 The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion number 1360 in the name of Sandra White on a welfare conditionality study. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put forward. Would those members who wish to speak in the debate please press the request-to-speak buttons as soon as possible? I call on Sandra White to open the debate. Around seven minutes, please, Ms White. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thank the researchers at Glasgow University and their partners across the UK who have collaborated on the welfare conditionality research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The project, which is looking at conditional welfare in the UK, started in 2013 and will finish in 2018. This motion highlights the first wave of those findings. I also thank the media who covered the research, particularly the daily record, for highlighting the human costs of this particular conditionality research, which shows that as well. We are looking at too many areas. How is it affected with conditionality in changing the behaviour of those receiving welfare benefits and services? Are there any particular circumstances in which the use of conditionality may or may not be justifiable? The findings are undoubtedly a stark reminder of the complete and utter failure of the UK Tory Government to provide meaningful support to those who need it. I give members a snapshot of the findings. Sanctions often came as a shock without warning. Many of the interviews of those believed that they had been compliant. Loss of income through sanctioning was usually disproportionate. For example, having no money for food for a whole month because of being five minutes late for an appointment. There were variations in expectations of different job coaches contributing to mistrust in the system, which was often viewed as deliberately designed to catch claimants out so that they could be sanctioned. The material impact of sanctions, both in terms of short-term crisis and long-term pay-off of debt, can result in renteriors, eviction threats and homelessness. Very few cases were sanctions worked at all. The issues that interviews said prevented them from finding work are not helped by sanctions. The high number of sanctions is still caused by DWP administration errors. The poor implementation of easements and flexibilities for particular groups—for example, homeless people and lone parents—is something that we should pay particular attention to. The level of awareness in this particular group is very, very low, and there is a discrepancy of support, which is neither intensive enough nor tailored enough to be effective in helping people to overcome barriers to work. One of the most galling findings from the report is the fact that sanctions do nothing at all to help people to find work. The running theme behind examples of people getting into work was the availability of appropriate support rather than the threat of punishments. The research demonstrates that the very foundation of the sanctions regime is flawed. The fact is that people, by and large, want to work—they do want to work—and in many cases have long histories in employment before their circumstances changed. I have no doubt that members across the chamber all have many cases of constituents who have fallen victim to the sanctions regime and have sought their advice and support. The report highlights many cases, and I would, if you are indulgence, take the opportunity to highlight a few to put into perspective the reality of the situation for welfare service users. In the word welfare, I really do not like it at all, and I try not to use it, but that is what the report does use. Take, for example, a man in his 50s, made redundant, could only find part-time work relying on universal credit to top up his wages. Prior to universal credit, he would have had the opportunity to apply for working tax credits, would have been free from conditionality. In his own words, that is how he has described his interaction with the system. The first moment that I walked into the job centre, I felt criminalised. You looked down upon to me, it was as if I was signed up to a prison. This man's problems did not end there. It was a long delay in receiving the universal credit payment, as well as administrative errors, which resulted in three months of rent-a-years. He requested that his housing element of universal credit be paid directly to the social landlord, but that did not happen. He had taken to court over the rent-a-years that he had accrued, and now he feels that everything is looming over his head and is suffering from depression and anxiety. One lady who is disabled said that it is demeaning, condescending, painful and damaging and that it actually makes your disability worse. A man who had a history of paid employment until an accident prevented him from working has had to manage his treatment and hospitalisation for on-going problems, while being sanctioned for not replying to a letter that was sent while he was in hospital. He said that it was a very hard time that he went through not coping on the illness that affected your daily life, but he has also affected that somebody has just clicked a button and just stopped my benefits. He stopped that wee bit of income that was coming in. He took it away and gave me this telephone number that was to phone my local council. They may be able to help me. Unfortunately, ring the council. You don't qualify because you're not getting this type of benefit. That research clearly illustrates that the sanction regime is dehumanising, ineffective and pushes people into destitution and reliance on foot banks, often no fault of their own. The Tory Government approach to benefit claimants is to resume guilt and to punish disproportionately. Not only does this fail to help job seekers find work, but it puts many people in the position with a simply penniless. We in this Parliament have an opportunity to shape services that fits the needs of users than the one box fits all approach of this Tory Government. I welcome the commitment from the Scottish Government that participation in work programmes will be voluntary. Our social security system must be person-centred, must treat people with dignity and respect at every stage of their journey into work, focusing on developing their skills to fill their employment potential. However, we all know that the Scottish Parliament will take over responsibility for employment programmes and some responsibility for social security related to disability to be devolved. However, the UK Government remains entirely responsible for some decisions, and in particular those that include decisions over claimant conditions and sanctions. I would hope that the minister would reply or touch on that particular aspect of it in his summing up. In summary, what kind of society do we want to live in? One, will we protect and support those who need it, or one, will we actively work to demonise those in need? I will always opt for a society that will protect, support and nurture. The Tory Government must halt the sanctions until an immediate review of the claimant conditionality and sanction regime has been carried out. For the sake of all our citizens, I would hope that they would do that. We move to the open session. Speeches of four minutes, please. Adam Tomkins will be followed by Neil Bibby. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I congratulate Sandra White for bringing this debate on a very important matter to the Parliament, even if I didn't agree with everything that she said in her remarks a few moments ago. I would like to start with some facts. First, sanctions are and always have been an important part of our welfare system, and it's right that they are in place for those few who do not fulfil their commitment to find work. It prevents abuse in the system and it creates fairness for taxpayers. Second, sanctions affect only a tiny number of claimants. Only about 2 per cent of job seekers are sanctioned and a quarter of 1 per cent—I don't have time to take interventions this evening, I'm afraid—and a quarter of 1 per cent of ESA claimants are sanctioned. That's to say, 399 out of every 400 claimants of employment and support allowance are not sanctioned at all. Third, the UK has a far less strict sanctions regime than that operating in most European countries. Indeed, there are only seven EU member states with a less strict regime than that operating here. If we are out of line with the European average, it's because we are more lenient than others, not stricter. I would like to point out that the Scottish Government's expert working group on welfare, a group that produced a report in 2014 about what social security would look like in an independent Scotland, argued that there is a general acceptance that receiving benefits will inevitably imply some form of conditionality. That report stated, and I quote again, that the social security system of an independent Scotland would be based on positive conditionality with expectations on individuals as well as the state. It's far from clear, Deputy Presiding Officer, how such—I don't have time to give away, I'm afraid, Minister this evening—it's far from clear, Deputy Presiding Officer, how such conditionality would be any different from the reformed and vastly reduced sanctions regime in operation now in the United Kingdom? Getting people into work is a good thing. I think that we now all recognise that work, for those who can, represents the best route out of poverty. Getting disabled people into work is a good thing, which is why I welcome the fact that there are 360,000 people with disabilities in work now in the United Kingdom who were not in employment two years ago. However, I recognise that the disability employment gap remains far too big, which is why we, on those benches, have a commitment to Harvard—a commitment that I have invited Scottish Government ministers to join in the past but which, sad to say, they have yet to take up. This is an opportune moment to be debating those matters. Just this week, the UK Government published its work, health and disability green paper. The green paper makes plain that a higher employment rate is good not merely for the economy. It's vital, too, to the health and wellbeing of our citizens, including our citizens with disabilities, which is why it matters, Presiding Officer. It really matters that the disability employment rate is even lower in Scotland than it is in the UK as a whole. I've already said that it's too low in the UK, but it's even lower in Scotland, where only 42 per cent of people with a disability are in employment. We hear a lot in this Parliament about dignity, fairness and respect, but I ask this. How is it treating disabled people with fairness and respect to subject them to a welfare system that parks them on benefits, tells them they're not fit for work and denies them the dignity of employment? That's why I applaud this week's green paper, because, as did Mark Atkinson, chief executive of scope, and as did, to be fair, among many others in the House of Commons this week, Dr Ailey Whiteford MP speaking for the SNP. I applaud the green paper because, in its very opening paragraph, it understands that the disability employment gap is one of the most significant inequalities in the UK today and is indeed an injustice that we must address. But it's not all about work. The final point that I'd make is this. The social security system must do everything it can to move people off benefits and into employment, but at the same time it must also support those of our fellow citizens who, for whatever reason, genuinely cannot work. That's why it's important to record in closing that spending on disability benefits has increased since 2010. It went up by £3 billion in the last session of the Westminster Parliament, and in this session £50 billion will be spent in the United Kingdom on disability benefits. That's more spending on disabled people every year of the current Parliament than was the case when the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Can I just say if people refused to take interventions that I wouldn't expect them to go over their speaking time, even in a member's debate? Please, Mr Bibby, to be followed by Claire Hawke. I welcome the debate this evening and congratulate Sandra White on bringing forward her motion. I was delighted to sponsor a briefing event in Parliament in September, which presented the interim findings of the ground-breaking research on sanctions and conditionality. I know that some of the members in the chamber this evening attended that event, and I'm sure that they would agree that it was a very helpful and informative briefing. It was organised through the welfare network run by Policy Scotland at the University of Glasgow, and I want to thank again Dr Sharon Wright, Professor Peter Dwyer and Professor Sarah Johnson for their very helpful presentation on the research that was conducted by academics from six universities across the UK. I'm sure that members across the chamber will agree that there is an increasing awareness of the impact of sanctions and conditionality on constituents and their family. That research is particularly useful in helping to place the individual cases that we hear about in a wider context. Although research focuses on conditionality that is reserved, there are important implications for this Parliament in considering how we operate the new social security powers now under the Scottish Government's control. As the motion highlights, the study found universally negative experiences of sanctions, linking continued receipt of benefit services to mandatory behavioural requirements, has created both, as Sandra White said, widespread anxiety and feelings of disempowerment among welfare service users. It's already been mentioned by some of the other key points that the study raises. For example, Saxons often came as a shock without warring with many of the interviewees who believed that they had been compliant. The loss of income through sanctioning was usually disproportionate to the so-called crime. Sandra White said, for example, that having no money for food for a whole month sometimes came as a result of being just five minutes late for an appointment. In the research, there were very few cases where sanctions actually worked. The running theme behind examples of people getting into work was the availability of appropriate support rather than the threat of punishment. That's what this research has been telling us. Yet, warringly, there was a view that the system is designed to catch claimants out so that they could be sanctioned. Those are real, serious concerns from some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. It's vital that we not only listen to them but learn from what is being said by the people who know the welfare system the best, those who rely on it. All too often, debates on welfare become arguments of facts and figures, but what the study does so effectively is to highlight the human consequences of welfare sanctions and conditionality. I know that Adam Tomkins said that he believed that there were very few people involved. However, that research shows that the 481s welfare service users' participants in the study significantly 134 were in Scotland, and some of the cases from our communities highlighted truly shocking examples of the consequences of sanctions. One male welfare user in Scotland said, "...my daughter could not attend school for two weeks. I didn't have any money for that. You have to give her some money every day for some lunch and for a bus." Barnardo Scotland, in the briefing ahead of this debate, highlighted the difficulties experienced by another parent. She was 10 minutes late for an appointment because of an unforeseen incident with one of her children. She was sanctioned, and this had a devastating impact on her family. She was without money for four weeks and was unable to buy fuel cards for her gas and electricity meters or feed her children. Those examples alone should set alarm bells ringing for all of us about the consequences decisions can have on the very people our welfare system is supposed to protect. Members will be, of course, aware of the new film, I, Daniel Blake, which highlights the devastating reality of far too many people who need our support but are simply not getting it. It is encouraging to see such a film shining a light on those experiences. I think that the more people are aware of those circumstances, the better. Presiding Officer, I want to conclude by thanking again all those involved in this important study. Its findings should serve as a wake-up call and make the Tory Government think again about the damage that their welfare policy is doing. Due to the number of members still wishing to speak in this debate, I am minded to accept a motion. It would be under rule 8.14.3 that the debate is extended by 30 minutes. The motion is moved on to Clare Haughey to be followed by John Finnie. I thank Sandra White for the debate and welcome the findings of the welfare conditionality study. The findings support the views of many members across the chamber that, for too many users, the welfare sanctions system is draconian, dehumanising and ineffective. The study illustrates that the linking of the receipts of benefits to mandatory behavioural requirements is too often a very blunt instrument that creates anxiety and feelings of disempowerment among service users. The detrimental impact of sanctions is not only financial, but material and emotional, and in addition can have serious health repercussions for the individual. Many users do not understand the reasons for the sanctions that have been applied to them. Poor communication, as well as health and personal circumstances of the service user, can lead to unfairly imposed sanctions, and many sanctions are subsequently overturned on appeal. However, that is not an easy process and the impact on users waiting for their appeal can have devastating consequences. From my constituency of Rutherglen, a young man in his early twenties living independently eight years ago suffered a severe orthopedic trauma. That led to several major surgical interventions to rebuild his limb. He was also diagnosed at the same time with severe epilepsy. He was therefore simultaneously under the care of two senior consultants who both individually confirmed his inability to work long-term. Forced to attend an at-hose assessment, his leg in plaster and using crutches, he was deemed fit to work due to his ability to use his fingers to text on his mobile phone. That was used to reduce the required qualifying points, and his benefit was withdrawn. No regard was given to the medical evidence from his consultants. This ridiculous decision was overturned on appeal, but that process took nearly six months. Had it not been for the intervention of his parents, he would have been out in the street and starving. As it was, they were able to assist, but the short-term financial impact on them was not insignificant. Thankfully, he was able to get the support of his family, but many young people in similar circumstances are not so fortunate and can end up in severe debt, evicted and needing to use food banks on a regular basis to survive. Ken Loach, the director of the critically acclaimed film I Daniel Blake, which highlights the negative experiences of benefit claimants, unfairly targeted by DWP sanctions regime last week, accurately called this situation conscious cruelty. The Glasgow university research has shown that, as in the example that I have cited, sanctions often come without warning with users believing that they had been compliant. That is consciously cruel. They also found that loss of income through sanctioning was disproportionate to the perceived infringement, for instance, having no money for a month due to missing an appointment by a few minutes. That is consciously cruel. The material impact of rogue sanctions on claimants' debt can result in rent arrears and homelessness. That is consciously cruel. Thankfully, ATOS has gone. However, the sanctions system remains, and it remains consciously cruel. Prior to my career in nursing, I worked for two years in the Department of Social Security. It was at the height of the factory era and over the period of the minor strike. The ethos in the department at that time was completely different to the target-driven dehumanising ethos that prevails today. It was not, I can assure Adam Tomkins, a system that used benefit sanctions. He thinks that I have always been in the system. To correct his figures of the number of sanctions of disabled people, it is 3,000 out of 85,000. Of course, the main purpose of the service was to help people to get back into work. However, at a time when major industries were being closed down or privatised with mass redundancies and a few other work opportunities, the ethos was very much one of support and not judgment and how times have changed. In designing a social security system for Scotland, we have the opportunity to build dignity and respect back into the administration of some benefits and work programmes. I therefore welcome the commitment from the Scottish Government that, under a Scottish social security system employability support programmes will be voluntary and that they will also help to ensure that people are not sanctioned by the DBAWP when on those programmes. John Finnie, to be followed by John McAlpine. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I join with others in congratulating Sandra White on bringing this debate here and, indeed, applauding the researchers for their work. It was my intention to say that we have all heard of or dealt with issues of the devastating and harrowing impact that sanctions could have, but perhaps Mr Tomkins has not, or his colleagues, or if they have heard of not listened, which would be more worrying. The effect of removing people's only means of support has a mental and physical health impact and on their families too, but it is unfortunately even worse when we consider what job seekers have been asked to do and how likely it is that they are going to improve their chances of finding employment. Around 65 per cent of participants leave the work programme not having gained or stayed in a job for at least six months. That figure is considerably higher for participants with health conditions or disabilities where around 85 per cent entering and staying in employment for at least three months and as much as 94 per cent for those considered furthest from employment. This report gives us very clear reasons why this may be the case. Claimants are being asked to apply for jobs regardless of whether or not they are appropriate. The study's interim findings show that people are being forced to apply for jobs. They tell the Job Centre Plus and employment programme providers that they cannot do because of disability, ill health or childcare responsibilities, yet they insist that the claimants are applying for them. That is the ridiculous case. The report of interim findings cites the example of a Scottish universal credit claimant being asked to apply under the threat of sanction for a job as a driving instructor despite the fact that he had told them that he did not have a driving licence. Much of the support that is offered is of a generic nature, and, as others have said, it should be person-centred. Such help is limited to such help as writing CVs and job search skills. Individualised packages of support are what is needed. Second disabled jobseekers interviewed in the study report are only being offered this very general kind of support. The DWP's own survey of work programme participants found that over 70 per cent of those in the programme with a health condition were not offered health-related support to help them find work. Providers themselves have openly admitted that there is not sufficient funding in the work programme to pay for on-going specialist support to help participants with disabilities and health conditions. The Centre for Social and Economic Inclusion reports that the work programme providers spend as little as £545 to provide up to two-year support for employment and support allowance participants. There is a positive message that is one of the few, and it comes out of the report, which is the great work done by the Job Centre plus disability advisers. Perhaps inevitably in the topsy-turvy world of the DWP, where nothing seems to make sense, those advisers are now being withdrawn from job centres, and mainstream job centre staff will be accepted to provide the specialist disability support. The structure of the contracts that prioritise job outcomes also means that those relatively close to the labour market are offered the most support, and more disadvantaged job seekers are provided very little practical help. If the purpose of sanctions is to help benefits recipients into work by enforcing under the threat of sanction participation employment programmes and other schemes of support, and if that support is unlikely and some ferry cases very unlikely to help them find employment, then the whole basis of the sanctioned regime is brought into a very serious and fundamental question. We can now use the powers of the Scotland arc to chart a different course, and Sandra White talked about dignity and respect, and that is what she would underpin everything. For sanctions are not devolved, powers over employment programmes, some of which are currently compulsory, have now been devolved, and new programmes will operate from spring next year. This would be a more supportive approach, whereby people are encouraged to take up offers of employment support, not because they are bullied into doing so, but because there are genuine opportunities to get work. I was very proud to stand for a election earlier these years as the only party manufacturer that pledged to use the new powers over employment services to significantly reduce the number of benefit sanctions applied in Scotland. My colleague Alison Johnson has worked with others on this and called on the Scottish Government to do this and released a plan explaining how that could be done. I was very pleased last month to hear that the Minister for Employability and Training committed to operating those new programmes on an entirely voluntary basis, and I commend that approach. That will require a significant investment in schemes that go far beyond the current EWP schemes. I will make a brief mention of rural areas. The cost of complying with benefit conditionality can be considerable, and that is particularly an issue for benefit recipients in rural areas, where transport costs from recipients' homes to the nearest job centre tend appointments or to the nearest library in order to use computers for jobs can eat significantly into the scant amount of money that they are paid in benefits. So, dignity and humanity is going to be the hallmark of the powers that we've got devolved. The only way that we're going to put it across the entire system is to get all the powers, and that comes by independence. Thank you very much. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I just apologise to other members and yourself in advance as I'm going to have to leave after I deliver my speech because I have another appointment. I too congratulate Sandra White on securing this debate today, although I participate in it with a heavy heart. The evidence that has been presented in the first wave report is not new. It's now more than two years since the previous welfare reform committee of this Parliament, on which I sat, published its report, Tough Love or Tough Luck, in 2014. The report examined the consequences of a decision made in 2012 by the DWP to introduce a more punitive system of sanctions for those on job seekers allowance and employment support allowance. It's important that that addresses the point that Mr Tomkins made. Yes, there always has been an element of conditionality in the system, but the 2012 changes introduced a far more harsh regime, introduced three categories of sanctions, higher, immediate and lower, extended the length of sanctions to a maximum of three years, and it speeded up the rate at which sanctions start. That means that people can be faced with destitution almost overnight. The Scottish Parliament report found that the number of those on job seekers allowance penalised increased very rapidly through 2013, from 3 per cent of the start of the year to almost 6 per cent by the end. The Scottish Parliament report believed that there was a deliberate policy to drive up the level of sanctions to previously unheard of levels through the managerial pressure that was put on job centre staff. That report identified a number of failings. Those included a consistent failure to notify people that they were being sanctioned and why, a misapplication of sanctions, a failure to appreciate that many people on benefits don't have the necessary IT skills from day one to utilise the DWP's universal job match facility and a lack of a deadline for decision making on DWP reconsiderations when a mistake has been made. The welfare reform report back in 2014 was only one of a number to expose the sanctions regime since 2012. There has been a substantial body of evidence gathered by the Joseph Rowntree trust, the child poverty action group, the churches, citizens advice and others. All those have been ignored. Conservatives still insist, as they did in 2012, that many benefit recipients welcome the jolt that sanctions gave them. That is the term that was used in the Scottish Parliament report. Two years later, there is very little in the first wave findings to suggest that anyone is jolted into work by a sanction. By contrast, as others have said, the sudden onset of destitution, the stigma that accompanies it, the feelings of disempowerment, deep resentment, desperation and depression, how can you present yourself as an attractive, confident potential employee when you cannot afford soap and water, when you are crippled with anxiety about how to feed your kids? That is to address the point about disabled people. The Charity Inclusion Scotland reported official figures that found from the introduction of the regime in 2012 till March 2014 that 14,000 people on employment support allowance—that is people who have an incapacity of some sort—found a job or a positive outcome as a result of the work programme that has conditionality attached. In the same period, almost 42,000 claimants on ESA were dealt out sanctions, so that means that a disabled person on the work programme was three times more likely to be sanctioned than to find a job. Far from being jolted into work, sanctions sent claimants tumbling further downhill into illness and continued unemployment. I want to conclude by a bit of historical context the 1834 report into the English poor law written by social reformer Edwin Chadwick. At that time there was also a system of conditionality. It was called The Workhouse or The Poor House in Scotland. It was designed to be so unpleasant that working-class people would be deterred from seeking the help that they were entitled to, or should be entitled to morally at least. One supporter of this regime told Chadwick that the workhouse should be a place of hardship, of course fair, of degradation and humility. It should be administered with strictness and with severity. It should be as repulsive as it is consistent with humanity. Margaret Thatcher, 30 years ago, spoke about the desirability of a return to Victorian values. The Puritive Saction regime introduced by David Cameron's Tory Government suggests that this has been achieved, like the threat of the workhouse that is designed to degrade. However, it is actually worse than that. The Victorian workhouses and poor houses provided food, heat, light and shelter as consistent with humanity, as Chadwick's correspondent might have put it. The sanctions regime that we are talking about today can deprive victims of those basic necessities. It does not even merit the term de-Kensi, and it is truly inhuman. When reading the report, I was, of course, concerned about the issues that it raised, namely that sanctions were creating feelings of anxiety and disempowerment among service users, and that, for those involved in the study, many reported negative experiences. I really do not wish welfare services in Glasgow or any other part of Scotland to feel an anxiety around the welfare system, but I also do not wish for this debate to become a bear pit in which to attack policies that, for the essence of which the population at large would agree with, at very least in principle. The Scottish Government itself acknowledges that sanctions are necessary on the welfare system. In 2014, its own expert working group concluded that, although it did not agree with the way in which the UK Government was implementing its sanction policy, conditionality was nevertheless still necessary. If you look at the welfare conditionality in simple terms, it is not the existence that has caused the controversy rather than the way in which they were implemented, and there must be a case at the very least for a light form of conditionality. Within the report itself, not at the moment, I would like to make progress, thank you. Within the report itself, there is acknowledgement by some professionals that enforcement, coupled with support, could act as a positive catalyst for change. Would the member like to intervene now? Indeed, the author was very telling that the member spoke of light touch, sanctions regime, light touch, conditionality. Of course, in the case, there will be a member in this chamber that would not accept that there has to be criteria, applicable criteria in any social security system, but, of course, it has to be proportionate and sensible. Given everything that Annie Wells has heard tonight about the real lived experience of sanctions as applied, would she not accept that that is hardly light touch conditionality? What I am saying is that there has to be a light touch conditionality, and what we have to do is we have to work as a Scottish Parliament to make this case and put it forward to ensure that that is what happens. I am not standing here for a minute and saying that everything that I have heard from Sandra White or Neil Bibby and the things that happen, but what we need to do is put it into perspective that the number of sanctions is less. Not at the moment, I am running out of time, I am sorry. When it comes to mandatory support from Jobcentre Plus or the work programme also, there were examples of good practice and positive accounts from welfare service users, particularly when it came to trying to deter some users away from lifestyles that were harmful to them. Even a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report from 2014 made the key point that, with appropriate support, interventions with elements of conditionality made deter some individuals from antisocial behaviour and street-based life. I am in my last minute. With the devilish of employment services to Scotland, why does the Scottish Government not seize the opportunity to work further on the basis? I would also like to bring into perspective to the debate today and remind members that fewer than two and a half per cent of GSA claimants and only 0.26 of ESA claimants are sanctioned across the UK. As always, the case with those issues is right to question the Government on them, but to constantly bring them to the forefront of debate seems disproportionate. I wonder why those linked to the SNP-led Government are bringing up the same issues over and over again when it has its own battles to be fighting and its own welfare reform powers to be working with. Often repeated in this chamber is that the Scottish Government has only a 15 per cent control of the benefit budget and yet it now has the ability to top up any reserved benefits that it sees fit. As my colleague Adam Tomkins highlighted, in the EU, in many countries we see tougher benefit sanctions than we see in the UK. In 2014, for example, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and Sweden all ranked higher in terms of the percentage of those sanctions. Of course, I welcome any work in this area, but I would again reiterate that sanctions are by and large rare occurrences. We need perspective when it comes to conditionality and we need to be able to at least acknowledge the benefits of a welfare system that incorporates some aspects of conditionality. Thank you to Sandra White for bringing this debate to the chamber and a special thanks to Glasgow University and the other universities who have been involved in compiling the report, which provides evidence that we have probably known for some time. For those who have seen the movie I, Daniel Blake, which has taken the country pie storm, I have to say that I think that the Scottish Tories are out of touch if they do not at least appreciate that the system that they are currently defending is becoming a more topical issue by the day. For me, it is disturbing reading and it affects many families and individuals. Here is the point that I think that the Scottish Tories are missing here. I think that there is evidence to show that there are high numbers of sanctions and I will come on to that, but it is the disproportionate nature of the sanctions regime that we have now, highlighted by Joan McAlpine, who is not here, but it is that sharp change under the way that sanctions came from that point that we are addressing. Claimants can be anyone that we know—it is not the same group of people—it can be any one of us or any one of our families who are unemployed, who will be required to have those conditions should they be claiming benefit. The research is confirmation that the under 25s face substantially higher sanctions and that younger claimants face direct discrimination and are more likely to be sanctioned than any other group. We have talked about the ethics of conditionality designed to change behaviour of welfare claimants. Of course, there should be a system of some kind to make sure that people do make the basic requirements in order to claim their welfare benefits. Wherever the policy started, I think that what this debate is about is that it has lost its way and it must change. It is disproportionate. It is cumbersome. It is unresponsive to people's real needs. It is lengthy. It is punitive and it is inhuman. Most of all, as Sandra White says, it does not even work. I believe that it also distorted the employment market because people are forced to take jobs that are either overqualified for or it is not the career path that they wish to choose, but they have to take those jobs because they will not get benefits. As we have discussed in other debates, that can lock people into low-paid employment and they cannot get out of that circle of low pay. We all have stories to tell. We all know about the man who was sanctioned for going to a hospital appointment, even though he told the employment office that he was going to. The problem is that once something goes wrong in the system, it is very difficult to communicate back to the Department of Work and Pensions that they have made a mistake. Their way of actually dealing with claimants and with problems seems to be exceptional and lengthy. However, people who turn to the state in most cases do not have a sludge fund to revert to. They may be lucky to have families that help them out, but very often people have no one to turn to. When the sanctions of four weeks, thirteen weeks and twenty-six weeks can be imposed on them. It can take up to six weeks for the Department of Work and Pensions to actually reconsider a decision and, as we have read from the report, it can take up to a year for an appeal. That is simply not good enough on anyone's terms that people should have the basic human right to appeal against a decision. It should be done speedily. We would not accept it in our course, and I do not think that we should accept it in our welfare benefit system. According to David Webster, who has done work on this, he says that since the figures are 2014 that there have been a million sanctions of employment support allowance and job seekers allowance the highest since it was introduced. The work programme itself has evidence that people who work for the work programme were told to increase sanctions for clients. That is, in the evidence, in black and white. That cannot be right. A former employee is testified to this, and the former employee says that this is what happens when you privatise the public and place financial targets on human needs. I conclude by saying that I think that the unemployed deserve better than this. This is not a modern Britain or a modern Scotland. They are not isolated cases. They are real cases. Of course, we need a sanction system, but one that treats people with respect, dignity and fairness, and one that has a system that is easy to navigate, and people understand exactly what is happening to them when they are in it. The last of the open contributions, Claire Adamson. I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak in tonight's debate. I had not intended to listen to Sandra White's speech and the contributions today, but I find myself getting more and more concerned about what I am hearing, particularly from the Conservative benches. I do not believe that it is the Scottish Government's job to mitigate for decisions taken elsewhere and a system over which we have no control. We are already doing it. We mitigate the bedroom tax and we have introduced the Scottish welfare fund that steps in and helps those who have been sanctioned by the DWP. I do not think that it is the job of the Scottish taxpayers to be funding a discredited system that is failing in every respect. When the appeals are running over 50 per cent against sanctions, you have to ask yourself why the system is allowed to continue and it is obviously broken. However, the thing that compelled me to speak this evening more than anything is the figures that have been used by both Conservative members who have spoken this evening. They are figures that have been produced by the Department of Work and Pensions and they say that, for GSA claimants, it is less than 6 per cent and for employment support allowance less than 1 per cent. However, David Webster from the University of Glasgow has called those figures a gross and systematic misrepresentation, arguing that a large majority of claimants are affected. His own freedom of information request from the DWP produced figures that are at 18 per cent of GCS claimants were sanctioned in 2013-14. So concerning are the figures that were released by the DWP that the UK statistics authority has stepped in, it has asked the DWP to produce a more comprehensive analysis of sanction rates for GSC claimants supported by a clear explanation. So what is going on? Well, the DWP are looking at the figures as an average of claimants on a month-to-month basis, which would be fine if claimants only claimed for a month. But what it actually means is that it is a gross misrepresentation on a month-to-month basis and does not reflect the exceedingly high levels of sanctions for GSE claimants. I think that this is a really important point to have made this evening. The DWP has said—the watchdog of the UK statistics authority has said to the DWP—that it needs to have objective and impartial sanctions statements. Would it not be so good if we had impartial and objective sanctions statements from all areas of this chamber, rather than a gross misrepresentation of what is happening to our citizens? If it was just one citizen that was subjected to cruelty in this system, it is one too many for a civilised organisation and a civilised country. I now call Jamie Hepburn to close this debate. Around seven minutes please, minister. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I begin by joining others in thanking Sandra White for bringing this debate? I'd also like to thank all members, most members for their contributions. There have been a number of salient points made. Through most of the contributions today, we have heard some truly desperate stories of the impact of sanctions on individuals and their families. The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and developed by a consortium of research bodies, which is the subject of today's debate, is detailed, comprehensive and moving, as Neil Bibby set out. Members of this panel had the benefit of an information session from Dr Sharon Wright from Glasgow University and her colleagues involved in the work. Unfortunately, I could not attend that session personally, but my Scottish Government officials have met Dr Wright and her colleagues. That was a very productive meeting and has helped shape our thinking. Those who were at that information session will have heard that for many people, sanctions come as a shock, not a jolt, but as a shock because they did not know it was happening. They heard, as Sandra White said, that many sanctions are still being put in place as a result of administrative error. They have heard that, even where the DWP has agreed flexibilities into the system, they were often not implemented. The report provides yet more clear evidence of what this Parliament has heard for some time, on which we have debated on more than one occasion that the current UK Government benefit conditionality and sanctions regime causes suffering, not just material terms as a negative emotional and health impact on those affected by them. This research is one of a growing stack of reports highlighting the negative impacts of benefit sanctions for some years. Now, research has pointed to the effect of sanctions. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, as Joan McAlpine mentioned, reported that the system is having a disproportionate impact on young people and that there were severe impacts on vulnerable groups such as those who are homes. It further found that, while sanctions raised the number of exits from benefits long-term outcomes in terms of job quality, employment retention and earnings, they were unfavourable. This is supported by findings that were published in October this year by the behavioural insights team, a social purpose company, part-owned by the UK Government, which stated that the UK Government's welfare conditionality policies can lead to poor claim at decision-making and, in turn, result in lower-quality and lower-paid outcomes. Even the UK Government's own social purpose company is highlighting that their system works against supporting the very outcomes that we regard as crucial measures of delivering successful employment support and Scotland's good-sustained jobs in a decent level of income. In the latest line of a long list of reports, Oxford University published research. In the last fortnight, it was found that the rate of sanctioning increased within local authorities. The rate of food bank use also increased. Indeed, I see that today the Social Security Committee, of which Ms White is the convener, published further evidence from Sheffield, from Sheffield-Hallam University. All of that is with the experience that many of us have here as elected representatives. I think of—I can always remember two specific cases. In my own instance, I had a young man attend one of my surges to report his concerns that, when he informed the DWP that he might not be able to turn up for an appointment at the job centre because he had to attend a funeral the next day, he was threatened with sanction. I always remember the experience of a woman who had faithfully turned up to every single appointment at the job centre. One day, the first time she was unable to attend on time, she turned up five minutes late for very understandable reasons that she was sanctioned. Can there be a more ludicrous example of the system that was highlighted by John Finnie, where an individual was told that they had to apply for a job as a driving instructor or face sanction when they couldn't drive? I think that that speaks to a ludicrous system. Incidentally, in terms of the numbers of those sanctioned, Annie Wells said that we had to get the numbers of those sanctioned into perspective. Adam Tomkins said that those who are sanctioned form a tiny number. According to the latest statistics, there are around 1,330 people receiving adverse sanctions in Scotland as of March 2016. I do not consider that to be a tiny number, but irrespective of the numbers involved behind those numbers are individual human beings who will bear the human cost of such a decision. I have very much agreed with the point made by Claire Adamson that one adverse impact for one individual is one too many. Ms Wells and Professor Tomkins, perhaps, want to reflect on that. To be fair, Professor Tomkins and Ms Wells were correct. The expert group, which was established by the Scottish Government to inform the decisions that we might have taken in the event of a yes vote in 2014, set out that there should be criteria and conditionality within the social security system. I do not think that there is anyone in the chamber, as I made that point a few moments ago, in intervention to Ms Wells. I do not think that there is anyone in the chamber who would suggest that there should not be criteria that can be applied for those who receive benefits. Pauline McNeill made the point very well. It is about the proportionality and practical application of specific conditionality. Everything that we have heard this evening, the DWP and the UK Government are getting that wrong. Annie Wells suggests that the Scottish Government should focus on what we can do with the devolution of some social security powers. I am very happy to turn to that. We have already set out—we will effectively abolish—the UK Government's punitive bedroom tax in Scotland as soon as we can. We have already set out. We will extend winter fuel payments to families with severely disabled children. We have already set out that we will increase carers allowance so that it is paid at the same level as jobseekers allowance. We will use our powers over universal credit to offer Scottish claimants a choice over how often they receive their payments and if their rent is paid direct to their social landlord. We will introduce the jobs grant to young people aged 16 to 24 who have been unemployed for six months when they start work. Those are real decisions, utilising the powers that are coming to this Parliament that will make a difference to people's lives here in Scotland. Sandra White is correct to say that sanctions policy remains out with the Scottish Government's hands. She invited me and I see her running up against time. It is an important point to make. She invited me to set out how we use the devolution of employment programme to do things differently. It does not come without a challenge because we know that there is a significant reduction in funding coming from the UK Government and an 87 per cent reduction in the funding being handed to us. In delivering devolved employment support, we have an opportunity to do things differently in Scotland to take a different approach. That is what we are going to do. I set out clearly on 5 October when we debated the future of devolved employment services. I firmly believe that attendance at the new programme should be on the same basis as other Scottish Government employability and skills support should be voluntary. I believe that those attending programmes should do so without the ever-present threat of sanctions hiding over them. People attending our programme should be there because they know that they will receive high-quality support to get into work. They should not be there because of their benefit that we have stopped. I have written again to Damian Greene confirming our intentions on the matter. I have asked my officials to take forward urgent discussions with the DWP. Tomorrow, I understand that Mr Greene will attend a meeting of the Parliament's Social Security Committee. I am sure that Professor Tomkins will take the opportunity to tell me what a good job he is doing. I hope that some other members of the committee will take the opportunity to discuss sanctions with Mr Greene and to urge him to address the suffering being inflicted on those who survive the very lowest levels of income. I also hope that they will take the opportunity to press the Parliament's determination—not just the Scottish Government's determination but the Parliament's expressed will—that devolved employment programmes will not interact with the UK Government's horrendous sanctions regime. By thanking Senator White for bringing this debate to the chamber, I hope that we will not have to debate it too many times in the future, because ultimately I believe that the powers should be in this Parliament's hands so that we can do things rather better. I now close this meeting.