Chamber and committees

We move to theme 4, which is about warm affordable homes. Before I hand over to my colleague Miles Briggs, I have a question about children in the Gypsy Traveller community. We know that £20 million has been set aside to address their accommodation needs in the next few years, and we know that they experience some of the harshest and most enduring poverty. How can we address the needs of those children, who can experience the harshest poverty?

Can we now hear from Peter Kelly, please?

Our second theme is employability and fair work.

I know that there are issues with regard to housing for children who are in kinship care, especially where they need adaptations to be made or the house is not suitable for them. That probably feeds back into the answers that we have heard to some of the other questions. I recognise that that might be a question that nobody on the panel is currently able to answer, but I thank Miles Briggs for raising the issue, because it is important.

I hand over to Natalie Don.

We move to questions from Natalie Don and then Pam Duncan-Glancy.

Good morning and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee.

I should say first of all that we have had a change of committee membership, and I want to welcome to the committee Paul McLennan. He replaces Marie McNair, whom I thank for her valued contribution to the committee since its establishment.

Agenda item 1, therefore, is a declaration of interests. I invite Paul McLennan to declare any relevant interests.

Agenda item 2 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much for that, and welcome on board.

Agenda item 3 is evidence taking from two panels of witnesses on the Scottish Government’s “Best Start, Bright Futures—Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026”.

With our first panel, the members of which all join us remotely, we will focus on evidence from anti-poverty groups. I welcome to the meeting Marion Davies, who is director of policy, communication and strategy at One Parent Families Scotland; Peter Kelly, who is director of the Poverty Alliance; Claire Telfer, who is head of Scotland at Save the Children; Alison Watson, who is director of Shelter Scotland; and Bill Scott, who is chair of the Poverty and Inequality Commission. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

Before we kick off, I want to mention a few housekeeping points. Please type an R in the chat function if you would like to come in on a topic, and I ask my colleagues in the room to direct questions to specific witnesses. We will be tight for time, as we have two panels, but we want to hear as much from you as possible, so I ask you not to endeavour to get everything you want to say into your first answer. You will have several opportunities to speak. Please bear that in mind.

I invite Pam Duncan-Glancy, who is in the room, to kick us off with questions on our first theme.

I will bring in Emma Congreve and Philip Whyte on that point, but I ask you to be brief, because members still have other questions to ask and we are running out of time.