Chamber and committees

You say that Social Security Scotland would need to go back to the DWP. I understand that, if it does that in one week, it gets the data from that week and that is it. However, if the mechanism is there to get that data once, surely it would not be administratively burdensome to get that data several times over a longer period.

I appreciate that.

Frazer Scott, you said that you would vote for anything that improved the benefit system; I share that view. Do you think that this change will improve the benefit system?

That is fair. Thank you.

Good morning, Mark and Frazer, and thank you for your advance submissions and your answers to our questions so far.

Some of the questions that I had have already been answered, so, in the interests of time, I will not repeat them. I will start with a question for Mark, if that is okay.

SCOSS’s report says that breaking the link with cold weather is retrogressive in terms of human rights. Can you explain that a bit more? As far as I can tell, the Scottish Government’s answer to that seems to be that the unreliability of cold weather is difficult for low-income families and that a predictable one-off payment is better. How do you respond to that point, given the comments about human rights?

Do you have a sense of the reason for that increase?

Do you think that the inquiry will take your advice on that? Do you intend to give it advice to do that, or do you know how it will approach it?

You made the point that there are two aspects to your work: protecting the legal floor for human rights and promoting human rights. In relation to protecting that floor, the committee—I am a member of two committees, but I am pretty sure that it was this one—heard from a group of learning disabled people, who spoke to us about their experience.

It was clear to me, given the number of people who are dying of preventable illnesses and the thousands of people who are stuck in hospital—in some cases, for years at a time—that the floor that we would expect for them is not being met. How can the committee ensure, through things such as the universal periodic review and the review of the 2018 report that Eilidh Dickson mentioned, that the floor is protected? What would you expect to see with regard to policy and budget that would allow us to tell whether we are protecting that minimum core?

Do you know when we can expect the UK Government’s responses?

What is your view on the Scottish Government’s response to the recommendations?

Good morning, and thank you all for the information that you have provided so far.

During the pandemic, a number of things had to be paused, and you did some work on the Covid inquiry. In your view, do the terms of reference, which have been updated as a result of Lady Poole’s resignation, now take account of human rights? Do you expect that the inquiry will be framed by that, and can the committee or parliamentarians do anything to ensure that that is the case?