an effect of sanctions in that it can dissuade people from applying for things to which they may be entitled because they fear there will be negative consequences for them in the future. Anyone else? Nicola? Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. Mae. A pwynt yna masgrifth i unlikewanach there haven't been any question about that particular light and it's just about the Scottish Welfare Fund and where there are obviously lots of overlaps with Shark yeahした ultar net grant, we have occasions where new mums are applying to the fund because the window for applications is too short and and the found out about sharks ant, renau gratitude a great, and the then go without the £500that similar to when subsidy is full, the status has not been increased since 2002. That has remained static at £500. Often, in the Scottish welfare fund, we are making awards for cuts, for buggies and prams because of the short window. On universalism, I would argue against that. 57,000 children are born in Scotland a year. Siametniad yn bod 19% i'r Rhwbeth sy'n mynd i gael i ystafellu eu sifftu'r cyllidau i gael i dda, lleiw, ffordd a'r twyr i fod iawn i cysig familiaid? Rwy'n mynd i chi'n ddod yn gweithio arnoeddu o'r cyllidau seithio, a'r cyllidau seithio yn y ddod yn lleiw o'u cyllidau, ond ond mae'n ddod ei'n ddod yn cael eu ddod, ac mae'n wneud i gael i'r cyllidau seithio arnoeddu, yn gwybod i wneud i gael ei ddweud yn gweithio, i gael gweithio cyst-dweith, yn cyfnodol, yn cyfrannu cynhyrchu'r gwybod i gael gweithio, yn gyfnodol lleol, yn gyfer gwaith y gwerthfawr, yn gweithio'r gwerthfawr, yn cyfrannu cymdeithasol, os yw ddigwydd. Felly, gennym y cyfnodol i gael ei ddweud. Rhaid i wneud, yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gwaith, mae'n gweithio i gael gwaith. a wneud ond rwy'n llawer a'i gferwadau i'r ddebyg. Felly, rwy'n olygu'n gwaith mai'r pannog a'i dweud tŷ yn gweithio y llôn. Felly, ddim roi'n gweithio bod chi'n gweithio i'r desg y maeddiadau. Felly, rwy'n gweithio i'r ddweud i'r ddweud ond fe ddydd ym mwy o'r ysgol yn gweithio. Rwy'n gweithio i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud. Nicola had the last word. You've made a number of pertinent points. I think you've left us a lot to reflect on. Certainly a very challenging last comment, but unfortunately we do have another panel sitting waiting to come in. Thank you very much for your contribution. If that will suspend the meeting until we get the panel in. If we could reconvene the meeting and welcome our new panel. We have David Isar, research fellow at the University of Stirling, Professor Nicola McEwen, Professor of Politics and Associate Director of Centre and Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Paul Spickard, Professor of Public Policy and Professor Allan Trench Institute for Public Policy Research. Welcome. We've heard some conflicting views about how a new benefits or welfare system in Scotland should be delivered. There are tensions between those that believe that it should be organised and delivered nationally, those who believe that there should be local decision making, some differences of opinion about whether there should be a system that applies universally across the country or some people suggesting certain things, some benefits should be targeted. Of course, in the last few weeks there's been some concentration on what powers the Scottish Government will have to offset any decisions made by Westminster that are perceived to be unfair or not appropriate to the Scottish scene. Can I ask you whether you think that we would be in a position with the changes that have been made at Westminster to be able to make decisions that are different than in a UK benefit framework decisions that are different and that we use our own powers and our own budgets to protect people in the way that we see appropriate? How do you see the new powers being used to deliver what a number of our observers and contributors have said should be the fundamental elements of fairness, dignity and respect? I start from my own point of view. It might be worth me just emphasising that I'm not strictly able to speak for the industry of public policy research, but I was one of the co-authors of their report, Divo Morland Welfare, which outlined many of the key elements of welfare devolution that manifested themselves through the Smith commission's report. Personally, I'm looking at the Scotland bill in the form that it was before report stage yesterday, so I may be slightly out of date because I'm not quite sure of exactly which amendments were accepted and which weren't, but assuming the Government amendments were accepted and no others were during yesterday's report stage debate, I think it broadly does that and it broadly delivers the model of what we call supplemental welfare in our Divo Morland Welfare report. However, it has one material and fairly significant shortcoming, which is essentially the gap between what's done by clause 21 in the bill and the power to top up existing benefits and the power in clause 23 to introduce new discretionary benefits, because the power in clause 23 is limited to short term payments. Our vision in the work that we did was that that should be a broad and general power, so it shouldn't be limited necessarily either to existing benefits or to short term arrangements. It could well be used for substantial long-term arrangements for new categories of claimants. Looking behind that, I have a concern and I've had the advantage of listening to much of your previous evidence session that what there is a great deal of talk about, it would seem, is finding ways of adjusting an existing UK regime. Part of the objective that we were seeking to achieve was to enable Scotland in significant ways to have a different regime, if it wanted to, that would sit alongside and, in a sense, on top of the UK-wide regime. I don't think that there are constitutional barriers to doing things differently in those areas that are devolved, so the specific devolved benefits, disability benefits and so on, apart from perhaps around the edges, and Paul will have something to say on disability benefits, I'm sure. Clearly there are financial barriers, there are finite resources within the Scottish block grant and that would be an issue of priorities for whoever was in government, but the first point that you made was around the bureaucracy and delivery. I think that that would be a barrier to redesigning those benefits where you decide that the delivery would be better done on a UK-wide basis. I don't think that there's a right and wrong answer to whether there should be uniform systems of delivery or whether there should be Scottish-specific ones that are strengths and weaknesses to both, but one of the weaknesses of a UK-wide system is that it constrains the ability of a Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, to design policies that would significantly diverge from the UK-wide policies, because the system simply couldn't cope with it. Of course, one of the weaknesses of doing it separately and differently is that you don't have the bureaucracy, you would have to build it potentially or strengthen the capacity of local government to deliver those sorts of services. That would be costly in the short term for sure, but in the long term it would open up the scope to do things differently. You asked that the outset of a fairly broad question and there are some fairly broad answers to it. In political terms and economic terms it may be exceedingly difficult for Scotland to vary the terms on which benefits are delivered. We have the precedents both of the Irish Republic and of Northern Ireland, which has had substantial devolved competence since before the formation of the Irish Free State. Despite the formalities, the constraints in practice that are experienced in Northern Ireland are very substantial. Currently, they are being effectively found by the Treasury for failing to make changes that are deemed putatively to save money, even though the savings may be in question. That is a sign that, regardless of what the legal powers say, the practical constraints and the economic constraints may be used substantially to limit what Scotland can do. If we look at the legal powers contained within the new Scotland Bill, then in many points they are circumscribed. There are qualifications to ensure that what is being devolved is not the power to make benefits but rather the devolution of the benefits themselves in their current form. At each point, there will be points of friction, points where it may be desirable and appropriate to start thinking about things differently and yet being unable to do so because the competences are explicitly limited. We start with the position from the 1998 act where all benefits are reserved unless they are specifically accepted. Then we move in the Scotland Bill to a position where there are a range of exceptions, often very obscurely worded, and sometimes there are exceptions to the exceptions. We have to try to read the tea leaves to work out what it is going to be possible legally to do, but we take those barriers together. First, the question of competence, second, the question of what is being permitted by the Treasury and by the Department for Work and Pensions. I consider that those obstacles are very substantial and it will take a great deal of ingenuity and willingness to overcome them. On that issue of competence and practicality, the controversy over the last few weeks about tax credits, will we have the power to compensate those who would lose out because of UK Government decisions? I think that that would be excessively difficult to do in lots of ways. One of them is clearly the sheer cost. The cost aside, do you have the power to do it, if you so wish? I think that the difficulty with this in practical terms is that tax credits are based on the assessment of income, which is a fluctuating condition, accumulated over long periods of time, extensive amounts of information are required. The only way that a restoration of the system would be possible would be by piggybacking on to the existing HMRC computer systems. Realistically, I cannot see a way in which that can effectively be done in any practical sense. If we are talking about top-ups meaningfully, it cannot be done the way that housing benefit was done. Housing benefit was very distinctive. We had housing benefit being managed by local authorities. We could pay the local authorities to make up the difference and to keep things as they were. However, I do not think that we are going to be seeing that in relation to many, if any, other benefits. What we are going to need to do to top up is effectively to create something that could be best described as a new benefit, which is conditional on receipt of the previous benefit. That is the only practical way of delivering top-ups in many circumstances. The new clause that was introduced at report stage is potentially quite significant and far reaching. It suggests that leaving aside sanctions, because it is specifically written into the clause as not being applicable. However, if you had a situation in which the UK Government decided to restrict benefit entitlement—in the case of housing benefit for under-21s—it would be an example. My understanding is that that new clause would give the Scottish Parliament the competence to introduce a new benefit that served the purpose that had been vacated by the UK Government. You would then have the two Parliaments operating in the same space for the same purpose. That is quite new. It might mean that, in the future, a different Government decided to reinstate those benefits for under-21s. You would have an issue there of the two Governments having to talk to each other, but it would not remove the competence that the Scottish Parliament had. You could, over the longer term, see that you might have the emergence of two distinctive welfare systems, in some cases, doing similar things. Clearly, there are practical issues and financial issues, but constitutionally, I think that it does open up the scope. Just to pick up on the point about tax credits and the extent to which the Scotland bill powers would enable the Scottish Government to mitigate those, it is worth saying that there is a timing issue in that the tax credits or cuts will start to happen before those powers come to Scotland anyway. The Smith Commission proposals, as they were first set out, envisaged the Scottish Government being able to top up benefit rates—that is to say, eligible amounts in the language of the tax credits. However, what is critical in terms of tax credits and the tax credits cuts are the work allowances and the taper rates. From the UK Government's £10 billion worth of envisaged savings from tax credits cuts, around £4 billion comes from freezing of the eligible rates, but £6 billion actually comes from reducing the work allowance and increasing the taper, so that is to say reducing the amount of income that people can earn before their tax credits are withdrawn and then increasing the speed at which their tax credits are withdrawn. It is not clear to me at the moment from the way the legislation is set out to what extent the Scottish Government will be able to top up these eligible rates only with the work allowance and the taper still being reserved. If that was the case, there would be some interesting implications for benefit topping up for work incentives and so on, or to what extent the new powers will actually, in theory, enable the Scottish Government to undo, if you like, the full effect of the cuts taking into account the eligible rates, the work allowance and the taper. Even if, in theory, they could do that, there are, of course, huge practical issues around the administration of that. At the moment, tax credits are, of course, an HMRC issue, but by the time those powers come to Scotland, we will have probably moved into a universal credit world where that benefit will be administered by DWP. There are a huge set of issues therefore around how we identify the people in Scotland that have been affected and how we administer those top ups, if you like. I might say a very wee word, convener. I would take the view that, legally, there is a power within the framework of the bill to top up tax credits, but the practical difficulties that Professor Smyker and David Iser start to elaborate seem to me to make it hugely difficult, if not utterly impossible, to accomplish that. Very specific then, thank you very much for your evidence. Clause 21, top up benefits, clause 23, short term. One of the things that David Iser touched on is that we need to realise that a tax credit is a tax allowance almost, whereas other benefits are benefits and are defined very differently in those aspects. If there is a possibility of it changing over to the DWP, then some of that data sharing that we need to go on would maybe be alleviated, so fair enough. However, for me what really bothers me and Professor Trench just touched on that then, if the Scottish Government takes the view of topping up a benefit of the tax credits allowance, we couldn't get an answer out. Nobody could get an answer out of the UK Government in the debate last night and I was a total anorak and watched most of it, but nobody could get an answer. If that person is eligible for that, because the next question is about eligibility, and we top it up because they have lost it, does it get clod back pound for pound by the UK Government because it is seen as additional income on the levels where people are allowed to earn, and that is the tapers that David Iser was talking about? Will it just be clod back? Will we give Peter and it will be robbed by Paul? Well, the Smith commission did specifically address that issue to say that that should not be what happens, but clearly there has to be a legislative agreement to avoid benefits reacting to each other iteratively to produce an effect. I think in some ways that the way that the clauses that you refer to have been expressed have been based on a misunderstanding about something really quite important to benefits administration, they both are headed with the word discretionary. Now the second of these clause 23 is discretionary in the way that the social fund was and now that the Scottish welfare fund is, but we have precedence, long-standing precedence in social security law relating to discretionary benefits, and discretionary simply means that it is within the power of government to say that they are established or not. The supplementary benefits commission had an extensive system of rule-based discretion. Some of us, the longest in the tooth, may remember exceptional circumstances additions and exceptional needs payments which existed prior to 1980. Those were not exceptional in the sense of not having rules, they were exceptional in the sense that there were differentiations being made for particular claimants. So the force of what we have here actually does allow for top ups to be made and top ups to be made on a rule on the basis of a rule rather than being one-off or unusual or ad hoc payments as the DWP documentation seems to think it must mean. So there's enough space within the law. The biggest issue that we have here are the practicalities. How does one get to know that somebody is fully entitled to a benefit so that the benefit can be topped up and for that it relies at every point on either co-operation or some form of certification or passporting? I think it depends on how the no detriment principles are interpreted and applied and I don't think that that comes within the legislation but that will, one assumes, come within whatever agreement is reached through the fiscal framework. If the situation that you alluded to were to be permissible I cannot say that this would be sustainable because it just undermines the autonomy that this legislation grants. So I'm not any more privy to the negotiations on the fiscal framework than anyone else but it will be interesting to see how they resolve that. Applying the no detriment principles is fraught with difficulty, enormously complex and I think that both Governments will probably look for a minimalist rule-based application but that's exactly the kind of issue that would have to be addressed within that agreement. I think that it's fairly clear that tax credits are indeed a benefit for the purposes of the Scotland Act at least. There is a real legal peculiarity here. The legal peculiarity briefly is that when tax credits were introduced in 1999 they were defined as replacing certain benefits. The tax credits act 1999 in its entirety was repealed by the tax credits act 2002 which created the system of tax credits that we have today which therefore completely replaced the previous ones so they're legally quite different creatures even though they happen to share the same name and that can create an ambiguity about what their status is but the framing of what benefits are for the purpose of the reservation in head F of the Scotland Act 1998 is sufficiently broad that I'm fairly clear in my own mind that it includes tax credits so they constitute a benefit for those purposes even if it's unclear and it's not perhaps the most polluted piece of drafting that one's ever seen. I think it's equally clear that in principle there shouldn't be any clawback and I think the legislation in the circumstances you've suggested and I think the legislation delivers that but the legislation is framed in a very complex way and more broadly that is a wider concern I'd have about the current state of the Scotland bill that given the way it's approached welfare devolution it's done it by creating a set of exceptions to the reservation so you have a general grant of powers under the act to the parliament you then have a reservation of specific functions in relation to social security exceptions to that reservation exceptions to those exceptions to preserve reservations in certain areas this is a highly complex way of doing it there would have been at least two alternative ways of addressing this issue in terms of the framing of the legislation and that's a matter of regret that well one would have been to reframe schedule for schedule f in its entirety so that you reserve specific areas of benefit activity and grant the rest to the parliament the other is a suggestion that you don't actually use reservation as the mechanism legally to accomplish this but you use creating an exception and therefore you move these provisions from schedule five of the act to schedule four of the act and you preserve the legislation that relates to the UK wide benefits that are going to be preserved there now that doesn't deal with the practical questions of how you then administer benefits it doesn't deal with the questions of how you fund them but it does deal with the legal questions okay on eligibility one of the biggest issues that i think face all of us in these new powers and and the timescale for these new powers is that 80,000 families in scotland will be hit by a tax credit cut come this april 80,000 families and we're looking at not having some of these powers to 2017 or 2018 you know at the earliest any ideas how we fill that gap can that gap be filled once that eligibility is lost can we restate it i think that there is a difficulty at present which is that it there's not simply that which is happening there are many more changes and effectively this becomes a question of priorities the scotish government with the best will on the will cannot possibly hope to mitigate and fill in the all the cuts which have currently been taking place across the piece so it's a question of priorities i think i'm afraid that there have to be greater priorities i would point for example within the esa to the effect of the assessment process and reassessment um and in particular the problems of sanctions which have led to something in excess of a fifth of all unemployed people having their income stopped altogether for extended periods i think that there are things which can be done about that i think there are things which can be done about that now within the scope of existing powers and would be happy to elaborate if given the opportunity but i think that we do we do need seriously to determine where the priorities are professors biker that the top-up benefits cannot be used to replace sanctioned benefits it is my view that top-up benefits cannot be used i think that that particular point is is largely clear though there are some weasel words in section 23 coming through um as it currently stands i think that what's actually happening with sanctions um is of questionable legality in other ways um the case has been made most strongly recently by emeritus professor michael adler in um in a posting in which he questions the legality in administrative law of a system in which punishment proceeds hearing and i think that there are certainly grounds to challenge this within the existing scope of scottish law is your view that this current scotland act of scotland bill and its current form does not allow us to use top-up benefits to replace sanctions that is my understanding of the act but i would point here particularly to the wording of section 23 which includes um an clauses saying unless and it says the requirement for it also arises from some exceptional event or exceptional circumstances now i've already commented on the language of exceptionality and it seems to me that any point at which the administration departs from the accepted cannons of just a natural justice and administrative law could be considered exceptional thank you can i just answer some clarification on your reference to the emeritus professor when he was saying um about punishment proceeding hearing and that there was no basis for that in scott's law um was he simply referring to scotland or was he reflecting on the UK so could we in effect have a different legal challenge in scotland to the rest of the UK he wasn't only referring to scot's law sorry you really must invite him and to uh to to put to put his argument for himself he wasn't only referring to that i however in my submission to you pointed out that there are issues here about accessibility to justice why are we not seeing a bombardment of legal cases for judicial review of administrative action and there are a number of reasons for that it's an expensive process it's a complex process it's extremely expert it's extremely inaccessible but there is a powerful case for this to be taken forward there are further barriers there is for example something called the anti-test case rule which a decision of the house of lords um from the 1990s which effectively means that even if it is shown that this is illegal that there will not be any redress for the vast majority of claimants who have suffered it that again seems to me to be something that must be within legislative competence relating to administrative law but i'd pass the professor drench on that sure about that but i there certainly wouldn't be i can't see there'll be any meaningful difference between scot's law and the law the other part laws of the other parts of the united kingdom when it comes to the principle of administrative law and indeed i'd point you to article to article 19 of the treaty of union which provides that the public law of all parts of the united kingdom shall be the same yes and to go back to the actual practicalities of this matter obviously the tax credits are currently with hmrc and they're moving to dwp hmrc in terms of the Scottish rate of income tax is going to charge us a good whack for administering it for us how they would be able to administer the complexity of tax credits for scotland i don't know but if it goes over to the if it's going over to the dwp which it is this committee has taken a huge amount of evidence on administrative problems within the dwp at the moment you know the the length of time of PIP assessments the delays to universal credit at the moment how on earth are they going to be able to administer a separate system for scotland would you think it's feasible that they would even agree to such a thing sorry is that direct to me or it's feasible and indeed i believe Lord O'Donnell former cabinet's UK cabinet secretary it suggested that that was the way forward through what he called service level agreement between dwp and Scottish Government I would share your concerns Ms McAlpine's concerns and i think dwp is likely to have grave difficulties coping with something additional quite apart from the question of administrative costs and and how those are dealt with and i think that that starts look like quite a strong argument to create a Scottish agency to deliver this and to take advantage of the provisions that are in the bill for data sharing for information sharing between the two Governments about claimants in order to provide at least a basis of information about what's going on and who is entitled to what. Just on that point of data sharing, Justina McElvie just started to remove the private session was raising some suggestions or questions about local authorities taking data from claimants and being able to share that and to use it as a single point of entry. Would that protocol or whatever it is on data sharing then apply to an arrangement between the Scottish Government and local authorities as well as an arrangement between the two Governments? An interesting and complicated question which I wouldn't try to answer straight away. Clause 29 of the bill is dealing with data sharing and provides for a fairly comprehensive interchange of information between the Secretary of State, meaning UK DWP Secretary particularly in this case but there will be other possibly other Secretaries of State as well. There is a legal fiction it's worth noting that the Secretary of State in the UK legislation means any Secretary of State. It is one indivisible office held by a multiplicity of individuals and the Scottish Ministers. There's clearly a power to share information between the UK Government and Scottish Ministers. The question of whether the Scottish Ministers have power to share that data then with local authorities in Scotland is another question and that's one that I would want to think about very hard. I think that it's an important one. It's a simple one, but I think that for the folk out there that are going to be the customers here, if that's what they're called within the system, will be interested in this. The DWP can't answer letters. They have a 15 month waiting time for assessments. They're currently not fit for purpose and I'm just interested in whether they're capable of delivering a further adjustment to already complicated tax credits in Scotland and how much do you think they're going to charge us for it? A large number of benefits that currently are too complex to be administered. What typically they have in common is a number of moving parts, all of which have to be moved into alignment for things to work. I'm going to take a very simple example, which has been devolved to Scotland and that's funeral payments. Funeral payments as currently they stand have several moving parts. That is, you need to know about the personal status and the income of the claimant, the personal status and relationships of the deceased, the resources available to the estate, the arrangements that have been made for the funeral and the reason why the individual in question is claiming rather than somebody else doing it. You end up with a 36 page form for what should be a perfectly simple process. Too many questions, too many elements. If we look at the series of administrative failures that have been in the past, housing benefit, child support, tax credits, which the ombudsman condemned as being fundamentally unsuited to the needs of low income families and now universal credit, they have in common a presumption that we can get, that we can process information that simply can't be done. When we go to claimants we find that we're asking claimants questions they can't reasonably answer. A simple one, are you disabled? We know from surveys that fully three quarters of people with disabilities either say they're not disabled or they're disabled sometimes, they don't know the answers. So what we're asking systems to do is to cope with complex human problems by mechanical processes. I'm afraid it can't be done and the only way we're going to get around this is by seeking to get a range of simpler, more direct benefits. I think that the legislation places an obligation on DWP to accommodate differences within those areas of competence, so differences at the margins on the delivery of how frequently it's paid to whom and on the housing component. My understanding is that I appreciate the experience for claimants has been difficult but the IT system that's at the heart of universal credit was designed to accommodate those minor differences. I'm not at all confident that it could accommodate bigger differences where DWP to be asked to enter into that sort of service level agreement, nor am I confident that they would want to. They certainly wouldn't be obligated to. I take it just as what you're saying, as the reversing tax credit cuts is a very significant change. That's not what it was designed for. No, that's not what it was designed for. I suspect that the legal opinion to determine that that was within competence anyway, perhaps within the new broader clause, would be more likely to be a matter for the Scottish Government to invest in the means to deliver its new policy priorities. It may be open to intergovernmental negotiation to do something differently, but it certainly couldn't happen quickly. As well as having to make good the massive cuts to the tax credit share, you're also talking about a huge administration burden as well. Just to add to what's been said, you're right that the main barrier to varying the benefit system is not political will or even financial resources. I think it's the administrative barrier. We hope that the fiscal framework, when it's published, will set out some protocols about how the administrative cost of making some of these variations might be arrived at. There's another cost that may need to be factored in, and that's around knock-on no-detriment issues, if you like. Were the Scottish Government to make changes to the existing benefits system, if the UK Government felt that that had some further implications on its budget somewhere, how would those costs be arrived at and estimated? That, again, is something that we hope that the fiscal framework will provide some guidance on, but the fiscal framework is being developed at the moment. You're saying that the fiscal framework is very important, and it's not just an abstract thing, because it could result in Scotland losing huge amounts of money if we're charged unfairly for the administration of those kind of benefits? The financial implications go both ways, but yes, the fiscal framework is going to be critical in terms of determining how those new powers influence Scotland's block grant and how the Scottish resource will change in respect of other devolved powers that don't involve a change to the block grant specifically, and also issues around how the no-detriment costs are arrived at and levels of borrowing and so on that the Scottish Government will have available to it. There's a whole set of really critical issues that the fiscal framework will need to look at that sit below, if you like, the Scotland Bill, which is not to say below in terms of importance, but the Scotland Bill has obviously had a lot of coverage at the moment. We wait to see what the fiscal framework will look like. Thank you, convener, and I'm glad that during this session we've come to the conclusion that the Scotland Bill specifically states that we cannot top up any sanctions, because we were going in the wrong way in the last session and I wanted to correct that, but I'm glad that you've confirmed that. One of the things about all of this is that the financing and the fiscal governance of all of this really hasn't been discussed to any huge degree yet, so the powers have been debated. We are where we are this morning, after some of yesterday's debacle, but the reality is that what you are saying is that some of these things may not be possible anyway because of practicality or because of us not having the money to do so. If I could turn to Mr Eisner's paper in particular where you talk about a future indexation of devolved benefits to the block grant, what would happen if, for example, a future UK Government or even this UK Government at a point decided that they weren't going to pay out in a particular benefit any more? If Scotland decided to do so, what would the impact be on the block grant if the UK Government decided to get rid of PIP and Scotland decided to keep it? The Smith commission was fairly clear that, in terms of Scotland's block grant, the sensible starting point is the existing status quo, the Barnett formula, and we add to Scotland's block grant in the first year that the new welfare powers have devolved the level of resource equivalent to spending on those devolved benefits in that year. Subsequently, that addition to the block grant has to be indexed to UK Government spending on those benefits, and that indexation basically serves two main purposes. Firstly, it acts to estimate, if you like, what the UK Government would have spent on those devolved benefits in Scotland had they not been devolved, so that goes back to those no-detriment ideas. The second objective of the indexation is to effectively protect Scotland from UK-wide fluctuations in benefit expenditure. However, what it clearly means is that the part of the grant to the Scottish Government to pay for those devolved welfare benefits is inextricably linked to what the UK Government spends on those benefits in the rest of the UK. The detail of the indexation is still to be resolved. It might be an indexation on the basis of total spending on the devolved benefits or spending per capita. Those two options, and there are potentially more options, have implications in the long run for the level of resource that the Scottish Government will have to resource those benefits in addition to its other revenues. However, the implication would be that, in the hypothetical scenario that you talk about, that PIP is no more assuming that it is not replaced by any other benefit for people with disabilities or sickness, that would have an implication for the Scottish Block Grant. In the extreme case of a future UK Government taking the axe to a particular benefit that we chose to keep here, the money would not follow for us to retain that particular benefit. There would be a financial implication here because of the policy decision taken by a UK Government. Yes, in the same way that, at the moment, if the UK Government was to drastically cut NHS spending, that would have an implication on the Scottish Government Block Grant. Although, of course, the way that the Barnett formula works is done on changes rather than on absolute spending, which does complicate matters slightly. However, of course, there is a link between UK Government spending and the Scottish Government Block Grant. You state in your paper that, over the period 2020-2021, the spending forecast of the UK Government suggested that the level of resources transferred to the Scottish Government will decline in real terms when it comes to welfare. On the basis of the UK Government's spending review, it is aiming to make significant savings on the transfer of DLA to PIP. It is also envisaging a reduction in spending on the winter fuel payment, largely because of the increase in the state pension age. On average, the benefits that are being transferred to Scotland, the UK Government is expecting to reduce spending on those in real terms over the course of this Parliament. Again, the detail of how the indexation happens has yet to be worked out, but you would not expect, on that basis, the addition to Scotland's Block Grant to be increasing drastically from the existing expenditure of £2.5 billion over time. Of course, there is a number of caveats, but one is that spending plans quite often do not meet with spending reality. In actual fact, if the UK Government did not meet its spending plans on those benefits and spending were to increase in the UK, the grant to the Scottish Government would increase as well. It would be fair to say that, at the time that those powers transfer here, we are also going to see reductions to the amount that would have been spent on that particular area. Scotland is going to get the power over those areas, but with less money to deal with that. Based on the UK Government's forecasts, you would not expect that transfer of £2.5 billion to be increasing year on year over the course of this Parliament. Further than that, in terms of what has happened in Northern Ireland, and I point here particularly to the estimates in relation to PIP, the Government believes that PIP ought to save money because it is removal of one of the bans. However, it has not taken account of two other things. One is that the assessments have not been taken place at the rate and speed at which it was intended, so the savings are not necessarily happening. Beyond that, it has made more generous provision for dealing with fluctuating and psychiatric conditions, which had been previously problematic within DLA. The obvious question is, will PIP deliver the savings that it is going to deliver, but what has happened regardless of that is that the Northern Ireland Assembly has now been found on a monthly basis, and one of the principal components of that is its refusal to introduce PIP. You have studied this a fair bit, Professor Spicker. That implication is having major effects in other areas of the budget in North of Ireland, am I correct in saying that? Yes. Particularly large-scale cuts that are being talked about in health and social care, for example. That is a separable issue from the one that I particularly pointed to. I was pointing to the fact that that is about the forecasts. If the forecasts say that money will be saved, then the savings, the cuts, are being implemented regardless in the particular area. That is quite a part from cuts that are happening in other circumstances, come what may. If we could turn to administrative costs, because I think that that is extremely important, a future Scottish Parliament could take a policy decision to introduce something, and could find the money for the introduction of that, but then the entire thing may have the rug pulled out from under it because of excessive administrative costs, because current systems would have to be adapted greatly to cope with it. Would I be right in saying that that is a possibility, particularly with the changes that there have been to IT systems? I think that if you are talking about the benefits that are being fully devolved to Scotland, the administrative costs of designing that system and administering that system and delivering that universal credit. If we were wanting to do something with universal credit and create an adaptation somewhere there, you have the system at this moment in time, which is being developed to deal with universal credit assistance, which is running late and well over budget and may not be as adaptable as folk have thought. What happens then? As we have touched on, there are significant administrative issues in the implementation and the roll-out of universal credit, and it is not clear to what extent the DWP will be in a position either administratively to make adaptions to that in Scotland. Clearly, it is likely to depend on how far the Scottish Government would want to deviate from the existing design of universal credit, but certainly anything beyond small adaptations you would have thought there would be big administrative challenges in doing that and potentially a large fiscal implication. However, we do not know until the fiscal framework has published how those cost estimates will be estimated and what scope there will be for negotiation around those. It is a possibility that the intention of a future Parliament here, who have passed a policy, have found the money to implement the policy, may be scuppered because of the cost of administration that may be governed elsewhere. Would I be correct in saying that that is a possibility? The cost of implementation would include the cost of administration. It would depend—there is a limit to what you could do with a distinctive policy administered at the UK level anyway, and there would have to be a time lag. It would not be—one assumes the priority—to introduce devolved policy at the UK level. However, I think that what that will demand is a consideration of new welfare powers alongside new tax powers. We have concentrated—I appreciate the welfare reform committee, but the broader debate has concentrated probably more on the welfare clauses than on the tax clauses. I think that there are, again, restrictions in what is possible there because of the way that the legislation has been designed. Personally, I would have been more comfortable with a lower level of income tax, the evolution if it meant a broader basket of taxes upon which to draw. The heavy reliance on income tax revenue places a huge amount of responsibility on the Scottish Government without necessarily giving it the flexibility to offset changes in one tax with changes in another, which is what the chancellor can do. If I could turn back to the costs of adapting something that is already there. We were told the other week that if you wanted to do something with tax credits, for example, that each transaction with the HMRC would cost £9.49, and you would have four transactions a year for each case, which would cost tens of millions of pounds. Do you think that those would be the kind of similar figures that you would expect to be charged if you wanted to make an adaptation to anything in the universal credit systems? I will give you a contradictory answer to our universal credit because I have received contradictory information about it. On one hand, we have the global cost of universal credit, which is estimated by 2021 for administrative purposes to reach £15.84 billion, which is a staggering figure, quite out of proportion to anything that it has currently been costing, where it has been running under budget. Any amount that was in any sense proportionate to that level of figure would almost certainly be beyond the reach of the Scottish Parliament. I have, however, been told, and this comes from a conference that I was at in February, where I was told by James Wolff, who was deputy director of universal credit policy at the DWP, that there was absolutely no reason, given the design of the computer system, why rates could not be simply and immediately varied within it, that they had modelled the system to allow for certain predictable changes. If you are within the class of predictable changes, then it is possible that this may be done, but if you are outside the area of predictable changes, then it will cost a prohibitive amount. I cannot tell you which is which. I think that it goes to prove that it is a bit daft carrying out lots and lots of legislative change without actually putting the finances and the fiscal frameworks behind it, but there we go. Clare Adamson, Professor Spickart, can I ask you to clarify some? Kevin Stewart had said that the panel had ruled out that there could be any compensation given to those affected by sanctions. In your contribution, you mentioned that there could be exceptions. I may again be working here on outdated wording of section 23, and apologies, I am just hunting now for section 23. It said that this exception does not accept providing assistance whether requirement for it arises from reduction in non-payability or suspension of a benefit as a result of an individual's conduct that seems to exclude sanctions flatly, but it carries on unless the requirement for it also arises from some exceptional event or exceptional circumstances and the need is immediate as well as short term. Now it is that unless which I am looking at and I am wondering do those weasel words provide an avenue, I would not be confident that they do and of course until you get into a court you will never know. Professor Spickart, I was really interested to hear what you were saying about the reassurances about the DWP computing system. If I could look up where we are now and the experience that the committee has had in looking into the roll-out of unit vessel credit where it is at the moment, when we took evidence in Inverness, we were hearing that the system has no flexibility in it whatsoever. The particular example of when an exception is being made for someone who perhaps is in a chaotic lifestyle situation where there actually has been an arrangement that housing benefit can be paid directly to a landlord for exceptional circumstances, that was a completely manual system on behalf of the local authorities. Effectively, the DWP system did not give the flexibility to deliver the benefit as it has been delivered on the ground. That cost was being absorbed by the local authority and it has huge capacity issues about roll-out, but how that could be increased because of this manual process that was there. We also heard about the increase in rent arrears from people who were on universal benefit, a direct correlation with increased rent arrears, particularly people who were in temporary accommodation where the rates were exceptionally high. The fiscal framework as we move forward with this, will it be able to identify the hidden costs to local authorities that are there from rolling out in addition to any additional changes that might be done there? The situation that you described in relation to universal credit is not supposed to be the one that will remain forever. It is rather being that enrolling out a system that was intended in principle to be agile but, in practice, has been anything but agile, then the initial claimants who have been dealt with have been within a very narrowly specified category of needs and where their personal circumstances change, then it has been necessary to take things off by hand, to do work rounds, which is something that the DWP is well practised with after the best part of the 1990s that they first started with computers. They have processes but, clearly, they need to develop the computer system a lot further before it is going to be able to deal with the kinds of circumstances that you are talking about. That also means, of course, that if we wish to create a systematic exception, then that would involve creating a new set of routines. In some cases, the systematic exceptions that we may be looking for could be of a different sort. I mentioned that, if we are trying to top up, it makes more sense to talk about a different sort of benefit. We have got a benefit apparatus in place with the Scottish Welfare Fund. That has been developing at speed, it has been developing expertise, and there are systems through which money can be distributed. That could be particularly important, for example, in universal credit, for the earliest part of a claim when there is a long delay in the receipt of benefit. In principle—although I do not know how this will work in practice—in principle, that money should be recoverable under the no detriment principle. However, whether that can be done in practice remains to be seen. Are you comfortable that the local authority development is visible and will be visible to the fiscal framework in making that assessment about no detriment? I find it difficult to relate that to the fiscal framework. I think that local authorities have been doing remarkable things under conditions of considerable constraint. Clearly, there has to be a capacity issue. What we have to avoid—because it is happening again and again in benefits—is where we create a system to try to deal with exceptions, emergencies, and that becomes routine because of the inadequacies of the overall system. The better we can make things work, the less need there will be for these sorts of things to be done, but we have a long way to go. It is irresistible to add to that. I am afraid that I do not think that universal credit will ever be able to deliver a system of that kind. In your paper to the committee, you suggested that it would be open to the Scottish Government to increase the value of child benefit, which is often regarded as a good mechanism for targeting money to families with children, but you also suggested that it would be open to the Scottish Government to extend the taxation of that child benefit? Yes. I have explained the mechanism. In order to meet certain conditions, we have already had, in relation to the question of topping up benefits, the identification of a difficulty, which is interaction of benefits. Child benefit is one of those benefits that does not interact, which thereby saves us one of those difficulties. It would not be open to the Scottish Government to take away people's child benefit. That is not open because that would not be topping up benefit. That would be a direct breach of the terms under which the topping up regime could conceivably work. However, if it was systematically supplementing, it could supplement in a differential way, and the practical way to do that would be to make the child benefit subject attacks. I have simply suggested that as being the sort of thing where, if we think about these things differently, it may be possible to do it. The main objection would be, but surely if you are doing this extensively in this way, is it still discretionary? I have already given the argument for that to say that discretion consists of the character of the judgment of the Scottish Parliament. It does not mean that you cannot have rules. Before I draw the session to a conclusion, does any member of the panel have any final comments to make? I think to Liz Adamson. Your issue about local authorities and the costs incurred at delivery would not apply. No detriment principle would not apply there because it is purely however interpreted as purely as a result of devolution to the Scottish Government. There is no detriment principle in the relationship between the UK Government and local authorities—perhaps there ought to be—but there is not. On the flexibility issue that we have been making, it is not—as I understand it—a flexibility at point of delivery but flexibility at the core. However, do not underestimate how long it will take to implement even changes that appear relatively simple. That is why there is legislative provision for the Secretary of State to postpone the date of implementation to changes at universal credit if he or she thinks that it would be appropriate to do so or impractical to follow the date of implementation set by this Parliament. I thank you for your contribution. You have given us a lot to think about. As usual, with a learning panel, you probably leave us with as many questions as those that you have answered. Thank you very much for your contribution. I will move into private session.