 Good morning, and welcome to the 13th meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have had a change of committee membership. I would like to welcome Paul McClellan to the committee, who replaces Marie McNair, and I would like to thank Marie for her valued contribution to the committee since its establishment. Our first item of business today is to invite Paul McClellan to declare any relevant interests. Thank you, convener. I am a servant councillor, at least for the next two weeks. I also know for any property in East Lothian. Thanks very much for that, Paul, and welcome on board. Our second item of business today is a decision to take item 4 in private. Are we all agreed for that? Perfect, thank you very much. We now turn to our next item of business, which is an evidence session on the Scottish Government's child poverty delivery plan 2022-2026. We have two panels of witnesses giving evidence today. I welcome to the meeting our first panel, which focuses on evidence from anti-poverty groups who are all joining us remotely. Good morning. We have Marion Davies, who is the director of policy communication strategy at One Parent Family Scotland. We also have Peter Kelly, director of the poverty alliance. Claire Telford, who is the head of Scotland to save the children. Alison Watson, director of Shelter Scotland. And Bill Scott, who is the chair of the poverty and inequality commission. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. A few housekeeping things to mention before we kick off. Please do put an R in the chat function if you would like to come in on a topic. I will ask my colleagues in the room to direct questions specifically to somebody to start us off. We are going to be tight for time because we have two panels, but we want to make sure that we hear as much from ourselves as possible. I would ask if you could endeavour and your first answer not to try to get everything you want in that one opportunity, because you are going to have several opportunities to come in. Please do bear that in mind. I am going to invite Pam Duncan-Glancy, who is in the room, to kick us off on our first theme of questions. Good morning, convener, and good morning to the panel. Thank you for all the evidence that you have submitted in advance and all of the work that you have done in this year and previous years. I know that it has been a really tough time for a lot and still is a tough time for a lot of the people who you represent. I would like to start by asking a question of Bill Scott, if that is okay. I know in the submission from the Poverty and Inequality Commission that you were looking for pace, scale and increased investment. I wonder if you could tell us how you think the delivery plan compares to those expectations. Does it include the stronger focus on evidence that you have wanted? Is there enough in there on social security for addressing the cost of living crisis now? Good morning, Pam, and good morning, convener and other members. The commission met last week for its first look as a group at the delivery plan. We were quite satisfied in some ways that the Scottish Government has listened to the advice that we provided over the period when the delivery plan was being put together. It shows some evidence that there is a greater acknowledgement of the pace and scale that will be required. The greater investment, particularly in employability, is something that we greatly welcome. There is also evidence that the Scottish Government has begun to understand the intersectionality, the aspects of how poverty impacts on, in particular, women, disabled people, black and minority ethnic communities. There is also evidence that those groups are not distinct from one another. For example, of the 100,000 children living in households where disabled people are, there are also 90,000 living in households with a lone parent, but 30,000 of those children are also living in a household where disabled people are. All the barriers that those groups face are impossible to assist them to move out of poverty. The greater recognition and the importance of lived experience in informing the policies and actions that the Government takes is something that we greatly welcome. We think that there has been an improvement in the publication of analysis that supports the background policy decisions made in the plan, including the cumulative impact assessment modelling, which shows how the Scottish Government thinks the actions that it takes will lead to a reduction in relative poverty to meet the interim targets. Of course, there are areas where the Scottish Government has not necessarily taken on the commission's advice. In particular, accessible transport and affordable transport is something that we believe more action will need to be taken on to link up all the other policies, because that is still a significant barrier to some people taking up employment opportunities. We would like to see an extension of the concessionary travel scheme to more people on low incomes, although we welcome the extension for younger people. In terms of linking up how affordable housing can help to deliver the child poverty targets, we would like to see more action and more thought given in that area. Whether the actions around employability will be sufficient on their own is still to be seen. As I said, we welcome the increased investment in that area, but we think that more work needs to be done with employers as well as those who are seeking employment to deliver on that. I think that the phrase being coined employer ability to get employers to understand the barriers that people face in moving into work is really important and to work with them to overcome those barriers before people move into work. All in all, we are quite impressed by the thought that has gone into the delivery plan. It is a good start. It is certainly not the end of the process. We think that more action will need to be taken to meet the cost-of-living crisis that many low-income households are facing. It is somewhat a contradiction, but poverty can be reduced because average income has fallen. That sounds like a contradiction, but it is a statistical fact that if average income falls from 30,000 a year, 29,000 or 28,000, then 60 per cent of average income, median income, will also be reduced. That means that people whose income has not improved at all can be lifted over the poverty line and therefore the numbers in poverty are reduced. That is not what it feels like to be in one of those households where poverty may well have deepened because of the additional costs that they are facing. We have to remember that relative poverty is largely an income measure, and it only really takes into account housing costs. It does not take into account energy costs or food costs. To really understand poverty, we need to listen much more carefully to people with lived experience. We also need to look at the other poverty measures, including material deprivation, because we will see a large rise in material deprivation over the next couple of years. On the point about the income distribution and how that affects the poverty rates, how much of that do you think explains some of the projections going forward in terms of the modelling? I have another question, and I think that this time it would be for Peter, if that's okay, where the poverty lines have noted that social security is not yet adequate and members and others will know that I share impatience for action on that, particularly around other disability payment and carers lines. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, Peter, about how we start to address that and what we need to do now. A short supplement from Bill's answer and then over to Peter, if that's all right. Definitely has affected the poverty figures over the last couple of years. We will not see last year's figures until next year, really. Again, that's one of the quirks when the figures are collected and when they're published. Because so many people were on furlough and therefore only on 80 per cent of their earnings, and because there was the £20 a week top-up to universal credit, many low-income households saw their income boosted, those who were on universal credit, while at the same time many other workers saw their income reduced. As furlough was still in place until November last year, that will continue to have an impact on the figures when they're published next year. That's a factor that we have to bear in mind that, as I say, average income fell slightly over the course of the pandemic. At the same time, the incomes of some of the poorest households rose because of the universal credit top-up. Of course, that's gone now, and those households are very much struggling with a loss of £1,000 a year. If I may go back to your original question to Bill, which I was hopefully going to come in on, my initial reflections were about the quality of the plan, the seriousness of the plan. You'd asked about the pace and scale and the use of evidence and so on, and whether all of that added up to, in my interpretation, a good tackling child poverty delivery plan. Over the piece, there are some really important elements in this plan that we need to welcome in comparison to perhaps the approach that we've taken to addressing poverty or child poverty in the past when we've set out these strategic plans. The fact that the Scottish Government has retained its approach to the six priority families, or sick priority grips, and the focus on the key drivers, is worth just pointing out that that's significant in itself a lot of the time over the years when we've been talking about anti-poverty strategy and what we want to see in anti-poverty strategy. One thing that we've needed to see is consistency and approach, and consistency that will go across parliamentary terms in particular. What we're seeing here is the benefits of the Child Poverty Act and the importance of that. For the Parliament and for all the different parties within the Parliament to retain the unanimity around that approach is really important. It's so good to see that. We certainly welcome the publication of the evidence, the attempt to link the evaluation of policies and assessment of the policies that have been introduced to the changes that are trying to be made into delivering on those child poverty terms. To go directly to your question about adequacy, incomes aren't adequate. That's self-evident in the fact that we have the levels of poverty that we have at the moment. The question is, are we moving towards adequate incomes? On the Scottish Child payment, again, as we said in our evidence, to see that payment doubled at the very start of this financial year and to have a commitment to have it increased by another £5 before the end of the calendar year is important. It's important because it will deliver something quite significant if the modelling is correct and it may well get us to those interim targets, not on its own. It's important to say that as well, not just Scottish child payment. In comparison to what we see happening in our social security system or our reserved social security system, it sets out how our social security system can be used to address poverty, which is obviously written in to the Social Security Act in Scotland. That, again, is important. We need to see the Scottish child payment progressively increased over the remainder of this Parliament. We have called for £40. As others have said, that needs to be kept under review. We have a measure of income adequacy in the minimum income standard. We use that minimum income standard in different parts of Scottish Government policy. In relation to the real living wage and the way that we understand poverty in Scotland, we use the minimum income standard to help guide our understanding of what is needed. The development of the minimum income guarantee, we hope, will be based on a minimum income standard, and that should take us towards adequate incomes. What is important is the practical steps that we take. Scottish child payment is really important. The mitigation of the benefit cap is really important. We will have to see a lot more of that, particularly post 2023-24, if we are going to get towards the end-in-child poverty targets. I have one further question on this theme, if that is all right. Thank you, Peter. That was really helpful. Bill, for your additional information too. My final question on this theme is for Claire. In the submission from Save the Children, you note that any delay, for example, in an increase to the Scottish child payment would put the targets at risk, which we can all see. Are you worried about that? What do you think we should be doing for the children who are on bridging payments, who are not getting additional money at all at the minute? Good morning, and thank you very much for having me. In terms of the Scottish child payment, it is really welcome that we have seen additional commitments in the plan to support families in the short term, but also building those adequate incomes over time, as we have seen. In terms of meeting the interim targets, it is going to be really important that the focus is on delivery, and we make sure that that happens. Obviously, more importantly, families need that additional money right now. In terms of the bridging payment and supporting the cost of living, we would like to see additional action taken. We would support doubling the bridging payments in the short term to support families through the cost of living prices that we are experiencing at the moment. More importantly, we should think about how we build on the Scottish child payment over time as well. While the increases are really welcome, we are going to have to get such an important tool in the toolbox for tackling poverty that we really need to think about, and keeping that consistently under review, how that can increasingly make a difference to building adequate incomes and that minimum income standard that we are thinking about in the future. Therefore, being open to further increases on the Scottish child payment during the course of the plan will be really important as well. I am now going to move on to a question from Emma Roddick. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. It is good to see you again. I just wanted to pick up on a comment that you have made about travel and the importance of affordable travel. That is obviously a big barrier for a lot of people in the Highlands and Islands. The plan does discuss the complexity of rural poverty specifically, and I am particularly encouraged by the work that has been done on housing and taking evidence from the anchor project in Shetland. Are there other aspects of rural poverty that you think need more attention? Absolutely. There are areas of rural poverty that are going to require additional support over and above what is already in place. For example, energy costs in rural areas are significantly higher. Both the weather and supply mechanisms are in place. People living in rural areas rely on gas, as you know, in containers rather than a supply from the mains. For all those reasons, we really need to understand rural poverty to a much greater extent. We are very concerned that there has been a loss of transport services in rural areas in particular. There were already pretty scarce, but they have been run down even further. Transport costs continue to rise at a time when incomes of the poorest households are either falling or are stationary. As I said, those costs can be a significant barrier to taking up, not just employment opportunities but training and educational opportunities. I know that there is a review taking place, but we will have to see targeted action to try to reduce some of those costs, particularly for those living in rural areas. As I said, transport services are not as good as they may be in the major urban centres. Housing costs rise to an extent because Scotland is a very successful tourist economy. Housing costs are rising in rural areas as well. We are formerly homes to people who are funding to small businesses and are letting out to visitors. That makes the cost rise for those who continue to live and work in those areas. We need to see more affordable housing, transport address and energy costs. There are just the three big headline issues, and I am sure that more could be added to that. We will move on to our second theme, which is roundabout employability and fair work. To start us off, I will hand over to my colleague Miles Briggs, who will be followed by Natalie Donne. Good morning to the panel and thank you for joining us this morning. I wanted to kick off on this topic with regard to childcare and specifically to barriers to work, because we know that that is often fed back to us as why people cannot go into the world of work. To what extent do you think that the 1140-funded hours being delivered in the current way helps to maximise the impact on child poverty and for people to realise opportunities around work? I might start with yourself, Marion. If anyone else wants to come in, can you put an R in the chat? First of all, thank you very much for the invitation to give evidence today. Single parents make up a quarter of all families in Scotland. There is roundabout four in ten of children in poverty with a single parent, so there is a key group in the child poverty delivery plan. As part of our work around this, we have consulted with parents and we have just completed a huge survey. 250 odd single parents replied to us. They have identified for us the key areas of importance, one of the top ones being childcare. They have fed back to us their concerns. We have got more than 110 pages of content of single parents telling us about their experiences at the moment. Childcare is one of the top things that they raise. Childcare is crucial in terms of single parents being able to access further education employment, being on their own with their children. The new strategy covers the provision of childcare and the 140 hours of funded childcare. This is a very positive move, but we believe that we need to do more. The feedback from parents tells us that childcare is not flexible enough. It does not match the requirements of the labour market. Official childcare is rigid in terms of its delivery. Our vision is that every child up to the age of 12 should receive funded childcare entitlement, and that should be extended to 50 hours a week. In the meantime, we would like to make sure that the childcare that is available is more flexible. The survey was that it is a disabled children who perhaps need more support and more focus, and that they have better access to affordable and appropriate childcare. Childcare should be seen as a vital infrastructure investment, so it should be key to local economic development strategies. Aside from the official mainstream childcare, we need flexible wraparound childcare, and that needs to be available during school holidays. In particular, that is a time of pressure for single parents who are in work. I need them, like older children, who perhaps have just started secondary school, to do things for them while the parents are at work. I am moving in the right direction, but I think that there is probably an increase in the pace of the availability. A big thing that came through was cost. A lot of parents were saying that they could not afford the cost of childcare and particularly out-of-school care. That was a big issue that came through in our survey. Does anyone else want to come into that? I wanted to expand that a bit more with regard to access to training and skills, because a lot of the college sector has put in place additional facilities. That has been impacted clearly during the pandemic, but I just wondered if you had anything further to add on how that sort of flexibility is used for people to upskill and access college places where they are available. I am not sure if anyone wants to come in on that or if not happy to move on. Bill Scott has got his hand up. It is just falling on from what Marion Scott just said. To understand poverty in Scotland, we have to understand the gendered aspects of it as well. We talk about lone parent families. 90,000 children are living lone parent families who are in poverty, but 97 per cent of those families are headed by women. Therefore, the barriers to employment, to increasing skills and so on disproportionately affect women because of their care and responsibilities. We need to see a coherence and join that policy thinking. I welcome the plan that has made steps towards linkages across policy areas and across Government. For example, the 20-minute neighbourhood idea is a really good one environmentally, but it is also a really good one in childcare. It is no good if childcare is sighted well away from where a lone parent lives. They have to travel to childcare, as Marion Scott said, often inflexible in ours. Then they have to travel back to pick up a child, et cetera. If the childcare was closer to them within walking distance, it makes it much easier to fit the working day around it. Obviously, the increase in funded childcare is great to be welcomed. I think that we still see whether that will have the impact that it could have over a longer period. I think that it will take time to have that sort of impact, but it is to be welcomed. Also, the planned improvements after-school childcare for those children that have reached school age are also to be greatly welcomed. We want to see more detail on that at the commission to see how that will work in practice, but it could be valuable. For a lot of families, two thirds of the children living in poverty are in working households. The real barrier for those households is that they are not in work, so they are not working sufficient hours to lift them over the poverty line. On such low pay, they are not lifted over the poverty line. If we can improve the number of hours that those households can work by improving childcare, we can help to lift those households out of poverty. I have quite a few people who want to come in now. If we can go to Claire, Peter and then back to Marion, that would be great. I think that we welcome the progress that has been made in extending early learning in childcare. That is a hugely complex task to develop a childcare system that meets the needs of all families. It is great that we are taking great steps towards that. As others have already said, it will take time to see how that will impact parents' ability to take up employment. We also need to remember to get the balance right between delivering childcare in a way that supports children's development particularly in early years and supporting parents to take up work for more hours. We spoke to a number of parents, particularly with young children, to help to inform what they thought the priority should be for the plan. It is fair to say that childcare is still seen as more of a barrier to work than an enabler for most parents on low incomes. Some of that is perceived and some of it's actual challenges, particularly fears around unmanagable costs. Support around paying for childcare is really complex and being able to access that becomes inaccessible. It puts parents off because they don't understand or aren't aware of the lack of information in places available locally and how they can be supported to pay for it or take up childcare. I think that there are a number of challenges in thinking about how we make sure that support is available. Part of that is about providing holistic family support and tailored approaches to supporting employability, which I think come through really strongly and are really welcome in the plan, as are the promises in the plan to extend free childcare further for younger children and out-of-school care. The lessons that we have learnt in delivering such a complex extension in hours, we really need to take note of those in the next steps for building that childcare system that will enable all families the choice of work in balancing that with childcare and making sure that that is flexible enough to meet the needs of parents working different shifts, different family needs. I think that delivering that at scale is a challenge and it will take time, so we really don't have time to waste in terms of starting to think about the specifics and how we're going to start delivering that. While the promises in the plan are really welcome, I think that the next steps in setting out what are the goals going to be, how specifically do they relate to child poverty and what are the timescales for delivering on that are going to be really important for parents in terms of the choices that they can make around work and caring for their children? Can we hear now from Peter? Thank you, convener. Just to come back very quickly on a couple of the points because Bill and Claire have already covered some of them. I think that in our consultation around the plan we similarly heard very clearly from community organisations about the importance of childcare and the importance of extending the offer of childcare so that it begins earlier for younger children, so that's really important. I think that in what's in the plan in terms of the offer to parents and that connectedness with the dedicated key worker that will help support, access childcare, will take into account issues like transport and so on, that's really welcome. I think that we're going to need to see that developed really quite quickly in terms of the implementation of that new offer, so that's a critical part. I think that in terms of how we do that we need to draw on the lessons of what's worked in the past that we're not starting from zero here, so looking at programmes like working for families that were around quite some time ago now, more than 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, and where there was an offer of holistic integrated support to help parents return to the labour market in a way that worked and that actually had an impact in terms of sustainability. I think that we need to draw on those kind of lessons and not think that we have to start again with the development of new childcare arrangements. I wanted to make a general point about single parents access to further and higher education. It is linked to childcare. There isn't really enough childcare to facilitate that, but beyond that, the point that I wanted to make was that it's actually very hard for single parents to move into further and higher education now, because when their child is three, if they are in receipt of benefit, then they are required to look for work. Any lone parent they may wish to take up further education is left with a very difficult decision because they are still required to be available for work. If there was research that looked at the number of single parents that went into further and higher education, we would find that there has been a catastrophic drop in those numbers. That is very important, because most single parents work in the areas of the economy that are low paid and place a par in the poverty that single parents face. Therefore, to help to tackle that, single parents need access to improve their qualifications and to be able to move into better pay work. All those things are connected up. Lastly, in relation to childcare and transport, those two things are crucially connected, because as a single parent, if you have a couple of children, you are out at work. You have one going to nursery and one going to school. The connectivity of transport is crucial for that to be able to get to all those places before you start work, perhaps at 9 o'clock in the morning and later on the day when you do the pick-ups. I will go back to transport and the points that Bill made about how important that is. Thank you very much for that, Marion. I will now move on to questions from Natalie Dawn and then over to Pam Duncan Glancy. Natalie. Thanks very much, convener, and thank you to all the panel this morning. It is really good to have you with us. I have got a couple of questions on this. I will begin. We have touched on some of the priority groups already, single parent families. Do you feel that the delivery plan is done enough to support employment for the priority groups? Do you feel that the Scottish Government has utilised its devolved powers fully in that plan? In your view, do you feel that efforts could be enhanced further with the devolution of employment law? Could I put that to Bill, please? Good questions, Natalie. Thank you. Whether enough has been done, only time will tell. As I said, the commission's point of view on increased investment and employability is that it looks good. It looks as though it is addressing some of the issues for those priority families with both targeted and holistic support being provided to the families to assist them to overcome some of the barriers. However, some of those barriers are structural, and we need to see more action taken on those structural barriers to take up employment. We have to say that we have still got far too many low-paid jobs, and people have become stuck in those low-paid jobs. For some of the reasons that Mary Ann pointed out, improving skills is an important aspect in moving up the career ladder. We would like to see more support for disabled people and their families, because the largest single group of children living in poverty are in households, whether they are a disabled parent or a disabled child. Child care is very important because it addresses the additional needs of disabled children. The employability service that is offered is more along the lines of individual placement and support. Individual placement and support has been really successful in moving medium to severe mental health difficulties into work. It has a very high success rate, and it works with disabled people and employers to address barriers. It works with employers to address barriers that they may not even be aware of in the recruitment process and in the workplace to ensure that the work place is truly accessible and that the recruitment process is truly accessible. It then tries to place disabled people with those employers. The holistic approach that addresses benefit take-up, access to work, support and so on, all that really needs to be done. We really need to see that holistic approach in employability. We have yet to see exactly how the new employability funding will work, but we hope to see it more along those lines. The other thing that I would really welcome is the new parental transition fund, £15 million per year, which addresses some of the financial barriers to work. That is tackling some of those issues that Marianne has identified about. In terms of childcare, you often have to pay the costs up front, but you only get the support with those costs in arrears. During your first month of work, you pay the childcare costs, but you have no income. If it can begin to address some of those issues, that will help many families to make that decision that they want to take up work opportunities. At the moment, they look at it and say, I am not going to be able to feed the children if I take up that job, because I just cannot afford the childcare and putting food on the table. I am hoping again that the commission is hoping that the new parental transition fund will address some of those barriers as well. That touched on one of my supplementary questions, which was just involved. You have mentioned that employers are becoming a little bit more flexible in terms of accommodating employees who might have childcare commitments or even other issues, ensuring that people in poverty have financial support to afford the tools or clothes that they might need to get to work or for their workplace. Sorry, can I just reaffirm? Do you feel that that is happening just now that employers are, given that extra support and are coming round to open up those barriers for people? I do not know the answer. I think that we need to see more work that we employers on this issue. I think that there is probably a role for the Fair Work Commission and so on in this area. We definitely need to see more work done to allow employers to remove some of the barriers. One of the things that has been proven absolutely during the past two years of the pandemic is that people can work very successfully from home. That removes one of the barriers for a lot of disabled people who, again, find it difficult to get accessible transport to and from work, or who find the journey to and from work to absorb their energy. A lot of people with ME, et cetera, who find the journey to work a barrier, not just the cost, but the physical effort involved. If they can remain at home in work successfully and they can, we need to get that message across to employers that hybrid forms of working now are much easier to achieve for many types of jobs. That should open up employment to more disabled people than before. Let's hope that some of the lessons of the pandemic have been learned by employers and they do begin to open up those opportunities to disabled people. You are kind of pre-empting my questions, because my next one was about hybrid. No, I absolutely agree. I think that there are issues with the different kinds of employment. I know, for example, in retail that it can be quite inflexible. I think that there really needs to be a focus on making sure that we recover all areas of employment to make sure that flexibility is going across the board. I think that Peter, sorry, wanted to come in on this. On that question of the role of employers, I think that the poverty line has been delivering the living wage accreditation scheme now for the last eight years or so. What we have seen from that is 2,500 employers who have signed up to become accredited living wage employers, so there is definitely out there amongst employers a desire to do more and to be actively involved in initiatives and efforts to address poverty. I think that we need to go further than that, so the restatement of some of the commitments around the expansion of the living hours programme is very welcome. Obviously, we are delivering that as well, so it is probably bound to say that it is welcome. I think that some of the references in the plan to the engagement of employers in this employment is absolutely central to tackling poverty. We spend a lot of our time talking about how employment is not providing a route out of poverty for enough people, but what we do know is that when employment works, it is the key route out of poverty for many, many people. For most people, it is the thing that keeps them out of poverty. We need to do much more to engage employers in discussions about their role in addressing child poverty if the ambitions of this plan are to be realised, then they need to be much more central to that discussion. That can be a difficult thing to do. We have tried over the past few years, and Scottish Leaders Forum and others have tried to actively engage employers in that. It is not a simple and straightforward task, but we need to do much more, and we need to take a much more focused approach to that. The other question that you asked was about devolution of employment legislation. I think that that would undoubtedly help. We have said that in the past, but I think that the engagement of employers to build on some of the really good work that has been done around Scottish Business Pledge, around living wage accreditation and so on, to really build that momentum to get employers involved in this is really important. Thanks, Peter. Absolutely agreed. No further questions, convener. Thanks very much for that, Natalie. I am now going to hand over to Pam Duncan-Glancy for questions on this theme, and she will then take us into our third theme, which is roundabout meeting the targets after that, Pam. Thank you, convener, and thanks again to everyone for your answers so far. Following on the themes that we have been talking about intersectionality, and specifically a blog has been published that you might be aware of this week by Close the Gap that highlights some concerns that I share about the delivery plan. It says that this was a time for building on the actions in previous child poverty delivery plans and applying increased focus on women's poverty. Instead, the sharp focus on women's poverty is diluted within this plan. No actions explicitly designed to address the disadvantages of women in the labour market beyond a vague commitment to continue taking targeted action on the gender pay gap and continued reliance on pre-existing strategies and interventions that are not well-gendered, including no one left behind individual training accounts and the flexible workforce development fund are throughout. That is obviously quite concerning, given the focus that we have had this morning already on the need to address women's equality and, in particular, in the workplace. I think that all of us around this table and on the panel agree how important that is. What could we specifically do now to redress that imbalance and make sure that we progress the work that the previous plan started on women's equality in the workplace? Who do you want to direct that to? If I could start with Bill and then maybe Marion, if that is okay? We could definitely do more. Again, from the plan, one of the things that is being fluid is that there will be collective bargaining. For both social care and childcare providers to try and raise wages in both of those sectors. Now, as those sectors are dominated by female workforces, that could assist. As I say, it is not only the number of hours that are in question but also the low pay. In both those sectors, low pay is a factor. Women continue to be in poverty even though they are in work. Those areas, as we have seen, are absolutely essential to the functioning of a modern economy. Therefore, the workers in those areas should be rewarded for that. That will cost money because, ultimately, the funder who provides that funding through local authorities, et cetera, to the childcare and social care providers is the Scottish Government, so it has to come out of the block grant. Again, there has to be some acknowledgement that there will be costs involved in that, just as there are in ensuring that everybody that secures a Scottish Government contract through the procurement process will have to be a living wage employer going forward. That commitment is in the delivery plan as well. There are commitments that will help to raise wages of some women workers. Of course, we would like to see more. As I said, there is welcome acknowledgement in the plan of some of the intersectional aspects of poverty. However, we would always look for more. We agree that we close the gap. The agenda of the analysis is important. In fact, it is one that takes into account disability, given how large a proportion of children living in poverty, 40 per cent of those children are from households with disabled parents or children. We need to see more work in that area to analyse the figures that we have got to make sure that the actions that are being taken around employability are meeting the needs of the target groups and assisting them to move out of poverty. That is why we called for that greater analysis. We have begun to see it, but we need to see more going forward, a quicker analysis of whether the policies that are being rolled out are working in practice to assist the groups. If we begin to see more lone parents able to take up employment opportunities, it will have a gendered impact. We will see. Mary Ann, do you want to add to that? That is a really important area for us. As Bill mentioned earlier, most single parents are women. There are women in their mid-30s. It could be classed as women returners, which was a term that was used a lot in the past. I absolutely agree that the employability strategy has to have a gendered focus that has been lacking. In our work that we have done, research that we have done with Oxfam and with JRF, both of those pieces of research found that mainstream employability programmes are gender-blind and they really do not focus on the needs particularly of single parents. We have to see some big changes there. There are some welcome parts of the delivery plan that mention a focus on this, particularly on single parents. We need to strengthen the focus on gender across our whole approach to child poverty. We talk about child poverty, but we must tackle women's poverty. Children live with their parents, and most of the children in the target groups live with one parent being a woman. We need an intersexual approach that covers gender and disability and ethnic minority groups. We particularly need to look at a gendered approach in relation to social security and reducing the cost of living. There is a whole area around women and poverty to do with domestic abuse. A high percentage of the single parents that we work with have been affected by domestic abuse or financial controlling behaviour. It sets the context of where they are at at the moment and it links into women's homelessness. I absolutely agree that we need to keep a high focus and concentration on women and poverty. That will contribute to reducing child poverty. I will move straight to the next theme. Thank you for those answers. On the targets, it is fair to say that, if we get there, some of the submissions will only reach the relative poverty target and we will miss the absolute poverty target. There are concerns about standards of living and possible targets on destitution. On that basis, it does not feel like for so many people that we are in an optimistic situation when it comes to the economy or the cost of living. Does the modelling still hold? Do you think in a year's time we will still be saying that we will meet the targets or is there anything that we need to do now to guarantee that we get there, given that the modelling suggests that we will only just make it? The reductions in poverty have already been touched on. Do not really reflect living standards, so it would be good to hear a little bit more about what that would mean for families. If Peter and Bill could answer that just for time, if that is the case, I think that everyone could say something on it. I will try to be brief on that. It is a real significant challenge when the statistics are telling us, as Bill had alluded to earlier, that poverty rates are going down, but the millions that MSPs, campaigners and grassroots organisations reflect are hearing about and are saying something different. How do we square that? We need to be cautious about the modelling. Even in the papers that the Scottish Government has presented in the annexes, there is a degree of caution and a lot of caveats to the models that are being produced. Both the standard caveats that are in any modelling about changes in the external environment in terms of the broader economy and so on. I know that this week we are getting predictions that the economy may go into recession later this year. I think that we need to treat those predictions with some degree of caution. I know that you are speaking to Fraser Ballander and JRF and IPPR, and they will know that they have more to say on the robustness of the modelling that I cannot talk about. What that caution around the modelling tells us is that we need to be listening to people with direct experience of poverty in a more consistent fashion. One of the things that was said is that there are lots of references in the plan to lived experience panels in different areas of work that is being developed in the plan, and that is good. I think that what we need is a very clear sense of how we can take what we are hearing through lived experience, which is that things are getting tougher, not that things are getting easier and apply that to our policy responses. Whether that is in what we do around the new benefits that are coming online in Scotland and thinking about the value of those and the adequacy of those, or thinking about some of the crisis responses that are available, so the role of the Scottish welfare fund and so on, is having that more real-time feedback. We know that the big data sets that tell us are we going to reach our child poverty targets are not going to be robust for the next little while they weren't robust enough this year to report on. So we need to treat those figures with some caution, and we need to think about how we use other sources of evidence to tell us whether we're in the right direction or not. Do you want to hear from Bill? Just very quickly, because I think that Peter said it most of what I'd want to say on this. I do think that there's a real danger if we trump it from the rooftops that relative poverty target has been achieved while forgetting the other targets. I think that the material deprivation target is the one that's going to be missed probably by quite a large margin. That's a really important one, because during the first year of the pandemic, 50,000 Scottish children went without a basic necessity, either without food on the table or energy to heat their homes or, in fact, with a roof over their heads. So that's the first year of the pandemic. We think it got worse in the second year. We're not sure yet, but we're waiting on the figures, but it looks as though it could probably got worse. If that continues and the rising energy prices, the rising food costs and even greater rise is predicted because of the war in New Ukraine, if that continues, then the impact on those families is going to be severe and real destitution will occur. For those families feeling that, and for the many families on middle incomes who are going to feel the pressure, it's not going to feel as though things are getting better, it's going to feel as though things are getting worse. There's going to be a real dissonance between the lived experience that tells people that things are much, much worse and the official figures which tell them that poverty is falling. So we need to treat it with more than a pinch of salt. Yeah, the modelling may well be correct, or it could be slightly off. We could just take the target or we could just miss it, but for the real people at the sharp end of poverty, poverty is deepening and probably we are going to see people living in poverty for longer. Again, that will have lifelong consequences for those children because it will impact on their health, it will impact on their entertainment, etc. Poverty is a cycle and we want to take children out of that cycle. Many thanks for that answer, Bill. We're going to now move on to theme 4, which is roundabout warm affordable homes. Before I pass to my colleague Miles Briggs, I'd like to ask the question myself. It's roundabout those children who are within the gypsy traveller community. We know that we've got £20 million set aside over the next few years to address their accommodation needs. We do know that they do experience some of the most harshest forms of poverty that is enduring. I wonder perhaps, Bill, if you could maybe touch on this aspect of how we make sure that we manage to address the poverty of those children who sometimes experience the harshest poverty that there is. I think it's very difficult. I worked briefly with the gypsy traveller community back in the 90s myself. I know that accompanying that poverty goes stigma that those children experience at school and in the wider community and the discrimination that community faces. Poverty does not come on its own, like old age does not come on its own. Stigma that those children experience is scarring as well as their poverty. I think that there's going to be particular difficulties. We've gone into some of the aspects of rural poverty, and that affects the traveller community to a great extent. I'm sure that Shelter can comment on this to my much greater knowledge on myself, but there's less places for traveller communities to settle and stay temporarily while they travel. That's been an aspect that's been occurring over the last few years. I do think that we often concentrate on the numbers. I'm guilty of that as well. The numbers of households with disabled people, households headed by a lone parent. The poverty experienced by some of the smaller groups back in our areas of communities and the travelling community is even more intense and much more likely to experience it. We need to concentrate on the need and not just the numbers. The needs of those communities have to be addressed. There are specific needs around education, housing and energy supply. Travelling communities are going to experience it because of the economic situation as well as poverty and discrimination that is still there, unfortunately, in many places throughout Scotland towards travellers. I wonder, Alison, if you could perhaps come in here and maybe speak a little bit to whether our rapid rehousing transition plans and our ending homelessness together action plan combined with the £20 million that's there to help tackle the shortage of accommodation for the travelling community in your estimation is going to get us to where we need to be. I understand the points that you are making. I agree with Bill's comments about the amount of marginalisation and discrimination that Gypsy child was experiencing. When Shetland Scotland did some work with the communities across Scotland a few years ago, I think it was very stark that there was quite high housing costs in terms of some of the local authority sites and that the standards were pretty poor. As Bill has alluded to, the supply on those sites was a real issue. I think that there's a real need for action there. I think that there's a more general point in relation to what you're saying about the joint ending homelessness. Together planning rapid rehousing, I think that we're at a stage where we're beginning to identify some examples of good practice that local authorities are driving forward. I think that we're really very far away from a coherent programme where we understand what the success looks like and how do we build on that, where are the gaps and barriers and what action is required to take that forward. I think that that's a general point and I think that it's also true of parts of the ending homelessness together plan. There relate to specific communities, so I would include care leavers in that, people leaving prison etc. I think that we're seeing, as I say, pockets of good practice but that it's not a coherent programme that's anywhere close to reaching the targets and indeed matching the aspirations that were originally set out in the ending homelessness together plan. Thanks very much for that and I think that that probably alludes to the fact that it takes us full circle to that mainstreaming equalities agenda that we need to make sure that we embed it at every level and in every area that we work. I'll hand over now to Miles Briggs who will follow on this theme and then Natalie Don. Thank you, convener. My questions follow on from your initial question there because I wanted to ask with regards to children in temporary accommodation specifically. I personally feel that the child poverty delivery plan lacked action in that area. Over seven and a half thousand children in Scotland today are living in temporary accommodation, the time children are in temporary accommodations doubled. I just wondered what your view was on how we need to actually see that area looked at again within the plan, especially as an Edinburgh MSP, I have to say, the situation here is in crisis really. I might be bringing you back in, Alison, if anyone else wants to add anything on that topic. Thanks for that, Miles, and the opportunity to offer a contribution. I just absolutely agrees with your concern. We've got record numbers of children in temporary accommodation, seven and a half thousand, as you say. Also, we've got a situation where we keep adding to that. Every 19 minutes in Scotland another household becomes homeless by the end of today and in our classroom 32 kids will have become homeless. Length of stay is a real issue. If a family becomes homeless today, on average it will be 28 March 2023 before that household is offered permanent accommodation. The fundamental problem here is the lack of supply of social homes that are required to move people effectively and rapidly on from temporary accommodation to permanent offer. It's come up in a number of contributions so far. Housing and action housing is a key structural change to end the cycle of child poverty and making sure that we are achieving the housing supply targets. The Scottish Government has laid out in housing 2040 making sure that we do that at pace. I think that that goes back to something that Bill said at the beginning of the conversation, pace and scale and investment are absolutely key here. I would also pick up on what Peter said early on as well about the need for consistency and longevity as we take action in child poverty. It's the same in terms of taking action on the housing emergency. We need to see long-term cross-party support because where we are now, we are very far away from even reaching the affordable housing supply targets of the previous Parliament. Those targets won't be met before September and they weren't on target even before the pandemic. I think that it's understanding where are we being successful and how can we build on that. What is the evidence telling us about what the barriers are, what the blockers are and making sure that we take consistent and long-term action to ensure that housing supply is truly on target? Thanks for that Bill. I know that you want to come in just in the interest of time. I'll maybe just ask this question before I bring you in with regards to what changes need to be made to the affordable housing supply programme. I think that we all agree with some of the steps that have been taken around a shift towards preventative models and that's welcome but in this case often that's beyond being able to keep people in their homes. I just wondered with regards to changes to make sure that that has the maximum effect on child poverty targets around that model as well. I'll bring you in Bill. First of all, I'm going to address the last question that was around children and families having to stay in temporary accommodation. I completely agree that we need to massively reduce the numbers that are in temporary accommodation for any one entry time. I think that some of those families have ended up there because of the benefit cap, so addressing the problems caused by the benefit cap because it leaves families with insufficient funds to pay their full rent. They then get rears and are evicted. When they are evicted, local authorities place them in temporary accommodation and then find it quite difficult, often because there are large families, to rehouse them. That is a preventative measure now, which I think will feed through and hopefully prevent families ending up, some families ending up in temporary accommodation. We need to see housing strategy and affordable housing plans taking into account that lived experience. Again, there is some indication that, particularly the needs of larger families will be addressed. I think that we need to see more about how grants to registered social landlords will be improved so that they can build those homes for larger families and build more accessible homes for families with disabled parents or children. Families with disabled people are more likely to live in social housing, but a fair proportion of them live in the private rented sector, which is not always suitable for them. If we had more affordable social housing, we could reduce some of their housing costs and move some of those families out of poverty and provide them with much more suitable accommodation. I work for a disabled people's organisation in my day job. I have seen people coming out of hospital and putting the first second floor flats when they are wheelchair users. We know lift up and down, so they are essentially trapped in their flats. More affordable but also more accessible accommodation is absolutely essential to addressing some of the problems with child poverty. Poverty in Scotland is around 2 per cent lower than in other parts of the UK, because we have a greater social housing supply than in other parts of the UK. We need to see it improve even further. I am sure that Shelter and other organisations are working very hard to achieve that. I wanted to ask about children in kinship care. If there is any specific ask around them, we know that there are different support payments being provided by different councils. Any members of the panel have any view on how children could be supported in kinship care arrangements? Anyone want to come in on that? I do know that there are issues with housing for children in kinship care, especially when they need to have adaptations done or that the house is not suitable for those children. That probably feeds back into the answers that we have heard from some of the other questions, but I recognise that it might be a question that nobody and the panel are able to answer at the moment. Thank you for bringing it up today, Miles, because it is important. I will hand over to Natalie Dawn, who has some questions on this, and then Pam Natalie. In terms of the policies that are included under the warm affordable homes, do the panel feel that they have enough of a focus on tackling child poverty? Obviously, we have funding from Home Energy Scotland, for example, that will provide £42 million in grants and loans to help with making homes warmer. However, we are now seeing what appears to be an ever-increasing cost of living and increase in fuel costs. To what extent do we feel that any of those policies might be counteracted by that? I appreciate and understand the question. It goes back to some of the things that Bill was talking about. We have a general problem about how high housing costs are a major contributing factor to poverty. We know that 170,000 children in the rented sector, private rented sector and social rented sector, are living in poverty after housing costs. As you see, we need to think about housing costs, including rent plus the costs of heating that property. It goes back to the point that I was making earlier about what investment is going to make sure that we are building the right homes in the right places to end the housing emergency as a structural change to end the cycle of child poverty. By right homes, we have to be building homes that meet the highest standards of energy efficiency as a major contribution towards tackling fuel poverty. However, we are hearing very clear messages about how the costs of that are accelerating very fast. We need to look at recognising the situation that the investment that is on the table from the Scottish Government at the moment will inevitably build less homes if we want to make sure that we are keeping up with the target but we are also keeping up with the target around energy efficiency. In terms of the pace that we want to see homes come on stream and the kind of homes with that high standard of energy efficiencies that are contributing towards reducing total housing costs, we need to look again at the amount of investment that has been offered to social home providers to build the right homes that will make the difference. I do not believe that anybody else wants to come in on that, so I will move on. I know that the panel has mentioned a sort of emphasis on more and increased and warmer social housing, more affordable housing, but does the panel feel that there are any other measures that could address child poverty that are missing from the plan in relation to housing? I will put that one to Bill first, please. I think that it is going back to seeing more joined up thinking across policy areas. We do welcome the fact that it does seem to be much greater thought given to how different policy portfolios across government might contribute to reducing child poverty. I think that that is one of the areas where there definitely needs to be more action taken in the future. If we are moving towards a just transition in net zero, we do not want the costs of that to fall disproportionately on those with the lowest incomes. In other words, energy costs could rise due to a just transition. As we try to eliminate carbon, and Alison has already talked about improving the energy standards of the homes that are being built, that will increase rental costs, unless we improve the grants to social housing providers. There are also areas where we are talking about energy production through wind farms. It is rather renewable forms of energy. I would like to see greater investment in community ownership of supply and reducing energy costs directly because the communities own the energy supply to themselves rather than the national grid. That happens in Europe. It is not unheard of. It is not mad scheming or anything like that that we are talking about. We are simply saying that if renewable energy is there and if we can tap into it through wind and solar power or wave power, then surely local communities, where that is happening, should be able to benefit from that. Let us see whether some of the issues around land reform where we have set up funds that communities can tap into to buy local assets and land and so on, whether that could be extended to energy production and say that local communities begin to own their own energy supply and benefit from that in lower costs to themselves. We will have to do something in the longer term to reduce energy costs. We do not necessarily, because energy costs do not factor them to the relative poverty figures that we store, the absolute poverty figures, but we need to see them being addressed. Otherwise, families will be faced with the choice not only whether to put food on the table but also whether they can pay the rent. If they cannot pay the rent, they will get evicted. The costs are enormous to the families and enormous to the public sector. As Miles will tell you, the costs of putting up a family in temporary accommodation for a week can run thousands of pounds. It makes no economic sense to allow families to get into that situation. At the moment, with their eyes and energy costs, if they are not addressed, there will be families who are forced to make the choice of whether to pay the rent or pay the electricity or gas bill. One will go and, if that happens, they could end up evicted, homeless, and there are huge issues for those children. I agree, Bill. I have concerns for people who are on keymeters who do not even have the option to not pay the electricity bill. They are just going to completely go without it. It is scary. My next question is, does the panel feel that if renewable energy was generated in Scotland, it was not sold back to the national grid but instead remained in Scotland with that benefit householders? Again, you have just asked that, so I have no further questions. Thanks, convener. Thanks very much for that question and those answers. Before I hand over to Pam, Bill, you have outlined the stark reality that we are facing and the need that we look at housing to 2040. We look at the outputs from the social renewal advisory board. We look at how we are going to decarbonise and those district heating systems that are going to be in the offing. Also, how does the draft national planning framework for and 20 minute neighbourhoods and all of that link all in together to address poverty and specifically child poverty? There is that golden thread that we need to pull together. I will hand over to Pam. Finally, on our last theme, I will hand over to Paul Maclellan. Thank you, convener, and thanks for allowing me to come in again. On the district heating thing, some of you will be aware of the experience of residents in the Wynford in Glasgow and the fact that they have created a system or that there was a system there for them to benefit from energy created on their doorstep. It was supposed to reduce fuel costs and also heat their homes, but that has not happened and, in fact, some of those costs are now increasing. It would be interesting to hear from Alison, if possible, what we can do to make sure that where community energy systems are put in place, they definitely do begin to bring down poverty for households. The real message of building social houses that are the right size with the right amenities around them seems so clear and absolutely the answer. What is stopping us getting there? Why are we not doing it? What is happening? Pam, I will start by picking up on some of the points that I thought Bill was making so well. It is understanding how acute the situation is, and part of the backdrop that we are now struggling with is the cost-of-living crisis. We are seeing rent arrears go up. Bill is rightly pointing out that that is going to be a big driver of homelessness. We are already seeing homelessness go up. We know that 57 per cent of families in Scotland are worried about keeping up with their rental costs already, and that is only set to get worse. As Bill was saying, in terms of taking a joined-up approach, it is also appreciating very high costs of accommodating families in temporary accommodation, but also the very high costs to local authorities of evicting families. We did research last year, which showed that—this was a conservative figure— the cost per family of eviction was about £15,000. We spent £28 million on evicting families from social accommodation. There is a legitimate question about what is the best way of using scarce public resources to drive the greatest positive outcomes. I do not think that it is about evicting families. We have learned a lot about eviction during the pandemic. We took a very progressive approach in Scottish Governments to be applauded for that. There is a danger of missing the opportunity to lock in that learning and that progressive approach and to ask ourselves in a very robust way in what circumstances should a family ever be evicted from a social rented situation, particularly if they are going to be evicted into homelessness. I wanted to make those specific points. In terms of the delivery of social housing, we were starting with the affordable housing supply programme. With the previous Parliament, we were starting from a dead stop. We had not been building social housing at anything like scale for decades, so we are still having to make up for those decades of under-investment and in those decades, the capacity to build had gone. We have built up some momentum, but, as I said earlier, the affordable housing supply programme with the previous Parliament is yet to meet its time. I am not seeing the question that enables us to understand the question that you are quite rightly asking, which is, where are the problems, where are the barriers, what do we need to do about them? Critically, we need to make sure that we are resourcing local authorities and social housing providers to deliver. I do not think that there is anything wrong with asking local authorities and social housing providers in particular to do more in the context of our national ambition to end homelessness, but we cannot do more with less. I think that in terms of what we understand are the very real challenges around supply chain, around rising costs, that the cost of building a social house has dramatically gone up, but the level of grant has not. We are in a situation, as I said earlier, where the amount of investment that is going in, great though it is, is not good enough because it is going to now build less. I think that it is taking the housing 2040 target, 110,000 affordable homes 2032, 70 per cent of those, 77,000 for social rent, good targets, but we need to understand in detail how we are going to deliver on that so that it does not remain an aspiration because families need bricks and mortar solutions that do not make broken promises. Thank you. That is my final question. Thank you very much. I will hand over now to Paul, who is going to ask the last few questions. I want to move on to talk about the levels of investment and the narrative. Which policies are likely to have the greatest impact on child poverty and if budgets are tight, where would you prioritise spending? I want to ask Claire this first question. I remember meeting the children to discuss about your report. It would be nice to just feel secure where you laid out and put out your impact on where you think the priority should be so probably that question first of all to yourself. I know in the conclusion you mentioned that there are about six or seven different things that you have mentioned but where would you prioritise that and where do you see the greatest impact? Thanks very much for that question. As you point out, our report with parents looked at their priorities and what they wanted to see in the action plan and I think that there are lots to welcome in the plan. Social security is obviously absolutely key to supporting families' incomes and looking at building adequate incomes in the longer term as well as supporting those immediate costs now. I think that the plan is probably strongest there in terms of having very specific deliverables and that investment is so important. We know that increasing incomes alone has a direct impact on children and family wellbeing and their outcomes so we really need to make sure that that is a priority in our spending. Social security alone won't meet the targets and support families but it's really important. One of the other areas that we're really pleased to see recognition throughout the plan is the importance of holistic family support. We know how important that is to families so linking up practical, emotional and financial support makes a real difference to families. The fact that that has been recognised throughout the plan is really important and will be key to how we deliver support for families. What we now need to see is how is that going to be delivered, how will the funding be supported and it's really important that we focus on that delivery and make sure that that's focused on what families need and that's what drives it. The investment in the transition fund and the employability support is really important and that's been touched on already by others in the evidence but that's a clear message from families that that transition moving into work is a real crunch time for families. There's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of fear and being supported through that transition both in terms of practical support, whether that's reducing barriers or access to childcare, transport and other areas but also that emotional support of that change, of the uncertainty of what it's going to mean for family incomes. Moving from benefits into income is really, really important so that really holistic and person-centred continuous support is going to be really, really important. I think in terms of those key areas and drivers, we're really, really pleased to see that and childcare as well. We've talked about that already, investment in delivering further commitments on childcare is key on this as well and we're really, really welcome. The steps that have been outlined or the promises that have been made on childcare again, it's about ensuring that that's delivered, it's delivered at pace and scale and with the investment that we've talked about as well. I think there's a couple of other areas in the plan where the parents mentioned and highlighted that maybe there isn't a strong plan around so debt was one of the areas that consistently comes up for families and I think the impact of the cost of living crisis, unfortunately, we are going to see a significant rise in debt potentially and thinking about how we support families to manage that debt and prevent it is going to be really, really important. So I think we'd want to make sure that we have investment and support available to all families that need it there and then we haven't talked about part C of the plan today in terms of the prevention. It's really important when we think about meeting the targets that we're thinking not just about achieving them in 2030 but how are we going to sustain low levels of child poverty from 2030 onwards? What does our society need to look like? So really pleased to see that those preventative elements of poverty are included in part C. I think there's lots to welcome in that but again it's about making sure that we've got kind of the specifics and the deliverables there because we know that focusing on income as well as the wellbeing and sort of family outcome, children and families outcomes together is going to be critical to preventing poverty in the longer term. So really thinking about that long term plan and that does require investment in tackling the attainment gap, thinking about how the plan links with the promise and looked after children. I think it's great to see that it was being connected up a bit more in the plan. I would say in relation to part C one of the other areas that maybe isn't included as strongly as we would like is the early years and thinking about how we're supporting families and children with very young children. Particularly when we look at some of the priority groups, families with babies and under ones that's a particular group with very specific needs that we need to think more around. A lot has happened, a lot of support's already in place. We have made significant progress but we're still seeing very high levels of poverty for that group. So I think it's really important that we look there and think about beyond early learning and childcare how we support parents, how we support families with the youngest children. So I think those would be our kind of top level analysis based on what kind of parents that needed to be in the plan. Claire, thank you for that and I know you've referenced the first thousand in one days has been vitally important and I think that that's key. I'm going to try and bring Marion in if that's okay convener in terms of a couple of things that you mentioned in your submission. One obviously was about financial inclusion pathway and we've heard about parental transition fund. Marion, just to get just what your thoughts are on the priorities and so on. The one kind of thing that Claire's mentioned to me as well and maybe open up beyond that was obviously around the debt advice because I think that is vitally important about how you deal with that. One's prevention about when people get into debt but how do you prevent it in the first place. So I think that's incredibly important. Marion, can I ask you that question first of all and about as I said the financial inclusion pathway and the parental transition fund but also then maybe ask the panel to talk around about or think around about the debt kind of thing that Claire brought up? Marion, over to yourself. Can you hear me now? That particular part of the plan around the transition fund, we really do welcome because the research that we have done around this has shown that this is really a big issue for single parents in relation to moving into work that can actually be worse off and there's a lot of reasons around that. Obviously there's the upfront childcare but what we have actually found is that because we do in our services we've embedded financial advice within them is that we've done some case studies which show that there are cliff edges in terms of the benefit system so that when single parents and probably others move in to paid work that they actually lose some of the help that they had when they were on benefit. So for example help with school meals with school clothing prants and some of the parents lost the kind of Covid payments and so I think it is worth a careful look in relation to the impact of that. I think what our survey has shown is that really the parents that have consulted and sent us in the information about their lives shows that they are in crisis and things like one parent said my work is asking me to return to the office but I don't have the money to pay for the fuel for my car. I'm choosing between eating my home and being able to eat. Unfortunately a lot of the messages coming through from parents was that they themselves were not eating what their children have left on their plates. They've lost so much weight that they can't afford to buy new clothes. We talked about this earlier, moving into rent arrears and the struggling to keep their prepayment meters tops up. One parent's got five kids and she's having to walk them all to school because she doesn't have money for the fares. I think that there's going to be a tsunami of debt and I think we already have a huge debt crisis but we need some emergency action. We need to look at things like the tapers for access to school meals and school clothing grants. We could look at that right away. A lot of parents, when they move into work, they'll lose that and so their income goes down. We really need to look at the Scottish child payment. Is that enough, the increase that has been put on the table? We need the emergency action for that to be increased to now rather than later. There's things like best start grants and payments to families with younger children that Claire mentioned. They've been increased by 6 per cent but inflation is predicted to be 8 per cent. Even those are not keeping in pace with inflation. It's crucial in relation to debt to have this integrated, embedded into the family approach that Claire talked about. It's mentioned in the child poverty delivery plan, the holistic family support. We have to invest more in the financial inclusion support benefits advice for that to be embedded in that. The survey that we've just had back is incredibly frightening. I have to say that the 200-odd parents that have replied to us are in a very desperate situation. Anything that the Scottish Government can do to reduce costs and to put money in parents' pockets is vital. No-one will need to wrap up, but that's a very important note for us to wind up this session on. The committee has an inquiry on problem debt and poverty. I'm sure that some of you have already submitted responses to that. If there's anything you feel that you would like to follow up today in writing, that would be most helpful. Thank you very much to the panel for joining us this morning. I will suspend briefly for a short comfort break and to allow the other panel to get into place. I'm sorry for that short delay. I welcome to the meeting now our second panel, which focuses on public policy research and analysis addressing poverty. I welcome along Jack Evans, Scotland Policy and Partnerships Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Philip White, director of IPPR Scotland and Emma Congreff Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute. I'm going to invite members to ask questions and turn on different themes. Theme 1 is around about child poverty trends and the economic context, and I'm going to bring in my colleague Miles Briggs first. Miles. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thanks for joining us this morning. I wanted to open this session by asking whether or not you felt that the delivery plan does enough to drive down the cost of living issues. I'm happy to open that to anyone who wants to start. Emma, you can test your link. Of course. Good morning. In terms of the actions in the plan around the immediate issues around the cost of living, I don't think that the plan was written in order to fully address those issues. The plan is written in order to seek ways to meet the targets in the interim targets and the final targets. It is potentially an issue that includes more actions that deal with the issues around the cost of living in the here and now, but on the other side of the coin was that what this plan was with the longer term focus that it has? Is that what we should expect this plan to be doing? I don't think that the actions that could be done by Government to address the issues that are present at the moment. I don't think that you would argue that the plan addresses those fully, but, as I said, we have to remember what the plan is there for. It's not necessarily to deal with issues that are short and long-term in some of the consequences, but it's potentially not the best place to be dealing with. Thanks for that. Does anyone else want to come in on that, Jack? Hi. I would agree with Emma that the yardstick that I measured this plan by is probably not its ability to get the cost of living crisis, but we are in the backdrop of a collision of increases to basic things for families. It is a completely valid question, but I think that what this plan is clear in its strategy and its overall overarching theme is to increase incomes and resilience to future shocks. That is probably where I would judge the plan, but I would agree with Emma that this plan has not been set out to reduce the drive-down living costs. Thanks for that, Jack. Philip, can I bring you in? I am sorry, but I want to add that Emma and Jack have covered it. The cost of living crisis is an income crisis issue or a cash crisis issue, and that is quite different from longer-term issues of poverty. In fact, it is a risk of the country heading into recession. We know from previous experience that recession can do quite strange things to poverty, and you can perversely see poverty start to decrease during a recession if everyone's income starts to get pulled down, particularly against or primarily against the headline measure of relative poverty. It is important to keep the two issues separate and focus on the long-term. However, I absolutely agree that we at IPPR have been clear that the short-term measures that we have seen, particularly in terms of council tax payment measures, have not done enough to address immediate income crisis that the lowest-income households are facing, and certainly a real risk to what it has done has spread quite scant resources far too thinly. There is an immediate pressure to address that. We know that those immediate pressures can have long-term ripple effects that do start to affect poverty, but that is what we would expect to see the measures in the plan start to kick in rather than necessarily address that immediate crisis that is in the face now. I think that there are separate measures that are required to be taken forward, not in the plan that are required there. Thank you for that. The delivery plan includes a welcome focus on employability, so I wanted to ask about forecasting around the labour market, and you have touched on potential recession already, Philip. What prospects are there for parents trying to look to enter employment or seeking to further increase income from work? I will maybe start again with Emma and then bring everyone back in. There is a lot of uncertainty, as economists say, around many of those issues. We still do not fully understand what the period of the pandemic has meant for the labour market, other than things were nowhere to be as bad as they were in terms of numbers in employment. There is an uncertainty about what that has meant for quality of work and the working conditions for people, particularly on lower incomes and how that will develop in the future. Issues with the cost of living around issues such as fuel and, potentially, with cost rising so much, people who are in constrained financial situations will be trying to contain that and to not take on any additional risk. If they are just about holding on to their situation and are very uncertain about what is going to happen to costs in the future—for commuting costs, childcare costs and eating costs—that ability to take jumps into the unknown, potentially changing jobs, looking for progression opportunities or going into work after a break, I think that, understandably, people are feeling a bit paralysed because of so many uncertainties at the moment. I appreciate that the plan focuses on employability and rightly acknowledges that it is a very important driver of tackling child poverty. However, added together, I do not think that the plan addresses that kind of day-to-day reality for people having to knit together issues around commuting, issues around childcare and issues around being able to access different employment opportunities, training skills and development. There is a lot mentioned in the plan, but I feel that there is not—it has not been knitted together in the modelling, and I feel that potentially it does not knit together in reality or for many parents who would benefit from the type of things that it talks about. It is just maybe falling short a bit in terms of that comprehensive package that will make a difference on the ground. Thank you. In terms of the prospects for parents entering employment, I probably would not base my assessment of that on the economic forecasting. I would probably have a look at the past and current performance of the priority groups when it comes to priority family types, when it comes to labour market and in-work poverty rates. Overall, the plan correctly analyses the fact that we need to shift some of the weight of the responsibility of reaching child poverty targets from social security and on to work for those who are able to work. It recognises two sides of that coin that we need an employability offer that gets people into the labour market, but we need a labour market that actually works for people. I think that the former part of that does the employability offer in the plan that do what it says on the 10. We can probably come back to it in other sections, but in terms of the labour market that is entering for their prospects, if you look at some of the groups such as minority ethnic communities, you see a consistent difference in outcome compared to the rest of the labour market. You have an ethnic minority pay gap, and you have white workers on average performing better in terms of how many hours they are getting and how many they want, and a general employment rate. Aspects of the plan should be looking at how to remove those construction barriers if they exist as well as get people into the labour market. That would also be true of the single parents, but in a completely different way, we know that single parents are less likely than other parts of the priority families to be in work. That is a reality of having one parent in the household and childcare responsibilities, and everything else that goes along with that. A different offer for them needs to be made so that they can be productive and succeed in the labour market. In terms of your question about prospects for parents entering the employment, I think that the plan recognises that the existing labour market and our existing economy do not offer a huge amount of hope for any different results than we are already seeing, which is high levels of inward poverty and different barriers faced to priority groups. Fel wants to come in yet. Just in terms of the wider context, I think that, particularly post-pandemic, as Emma said, it will still be a while yet to see the true impacts of it. At a macro level, headline has been broadly positive that you have seen that employment actually has ferd quite well, but you need to dig beneath the detail of that and drill down. What we have seen is the fact that, despite that positive trend in the overall rate of employment, it masks very significant inequalities within the labour market. Wage inequality is higher now than 40 years ago, and the nature of work has changed in terms of more part-time workers, a big rise in solo self-employment and zero hours contracts. Most presently, for poverty, you have seen stagnating real earnings. It is at that lower-level issues that you know that the battle against poverty is going to be fought. As we will probably come back to, I think that the feeling is that, although the delivery pan makes positive noises towards that, what we are really lacking right now is a level of detail that shows quite clearly how you can start to tackle those inequalities within what might, on the surface, look like a labour market going in the right direction. Are you aware of regional divergence and differences in Scotland around opportunities or levels of parents who are able to access employment? Do we have any data specifically on Edinburgh and the south-east, for example, which has continuously been growing even through the pandemic? Emma, I do not know if you have any data on that. It is maybe something that we need to look at and if you could write to us, that would be helpful. I am happy to write to you with some actual facts and figures on that, but I think that it is important to state that poverty is not everywhere in the whole of Scotland. There may be more of it in some areas due to some local dynamics and labour markets, but it is as present in Edinburgh as it is in most parts of Scotland. It is just different experiences, but I can certainly write to the committee with some more detail on that. I move on to questions on theme 2 and 3, which Pam will start us off on. Round about evidence-based modelling and then round about coherence and targeting. Pam, please. I thank the panel for the evidence that you have submitted in advance and for all the information that you have shared with the committee and others to date on the issue. I take the point that the plan is not written as a cost-of-living plan, but it is written in one of the biggest cost-of-living crises that any of us will ever live through, or I hope that it will be the biggest that any of us will ever live through. Although the modelling suggests that we will meet the initial relative poverty target—only just, but none the less—we will get there, it does not feel like that for people on the ground. Things do not feel optimistic at all. It does not really meet the sniff test, I guess. It is just not quite right. In the panel's view, the modelling is optimistic. Given the circumstances that we are hearing from individuals living in poverty and the experience that they have right now, do we think that in a year's time we will still be saying the same thing about possibly meeting the targets? I am sorry, I think that everybody could probably add to that. I do not know if I want to target it specifically. I will go with Emma, because I think that— I am happy. I will take the hit on this one, but a way to start. Previous IPPR Scotland analysis gets shared across all three of our organisations. Who is optimistic and who is pessimistic? I think that even you—it might be a bit loaded, but ours has been more pessimistic or the Government has been more optimistic. At the end of the day, you have hit on the head that, ultimately, a model is only a model. It is a computer simulation of what we think the world will look like in a year or, in this case, three years' time. It will never be infallible. We will certainly say that ours has been infallible. I do not think and hope that the Government would say that there is. In terms of the next year or two years, we do not know what the world will look like in a couple of years' time, not least if we hit a recession. As I said earlier, actually, that can do any weird things to poverty. There could be really negative impacts on the actual rates of poverty, or, again, as we saw in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Overall, it could actually perversely bring poverty down if everyone's income comes down with a recession. A model can really tell you so much. It tells you where you can potentially have the greatest impact. We know that, whether it is right or wrong, optimistic or pessimistic, both IPPR and JRF and Fraser Valander and Scottish Government would agree, we clearly know that, in the short and immediate term, social security and direct cash transfers are going to have the greatest impact. That is four or five or six percentage points. That is where you are going to get your biggest plan for your buck. What is going to have to do the heaviest of the lifting to meet the interim targets? I do not think that further increases can be off the table if it seems that we are not going to meet our projections. Most importantly, the only way that any projection ever comes true is if you deliver the things that you said you will, at scale and at pace that is required. That is where we really need to see further details come through, not in the delivery plan, but not least around the employability schemes, but in getting those schemes, benefits, payments and services in-kind, out to the families who will benefit quickly and at the scale and pace that they need, is going to be absolutely key. If you do not do that, you will never meet any kind of projection whether it is optimistic or pessimistic. I would like to come in on this one. Thank you. I would like to say that we are doing a lot of work on this alongside JRF and the children to really understand the modelling. We only got side of it when everyone else did, so it takes a while to sort of recode things and try and do that work, but hopefully by June we should be able to the clear idea on that. I would like to say that, on the modelling, we would all benefit from a lot more understanding of what it can and cannot do, and I think that it is right that what it is very good at doing is showing us the scale of the impact of certain measures. The Scottish child payment is responsible for most of the projected fall in child poverty. There are a lot of rests on that, but it is also a version of the world that has been modelled that does not take account of any sort of elastic impact of the pandemic, which, as we previously mentioned, is still to be understood fully, nor does it include, as you rightly say, the potential scarring impacts of the cost of living crisis. It is based on the world that we know is going to be very different than what has been modelled by 2324, so it can only give a very—it is almost like a best guess of where we think we are headed, but relying on its accuracy to the last percentage point, I do not think that it is a very good idea. I think that it probably gives us a good idea of the trajectory given policies that have been put in place, so Scottish child payment, as long as nothing else comes along and changes everything, and we just had a pandemic and huge increases in the cost of living, which could significantly change the trajectory, not due to Government policy but due to things that are happening outside. It is a useful exercise to model those things to understand the scale of policy, but we cannot rely on it to tell us whether or not we are definitely going to meet the targets. It just gives us an idea if we are heading in the right direction. Can I also bring Jack in, who would like to respond to this one? Thank you. Emma, I thankfully covered the more technical side of the PAM's question, but I am pointing out that GERF will be responding with Fraser Valander and Save the Children by the summer in some detail about our opinions on the modelling. The other part of PAM's question was about that kind of SNF test and about what does it really mean if someone is saying that we are going to meet poverty targets while they are watching their prepaid electricity meter in a plummet as they cook their roast dinner or try to turn their heating on. For me, what that speaks to is about the way that we use data and gather insights, so we need to be much more reactive in moments of crisis than we have been over the last couple of years. We have relied on poverty statistics that, by the very nature, are not real-time and there is a lag on them anyway. That feels less appropriate at a time when inflation is doing what it is doing in cost of living, but it is increasing. Speaking with organisations that are working directly with families that are going through these crises, is it going to be even more important for the Scottish Government than ever? Understanding that if there are ink spikes in areas that are demanding in food bank use or homelessness accommodation, having a collective understanding of the picture of what is happening in poverty and in destitution is going to be really important to making sure that tackling child poverty delivery plan is not just getting us to the targets but responding to the actual need of children in poverty and families in crisis. That is all really helpful. There is a real challenge in there for us to see how we gather that information, how we find that intelligence and then use it to, as you said, react quickly in a time of crisis, which we absolutely need to do. Jack, can I ask a further question on some of the actions in the plan? How much action do you think there is in there to address poverty from the priority groups? What the plan does is that it has a welcome focus on the priority groups. Most of the actions that I would focus on are probably in the first part of the plan, in terms of increasing incomes from work. It understands that, for incomes to be increased for the priority groups that we need a new employability offer, but it also understands that we need a new, transformed economy. All that is welcome, and all of it reflects the evidence that is in Annex 6 that is heavily pointed towards those of the actions to do. I do not think that it matches the bold actions that are mentioned in the forward to the report. I am not sure what the single offer to parents for employability is. I am not sure if the £81 million new money or where it is from, and I am not sure how the parental transition fund is going to work. All those are the right ideas to have, the right diagnosis of the problem, but I am not sure that the solutions are outlined in the plan explicitly. The plan does say that it will work with others to come up with that offer, but I echo what other people said this morning that rapid iteration needs to be worth coming, because we are halfway through 2022. For those child poverty targets that we met, if we are creating a new employability offer, that needs to get off the ground very quickly. It needs to be targeted in a way that previous employability offers have been set to, but we still do not have evidence of whether that has worked or not. In terms of actions to reduce poverty, I think that it has the right ideas, but probably not quite there on the practical steps that are going to be taken, which is the most important thing. I think that we will be looking forward to working with Scottish Government and directors across all the political parties to make that work. I have one quick follow-up on that as well, please. That is really helpful. As people will be unsurprised to hear, I hope that the pace and scale moves quickly and that the actions follow to meet the ideas. On the point of addressing poverty of the priority groups, close the gap of published a blog this week. In that blog, they have said that they feel that that plan is a regression in terms of gender analysis and women's poverty. Do the panel share that view? I have seen the blog from close the gap, and I agree with a lot of the majority of it. If you look at the last tackling child poverty delivery plan, there is explicit mention of the inextricable link between women's poverty and child poverty. That was peppered throughout it, and I think that it is in the evidence in the annex 6 and in the annex 7 in terms of the insert evidence there. However, what it is not is that it is not written into the plan as boldly as it was last time. For any strategy, if you do not have what you want in the core part of the strategy, you are probably going to miss it out in the core part of the delivery. I was slightly disappointed not to see it more explicitly mentioned in the childcare aspect, because we know that the delivery plan talks about parents' access to work being improved by childcare. We know explicitly that it is around about 80 per cent of those who are not accessing the labour market are women, so it is a women's poverty issue. However, there is just less focus on it as it was. It does read like a regression, and I do not know if that is purpose or an oversight. The last thing that I would say is that there are several other strategies pointed to in the delivery plan that allude to working with women, such as the gender pay gap refresh that is coming. Maybe it will all be in there, but I would have hoped that it would have been in the plan that was produced three weeks ago. I will briefly bring in Emma Cymru and then fill in on that point. I will hand over to my colleague Emma Roddick for a question on it. We still have questions to go on running out of time. In terms of the priority groups, there are links to the point about the gendered analysis. I think that there is retained the priority groups within the analysis, but from the analysis point of view, there is less that picks up on the specific issues that are faced by priority groups and addresses those directly. I think that when you do that, you go very quickly into appreciating that women are disproportionately affected by the issues that are thrown up in the priority groups, from lone parents to mothers of large families to young mothers to those with babies. It is good that the priority groups are still recognised. There could be more focus on explicitly addressing those issues, rather than on transport, where it says that people in poverty use buses, that this will be good for all the priority groups, because all of them use buses. I am not quoting properly here, but that is sometimes the impression that it gives. There is a lot of catch-all in there that will affect all of the priority groups, but maybe not that focus in terms of what the priority groups specifically need. That lends itself to picking up better some of the gender issues that are prevalent within that. We know that, when you look at child poverty, if you are not in a priority group, somewhere around about 10 per cent is going off last year's stats, compared to 30 per cent if you are in one or more priority groups. That huge disparity shows you that your starting point should be how do we design and embed policy that specifically and explicitly targets the priority groups, not how do we design a generic policy and then look after the fact about the benefits or impacts that it has had for priority groups? It does, however, feel that sometimes there is a rush to generic policy, which we look for the after-the-fact benefits. There is not enough focus on designing policy where, at the very start, it has very explicit goals and abilities to be able to explicitly get to the priority groups. Ensuring that they are embedded in policy from the start is incredibly important. I will move on to a question from Emma Roddick. I struggle, as always, with the contradictions in our hybrid social security system. The Scottish Government wants to give money to parents to help to tackle child poverty. It wants to help those same parents into work. It relies on universal credit, which is a reserved income-based benefit, to provide the data for who receives Scottish child payment. Is it possible to do both of those things when universal credit says that you are in work, so therefore you might lose your benefits? I am asking, can those policies to tackle child poverty be as effective as they could while they are being delivered under a hybrid social security model, which is led by two Governments that have fundamentally different ideologies? I suppose that that is probably for Philip and Jack. I think that our starting point will always be not one of the limits of the evolution settlement here and now, but what are its abilities and how to test and stretch that as much as possible. That may ultimately lead you to reconsidering the evolution settlement, seeking early powers or whatever else, but that is not the starting point. I cannot be the starting point or I do not think that it should be the starting point for an issue like that. You seem, as a Scottish child payment, that there is an ability to be able to use the powers that the Scottish Parliament has in an incredibly important, progressive and really welcome ability to do that. We know that there are risks that come with that in the fact that you create a double cliff edge for families. To an extent, as soon as they lose their UC entitlement, they lose their Scottish child payment entitlement and, in fact, all the other benefits and payments that are reliant in UC eligibility in Scotland. There are alternative and different powers available to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament has the ability to create wholly new benefits in devolved areas. That is clearly incredibly complex and difficult. It is why the design of Scottish child payment, and I should declare an interest, is one of the civil servants at the time that designed the Scottish child payment, but it is why it was designed in the way that it was to be able to use that data that was available to quickly get a benefit out of the door in the form of Scottish child payment. Other powers are available, so they are still open. I think that we really have not nailed it yet in what we do, as you say, for people in work. While First Art Scotland has been devolved, that focuses on a very specific sub-sect of people that are long-term unemployed and are having no health condition. There is that question of what you do about that much larger group of people who may be accessing UC, who are accessing a DWP job centre that are essentially shut off to the Scottish Government and the ability of Scottish Government programmes to really get them right from the minute that they walk through the door. The starting point has to be trying to get the two Governments to work much better together. We have seen the heel dragging and the issues that have arisen around trying to get data out of DWP, but our starting point is that huge fanfare was made when those powers were devolved. There is a need for the UK Government to ensure that the Scottish Government has everything that it needs to be able to make them work. We would expect both Governments to work much more closely together to be able to ensure that it is dry, techy, boring area, but something like that of sharing agreements are incredibly important so that you are able to identify and pinpoint the co-word of people that you can provide the greatest support to. I think that that is somewhere where we are still potentially a little bit behind the game. Jack, do you want to come in on that? Sure. There are probably just a couple of brief points on it. It was welcomed that, firstly, the existing settlement between the two Governments existed at the time of the targets where agreed Parliament was not a big difference in what was happening then and now, so that would never be a reason that the Scottish Government would not be able to meet the child poverty targets. Having said that, there could not have been a clearer contrast on the day that the plan was announced. The day before that, the chancellor just basically abandoned those on low incomes in his spring statement. You have one day abandonment of those on low incomes and the next day you have a Scottish Government targeting a payment to those who need it most via the Scottish child payment. Those actions will put the child poverty on a downward trajectory, but it is also just worth noting that, in the four words from the cabinet secretary, there was no mention of the difficulty between the UK Government and the Scottish Government, which I think is welcomed because there needs to be an acceptance that the Scottish Government does have, the significant powers that it does have, and that, as Philip was talking about, the ability to create new benefits as it has done already. I completely get the point, because there is such a contrast, but I think that it is probably not the focus of the GRS approach on that. I will now move on to our last set of questions that will be from Natalie. Thank you, convener. I will keep that brief, because a lot of my questions have been answered already. Does meeting the 2030 targets require a radically different approach to that taken to meet the 23-24 targets? Does the panel believe that the concept of a minimum income guarantee, or a universal basic income, would be a feasible option that the Government could explore to tackle poverty in terms of affordability and effectiveness? I will put that on to Jack, first. Hi, thank you. I have a big question there. What I would probably like to do is talk about the big action to get to the 2030 targets. I think that the plan does not get us to 2030. The plan gets us scraping towards the interim targets. More child poverty to be reduced as significantly is needed to meet the targets. We will need an economy that looks significantly different from the one that we have today. We will need people to be in jobs that are flexible, well-paid and good jobs. That does not feel like the labour market that is open to many people at the moment. There is a lot of work that the Scottish Government can do to support that, but there is a significant amount of work that employers need to do to support that. More decisions that affect people on that side of the issue will be made in board rooms, in committee rooms, in this Parliament or in Westminster. Getting employers on board with this national mission is a key task, and it is referenced in the delivery plan. It has a £800,000 budget put beside it, but it cannot be underestimated how much that is needed and the national economic transformation strategy that was published not too long ago, which is also trying to look to that. There are quite big gaps that were due to be filled in that strategy, but they have also been passed over to the fair work nation strategy, but it is coming in summer, so we will have to wait and see if that will deliver in a pathway to the transformed economy to reach the 2030 targets. I think that the questions that you asked about minimum income guarantee might be best going to Philip on that, who sits on some of the working groups on minimum income guarantee. For universal basic income, I am relatively agnostic about its ability to end poverty. There are still quite terrifying numbers about how much it would cost to implement a level that would actually make any difference to those in poverty. I think that there are a number of levers that can be pulled now that would make a bigger impact today to people in poverty than another discussion about universal basic income. It is also the reality that you can probably do a minimum income, a universal basic income, without quite massive relationship changes between the UK Government and Scottish Government. However, in saying that, I think that examples in Wales of a universal basic income for those who are children who have experienced the care system is a really interesting concept. I think that that idea could be applied in this sense to perhaps some of the groups in the priority groups that we think that perhaps work is not going to be the way that poverty is solved. Basically, the families of babies that are in poverty could be a cohort of people who, if we were looking at universal basic income—and it would not be obviously universal, but I, with a basic income guarantee out there, would be interesting to look there. That is where I would be at. Thanks, Jack. That is very helpful. For me, in terms of the universal basic income, we have obviously got a real focus and employability for this. It is important that families that are in poverty are still going to be able to see their children. I think that a universal basic income would perhaps open up a bit more flexibility. Could I pass that question on to Philip next, please, and then I will come to Emma finally after. Thanks. Yeah, of course. Just in terms of 2030, it is very simple. It will not help us to meet the 2030 targets. You need to lift 210,000 children out of poverty between now and 2030. The Government's own analysis says that the decrease between now and interim targets is essentially flat lines in the years thereafter. When they went back to 25, 26, no idea what the world will look like across the rest of this decade, but it is very clear that further work is going to be needed. Further work needs to be a really big part of that. Again, maybe the commitments in the plan do start to deliver that. Certainly, 12,000 per cent since work every year, which is the stretchium, is not going to achieve it. It is going to need to go further at a far greater scale. Obviously, we will want to see what, at the very least, the initial outcomes look like of the commitments in the plan, just now to know how to build off those at scale. Again, what we are lacking right now is detail. Further work has to go absolutely hand in hand with a minimum income guarantee. That has certainly been the focus of IPPR Scotland's work, and it is not the focus of the Scottish Government given that they have established the expert in steering group. That is always an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the welfare state. It is about saying that there is a common standard of living that everyone should be able to reach. Actually, it is a standard safety net that is there to catch everyone. You are absolutely right that a minimum income guarantee is not just about a cash transfer, it is not just about a level of income that you try to get everyone to. What it also needs to go alongside is how do we rethink the world of work, ensuring that people have good, secure, stable, well-paid jobs? It means that they are able to find that right balance between home and work life. We know that, particularly for lone parents and single families, again, those right at the cutting edge of poverty are most likely to be in that type of insecure work, where they are facing a horrific juggle between home and work balances. Where childcare needs to kick in and where that wraparound support needs to kick in, which is lacking at a scale that is necessary. Alongside that, universal services. The potential is there, but it is not easy by any stress. The imagination is not least in the further transfer of the potential of powers that will be required and the work that will be required with the UK Government. The ambition is there from the Scottish Government. Obviously, through the steering grip, we are looking at it in great detail just now. I think that it is one that we have seen these types of grips kind of tail off. Once the kind of true scale of cost and complexity becomes apparent, I think that this is one where we can't allow that to happen. This presents a hugely transformative opportunity for our society. I think that it is one that we are going to need to see come fruition across the rest of this decade, if we have any hope of meeting times in 2030. Finally, can we hear from Emma? Thank you. I would echo a lot of what Philip has said there. We should look to the words of the people who have written the plan in terms of what they think about meeting the 2030 targets and our next score explicitly. The reduction for 2030-31 is unlikely to occur without considerable changes to the driver's poverty. There is no question that a lot needs to change in order to meet those targets. We are thinking about options that exist in terms of universal basic income and minimum income guarantee. Obviously, they have their pros and cons. One thing that strikes me is that what we should be aiming for is to enable choice for parents so that income does not constrain the choices that they are able to make. If their needs are that they want to go and work, they should be able to do so and not be constrained by their lack of income that constrains their choices. One of the issues that we found in our analysis of universal basic income is that it can put people off and universal basic income provides your income so that you do not need to work. That embeds poverty, especially if the amounts are not enough to give you a good standard of living. Your focus needs to be on opening up options in the labour market so that people who are on higher incomes can make choices as to how much work they are doing because they can bring in childcare and can afford to do that. They have choices about travelling and commuting that people with low income do not have. Enabling that feels like a place where the current plans are lacking in terms of the details that we have talked about and the society that the Government is offering as a whole in order to enable that. That feels like the right focus for the next plan. Alongside that, around the cost of living and housing costs, which I know you could have done in the earlier session, you will see as a fundamental area. The current plans did not quite cut it in terms of having the full offer that is probably required for 2030.