Chamber and committees

As no member wishes to debate the motion, I will put the question, which is, that motion S6M-02177, in the name of Ben Macpherson, be agreed to.

Motion agreed to,

That the Social Justice and Social Security Committee recommends that the Best Start Grants and Scottish Child Payment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2021 [draft] be approved.

Pauline Torley’s sound dipped off during that answer. Did you catch enough of that, Pam?

That was helpful. I think that, in future sessions, we will come back to the data that you will capture for some of the bigger benefits that are coming on stream, particularly around adult and child disability payments.

I am keen to explore with you the challenges that you have had with data from other organisations that you need access to, particularly the DWP. That has obviously been a challenge in relation to the roll-out of the Scottish child payment, which had to be delayed because of delays to data coming on board for you—for example, access to eligibility data, with eligibility being dependent on universal credit. How challenging has that been for you, and what are you doing to overcome those issues and ensure that you are getting access to the data that you need?

As we are still within the window of revised timings that I suggested to the minister for the next agenda item, I will ask one final question.

At the session that we had in Dundee, you talked about the feeling of the organisation in terms of scaling up and the speed of the roll-out of benefits. It would be useful for the suggestion that was made in that informal session to be put on the record for my benefit, please. Are you moving at pace in scaling up? Are you comfortable with that pace? Could you be going faster in terms of rolling out new social security benefits and taking on responsibility for existing benefits?

Most importantly, do you feel that you are getting it right for the clients at the pace that you are going at?

Thank you very much to all the witnesses for coming in and sharing on the record your experiences of the last few years. We greatly appreciate your time. As I said at the outset, we look forward to progressing a regular and productive relationship with you. On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your time.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow for the changeover of witnesses.

The issue with data sharing brought about the delay in the initial roll-out of the Scottish child payment. Are you confident that there will not be a further delay, and that the data from the UK Government and the DWP will come in time this time around?

I thank the minister and his colleagues, Karen Clyde and Pauline Torley, who joined us online, for their time this morning. It is greatly appreciated.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. Our next meeting is on 9 December, when we will take evidence on the third sector’s recovery.

We have a final question from Marie McNair.

Do you feel that you have support for meeting that fast and furious timetable?