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Felly, mae'r digwyd pan correlationrain i'r cymaintarloli, ac maesian panel fod yn mer 1918 yn llawer o'r plugio ar polwagor, unedwg toion diw shovel Tekstleddol Cyment hwyl iawn. dahnaw'r phometerau'n yn lawn i'r eu meddwl ni o breach Ifa Dyrrhe campaigns in policy officer shelter Scotland, Mike Daley solicitorm advocate in principal solicitor gyrfaen law centre, and Ailey MacIver volunteer living rent. The three of you this morning for joining us and helping us with our enquiry and permission will move straight to questions. First question from Alison Johnstone MSP. Thank you, convener, and good morning. I'd like to discuss the impact of changes to the local housing allowance in the first instance, if I may. Changes to the local housing allowance means that it provides much less support for housing costs than it used to, and I appreciate that there are differences across the country, but in areas where rents are particularly high, such as by my own region of Lothian, that can be a real issue. For someone who is seeking to rent a one-bedroom property in Lothian, it can be the case that less than 5 per cent of the market is accessible to them. I appreciate that that is a particularly dire situation that does not apply across the country, but could you give us your views on the problems that that would cause to someone who is looking to rent using housing costs payments? I should point to that. I don't always know people who want to speak, so please do telegraph it, making it clear when you want it in, Mr Daley. Yes, thank you, convener. Ultimately, the local housing allowance is completely inequitable. There's no doubt about it. Even when it was introduced in 2008, and it was set at the 50 per centile, that caused problems. Of course, now it's set at the 30th per centile, and the reality is that it's been frozen and it's not being linked to the local market rents. It's plain that, for example, for people in your constituency, you're looking at the discrepancy between the local housing allowance and what people will have to pay on average in terms of the rent, just between the local housing allowance as it was frozen is about £22 a week. Immediately, you start to see that the reality for people in the private rented sector that are receiving whether it's universal credit housing costs or indeed legacy housing benefit is that ultimately they are pushed into poverty because they are not treated. It's a discriminatory system where they are treated differently from tenants in the social rented sector, and they're having to find that extra amount of money in order to pay the rent against the reality, which is that if you look at the Lothians and you look at, for example, Greater Glasgow, the rents in the private rented sector in those areas have more than almost doubled in terms of the rate of the consumer price index since 2008. The reality is that rents are overheated in the private rented sector, and at the same time, because of the hostile environment that's been created by the UK Government, it's got tougher and tougher and tougher for tenants. Ifa, do you want to? Yes, I would just reflect everything that Mr Gillie has said. In our experience, and we do most of our experience around this, has come from the Lothians area, so we do know exactly what you're speaking about. What we're really seeing is an affordability gap being created, a lot of families particularly, because it is families who are increasingly moving into the private rented sector as the private rented sector's size has grown. We're seeing that they are particularly struggling to sustain their tendencies, but for younger people to access tendencies in the PRS just because of the limited help that LHA can now give them. As a union, we represent any tenant, but in Edinburgh, in particular, a lot of our members are under 35, which means that they get the reduced shared room rate, which is even more of a squeeze than the reduced rate itself. There is a massive discrepancy in what people get in terms of support and what they have to pay for their rent. Just to give an example, we had a young person who was in her early 30s. She was in full-time work but in receipt of social security support. It took her, when she had to leave a tenancy because she couldn't afford the rent increase, when she was looking for another house. It took her five months to find another place that she could afford, with both her house and cost paid, and topping up with her own wages. That was five months of being homeless because she couldn't find a place to live. As somebody who was, unfortunately, struggling with mental health problems and things, it was incredibly difficult for her. The situation is bleak, particularly in areas such as Edinburgh. That case is from Edinburgh itself. I suppose that, when you get to the stage where only 5 per cent of the market is accessible to you, it will take people longer and longer to find somewhere. Where do you think that we are headed with this? I don't think that it's sustainable. I've said this before in other committees of the Scottish Parliament that ultimately what we need to do—I appreciate and certainly Governor Law Centre has some views on what the Scottish Parliament can do with the powers under the Scotland Act 2016, but at the same time accepting that the Scottish Government can't mitigate everything that comes from Westminster, so we accept that. Ultimately, if we look at the market in the central belt of Scotland, ultimately it's been overheating and overheating and overheating. The idea that you've got double the rate of inflation rent increases can't be sustainable. In our experience, often we think of the private sector that our clients see in Glasgow as being double the rent of the social rented sector and half the quality. If you think about how much of that is funded from the public purse, we need to do something about it. One of the things that Governor Law Centre wants to do—I should declare that we are assisting the deputy convener with our proposed bill—we need to look at systemic, wider solutions. I think that the Scottish Parliament can do more in terms of social security. We would call on the Scottish Government to return the local housing allowance to the 50 per cent. I appreciate that that has to come out of the Scottish Government budget, which is not easy, but I think that that's fair. We would also say, let's get rid of discrimination against people that are under 35. That's completely wrong. At the same time, let's beef up the good intentions from the Scottish Government when it introduced the private housing tenancy Scotland Act 2016. Nobody's ever used their rent pressure zone. Ultimately, the powers that are in that act, as I say, well-intentioned as they are, now and where we are in 2019, I think have to beefed up. I think that we need to beef up rent control. Just before others come in, I really appreciate your comments on that. I had to say this last week as well, because we have to keep reminding ourselves that we're a social security committee, we're not at the local government committee, we're really tempting as it is to get into all of that. We're looking for recommendations, as Mr Daley has made in terms of how social security could be changed, either at the Scottish level or the local authority level or at the UK level. We're able to make recommendations in all three tiers of government, and that would be helpful if we challenged a very specific proposal from Mr Daley. It's in that spirit if there are any suggested changes in how social security works would be very helpful. I don't know if I want to come in on that earlier. If I then, we'll take you there. Yes, just to reflect that, in terms of social security solutions, taking away the shared room rate would be a really helpful measure to take, really restoring LHA to where it reflects market rents as well, because, as Mr Daley pointed out, over the years, effectively the link between LHA and market rates has been broken. One doesn't reflect the other. Revising LHA so that LHA does give access to the market would be really helpful, too. That's helpful, Ailey McIver? I would just echo what Eva and Mike have said. Definitely, we need to get rid of this discrimination against young people, so that they can only live in a shared house rate. Many times, that is not going to be appropriate even for that person, and it is flat-out discrimination, so we would say, yes, that absolutely has to go. Increased support through DHPs for would be great. Obviously, we know that that's a finite pot of money and there's a limit to what that can do, but we know that the whole of that has to go through bedroom tax mitigation, which we obviously support. However, if there was more money available to support discrepancies between actual rents and the amount that LHA covers, that would be beneficial. I think that it's really important to remember the context in the private rented sector. Poverty has increased by 75 per cent in that sector. Marginalised groups of people who are already lack power in our society are overrepresented in the private rented sector, so young people, black and ethnic minorities, migrants and the working class and women as well. It's really important that we think about this question socially and that we do as much as we can to ensure that poverty is not exacerbated. You probably answered my question, but in the context that some people believe—I emphasize some people believe—that the new secretary, Amber Rudd, is open to reviewing the universal credit system, so let's just say that if there was that possibility that she was open-minded, would that be your answer to the priority? I suppose that what's the evidence that their society has impacted on the registry of local housing allowance? For our members, our tenants, people repeatedly tell us that in order to make up the shortfall of their rent, as is always said, priority payment, they are needing to reshuffle what are already very tight budgets. Even people who are in full-time work are extremely difficult to cover all expenses, so they are maybe forgoing other things like food or peating or anything like that, so cutting back on things just so that they can make rent payments. Is it leading to homelessness? Do you have evidence of that? I see Mr Daley nodding head doesn't get picked up on the official report. Government Law Centre certainly has evidence and I would echo what Ailey has said. The reality is that if you've got a shortfall between what you get in terms of housing costs with your rent, you can't get into the social rented sector, and there are lots of reasons for that. If you want to have a roof over your head, you have to use whatever other income you have. We also have to see that in the context of the reality of people having zero-hour contracts and not having security and work, so people are using whatever they can to make the shortfall, and they are getting into rent arrears. Ultimately, at Government Law Centre, we set up a specialist private rented project for the whole of Glasgow because we were seeing people coming more and more to advice agencies across the city because of the private rented sector. That is where Ailey said, is where poverty has increased exponentially other than any other homeowners or social rented sector. The evidence is overwhelming. The Joseph Renty Foundation did a study on that in Scotland. There is no doubt that there is empirical evidence that poverty has been created. In terms of social security solutions, the Government Law Centre has run a campaign that universal credit should be devolved in its entirety to this Parliament. We are supported by Unison. The STUC supports some of our recommendations. The universal credit is the thing that amplifies and exacerbates the mess that we are in and is leading to more people basically going to food banks and more people not being able to pay their rent and being evicted and ending up homelessness. I would echo everything that has just been said, but where we are seeing that where people are becoming homeless from the private rented sector is mainly as a result of the benefit cap, which compounds the problems that we have already talked about. In our submission to the Work and Pensions Committee recently, we compiled our evidence, looked at our case evidence, and we found that we had worked with about 80 families over the course of 18 months who had been affected by the benefit cap, many of whom had become homeless as a result. We know that they are really struggling to afford rent in the private rented sector, and that, as they become homeless, they put more pressure on an already pressurised homelessness system, which creates what we think is a bit of an untenable situation. If we are talking about social security solutions, we also need to consider the removal of the benefit cap as a priority as well. There are several specific proposals there. I am going to resist the temptation of saying whether the UK Government should do this or whether the Scottish Government, by ways of mitigation, should do this. In terms of the 50 per cent health suggestion that was made, in terms of the shared room rate, has any estimation been made of how much that might cost, whether across Scotland or maybe in a local authority where a bit of work has been done in relation to that? That would be helpful to know, but, more importantly, what would be helpful to know is how many individuals or families there might be out there in the communities that we all represent that might be more likely to find a quality private rented sector housing solution, as opposed to—I will come back to this for a follow-up question—a hugely expensive solution, imperfect and flawed solution of long-term temporary furnished accommodation. For example, there is a lot of money tied up in the system, so I would be keen to know how many individuals or families that we could project would benefit from the 50 per centile and the shared room rate going to allow people to move into good-quality housing solutions. That would require a piece of work to be done, but, convener, the data is there across the different parts of Scotland. We have the numbers in terms of who are receiving housing payments, whether through universal credit or house and benefit. That could be done as a calculation. I am not going to volunteer. I am going to do it necessarily myself, because I need to go back to my office and find out whether we have the resources to do that. However, I think that, amongst ourselves and Shelter, that is something that could be done. I think that the very short answer is that although we cannot give you a specific figure right now, certainly it would be a significant number of people that would gain from that recommendation. Coming back to Alison Johnstone's point, there is only 5 per cent of the market open to people private renting in the Lothians. For example, if it went up to the 50th per centile, that would open up the market to more people. That would be a good thing. At the same time, I am conscious that the downside of that is that that would fuel and overheat the market. Of course, that is why I will not go into the other solutions that are out with the remit of the Social Security Committee, convener, but that is why we need to have a multifaceted approach to that. I accept that, but I think that social security is at the heart of it. That is helpful. If I really want to add anything to that or any additional comments. The reason for asking it—I am going to come back with it a little bit more—is that I anticipate Shelter or the Government Law Centre will have done that work, but I would anticipate that, if we are looking at a social security solution, we have to do some projections in relation to that. One of the hugely expensive and effective ways of supporting people in tenancies is temporary furnished accommodation without any permanency and security. Do any of you have any comments to make about the expense of that for those who are using it, or for the public purse, who are funding what is sometimes pretty poor accommodation for constituents that we represent and how that money could be better spent? Some numbers around that would be really helpful, as well as whether you have them here today or could provide them. Ifa, is that something that you could comment on? Yes, definitely. I do not have the exact numbers to hand, but we will provide them to the committee at a later date. However, we are aware that temporary accommodation that you are referring to in some local authorities is extremely expensive. It was sometimes often tripled the price of what it would be as a mainstream flat. That is a confusing and almost ridiculous situation to be in that, when a person becomes homeless and they are living in temporary accommodation, they are paying way beyond the odds for what you rightly said is often poor quality accommodation as well. It would make absolute financial sense for them to be moving in to the private rented sector in some cases, because the private rented sector works for some people very well and works for other people not as well. However, it would be a really valuable use of the committee's time to look into that. However, as I said, I do not have the exact figures to hand, but we will provide them. Before I bring others in relation to that, ifa, I am just wondering if you would be able to flesh out to the committee what elements of the social security system if the person is not working, what elements of the social security system would pick up the costs of that? How would we take those costs back out of the system and put them back in in a way that supports people to get the housing solutions that we would all want to see? Well, if I have understood you correctly, if a person is obviously not working and they go into temporary accommodation, that cost is covered by housing benefit, and it is not covered by universal credit housing costs yet, it is still housing benefit, so it is a huge cost to the public purse. If the person is working, they are eligible to pay this cost themselves, and we have worked with many families who have accrued massive rears as a result because there is absolutely no way, as Mr Daly put it, that a lot of people are in insecure work and on zero hours contracts and really struggle to meet this often-exorbitant cost of temporary accommodation. It is either housing benefit that pays for it or the person is liable themselves, but either way, it is not really a sustainable way of working the temporary accommodation, if you want to know what that might mean. Okay, and yes, that makes sense, and anecdotal information from any politician should always be taken with a little pinch of salt, but anecdotally, from my constituency case work, I know families who are homeless and stay in pretty overcrowded situations with families of friends and sofa surfers, because quite frankly, they are in work and they just can't afford the high watering costs of temporary furnish accommodation and the costs to put their furniture and storage with the local authority contractor that does that, so they'll go to some kind of store somewhere, they'll put their own furniture and storage at the cheapest possible cost and they'll sleep in the sofa and on camp beds in family and friends' houses, and they may be under the radar, so that's anecdotally from me, but it's not anecdotal if our witness here today thinks that that's an increasingly common event or occurrence, Mr Daly. It certainly is convenient. I mean, I think there's also a sex discrimination aspect to this because 80 per cent of single parents who are homeless and who are in temporary accommodation are women. I've got clients who are women with kids who want to get back to work and have went back to work part-time and full-time and they can't afford to stay in their temporary accommodation, so one client, for example, when I'm in the process of raising judicial review proceedings against a local authority in this case, who's been sued for £14,000 of back rent, and they've tried to make good of their life, they've tried to get into work, but they're stuck in this four years in a temporary accommodation flat as a homeless person, so there's a gender issue to this, but I would also say there's an even, equally massive scandal, and I don't know if the committee members have saw the Herald on Sunday just there, but we've been working on the Herald on Sunday at the Government Law Centre and we've been taking them around what can only be described as homeless hotels in the city of Glasgow. We are charging over £300 a week to live in a grotty room and we've got clients that have lived in those rooms, those temporary accommodations for over 10 years. It's an absolute scandal because that money is public money and so what we did was, and don't get me wrong, the Scottish Parliament's done some wonderful things in terms of homelessness and I won't strail off into this, but what is done is lots and lots of really innovative things, but we're then faced with the reality of the austerity agenda from the UK Government and then we discover that street homelessness rises and so we've got rid of the hostels in Scotland, rightly so, and what we've done is we've actually recreated the hostels under the guise of hotels that are privately owned, ripping people off, ripping the public purse off and people are getting misery out of it. Ailey McIver, I'm conscious you've got the opportunity to respond to this line of questioning and if I'll take you back in on a second Ailey, do you want to add anything? Yeah, I'm just to kind of echo a few things that have been said, I guess. As I said before, the tenants that we've supported tend to be younger people, they tend to be single and also a lot of them are in work and we have not supported that many who have been through the homeless system, but those that have, a number of them have told us that they've ended up sofa surfing or staying in whatever types of precarious accommodation with friends or family simply because of the question of affordability. They're in work so they're not eligible to have those costs paid in temporary accommodation, so it has been their only option to do that. Okay, thank you. Ifa Dilley? Just really briefly, I just wanted to point out that there are also other hidden costs as well, whether the person that accesses temporary accommodation or not, especially if they access temporary accommodation, which we know especially for families, they're put far, often far out with their support networks, outside the children's education networks, so they're incurring extra costs around transport particularly and you've touched upon sort of the quality of some accommodation types that are provided and those accommodation often lack many facilities and we've worked with many families who haven't had the ability to cook fresh meals, for example, aren't able to store food and are having to rely on very expensive sort of takeaway food, which isn't sustainable for them. Okay, thank you. I checked to my colleagues, Mr Allen, I'll take you in shortly, but Michelle Ballanty has been very patient for a couple of supplementaries on this theme, thank you, yes, you've covered some of it. Can I ask you, when we talk about this sort of temporary accommodation, particularly these kind of hotels as you described them, who is actually commissioning them? Who is actually, you know, driving it if you like and controlling it, because somebody somewhere is making the decision to use this facility for people? Well as local authorities, and I mean I could talk obviously from the Glasgow experience, because although we do various things across Scotland, that is one of our core areas. The part of the problem with Glasgow's situation is that it's a stock transfer council, so from 2003 all of its 80,000 houses went into the social rents in terms of housing associations, so the council then had to get back some accommodation, so actually Glasgow City Council then became a landlord again and it has got some properties which it basically uses for families so if you're a single person, you won't get into one of these furnished temporary lets, so basically what does Glasgow City Council have, what doesn't have anything, so ultimately it uses the private sector which is these hotels, and in terms of these hotels the big problem with them is they're not actually really regulated by anybody because they don't provide support so they're not regulated by the care commission, they, I think it's a lacuna in the law, I think they've slipped through a gap and are basically milking the public purse. So the housing unit of the local authority is doing the deal with these hotels, I mean as a commissioner of something like that and somebody paying it, surely they should be doing something around conditions rent in terms of the offer or agreement that they're making with them, are they just, are they just not bothering or is it just that the whole of the market is ganged up on them, you know what's actually going on there because it seems to me that somebody somewhere is not actually gripping it. Oh I mean I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say Glasgow City Council is not bothering because I mean obviously you've got professional you know council officers that want to do the very best and help people but the reality is when you've got an increase in demand and that's what's happened in Scotland, we have had an increase in demand. You know people, if you think about how we reduced homelessness and we did you know the Scottish Parliament did a lot to reduce for example rough sleeping and did a lot of good things and that happened let's say with the 2003 homelessness etc Scotland act and lots of good things, abolishing priority needs and so on and so forth. Then we get the austerity agenda, now that's a political choice from Westminster from 2010, we then get the series of welfare reforms and what then ultimately and also the fact that we count people who are having the lowest employment ever but the reality is if you do one hour a week your count is employed. So what we've created is a system where there's insecurity for people to work, there's disincentives for people to work and we have an increase in the demand in Glasgow because Glasgow basically takes on all of the demand, the biggest demand in Scotland from all the surrounding local authority areas. So I think we need to and I would say this obviously been from there but I think we need to, we need to, that Glasgow needs to be given you know the ample support and backing because we're basically carrying the biggest burden. Can I ask just one little one then and then I'll move on. Back in of course you are but you know Ifadiri had a comment to make in relation to your question. Right, just to supplement that about who's sort of commissioning hotels and unsuitable type of accommodation Mr Joe is obviously speaking from a Glasgow perspective and most of our experience comes from an Edinburgh perspective and our belief is that the reason that these unsuitable accommodations are procured by the council is because there's a massive pressure on the system and it's not really through choice and we know through you know Edinburgh council setting up their homeless task force that there is a real desire to be reducing this type of unsuitable accommodation but it's just because of the pressure they're under. So what's key here is preventing homelessness from happening in the first place, relieving pressure on temporary accommodation and that's where social security comes into this and it's absolutely crucial. Okay my last wee question is you said earlier about devolving everything to Scotland now one of the things we know is that what's devolved so far is quite steady in its economic management. What you're asking for is a completely different scenario particularly in terms of economic shock so have you given any consideration to that what do you think the impact would be because obviously on transfer the block grant is adjusted accordingly but then the economic shock would sit with the Scottish Parliament. Well I think the reason that the Government law centre came to the conclusion that the universal credit and I would be all for actually all social security being devolved to Scotland is because it's been universal credit was a good idea. The problem is in the execution and delivery and you know I know from colleagues in London who are knowledge about these matters that it would have been easily for the universal credit system to have been designed to be seamless so that people could have just been imported into it electronically automatically because DWP has all that information yet the system that we've created with universal credit you know with not you know the resultant in people being paid in arrears the way it's quantified so it's not you know so if you get two wage slips ultimately you end up having an over payment the fact you can have up to 40 deducted from universal credit and be pushed way below the bread line all in the sense is that I genuinely believe that the system's been designed as part of the hostile environment it's the same hostile environment that the UK government's created for asylum seekers and what they've done with welfare reform is they've created and I guess if you want to be kind to the UK government you could say that it's been created as an incentive because they believe that people need to be given a you know carrot and a stick and there's the stick to get you back into work but what I would say is that it's completely flawed and that's why the only way that we can sort it out for Scotland is for universal credit to come to this parliament but the question around economic shop which was my question but when you say economic shop do you mean because there would have to be additional monies because there's a volatility in it in a way that there isn't in the current devolved benefits well well I mean if you think about it there's a lot of if looking at it from a cost like so let's say a cost neutral position you could you could redesign universal credit so that it wasn't such an ordeal to apply for it and it wasn't calculated in the same way what I'm saying to you is that the way that we create social security in terms of how one applies because we know that the decision makers get things wrong very very frequently but it's simpler than the legacy one for application well I think it's created more problems than than what we've had in the past I think what we've done is we've walked one step forward with universal credit in several steps back and other witnesses and we move on as much as I might like this this mission drift line of travel as an SNP member I'm convener of this committee and and a mission drift it is if the committee wishes to do an inquiry into the devolution of all social security benefits to this place the as Michelle Ballantyne seems to be suggesting I would embrace that but it wouldn't be for my for for my decision to make is convener are there any additional comments from our other witnesses before we move on to Alice Rallon okay thank you Alice Rallon thank you convener I'll try to stay on mission I was gonna ask in that case about the issue of renter ears and some of it's been a theme in many of the sessions that we've had in here about universal credit has been potential links between changes to the benefit system specifically around universal credit and what the picture is in terms of renter ears both from the point of view of tenants and landlord so I just wondered if you had any observations about that sorry thank you um yes absolutely um I know that you're going to be hearing evidence from citizens advice later and they've got some really strong evidence on this which outlines how renter ears have changed since the introduction of universal credit but it is absolutely our experience that universal credit has led to the creation of greater renter ears for tenants the five-week wait automatically puts tenants both private renter sector and social renter sector of course into arrears and what from our experience is that it's very difficult for tenants to then get out of these arrears and particularly for tenants in the private rented sector the private rented sector charges rent in advance as normal and the benefit system has charge gives the money in arrears so there's that gap and it's just extremely difficult and it puts tenants in the PRS particularly in a very precarious situation what we what would be interesting perhaps for the committee to look into is where private rented sector tenants have gotten into arrears which have resulted in eviction there is a ground or a mandatory ground for eviction in the new prt which means that if a private rented tenant is in arrears of a month's worth for three consecutive months that's a mandatory ground for eviction but with the way universal credit is designed it's very likely that PRS tenants are always going to be in arrears and will always be at risk and kind of at the mercy of their landlord not to pursue eviction yeah I would I would completely agree with all that's been said I think when this Parliament was looking at the private house in Tennessee's Scotland bill as it was then we weren't particularly focused on universal credit and the fact that that ground that's in the 2016 act um as has been noted is just all you have to have is one month rent arrears over three consecutive months and because universal credit and we've certainly got case study examples from gov law centre whether there has been much longer delays way longer than five weeks people are are going to be pushed into that now the Scottish government obviously has done good things in terms of scots choices so you know that there's been powers that have been used so that people can opt for the rent to be paid directly to the private landlord but even then there's examples where there's still delays because the system has become much more bureaucratic and it's not in the control as it was it used to be in terms of local government so so all of that results in in a greater propensity towards eviction and ultimately the first tier tribunal has got a fairly low bar to you know to overcome to decide that actually they have to grant a decree so I think we need to revise that aspect of the 2016 act unless we're able to fix universal credit just to come in on that I guess in terms of that five week wait you know we can see absolutely no logic in it and it does serve really to put tenants and particularly in the private rented sector into debt how you're able to manage without money for that amount of time whether you were you know if you went that amount of time without a wage then that would be incredibly difficult for anyone so I don't know how it's supposed to be that you're meant to manage on that and there's all this talk about you know run-ons of housing benefit yeah that's fine if you're transferring over from housing benefit but if you're a new if you're a new claimant you know if you're brand new to the social security system you've not got a claim before then you don't get that run-on you've got at least five weeks five weeks if not longer and yes you can get in advance but you've got to repay that and that is going to be through deductions to future payments so you're always going to be in the system of precarity and we do feel that you know that system has been set up to put tenants into debt to transfer debt to tenants and that's not just about you know that debt doesn't just affect you know us through the possibility of eviction per se but also about how we experience homes you know you can't heat them properly um you can't escape from them because you've got no disposable income to go and do anything else um you might be afraid of losing them you never really call it your own so it's a much wider social question as well and one that we think is really serious um you know and it's against the grain of what social security should be okay thank you if you anticipate my next question which was whether you felt the system of advances worked and I was keen to hear whether others on the panel have used about that as well obviously we've anecdotally heard much the same evidence as you have about how the system of advance advances don't work for the reasons you've given but I just was curious to find if there's any evidence around that and unfortunately evidence is anecdotally as well but I the DWP should be able to provide evidence on how often advance payments are provided and how often they're taken up to give more sort of substantial evidence to it but our experience is that advance payments there's quite low awareness of them and we know that job coaches don't have that long with individuals when they're making a claim to explain advance payments how to access them and and the sort of process around it we find people who do access advance payments are extremely worried about paying them back I think Mr Dilley referred to them being paid back 40 percent I think it's reduced to 30 percent but that's still an extremely high percentage of somebody's other income which is often quite low so that is quite a lot for a person to take on and lastly we find where people are accessing advance payments is because they have other priority debts that they want to pay as well that are they're bringing on with them so that they will prioritise them too so if they access an advance payment and this is anecdotally from landlords as well that the landlords may not necessarily see the rent they're due that month because the tenant has other debts to pay and abuse the advance payment to do that. You mentioned earlier on the CAV and their proposals we'll be hearing from the CAV later on but I just wondered how you felt that would work given what they've proposed as an alternative system whether you had any views on how that might work the idea of assistance without being repayable. We would certainly support it as I said before we cannot find any logic in making tenants wait five weeks at least if not longer due to other administrative delays and whether it transpires that maybe your entitlement might change whatever after that but we just feel it is completely against the grain of what social security should be and if the Scottish Government does have the power to introduce something like that which I believe that it does through top-up powers we would certainly support the idea of a non-refundable assessment payment. I mean Governor Law Centre certainly would say that that is a very sensible idea because if you were to do a cost-benefit analysis although it's a one-off payment that's going to result in somebody not for example being taken to the first-tier tribunal for eviction and if you think about the cost to the public in somebody ultimately being made homeless which ultimately I mean there's empirical evidence that shows it can be anything from £20,000 to £30,000 in terms of the different services that people have to access in terms of homelessness it would make sense as a prevention to to have that but I think the ultimate solution as I say on a I mean the point about it being sustainable is I mean in some respects what that solution is doing is putting a sticky plaster on a gaping wound and presumably on that. I'm sorry. Yes we would support that proposal and we would say that as an investment in a person it would avoid hardship at the past and it would support both the tenant and the landlord as well and it would give the landlord some certainty in sort of keeping this tenant on and continuing to rent them. We commissioned research into No DSS recently which showed that landlords private landlords are increasingly quite worried by universal credit and did cite the administration and particularly the initial five-week wait as a particular concern for them so this would give landlords a bit of peace of mind as well I think. Finally you mentioned Ms Bekever about the idea of the Scottish Government essentially mitigating this situation presumably without putting words on anyone's mouth however it would be simpler if the situation were not created by the UK Government in the first place. Absolutely. Thank you. Sorry Mr Allen just from one clarity and I suppose for the OR for those who did such things you're effectively talking about if the DWP won't facilitate payments within two weeks then rather than trying to seek an advance from the DWP the Scottish Government or some other body should step in and provide that money as a one-off grant to support but is that effective way? That was making the point to be sure but it would be better if the UK Government hadn't created that problem in the first place. Absolutely but the campaign call was that someone should step in beat the Scottish Government or any other organisation to give that as a grant but the underlying issue is if you could pay job seekers allowance within two weeks from application if you could pay income support from two weeks of application then you can just pay it from two weeks of application so why don't you just do that is that effectively the position of the witnesses? If you think about it I mean effectively I guess that could be done under a discretionary housing payment and just very quickly the difficulty with discretionary housing payments is that we're currently using it and this is coming to your point convener which is that we're currently using it to offset the bedroom tax well let's not forget about the the monitor of the bedroom tax which which the Scottish Government's now spending 50 million per annum having to offset and that's a 52 week DHP application but for any other discretionary housing payment it's usually 13 weeks that you know the payment runs for um so it's just important to bear in mind um yes I think I think the use of that power would I believe be more cost efficient because it would it would it would contribute to prevention of homelessness okay um Mark Griffin do you want to take us forward next line of question? Yep thanks convener I wanted to talk about direct payments to landlords um just to ask first of all how you feel the DWP's alternate payment arrangements and scottish choices are working just properly. I mean the only person who can make my contact with him is Mr Bailey so go for it yeah I was only looking up convener um I mean I I mean clearly there's have to say I always I always like to compliment SPICE for their excellent work the the analysis that SPICE has done in terms of its house and social security uh so in terms of the actual data that's there what I think is interesting is the relatively low take up of you know alternative payment arrangements and um the scottish government scott's choices um so so whether this is an issue of a lack of awareness uh or or or other reasons um I'm not sure but I mean what I would say is that Government Law Centre was absolutely delighted that it was possible for the scottish government to introduce scott's choices because we were not that long ago sitting in a position where we were terrified you know that people were going to not be able to have their rent paid directly to the landlord under the kind of limited circumstances of being able to demonstrate you were vulnerable so so we so we very much welcome the position that we have in Scotland but I think the what I'm saying is the official analysis in terms of the take up numbers I think gives me a little bit of cause for worry yeah um just to say I mean I we would certainly of course support the opportunity to give tenants a choice if they want to have their rent paid directly to their landlord because that would help them for whatever reason then we would absolutely support that but of course we do view as a you know as a sticking plaster particularly because you can't get your Scottish choice until the second assessment period anyway so you're already in difficulty at the beginning potentially however I'm not sure that it is like necessarily um useful to compare that to an app an alternative payment arrangement simply because from what I understand alternative payment arrangements um can't you know they're not granted on the long term they're reviewed you have to prove a certain level of need for them a certain vulnerability and give evidence that you need to have it so and they can also be reviewed at any point um by the by your work coach by DWP so I'm not sure that they're necessarily useful to compare to one another um I think ideally what we'd want to see is in the way that an app can be introduced immediately we'd want a Scottish choice to be introduced immediately and that to be a choice you know not that you have to prove that you're vulnerable in some way you should be able to get a choice I just want to flag um I agree with everything that has been said especially around um alternative payments can only really be instated from the second assessment period um otherwise in terms of administrative problems from conversations with um social landlords if a person has an alternative payment in place um there is an alternative payment schedule so they get paid the landlord gets paid at a different point and just administratively it's quite confusing for landlords to sort of separate out this payment because they get it in a big chunk especially if they've got different tenants or a number of tenants getting APAs um so I think that maybe just needs sort of untangled with it and I think it's been kind of touched on so you can have Scottish choice or an alternative payment arrangement um the uptake of Scottish choices so far is quite low I think it's about 38 percent of people took it up who offered it in the last year um but it's that could be for a number of reasons that low uptake them may already have an APA in place they may not be aware of it um so I think it's quite early days for Scottish choices and I think maybe that could be looked at a wee bit more just to sort of disentangle how people are accessing it and what they're getting from it okay we heard about that last week about the issue of Scottish choices only being available for the second payment is that something all witnesses agree with that it would be beneficial for Scottish choices to be implemented from the first payment yes definitely okay and if I can come on to my second point and perhaps this would address the the low uptake issues just to whether witnesses feels that direct payments to landlord should be the default position with tenants then having a choice to opt out with that option then covering anyone with with a vulnerability at the outset I think that govern law centre would certainly support that I know that Ailey's talked about the choice and choice is something that's often very lacking in the private sector because people don't have a choice you know in terms of what they can access so I'm certainly very empathetic and sympathetic to given choice but having a default position if you think about behavioural psychology you know when somebody has to if somebody's kind of you know coping with different things in their life and they actually have to go and do something when they've got other things that are troubling them then they might not access you know they might not do that whereas if you make it a default that they get Scottish choices then from a behavioural kind of psychology perspective that would be a good thing to prevent rent arrears from happening but still retaining the choice if a tenant wanted to choose we don't really have a strong view on whether it should be default or not and we think it's positive that it has a choice the reason that we that we don't have a particularly strong view on it is that even if it were paid directly to the landlord it doesn't fix the problem that you have to wait five weeks for money so it's yes it would certainly be beneficial and there would definitely be tenants who would benefit from that for a range of reasons but I guess the reason that we don't have a particularly strong view that it should be a default is that it doesn't fix that initial problem that I would entirely echo what Eilius just said. So Mark, do you want to just follow up on any of that? No, I've no follow up on direct payments. I do have a separate question if that's okay. I wanted to come on to discretionary housing payments as well and last week we heard evidence from Edinburgh City Council who set a position that they would cover people affected by local housing, allowing shortfalls or people affected by the benefit cap for up to 12 months, as long as people had demonstrated that they had exhausted other options and that seemed to me through my experience in Central Scotland to be more generous than what was on offer anywhere else. What are witnesses' views on how discretionary housing payments are operating across the country? Is it as generous as 12 months seems to be offered in Edinburgh? From our experience, if you're not claiming DHPs for the reason of bedroom tax or a benefit cap, it's quite difficult to get your application processed or awarded more so, just because it's our experience that through the welfare forms that DHPs have to mitigate, it's just taken up most of the pot. I was interested to hear that Edinburgh are committing to dealing with LHA shortfall because that's just not our experience and we also have problems getting applications in for people who are affected by the benefit cap as well and their awards getting tapered off and that leading to homelessness. It's definitely our experience that it's not the case in Edinburgh and otherwise that people who are facing LHA shortfall need to be met by DHPs. It strikes me then that it's very interesting Mr Griffin that Edinburgh have made that pledge because I do think it's a very progressive and generous and it also comes back to the convenience point which is that clearly then Edinburgh must have the data in terms of what that costs which would kind of be very helpful in the journey at looking at the moving the 30th percentile to the 50th percentile as a Scotland-wide concept. Our experience in Glasgow is that for non-bedroom tax DHPs it's a process that you have to repeat, so it's generally 13 weeks that it's applied for in Glasgow. I do think it's a very strained budget because let's remember that DHP was designed to cover a wide range of possibilities where people get into difficulties and indeed in the social rented sector as well. It's a budget that, if you said the solution to the local housing allowance is for every one of the 32 councils in Scotland to use their DHP budget to offset it, I just don't think that that would work in terms of the ability for all local authorities to do that. Just to echo that, it's great that Edinburgh City Council is able to give up to 12 months to address that shortfall in rent and it's really good to know that now that we could direct tenants to that but just to echo what Mike said from what we've heard from our colleagues in our Glasgow branch, the amount of time that you can get a DHP for tends to be much shorter than that and that's actually the first that I've heard about the Edinburgh rate, exactly none of the tenants that we've supported that have got DHPs for that particular purpose. I've ever said that they've got it on that long term but that might just be because it's something new. Just now local authorities are relying on guidance from the DWP on administrating their DHP budget. The Scottish Government now has powers through the Social Security Scotland Act to issue guidance. Do you think that that's something that the Scottish Government should look to do fairly soon to iron out some of those anomalies across all local authorities? I would say that that would make sense to do that but I think that it's still going to bring us back to the problem that this Parliament discusses on a frequent basis, which is not every local authority being in a position to have the funds to do that. If you look at a council like Glasgow, we've got about £0.5 billion to sort out in terms of the equal pay deal for women workers. I just think that, yes, the guidance would be helpful but whether it materialises into action consistently across Scotland, I have to say, I don't think it would but I would certainly welcome the guidance from the Scottish Government. I would also suggest that DHPs could be reviewed more in their fullness. I think that DHPs discretionary local authorities have the ability, quite rightly, so to operate them in varying ways depending on their local context but the fact that every local authority has to fully mitigate bedroom tax, which of course we completely support, I would just raise the question of whether DHP is the best mechanism to be doing this or whether it would be more useful for DHP to be moved out of the DHP system so DHP could deal with the problems that it was meant to deal with in the first place but I also echo the point that while guidance would be useful, I think that it's a question of resources as well. Just to echo that, yes, it does seem that guidance would be useful but how that would span out in practice, I'm not sure. Can I just check with you, Fidea? When you said about bedroom tax being moved out of DHP budgets, is that effectively the way of saying however much that costs would still stay within DHP budgets and that money would then be spent elsewhere? Was it actually a call for additional funds? Not necessarily additional funds but really to look at it and to understand whether bedroom tax is best dealt with by DHP or whether there's another method to stop the bedroom tax at Sorcer just to review the options around it. I just wanted to pick up on that slightly. Can you clarify for me your understanding of the way in which DHP is administered? In reality, when you talk about mitigating bedroom tax, DHP is a means-tested award so it's not about necessarily directly mitigating bedroom tax, it's about actually saying do you need the money, watch your circumstances and we award it. So when you say take it out and deal with it elsewhere, are you saying there are people in need for one reason and people in need for another reason and they should be looked at differently? Because surely it's the same thing in reality when you're talking about a means-tested need. My issue with bedroom tax being dealt with under DHP is that it's no longer a discretionary choice of the local authority to give it for that reason. We believe that bedroom tax should absolutely be dealt with and people should not have to deal with that themselves but it's no longer discretionary. It still means tested. Most local authorities apply and you have to submit your income and expenditure and you get the money if the need is there. That's why I'm asking for clarification. I think that it's really helpful, Michelle Ballartine, but I'm just wondering if someone was to qualify to have their bedroom tax mitigated the gap between the means-tested award that's already been applied in the gap to the rent has means-tested not already been applied before you then use DHP to mitigate the bedroom tax? That would be really helpful for Clarty, Ifa Deary, I don't know what you want to do. I see what you're saying but I think it's slightly separate to the point that I was making. Can I come back to you on that question? I think that the issue here is are you suggesting that everybody who has bedroom tax applied should get the money regardless of need? My understanding is that, at the moment, it's done through a means-tested basis on DHP. If you separate it out, how would you manage that? You could speak for yourself, Ms Deary, but I think that you were making a very separate point which you might just want to say again so that it's not lost during this exchange. Just articulate again the reason why you would like the bedroom tax funds not to sit within DHP then I think that Mr Deary might want to make an additional comment. I'd definitely like to come back to you on that point. Just to reiterate what you've asked me to reiterate is that it could be an option to look at because it's not discretionary, because of the commitment that the Scottish Government has made, local authorities have to mitigate the bedroom tax and therefore it's no longer a discretionary choice, so maybe there is a better mechanism by which people could be helped if they're affected by the bedroom tax. I understand the point that you're making, but do you want to add anything in relation to the means-tested aspect before I bring in other witnesses? No, I'll come back to you on that point. Mr Deyla, did you want to come in? Just to say that I think that we've ended up with bedroom tax coming out of DHP for a historical reason, which is that housing benefits are reserved, so when the bedroom tax was introduced some years ago, that was the route for the Scottish Government to offset it by the £50 million. Obviously, we now have the Scotland Act 2016 and we've got additional powers, but my understanding is that DHP, to be eligible to apply for DHP, you have to be receiving housing benefit or universal credit housing costs. I think that the convener is absolutely correct on that point. We've never really thought about whether it might be neater to call it the bedroom tax or whatever, but in some respects, I suppose, at the end of the day, if it comes down to the money cost of it, it doesn't change anything from the pot that's there. The pot is there, and whether you start to call in things different names, I'm not quite sure changes the fact that one just has a pot. A very patient Jeremy Balford, we've got it to you, sir. My middle name, convener. Good morning, panel. I've got two lines of questions. The first one's going back to Alistair Allen's comments about rent ar rears. Some of the evidence that we took last week, particularly from Edinburgh City Council, was that under the old housing benefit system, people don't have ar rears under that system as well, and those are obviously then transferred into when they transfer on to universal credit. I'm just trying to work out when we're talking about ar rears, how much of that is historical ar rears and how much of that is new ar rears of the people that you're dealing with. Obviously, people don't just get rid of those ar rears because they transfer, of course they transfer with them. Obviously, housing benefit no system is perfect, but it has ar rears within it as well. At this early stage of when universal credit is just starting to roll across Scotland, how much of the ar rears are historical rather than new? I mean, I think, certainly in Governor Lawson's experience, historical ar rears in the private rented sector are much more short-lived, if I can put it that way, than say, for example, in the social rented sector where you've got a much more sympathetic landlord, mean often the landlord has got the wherewithal to allow very small payments of £3 a week to ar rears and cases in the sheriff court sit there for years, assisted, frozen for that to happen. Now, I accept that in the private rented sector, if you've got somebody who's rented a property and they've got a bite of like mortgage and it's one property, they can't do that. There's just no way that they can do that because they can't pay the mortgage. I think that the reality is that the pressure that's on the private rented sector that we're familiar with is so much tougher. We're not laying that at the door of private landlords, it's just that the economics is completely different, which is why I'm saying that the historical ar rears aren't historical for very long because you get evicted. So the system then is not that different within the private that if I was on housing benefit and didn't pay my rent within the private, I would be evicted. And the same is true really with university credit as well, if I don't pay my rent. So there's not a difference in regard to the policy. As you say, if you've got a mortgage to pay, you've got to pay that mortgage. So within a private sector, there's not much difference then between the two systems because if you don't pay your rent, the landlord is likely to evict you. That's absolutely correct, Mr Balfour, other than the point that my colleagues have made, which is that the problem is that matters are exacerbated in terms of the universal credit, in terms of the administration and the delays and all the problems that we've talked about. Given that when you look at what we did with the 2016 private house in the Tennessee Scotland act, the eviction ground, unless you're doing me wrong, we've got experiences of private landlords who are very sympathetic and will not just jump with one month rent over three consecutive months to eviction. They've maybe known their tenant for a long time and so on and so forth. But then we've got other examples where the landlord's under pressure and they can't sit around waiting for, you know. So universal credit is just from the administration of it, that is what's exacerbating the position in terms of more likelihood of eviction and homelessness. Yeah, just to say, I don't have concrete data on this but I would imagine that in terms of historical and new areas, it's probably a bit of both. You know, let's not argue, let's not ignore the fact that rents in the private sector are extortionate, so it's not an unlikely situation where people might face that gap previously under housing benefit that they would have built upper rears as well. But I'd echo what Mike Daley has said, you know. That situation is compounded whether people have brought those arrears over into universal credit or whether they've developed them as a result of universal credit. But the fact is, you know, you've got to wait for that money so that is already going to put you into a precarious situation that might compound previous arrears or it might be brand-new arrears for you. It could be either and I don't think we've got, you know, sort of data to say otherwise. Can you clarify this? I apologise if I'm missing my point here but my understanding and please do correct me, but if I go in on the day to do my universal credit and I need money on that day, I will get that money given to me if I can show that I need that money. Now I appreciate that when I have to pay that back over a 12-month period, but you're talking about this, you go in and you've got this five-week delay until you get any money, but my understanding is, and if it's not working practice, I've been trying to know why it's not working practice, is that if I go in and make that claim that I don't have to wait that five-week period, that I get the loan if you want to use that word, but I get the loan to pay that, is that not the situation? Yeah, certainly and some people will take advantage and some people won't for whatever reasons and that's obviously up to the tent to decide, but I think— The lieutenant doesn't have to go into round areas on universal credit if he or she takes that payment on that day. I suppose technically not, no, but— Oh, no, no, no, no, no, but hang on. Mr Balfour, you've got to allow the witness an opportunity to say that. No, no, no, but I think we're just going to try to find that he's correct. Mr Balfour, you've asked three different questions and Ailey McHiver's not an opportunity to answer any of them, so could you maybe let the witness answer the question and then come back for that clarification? I would just add that, as a technical system, it seems to be designed that could easily put a tenant into areas, I guess that's what I'm trying to say, especially because the deductions that the tenant has to bear to their future payments are much higher under universal credit. I appreciate that that is going to go down from 40 per cent of the standard allowance of 30 per cent in October of this year, but if we compare that to what the deduction levels were, under housing benefit I think was 5 per cent or something like that, so it's quite a big difference and that situation is ultimately going to put tenants in hardship. So to go out to the question, I do think that, you know, there's probably a case where there's a bit of both. There'll be some that will have historical areas, some that'll have new, some that might have a bit of a combination and might be compounded by the fact or not that they've decided to take an advance and have had to repay that. Of course you should call up on that now, Mr Balfour. Yeah, I mean, I do think that it's important, when we're talking, that this is a tenant, this is an individual choice that they're making. I think that's the point. I was, you're saying it's a theatrical, but it's an individual thing. It's a bit like, do I choose to put the money to the landlord directly or do I choose to take it directly? These are choices in building the system that an individual makes or doesn't make. I mean, I would say, Mr Balfour, that often the choice that's being created through universal credit is ephemeral, because we need to remember that the people that Ailey's talking about very often in my experience are not in the private rented sector through choice. We might be being evicted from the social rented sector, relationship breakdown, whatever, they can't get into the social rented sector. So they're not there by choice. And the only, looking at the, Alison Johnston's point about the Nalothian's 5% access to the man. So all you can get, you won't get the nice, I mean, so given a quick example, I could spend £650 a month and get an absolutely luxury flat in the west end of Glasgow, but if I'm in receipt of universal credit and benefits, I ain't going to get that, right? Even though that's unlawful for me to be discriminated against, but I'm not going to get it, what I'm going to get is a grotty two bedroom flat for that. So the choice is ephemeral and I think what the UK government's done, and this all goes back to Ian Duncan-Smith, I have to say, was this idea that you give, you put all that responsibility onto the claimant and that that was a wonderful, beautiful thing. And all I'm saying is that in the reality of the clients that I work with is that if you're absolutely struggling and you've ended up in a relationship breakdown, you're in the private rented sector trying to cope with the children, having all that extra responsibility in a system isn't actually a helpful thing. I think that that's quite a reasonable debate that the committee will have to wrestle with in relation to choices and what the balance is in relation to how... I've got a second issue, can I break you on to it? Yes, okay. You had to wait a long time, so I apologize if I'm asking you to ask this briefly. Sorry about that. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is probably a bit more of where we can have a bit of consensus hopefully. One of the things that has concerned me about the new system, and I understand, has been raised by the Scottish Government and the DWP and our review unit as of this year, yeah, January this year, is around the mandate for vulnerable individuals that you're dealing with. My understanding is, perhaps you could just clarify this for me, is that you have to go every two weeks back to the individual for them to sign the mandate again, which, obviously, doesn't be slightly illogical. Firstly, is that the case, and if it is the case, is it your position that the mandate should be for a much longer period than a two-week period? I think that Mr Malfie referred to an issue that, from the DWP's perspective, has been caught up in data protection, you know, GDPR, the 2018 Data Protection Act, because the way that they store somebody's data, they have a lot of, perhaps, medical information. Not that I'm paid to defend the DWP, but to be fair, the DWP would say, well, we've got obligations to make sure that if we're given access to a third party to access your data, we need to make sure that you've consented to that. So I can see where the DWP comes from, but I would certainly agree with you that that has resulted, I think, in an overly bureaucratic system, because there's ways to get consent in a streamlined, easier fashion and not having to renew it, as you've said. So I think that that's a fixable thing that the DWP can do without using the shield of data protection, which is often used by so many people to kind of, you know, to thwart engagement with a third party. Morwet, ifadiri, then Ailey McIver. Just really briefly, Mr Daly has summed it up really well, but the only concern that we would have with that, obviously, there's quite rightly data protection, there's quite a sense of information going on there, but where we'd be concerned and where we have experiences, where this difficulty in getting this consent has led to delays and issues with the person's claim and therefore putting them into a bit of difficulty. Morwet, Ailey McIver. Yeah, just to add to that, it could delay the process, but it could also cause, like, additional distress to the claimant as well, particularly if they are a vulnerable person, and for, you know, a wide range of reasons, and that's a situation that we all want to avoid. Two members want to ask supplementaries on this. I waited both of them before we go back to the witnesses for a response because of time constraints. If it's on this issue, deputy convener, then Michelle Ballantyne. It's not on this issue, not so complete separation. Right, okay. It's on this issue yet. Can you just confirm, then, that your understanding is that the client can put a note on their journal giving you permission, they can give you permission on the phone there and then, or in person, so based on that, those three options, which are all pretty simple if you're there or if you're not there, can you just explain what the bureaucratic difficulty is in actually getting that permission and being able to talk to the DWP? Is it used as Michelle Ballantyne would outline it, Ailey McIver? From what I understand, I think it's the sort of specificity of the information that you have to give, so the claimant would have to explain what exactly they want to, the information exactly that has to be disclosed for what purpose it is, and it's issue specific, so each issue that you need to have dealt with, for example, needs a separate line of explicit consent, if you like. You also have to give details of the person who you want to disclose it to, you know the branch they work in, all these kinds of things, so yes, in theory it might be easy enough for somebody like you or I to add something to a journal and say, I want to give this person my permission to receive this part of information, but I think particularly if an issue is complex, if it comprises lots of different arms and legs, which quite often issues do, they start growing arms and legs once you start opening them up. That can be very difficult and time constraints for the claimant and also quite distressing for them as well, particularly if they are struggling for whatever reason to access their online journal, if it's difficult for them to make phone calls for any reason, or even going to the job centre to give that permission, if you have to do that every time, that's quite a big ask of somebody. It was just the point that I think has been given in evidence, and I'm looking at the analysis of the evidence that has been submitted to the committee on this, is that the overall picture is that communication with the DWP on these issues is poor. Again, it's one of these kind of operational realities is that what we've done is we've created, as Mr Malfour says, a system that actually impedes what's in the interests of the landlords and what's in the interests of the claimant, and that is something that I think is easily fixable for the DWP to get its systems sorted. I'm interested in the question of how single people might be affected by social security and housing. I've always suspected that single males in particular might be a high profile group. Any information that you could offer the committee on that would be really useful. I want to come back on the gender aspect of that. Women are disproportionately, single women are disproportionately represented in the private rented sector, and also because of the gender pay gap, the problem of the gap between LHA rates and actual rents is compounded for women. On a related point, we have experience of working with separated parents who are single men themselves, who have shared custody of children, but if it's a single male, for example, who's under 35, he only gets the shared room rate. If he isn't receiving the child benefit, he isn't the recipient of child benefit, he will only get shared room rate despite the fact that he will probably have obligations and want to have children around for overnight visits. We know of this particularly in temporary accommodation. Single men, we've talked about this before, can't really access temporary furnished flats or in B&B and hostels most of the time without a visiting policy, but when they do have a flat by themselves, they can only access the shared room rate, which makes it difficult for them to procure the space needed to facilitate children visiting. Mr Daly, I feel that it's said to you that it only adds something if you feel you really need to, but I suspect to know the answer to that. No, no, I'm very happy with what my colleagues have contributed. It's all because of time to the straights deputy. Do you think that you want to follow up on any of that? I think that that's an interesting answer. I acknowledge that there's a gender dimension depending on the issue that affects women, but I suspect that there's much deeper issues as well affecting single men. I think that it's interesting what you said there about separated appearance and perhaps an issue for another day. I presume that the courts might take a view on access to children if that accommodation is not suitable for children. I thank you for raising that, Pauline. I have constituency cases where there are issues in accessing suitable size or affordable accommodation for fathers who want to have that positive relationship with ex-partner and the children unless they enter a legal co-pairing arrangement. That's not always reflected and that's not always the issues of them, so that's a really important point to raise. Time is upon us. There were two other themes that I know we wanted to discuss, so I'm just going to put it on the record. Perhaps you could drop the committee a note in relation to some thoughts on what perhaps the next panel could pick up on this, but there were certainly issues around how we better use the social security system to promote the private-lending rented sector to take on more responsibilities and partnership with them, the good providers in the private rented sector, so a better long-term use of the social security system, because one of the things the private rented sector says is that they're up for it if they get that long-term commitment and secure financial support. That would be really interesting to know, and then Michelle Balleton must have previously discussed the idea of tenancy deposit schemes at a local authority area. Certainly my experience in Glasgow is that they can do some quite good work. I think it's why people that operates it in Glasgow, but actually the funds they have at their disposal actually discourage the vast majority of private rented accommodation, so it's actually who would fund tenancy deposit schemes. Can we think more imaginatively about how the social security system could work to fund some of that, be that local authorities, the Scottish Government or indeed the UK Government? So just think innovatively about what more we could do, and we'd certainly have an interest in tenancy deposit schemes in relation to the private rented sector. I hope that reflects some of the discussions that we were having. Michelle Balleton, before the meeting started, just wanted to get that on the record. Thank you all three of our witnesses this morning. Please follow the inquiry. If there's any additional information above that again, you want to send us. Please don't hesitate to get in contact, and we will suspend briefly until we get to our next panel in place. Thank you. Welcome back everyone. We're still on agenda item 2, social security support for housing, and we now welcome out our second panel, who are John Raffer to visit and support group head Bethany Christian Trust, Gary Neill, operation manager Rock Trust, and Rob Gowns, police officer of citizens advice Scotland. Thank you to the three of you for supporting our work in relation to this inquiry, and thank you. I think that you sat through a substantial amount, I think, of that first evidence session as well, so we really appreciate that. We will move straight to questions. I said that we started the meeting to declare an interest, but I am the director of Bethany Christian Trust, just for the record. I think that you have just done that, so thank you. My apologies for not doing earlier. I am putting that on the record. Almost straight to questions. Alasdair Allan, MSP. Thank you. I am interested to hear your perspective on an issue that I raised with the last panel, and I am sure that you heard the discussion about it, which is what you are noticing as organisations in terms of changes to the pattern of rent arrears? In terms of rent arrears, it has been an area that we have been closely looking at over the past year. Since 2012, whilst debt issues as a whole have decreased in particular consumer debt, rent arrears have increased as an area of advice by about 40%. It is something that we have particularly looked into the causes of. The particular reasons for the benefits-related issue, a loss of income, or unexpected costs, but it quite closely correlates with the introduction of welfare reform in 2012-13, and in the last 18 months, in relation to universal credit, it is a particular concern in terms of people being able to firstly get out of debt, because most often people will either borrow from family or friends or credit cards, and that is not a sustainable solution, or they will cut down on essential living costs, cut down on food and heating, which is not a long-term solution either, but it has certainly been something that over the past six or seven years has been one of our fastest growing issues in CAP. I think that we are definitely seeing an increase in rent arrears, defaulting on rent, and it is down to the fact that people are having to make choices on what they are spending their money on. That might be, as has already been said, choosing between heating, lighting, rents, food and all those things. The poverty gap is increasing year on year, and the people who are on benefits are falling more and more closer into that poverty, so they are having to make these systemic choices, and unfortunately, in some cases, it is defaulting on their rents, so we are seeing an increase in rent arrears. We could clarify a bit, but we do not work trust with young people in the nature of our client group. We have not encountered an awful lot of rent arrears, but I know that one of the young men that we support through a rent deposit scheme is perhaps something to do with universal credit and the difficulties in claiming house and benefit or help towards housing costs. Historically, we worked with a young man who worked in construction, so he was essentially self-employed, and we only became aware a few weeks or perhaps months down the line that he had been off ill, and he had had the income and had fallen into arrears, and there was not really any benefit or any he was not able to access any help at all to pay off his historical arrears, so that seems a new thing for me. I understand that in the old legacy benefits and housing benefits, there was an opportunity to go back and make a historical claim. Is that correct, Rob? I think probably not. I would need to double-check on the particular case. In terms of historic arrears, we have seen people with debts of thousands and thousands of pounds if they are not currently in receipt of a benefit, that can be difficult to pay off. As was alluded to in the first panel, it is possible for landlords to apply to have that deducted from a benefits claim, but that can be at a very high rate currently up to 40% for all sorts of debts, so that can present difficulties in terms of clearing rent ar arrears. I think that there is a point of clarity where the committee needs more generally, so thank you for putting it on the record and we will check that out ourselves, so that is naturally helpful. One of the things that you have seen that the committee is interested in is whether there is any connection between some of the difficult choices that you are describing that people have to make around food and heating and situations to do with delay in initial payments of certain benefits, and I suppose that gets to the heart of it. One of the matters that we are interested in is a committee. You will have heard this describing, and you will be more than familiar from your own work, the situations that people have to face if benefits are paid in arrears and so on and the implications of that for housing costs. Can you say anything about either anecdotally or in terms of evidence about what you have seen as an impact on your own work as a result of those changes? Mr Rafferty, do not be shy gentlemen, just make it clear that you want to speak for it, Mr Rafferty. I think that, on Bethany, we deliver housing first services here in Edinburgh, and it is one area that we are seeing a dramatic rise in arrears and stuff like that. We are working with the most complex needs, the most chaotic lifestyles, and these people having to interact with the benefits system as it is universal credit is very problematic. It causes delays in receipts of benefits, and it causes delays in receipts of housing costs. We are seeing increased demand on services and support. There is an increase in the delays that costs are being paid to onwards. As we have already talked about in the first panel, the direct payments that are being made from the second assessment period onwards is exacerbating that. People with the extreme chaotic lifestyles that we are dealing with receive their first receipt of benefit, and they are then choosing what to do with that benefit. The choice is that they pay their rent, and they may pay off the drug debt that they have already got. The choice is who I am going to pay my rent to, and I am going to pay my rent to a landlord who may evict me, but that is further down the road, or my paying off my dealer who could break my arm or whatever in the immediate days. That is the kind of causes and cases that we are dealing with right now. That is the stark choices that people are making. It is costly to their health at the moment. Any other comments or witnesses? Certainly, the length of wait and time for first payments to come through. If people have not taken the option to get an advanced payment, we are seeing young people who will come here regularly to access food banks. They will come to us to get free toilet trees. They will come to us to get some advice on where else they can go to get three services that otherwise they would be expected to pay for. It has certainly increased since the introduction of universal credit. There is no doubt in that. In terms of my housing, I take on things as well. What we are also seeing is that people accessing the social welfare fund more often, whether in desperation to access crisis grants, is beginning to have a noticeable impact on the awards that young people that we are supporting are having when they are moving on to their own accommodation in terms of the awards that they are receiving towards furnishing their accommodation. I suspect that that is linked. I think that it is a very similar picture of people who will be going without to pay the rent or to manage their arrears, whether that is not putting the heating on, whether that is going without food, or if they have kids making sure that the kids are fed but cutting down themselves. He is in possession action from landlords and the threat of eviction and people needing support from advice services but also from the Scottish welfare fund and food banks. Finally, you mentioned it there again and it came up in the last panel, but the system of advances, is there a high level of awareness amongst the people you are dealing with, the service users, and indeed the people who might benefit from this, of the existence of a system of advances and does it work even if they access it? There is an awareness because the people we are working with have the support to make the claims. Our staff are aware of the advances, but they have the choice of having an immediate hit of five weeks or a hit of 12 months of reduced benefits. We are saying that people are choosing to take that initial five-week hit rather than sustaining a year's worth of taking reduced benefits. That is what we are saying. Any other comments on that? Young people can be quite impulsive and sometimes they are making decisions given just because they are young people can be flawed in terms of the way that we might see it. Young people's brains are still developing and there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that when people are in poverty and people are in financial difficulties, there are actually physiological changes that take place in the brain that affect their decision making. We see a problem that can seem quite appealing to get money in advance and that is not often the best thing for people. Obviously, we will encourage young people to make a choice that they believe is right for them, but we do see it as potentially an issue when these advance payments have to be repaid from benefits that are already keeping people in the bedline when they are paid in full. 30 per cent to come off your benefit payments is going to leave a young person going without heating or going without electricity in their home or going without food. They definitely have to make difficult choices if they are going to be making repayments. Can I just check? I know that time will be tight here, but I think that the last time we were discussing this, it developed into a conversation around direct payments to landlords and alternative payments versus Scottish choices. The crux of the debate seemed to be around choice, and I apologise for letting you in at this point to develop this further. It was about whether or not the choice should be to opt out of that payment going direct to the landlord or opt into it and whether the opt-out on balance would be desirable. While not everyone needs that level of protection and not everyone is vulnerable, it is difficult to identify who can be vulnerable to that direct to landlord and opting out might be beneficial. Some of that on the record, and I think that Mr Gryff will want to explore that a bit further. I am just conscious, but we are at time constraints today and I want to get all the evidence on the record this morning. Mr Rafferty? From my point of view, we would agree that the default of opting out would be the preferred manner for us. We talk about choice and we are still giving people choice. The choice to opt out for us would be the preferred manner. Mr Neil? I agree entirely with what John has just said. It all feels a bit rushed, but Mr Gowns? I think that we would still favour the Scottish choices being given as a choice of whether to have direct payments to landlords or whether to have paid to themselves. The alternative payment arrangements should, if they work correctly, urge people in situations where they have addictions or debt and would and where the sort of choices is taken away. I think that there still needs to be done about promoting awareness of the Scottish choice and what it means in practice, and to sort out some of the issues in terms of how those payments are made to the landlords. However, we would support people being given a choice of whether they receive the housing payment or whether their landlord does it directly. Opt-in or opt-out is what we are asking as a committee. Basically, it is the choice that is either a default. Right now, it is opt-in, so you only get Scottish choices if you opt-in to it, and the money goes direct to you by default. There is a default currently with an opt-in. The alternative system could be the default if the money goes straight to the landlord and you have the choice to opt-out, so would it be the status quo or would it be opt-out? It would be the status quo for us. I apologise, Mr Gryffin, for exploring this line of questioning. Do you want to just take us forward on that? Just briefly, Cymru, I think that that has been helpful to hear that. The only issue I would go back to that I raised with the previous panel is whether you think on Scottish choices that the work should be undertaken to make sure a payment can be made direct to the landlord from the first payment rather than the case at the moment where it is only the second payment that can be paid direct to the landlord. Definitely. I would agree that that would be a great strive forward to have the direct payments to the landlord from the first assessment period. What we are seeing right now is that, as I have already said, because it is from the second assessment period onwards, people are making choices, poor choices, as to where they are spending their money, and paying their rent is not always the first choice or the first option for them. Definitely changing to the direct payment from the first assessment period would be a preferred option for us. I agree that the direct payment from the first payment would certainly make it a little bit easier for homeless people to get into the private rented sector, which is already a very real challenge even taking the payments out of the equation. There are many barriers that they need to overcome to get into the private rented sector, so that would certainly be one thing that could be done quite easily. That would be a helpful thing to have. Some of the issues that we see are around, in particular around the first month's rent, so that would be a helpful thing to have. Do you want to explore your other line of questioning? On the questionary housing payments, there is a raise with the previous panel just to ask for your experience as to how the non-bedroom tax element of discussionary housing payments, how that is operating, how that is supporting people whom you have come into contact with, or what you have been representing. I think that the only interaction that we have with the DHP is when our tenants and our supported accommodations default through or are sanctioned on their universal credit, and the DHP kicks in at that point to pay their housing costs for the period that they are sanctioned, so that is the only interaction that we have. As I have said, rock trust operator rent deposit scheme. One thing that strikes me that is maybe a bit unhelpful is that discretionary housing payments are only available to people who are already in receipt of housing benefit, and a lot of the people who are approached just for help to get into private rent accommodation are not already in receipt of any benefits, necessarily. That cuts off the option for help with a rent deposit, so if there was an opportunity for someone to access a discretionary housing payment before they start to receive help with their housing costs, that would be another great help in terms of helping homeless people into the private rented sector. On the whole discretionary housing payment scheme works well, though it can vary area to area and in terms of what is prioritised in which area, how long the awards are made for and how much is spent throughout the year. We have heard from CAB advisers that, in some areas, the local authorities are very willing to help with issues to do with the local housing allowance, as we have heard from the first panel, whereas in others it can be very difficult to get those payments. Again, people receiving, for instance, for the relation to the benefit cap or universal credit issues outside of the bedroom tax can vary across the country. We would support the guidance being reviewed and, in particular, prioritised in what areas should be prioritised for discretionary payments and long-term payments, and the areas that are almost not discretionary as Shelter Scotland was talking about, such as the bedroom tax. We would welcome a review of the guidance. Mr Gowns, in particular, has heard anecdotal evidence of the variance in generosity of different local authorities' DHP schemes. I wonder if you are able to provide written evidence to the committee at a later date of any hard data that you might have on the variability of DHP schemes across the country? I would be happy to do that. Alison Johnstone is followed by Jeremy Balfour. Thank you, convener. I would like to ask a couple of questions on the benefit cap and exemptions. People can be exempt from the benefit cap if they claim certain social security payments. Those include several of the payments that are being devolved to this Parliament, but they often have quite low rates of take-up. People who are facing the benefit cap may well be entitled to an exemption, but they may not know that they are entitled. I appreciate that some of those benefits can be very complicated to apply for. Is there scope to help people escape from the cap by ensuring that they have the assistance to help them to apply for a payment that provides an exemption? That would be very helpful. It is certainly something that the CAB will, as is obviously a huge part of our work, is helping people to find what they are entitled to and to help to claim it if they should be entitled to things. Some of the examples for the benefit cap are of disability benefits, but we think that some of the changes would need to go further. We know that the majority of people who are affected are lone parents with three or more children, so it can be very difficult for them to move into work or move into different accommodation. The Work and Pensions Committee has recently done an inquiry on that and found that 82 per cent of the people who are affected by the benefit cap were not expected to look for work by the social security system. The benefits that they were claiming were things such as income support or the equivalent of universal credit, because they had young children to take care of or that they were not able to work due to ill health. We would urge everything to be done so that people can take up all the benefits that they are entitled to, but we would also see the benefit cap reviewed because it takes into account a lot of people who probably should not be affected by it. Gary Neill or John Rafferty want to add anything to that? Nothing to add at this moment, because it is an area that we do not have a lot of interaction with. Do not feel that everyone has to answer every question, just remember when you wish. Obviously, there is more that we could be doing to raise awareness of benefits that people may be entitled to apply for. We know every year that there are billions of pounds of unclaimed benefits. What do you think we as a Parliament and the Scottish Government could be doing to increase take-up more generally? Obviously, there is support for the independent advice sector. The Scottish Government has set out its own schemes, one of which we are partnering with them on financial health checks. I think that it is going more widely. Reducing stigma is very important. I think that some of the way in which we talk about social security and moving to a place where it is not seen as a shameful thing, but it is not seen as something that is very complicated and that generally awareness is raised that it is not something that is all that is just for unemployed people or those grounders. It is something to support people in a range of situations when they need it. I think that with the reduction in local authority budgets, a lot of local authorities are choosing to close down advice shops. In West Lothian, we had an advice shop that people would go to to get advice for maximising incomes and stuff like that. That is now closed because of the cuts to their budgets, and I believe that other local authorities are doing the same thing. There is a limited choice of where people can go for advice. There are advice services at City of Edinburgh Council to deliver advice services, but there is a waiting list to get on to those services. We are limiting the choice for people going forward to get the advice that they need. I am not sure that I have actually helped. Can I just check before we move on? I was quite worried about the question that the position that Mr Raff did in relation to advice services. I am just wondering whether it is a mixed picture across the country. For example, in Glasgow, the local authority has got a network of advisers in libraries who are there more often than not to advise on universal credit. I know that citizens advice is doing quite a lot of advice. I am just wondering whether it is an inconsistent picture across the country in relation to the type of support that is available. I am not saying that Glasgow is perfect by any means, it is just that I happen to be aware of it. I am not aware of the country wide. I am just aware of the areas that I have responsibility in. West Lothian is one of those areas. I know that the advice shop has closed and there will be advice facilities there, but again, there is a waiting list. There are only so many people working on those services, so there is a waiting list to get anywhere near those services. It is absolutely an issue for West Lothian. We have to work out as a committee type. That is happening consistently across the country, otherwise that is very helpful. Jeremy Balfour. Thank you very much and good morning, gentlemen. Really probably aimed at the Rock Trust and Bethan. I think that one of the advances that your organisation is both playing is the wraparound support that you give to individuals who are very vulnerable. Without going too far off being before the committee put me back, obviously we are looking at private tenancies particularly, but is there a better way that the social security system could help you, not just with the kind of payment rent, but the wraparound support to make sure that that individual stays within the tenancy and is supported in the tenancy? Do you get support from a social security system for doing that? If not, what would help in regard to that kind of service that you provide? I would say that Bethan's evidence or experience would be that our work is all done as a social rented, a social landlord. Our accommodation is all supported, so our wraparound support is provided by contracts from local authorities. Social security pays for the house and benefit aspect direct for the rent, but the wraparound support is provided by contracts from local authorities. What we are seeing throughout our services are being blocked because of the lack of mainstream move-on options and the lack of affordability for our service users to move into the private rented sector because of the LHA and all the rest of it, under 35s, shared options and stuff like that. What we are seeing is that we are working with people, people who are staying in temporary, supported accommodation for a lot longer than they were doing because there is no suitable move-on options for them. I congratulate you before you answer that question. Would it be helpful for you to give that same support within the private rented sector? Yes. Would that be done through contracts with councils? Yes. That is a helpful line of questioning. You mentioned housing first, Mr Rafferty, the idea is that the investment that the UK social security system, the Scottish social security system, local authorities and others put into some of the most vulnerable and complex individuals that need our support over a five, 10 or 15-year period is a significant amount of money and it is whether or not there is a better way of investing that money. I know that that is what housing first is all about and it is whether or not the social security system could support that more intensively in a speedier way because it might benefit the public purse in the medium term to do that as well as meeting the core needs of people who deserve our support. I think that any comments in relation to what layers of the social security system you think could do more and how they could do that would be really helpful to the committee. Mr Heal? I am speaking about young people here and the shared room allowance and the local house allowance. We come across many young people who are in temporary accommodation who are homeless and that will mainly be bed and breakfast accommodation. I met a young man this week who had been in bed and breakfast accommodation for three years. That is unusual, I will say, but there are many young people in temporary accommodation who will be receiving vast sums of money and house and benefit who could very easily afford and manage to live in a private rented flat if the local house allowance was not capped at £68 a week, but it is. A £68 a week will not go anywhere close to covering the rent on even a shared room. Shared rooms in Edinburgh are—our research would suggest that there are between £400 and even up to £500 for a shared room in Edinburgh, which is outwith the means of most of the young people who approach us for support to get away from temporary accommodation. They are quite happy with the idea of having a private rented flat. Historically, what we found was that a lot of young people that we worked with were willing to just hold out until they could get social housing. I think that that is much less the case now. People are open to the idea of being in the private rented sector, but it is just closed off for most young people and it is closed off for all young people if they rely on benefits to cover their housing costs. If we agree with those points, it is obvious that if someone does not have anywhere to move on to that is affordable, that is not a good outcome. I think that the social security system can do more of that firstly by joining that if somebody is in temporary accommodation that is provided by the private sector, that is also covered in full by social security support. As was mentioned on the first panel, we would support the ending of the freeze on local housing allowance and to have it restored back to its value so that it can take into account the housing market. I think that there is also mentioning that there can be an issue of what you will see as no DSS adverts. A large number of private rented sector properties are exclude claimants of housing benefit or universal credit. There seems to be a number of reasons for that, but it is something that can take out all the affordable private rents out of the market and it would appear to be discriminatory against people who receive social security support, so we would look to see some action taken on that. That is helpful. You have actually saved his time because I saw some nodding heads from Mr Dill and Mr Rafferty, so there is a line of questioning and we do not have to ask what is really helpful. Pauline McNeill. Thank you very much. It was on the last point that Rob made in relation to the willingness of landlord to take the HS claimants. Have you seen evidence that that is increasing in recent times? It seems to be anecdotal, but it seems that an increasing number of landlords are reluctant or refusing to rent tenants who are in receipt of universal credit, partly because they have heard about some of the issues and are concerned about rent. There is some research that the Social Security Advisory Committee took last year, which found that, on the shared accommodation rate, it searched through all the flat listings in Edinburgh and Glasgow. In particular, in Edinburgh, they found that there were at about 570, there were only four that would be affordable, and all of those, the landlords would not let to people who received housing benefit or universal credit. In effect, there were no options for people in the private rented sector that they would be able to afford on the shared accommodation rate. You said in your submission that we should legislate to prevent that from happening. You say that the Scottish Government should consider options, including legislation, to prevent landlords from excluding recipients of benefits than advertising lets. Do you want to speak to that? There is a range of options that could be taken, whether that is in terms of to help in some way to incentivise landlords to be able to take on people who receive universal credit or housing benefit, that is ultimately addressing some of the issues with universal credit around the housing payment that are causing delays in the housing payment, whether it is work with landlords and mortgage lenders to help to reassure them, or whether ultimately it is something that the right one to go down the legislative route of preventing adverts that discriminate against people in housing benefit and in receipt of social security. With social housing unable to take everybody who would want a social housing place, waiting lists across the country are around around 158,000, so there is not enough social housing for everybody that wants it, there is a need for people to access the private rented sector to get a home and in those circumstances be a case for taking action. Do the other witnesses have a different view? No, I would agree with what Rob said. I am interested in the idea of incentivising landlords. We certainly come across a lot of landlords and their lending providers have stipulated that they cannot take people on benefits, but even if they are legislated for the kind of over-discrimination with a no DSS kind of thing that has been going on for as long as anyone can remember, there is a lot of stuff that goes on that you probably could not legislate. Certainly, working with young people, we see it all the time. Young people are seen as a risk, homeless people are seen as a risk. I am interested in the idea of incentivising and maybe taking a lot of the risks away. That would certainly be something to look at. I agree. That means that the private rented sector is in that business to make money and homeless vulnerable people are seen as a risk. Anything that we can do to mitigate against that risk can only help to bring people around the table who are then willing to rent out to vulnerable groups. Addressing the LHA, addressing the direct payments from assessment period 1, and anything that has already been discussed that can mitigate against a risk that one word has got to take on. I use the expression seen as a risk, but Mr Neil, earlier on, you expressed the fact that some of your tenants and people you work with, and I know from my own experience when I headed up a drug and alcohol unit that a lot of my tenants were a risk. You made the comment that they had been evicted from social housing, and then we are having difficulty finding private rented accommodation. Is there something between that that we need to do in terms of providing housing that is more supportive, that gives the wraparound care that we have talked about with some of your organisations? I found that my tenants needed huge input to maintain a tenancy and I feel that when we are looking at a lot of the people that you are talking about, it is that vulnerability, it is that inability to cope quite often in the home on their own, and often quite sometimes not because of themselves but because of the people that come in and take advantage of them as well. Have you got any comments around some of that? Obviously, maintaining tenancy seems to be the big difficulty for many of these people. Certainly, there will always be a place for supported tenancies and outreach support. A lot of the tenants that we work with and our supported accommodation may have had failed tenancies in the past, but for every tenant that we meet that has had those issues and need to develop those skills, we meet probably two or three who would be able to live independently in a private rented tenancy. We often will have to decline applications from young people who are homeless trying to access our support accommodation because they do not need the support that we offer along with accommodation, they just need accommodation. I absolutely agree that there is a real need for supported accommodation, but there is also a very significant number of the homeless population who could manage really quite fine in their own tenancy if that financial barrier was removed. Can I go on to ask some of the stuff that I wanted to ask earlier about deposits then, because I think that fits neatly into this. One of the big issues about getting into private rented accommodation is the initial outlays. We know from some of the evidence that we have taken that it is not sometimes just having a month's deposit or being able to pay in advance. Of course, we have got the on-going problem that benefits, not just UC, but benefits previously were all paid in arrears, which has always made it difficult for private tenancies. In terms of that scheme, we know that local authorities can give help with deposits, and I wondered if you could tell us what your experience is nationwide about people being able to access help with deposits, and particularly around whether the levels of deposits are commensurate with the marketplace. Mr Neil, did you want to? Yes. Rock Trust operates a rent deposit scheme, and we can offer a paper bond rather than an actual cash deposit. There are enough landlords out there that are willing to work with us on that. I think that one of the main stumbling blocks that we are finding now that has been established for a couple of years is that the idea is that young people will gradually save towards having that deposit, which they can then lodge with the landlord. Young people are just finding it extremely difficult to save for that deposit, and so we have young people who have been working with us in excess of 12 months. I think that one young person out of 14 has actually saved for their full deposit. The rest are saving towards their deposit, but it has taken in excess of 12 months. If someone could just pay that cash deposit, not only would it help them in that regard, it would also make landlords much more willing to take people on if they had that cash deposit, because we still encounter a lot of landlords who will not consider a paper bond. As a social landlord, we have just taken the decision to do away with deposits in our supported flats. We have done that with a view to offering our tenants as they come in the opportunity to put what a deposit they would have done for our flat into saving for a flat further down the road. We will work with our tenants to help them to attain a deposit for when the time comes that they achieve a suitable move-on option. We have not interacted with rent deposit schemes and all that stuff, so it is not an area that I can talk into. From an accommodation provider, we have taken that decision to do away with the deposits that we would take and offered the opportunity for tenants to save up towards a deposit further down the line. I do not have a great deal to add to that. I see something in terms of the social security side of it as potentially something that discretionary housing payments could be made for and have been in some cases. That is obviously a budget with lots of pressures and lots of priorities that we have heard about, but I am happy to go away and have a look through our data to see what might be going on. If you have finished that, I will take a supplementary on your point. I can not keep it tight because I am aware of your time. I know that we will have to close the session soon, but I think that you have hit upon something crucial. There is no loss of money to the landlord because legislation says that the money has to go to the tenancy deposit scheme anyway. We have found that what we are talking about is underwriting and going garntor. Should something go wrong in between the tenants moving in and if some issue is to happen with the tenants, it would be one of the three tenancy deposit schemes in Scotland. You could provide six or nine months once you are in the tenancy to pay up your deposit into directly into the tenancy deposit scheme. That does not seem to be a solution that requires money, but it requires a reorganisation of where we are. Is that something that you think would be achievable? It would certainly be an improvement on what we have just now. That is essentially what we are doing with our rent deposit scheme. If we open that up to a wider homeless population, absolutely that would be welcomed. I assume that that is something that other witnesses would think that words of the mouth would be supportive of. The time is almost upon us. I am conscious that there is a number of matters that we have not raised just because of the time. There is an opportunity for another question if a member wants it at this point. Other than that, you might want to write to us if you have any specific comments that you want to make regarding the cost of temporary furnished accommodation. A theme might be that irrespective of who funds at local authorities, Scottish Government, the UK Government, there could be a lot of money trapped inside the system and the idea that those most vulnerable and unbenefits are taking some time, not always some time, poor quality accommodation, but it is significantly expensive, much more expensive in the private rented sector, ironically, quite frankly. A lot of the working poor cannot afford to take it and are so far surfing a stay with families and friends. There seems to be a lot of money trapped inside the system and how we could release some of that to be more innovative would really welcome your thoughts on that as well. Not just now, unfortunately, because you need to go and think about it, but I think we would really welcome that. Are there any additional comments that any of you would like to make before we close this evidence session? Thank you very much for coming along. If you have any additional comments, not just the ones that I raised, but anything at all, please do stay in contact with the committee. Thank you very much for giving evidence this morning. We will move straight on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item 3, benefit automation. I have a suggestion to members because of time constraints and we do have a matter that we have to discuss in private agenda item 4. I would like to suggest that we put off what will be an in-public discussion in relation to the letter that we have received from Inverclyde council in relation to issues that they have had in relation to benefit automation and data sharing with DWP. I think that it is a very important issue that they have raised. We should give it a bit of time for discussion, so they are minded that we put it on next week's agenda and we make it one of the first items that we discuss on the agenda as opposed to one of the last items that we discuss on the agenda so that it does not fall off the end, given time constraints. In my apologies to Inverclyde council that we are delaying that slightly, but would members agree to that approach? Thank you very much. We can now move to agenda item 4, which is social security support for housing, which we have previously taken privates when I move into private session.