Chamber and committees

I reiterate what I said to Miles Briggs at the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, where he asked the same question. First, it is obviously for local authorities to decide their council tax level; it is not for the Government to tell them where they should set their council tax.

Secondly, council tax levels in Scotland are significantly lower than those elsewhere in the UK, so we are starting from a lower baseline. We also have the council tax reduction scheme, which supports huge numbers of people who struggle to pay their council tax. Again, I am happy to furnish the committee with details of that. That scheme is available—to an extent, it is not available elsewhere—and it recognises Miles Briggs’s point that we need to support people who are struggling with their council tax. The £130 pandemic payment was also paid to those in receipt of council tax reduction.

If we take all those measures together as a package, we see that the money that I have talked about throughout the meeting to support low-income households will be important as we face rising living costs, including food and fuel costs. The package of measures and the funding that we are giving to low-income households will help to keep people’s heads above water over the next few months.

First, I acknowledge that women probably have been hardest hit during the pandemic, for all the reasons that we understand. We have tried to support households during the pandemic because we know that that will disproportionately support women and families who are struggling. Women, particularly those with children in low-income households, are major beneficiaries of the £130 pandemic support payments, the bridging payments, the Scottish child payment and all the other supports that I have outlined during the meeting.

Earlier, I laid out the additional support that we have given to carers over the past two years and the support that we are giving them in this year’s budget. Additional support is being provided to unpaid carers, with an additional £4 million being provided here and now to support carers who are facing challenges. Again, all that support will disproportionately benefit women. We recognise the burden that women have carried throughout the pandemic, and we want to do what we can to support them. We believe that we have done our best to do that through the mechanisms that I have laid out.

You make an important point and, as I alluded to earlier, looking at the budget and the child poverty delivery plan in March, it has to be across the Government; it cannot all be from my portfolio. That is why all cabinet secretaries were tasked with looking within their own budgets to see what more they can do to help us meet the interim targets.

I think that we have a good track record. In 2020-21, we invested £2.5 billion to support low-income households, which was an increase of £540 million on the year before, and £978 million was targeted directly at children in low-income families. That includes key investment and support targeted at children, such as winter hardship payments, attainment Scotland funding and pupil equity funding. There is the broader low-income support, such as the council tax reduction scheme, which amounts to about £351 million, discretionary housing payments, which I referred to earlier, and the Scottish welfare fund.

In the round, the 2022-23 budget continues significant investment along those lines to tackle poverty, with more than £3.9 billion towards benefit expenditure. We are committing £831 million towards the delivery of affordable housing; £80 million to discretionary housing payments; the first £50 million of the whole family wellbeing fund; £10 million for the tackling child poverty fund; £200 million for the Scottish attainment challenge; £70 million to continue to fund the expansion of free lunches for children in primary 4 and 5 and special schools; £22 million to provide meals during school holidays; and £65 million for employability support for those most impacted by Covid. Of course, within the local government settlement there is funding for things such as the Scottish welfare fund.

That is quite a comprehensive package in the round. There is always more that can be done and we are keen to hear what more people think we could be doing, but that has to be within the context of a fixed budget where decisions like this have to be made, and I think that we have prioritised support for low-income families.

As I have set out, we have focused our doubling of the Scottish child payment in April on children under the age of six. We know that that will affect 60 per cent of households who are living in poverty, so it will have the biggest impact.

We are determined to meet the timeframe for doubling the Scottish child payment to everyone by the end of the year. The bridging payment is just that—it is a payment to help families in the meantime. The resources that we have put into social security go well beyond the block grant. However, we have a fixed budget and we have had to make difficult choices in order to put money where it will be most effective. I have laid out why that is and the choices that we have made.

The Labour Party’s contributions and ideas for the budget will all be considered in the round by me, Kate Forbes and other cabinet secretaries. We are always looking for good ideas, but we have to make sure that they are affordable within a fixed budget, with all of the pressures that come with the reduction in the settlement from the UK Government. When we look at the Covid moneys that have been removed, we can see that it is a tough settlement. Within that, as the Scottish Fiscal Commission has said, we are putting a huge amount of money, which is projected to increase, into social security and support for low-income families that is well beyond the money that is contained in the block grant.

Pam Duncan-Glancy talked about parental employability support. In March, we will bring forward the tackling child poverty delivery plan, which will look across government. As organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have said, although social security needs to do the heavy lifting, poverty and child poverty cannot be tackled through social security alone; other mechanisms must be looked at, and we have been doing that across government.

We have committed £15 million of further investment for the parental employability support fund across 2022 to 2024. This year, £5.8 million is available, ahead of the wider investment in employability and skills and including continued investment in both the no one left behind approach and the fair start Scotland programme.

We are aware that, due to the impact of the pandemic on local authority operations, including parental engagement and employability support, there have been some delays in the roll-out of the parental employability support fund. We have been supporting parental employability. In addition, we are also committing the first £50 million of the £500 million whole family wellbeing fund that is to be invested across this parliamentary session. The priority for that will be holistic whole-family support.

You have to look at the investment that will be made in the round. When we bring forward the tackling child poverty delivery plan, you will be able to see those investments across government. That is before we include things such early learning and childcare and support for families. All of that will help to make an impact and get us towards the child poverty targets.

Rapid rehousing transition plans are a critical part of the affordable housing budget. It is really important that we tackle temporary accommodation, which is an issue that the member has raised previously. Rapid rehousing transition plans are critical to making sure that people are moved out of temporary accommodation as quickly as possible. Temporary accommodation provides an important safety net for people, so it is there for a reason, but people should not be in temporary accommodation for any longer than they need to be there. They should be moved into settled accommodation as quickly as they can be.

We have committed £53.5 million for rapid rehousing. Within that, the housing first approach is also funded to ensure that those with more complex needs are supported to move into their own tenancies. As we have discussed many times, it is not just about bricks and mortar. It is about wraparound support to ensure that people are able to maintain a successful tenancy.

We need to look at supporting particular local authorities that have had more challenges. The City of Edinburgh Council clearly has pressures on housing, and perhaps more so than other local authorities. We recognise that and we are trying to work with local authorities that are under particular pressure to come up with the solutions that they need. Local authorities have been allocated an annual share of £23.5 million for homelessness prevention and response measures, and Edinburgh’s allocation of that funding is £4.4 million. We will work with individual local authorities to try to help them to overcome some of the difficulties that they are facing.

As I said earlier, we have the current five-year £50 million ending homelessness together fund. I am happy to bring in Shirley Laing to answer on the detail, but you can be assured that the funding that we are putting into homelessness prevention will all be allocated and used, as you would expect, to make sure that we do not just tackle homelessness with rapid rehousing and housing first, but prevent homelessness.

A new part of the work this year is the homelessness prevention duty. We will be expanding the duty and the requirements on local authorities, but also extending that to other parts of the public sector. The best way of preventing homelessness is early prevention, and that legislative provision and change will require all parts of the public sector to highlight where they think that someone could become homeless and then to do something about it.

I will bring in Shirley Laing on the £16 million.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission acknowledged that there is a lot of uncertainty over the longer-term trends, which could impact on the overall fiscal position. Its forecast includes several benefits that have not yet launched and uses assumptions that will be confirmed only when outturn data becomes available.

To answer Jeremy Balfour’s final point, the forthcoming resource spending review will allow us to take spending forecasts into account in determining funding requirements as we target public spending to where it delivers greatest benefits.

We are making a significant investment—it is an investment in people. The money that we are investing in ADP and other benefits is about supporting low-income households; it is about supporting people and helping them to have a better quality of life. We are taking the steps that we need to take through the resource spending review, but we certainly see the investment that we are making as a very important investment in making improvements to the application, review and appeals processes and removing barriers. I would have thought that that would be welcomed across the Parliament. The experience that people will have of the adult disability payment will be very different from their experience of previous benefits.

I might bring in Kevin Stevens on the specifics of the extra Christmas payment, but I will go back to the point about how it will be paid for.

I said to Jeremy Balfour that we will be looking at all the cost pressures within the spending review process, where we will be able to look across the longer period to the pressures that will come into the budget, including for social security. That is where we will be able to project and make adjustments in the budget going forward. That mechanism allows us to ensure that the required funding is there.

Is Kevin Stevens able to answer the question about the extra Christmas payment? If not, we will write back to the committee.

On that last point, we are prepared and we signalled to the DWP back in the summer of 2019 our intention to double the Scottish child payment, so there has been no lack of preparation on behalf of the Scottish Government. We have had a lack of agreement with the DWP about the data transfer. I explained in some detail in my initial answer to the convener why that is, which is that we put forward a proposal that we thought was less risky and more straightforward. The DWP has not agreed that and wants to use its new system, which carries higher risk because it is a new system, and, therefore, that needs to be built in. There has been no lack of preparation.

I also told the committee earlier about the review points to ensure that we are jointly responsible for making sure that that data transfer happens and that we can get the doubling of the Scottish child payment by the end of this year. There is no lack of preparation on the part of the Scottish Government.

As I set out, we have said that the strategic review of the ADP should take place once there is the safe and secure transfer. However, I also said earlier that an earlier part of that review would kick off by looking at the mobility descriptors—the mobility element, if you like—of the criteria. That will start this year, so it will start more quickly in recognition of the concerns.

Not all of this is within our gift, so for any changes that we propose to make we have to have the certainty that they will not impact on passporting benefits. That is why, going forward, the response of the DWP to any changes that are proposed is as important.

On the question of policy, if we were not making major changes to the look, feel and scope of the assessment criteria, I do not think that the Scottish Fiscal Commission would be projecting the big increase on the ADP spend that it is projecting. It is projecting that increase for the very reason that there are likely to be improvements to the application, review and appeal processes, which will mean that more people will keep their benefit and more people will be entitled to it.

We have tried to provide local government with a fair and affordable settlement in a really tough financial environment, given the tough settlement from the UK Government. We have tried to give local authorities a fair and affordable core settlement. Of course, a lot of local government resource comes from other portfolio investments, such as in childcare and education, as Miles Briggs will be aware.

There is no money left over. There is no money down the back of the couch. The money has all been allocated. We have tried to allocate money to local government while, at the same time, providing money for social security in order to double the Scottish child payment. All of these issues have to be weighed up in the round.

If Miles Briggs believes that more money should be given through the local government core grant, for example, he will have to tell us where that money should come from. Should it come from the additional money that we are putting into social security, as the Scottish Fiscal Commission has recognised? If that money was to go to local government instead, it would not be going into the pockets of people in low-income households.

Balanced decisions have to be made, given our fixed budget. There is no magic money tree that can provide money that does not come from elsewhere. In balancing the budget—I am sure that Miles Briggs could be part of the budget discussions with my colleague Kate Forbes—any movement in money has to be compensated for elsewhere. Those are the difficult challenges that we will face over the next few weeks. I am keen to hear what other parties have to say and where they would shift money from.