Chamber and committees

Thank you.

My apologies, convener. Yes, work has been done on the additional costs, by not just the Scottish Government but many external agencies. I am happy to write to the committee with more information on that, if that would be helpful.

I remember the committee getting into this issue in quite a lot of detail when I sat on it, and to say that it is complex is an understatement.

The issue, as you have laid out clearly, relates to concerns about the fiscal framework and any knock-on effects. The previous cabinet secretary for social security wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in February last year to agree that an increase in take-up of reserved benefits to which an individual was already entitled fell outside the scope of the spillover provisions—which, as you will know, are also complex—and that the DWP would not seek to raise a spillover claim in that scenario. Where one of the qualifying criteria for a Scottish benefit is that entitlement is conditional on the receipt of a reserved benefit—in the main, income-related benefits—Social Security Scotland signposts clients to those reserved benefits. Indeed, that is particularly important in relation to take-up of the Scottish child payment.

Although Social Security Scotland does not directly promote reserved benefits as a matter of course, as we would regard that as the role of the UK Government, we fund advice services that give advice on all benefits, whether they be devolved or reserved, to try to maximise take-up and people’s incomes. There are on-going issues around the fiscal framework—indeed, the view that changes need to be made to the fiscal framework on this issue has been expressed a number of times—but that is as much of an update as I can give you.

I have heard the sector’s concerns about the advisory council and understand where it is coming from in that respect. I have had a number of meetings with third sector organisations and social enterprises at which we have talked a lot about their role—not least their economic role—in the Covid recovery phase.

Social enterprises, in particular, are keen to play an increasing role, and the new plan for social enterprises recognises that they have a particular role to play. Some are keen to do more in areas in which they might not traditionally have been involved. For example, in a conference call that I had with representatives of the social enterprise sector, they were keen to look at whether they could get involved with social housing supply as part of the approach to affordable housing, which is not traditionally an area in which they have been involved. Such a development could be quite exciting, and we have agreed to do more work on it.

It is important that we continue to grasp the can-do mentality that we had during the pandemic. The third sector really stepped up to the plate by helping to keep people safe and to build community resilience, and we want that sort of thing to grow and the sector to be an equal partner. I know that we have a bit of work to do to make that a reality, but as far as my portfolio is concerned, I want to ensure that the third sector—and social enterprise as part of that—is at the heart of what we are doing.

I am sorry, I did not quite catch—

That is an important question, because tackling child poverty cannot be the responsibility of just my portfolio—it must be the responsibility of the whole of Government. Indeed, it is also the responsibility of the UK Government, local government and the third sector. We need to work together to tackle child poverty, which is why I said in my previous answer that it does not help if another organisation is facing in a different direction.

Just yesterday, I gave a presentation to the public services reform group, which is a group of cabinet secretaries and ministers that is chaired by the Deputy First Minister, to look at how we make the necessary improvements to public services and do things differently. I made a number of asks, including that we have shared responsibility for tackling child poverty—of course, everybody accepts and acknowledges that. I also said that we need game-changing policy ideas from across Government to add to the Scottish child payment, which is described as a game changer by many organisations.

It is fair to say that tackling child poverty needs to be done in three ways. The first is to ensure that people have opportunities to get into work that is secure and that pays at least the living wage, and employability programmes are an important part of that. Secondly, we need to reduce costs, which includes the provision of wraparound childcare. Housing costs, which are already lower here than in the rest of the UK, are important in that respect, too. The third area is social security and other supports.

We need those other bits. Employability is a very important area, and we are looking at how we can make employability services work better for people. Around 90 per cent of children who live in poverty live in one of the six priority groups of families that we have identified. Those key groups face issues that are to do with not just financial poverty but such factors as being lone parents, being from a black and minority ethnic community and all those additional issues. It is not just a case of saying, “There’s a door over there, if you can find it, to get on the employability programme,” because that does not work for folk with all those pressures on them. We need to wrap all the support around those families. It is not a question of providing a job opportunity or training alone; it is a case of helping with childcare and transport costs, removing some of the barriers and relieving some of the pressures. If we can get that right, that will get us a significant way towards meeting the poverty targets, even against the really difficult backdrop that we described earlier.

That is one of the main areas of focus. Cabinet secretaries and ministers will bring other things to the table, but there is a big opportunity there, if we can get it right. Again, I am happy to keep the committee furnished with updates on the detail of that work as we progress.

I think that we can get better at that. There is more work to do; we try to do that as much as we can, but we need to make sure that, for example, we interrogate all our spend. A commitment that was agreed yesterday was that we would interrogate the proposals in the spending review and the budget with regard to the impact of that spend on tackling child poverty. That will be a really important part of getting to the right solutions.

Of course, that might mean making some difficult choices—setting budgets and working through the spending review usually do—but I am keen to keep a laser focus on this. In difficult times, difficult decisions need to be made, because you cannot do everything. For me, though, this issue must be the Government’s overriding priority. I think that that has been accepted, but the issue then is how we make it happen.

The comment that you cited is probably fair-ish comment. There is always room for improvement; we can get better at poverty proofing, and I want to push that.

I am certainly doing everything that I can, as is the Scottish Government, to leave no stone unturned. We will absolutely give it our best shot. If we manage to do all that, we will have played our part in reaching the targets.

Of course, I cannot control the impact on those targets of decisions that are made elsewhere. How frustrating would it be if the analysis suggested that we would have reached the targets had people not lost £20 a week of their universal credit? As the motto says, you can control only what you can control; we can do only what we can do, but we will work alongside the third sector and local government to do everything that we can. I absolutely give that commitment. I am confident that we will do everything that we can, but some things are just outwith our control.

At the moment, I am worried about what I described earlier as a perfect storm. The worry of fuel poverty rates going up this winter because of rising energy bills is fast upon us; last night, I attended a Scottish Government resilience meeting in which we looked at those very issues. Again, many of the issues, such as energy caps, are reserved, and we want the UK Government to do everything it can around energy prices. The big energy companies have a role to play here, too, because we need to keep people safe over winter. As ever, the Scottish Government will step up to do what it can—you would expect nothing less—but it is a worry for people’s household incomes that all these pressures are brewing at the same time.

Let me make it absolutely clear: my answer to your first question is yes, and I say that without hesitation. We will do absolutely everything that we can to meet those targets. You are right to say that there were no caveats when they were set, but I think that it is fair for me to point out when progress is undermined by decisions that are made elsewhere and our task is made all the more difficult.

As for your point that social security will need to do the heavy lifting here, that is true to a degree, but I highlight the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s comment that it is not sustainable to try to meet the child poverty targets through social security alone. Not only is that unsustainable financially, but it does not recognise the other two pillars of reducing costs and providing employment. Those are hugely important, which is why I spent a little bit of time earlier talking about the importance of game-changing interventions around employability and making it easier for parents, in particular, to get to where they want to in their lives. Employment and employment opportunities play a huge part in that.

We have said that we want to make progress on doubling the Scottish child payment as quickly as we can, and we have set that in the context of the forthcoming budget bill. I am confident that we will make progress as quickly as is humanly possible and that that will make a difference, but I also point out that it sits alongside all the other interventions for supporting families. The bridging payments, for example, have put money into the hands of families now, without our having to wait for the DWP data issues to be resolved. The payments have been a way of recognising that the issue is current and that people need the money, and they got that support into people’s hands.

However, that sits alongside the best start grant, which ensures that we help families with the cost of food, and the work that has been going on around free school meals and holiday meals, all of which is support in cash and in kind for families to keep them afloat. You can be assured that we are looking at whether there is more that we can do over the winter, because we want to do everything that we possibly can to keep families safe this winter.

I will get back to the committee on the timeframe in relation to the homelessness prevention duty, but we hope to do that relatively soon. Prevention is key. There is some good work being done around the ambitious rapid rehousing plans that local authorities are taking forward. There has been a sea change and a move away from the previous systems that we had towards a recognition that a housing-first approach is important for those who have additional vulnerabilities. Preventing homelessness involves local authorities and registered social landlords working with tenants who are at risk of becoming homeless.

It is not in a landlord’s interests for a tenant to lose their tenancy and end up back in the system, so a lot of preventive work has gone on, in particular with local authorities and RSLs. The pandemic has been tough and, as you will be well aware, we have worked on a number of ways of strengthening the position—the pre-action protocols, the loan fund and the grant fund—to try to ensure that people do not lose their tenancies and that we make tenancies sustainable. That is the best way of preventing homelessness. For people who have particular challenges, such as addiction issues or mental health challenges, the rapid rehousing and housing first model is definitely the way, because it gets them back into a sustainable tenancy with the wraparound support that they need.