Chamber and committees

I might bring Alison Byrne in, because she would have been around when that happened. The difference will be around eligibility for passporting benefits. I take your point that there were different approaches to terminal illness, but I do not think that that would have put at risk any of the passporting benefits, whereas the mobility component of PIP and then of adult disability payment is seen by the DWP as a fundamental part of the eligibility for passporting benefits. Therefore, I think that we could say that it is being treated in a different way.

We have to get beyond that. The fact that the UK Government has published its green paper seems to me an opportunity, because it is clearly thinking about making changes. If we are both doing so, we need to come to some agreement that that is okay and that it should not put at risk passporting to benefits that are still reserved.

I am quite optimistic that we can get there and, if we can, it opens up a lot of opportunities for the review of ADP from 2023 and allows us to scope and build something that, were we starting with a blank sheet of paper, we would choose to put in place instead of what we are inheriting. That said, as I said in response to Pam Duncan-Glancy, things will still feel a lot different for clients, given the major changes that will be made. However, we want to go further than that.

I am happy to do that, and it might help if I provided the correspondence from the previous cabinet secretary.

An important obligation on us is the duty to promote benefit entitlement and uptake, and it would be nice if the UK Government did the same, because that would help.

Advice services are important, and they deliver huge gains for not only individuals but families and communities, given that the money that people get is quite often spent in local communities. The value of that is huge, and we see it as being key to ensuring that people get access to what they are entitled to and are then able to support their families.

We want to do more of that. For example, you will be aware of the work that has been done on co-locating advice services in places where people go, such as general practitioner surgeries and schools, to make things not only easier but perhaps less threatening. After all, if they are already in that place, they will not have to walk anywhere else. We need to do more of that. Those who work on the front line in the health service or other services really value the ability to signpost someone who might have turned up for health reasons but who has expressed concern about the impact of debt and financial worries on their mental health. The ability to signpost such a person to an advice worker is really important, and there is scope to do more of that.

Miles Briggs will be aware that there were exceptions during the pandemic, because of increases in the need for temporary accommodation and keeping people safe in hotels. Nobody wants unsuitable temporary accommodation to be used. We have given local authorities until the end of September to make sure that they are not using unsuitable temporary accommodation and officials have been working closely with the local authorities that told us that they have the biggest challenge in meeting that deadline.

It will not surprise Miles Briggs to learn which local authorities those are. The City of Edinburgh Council is one, and I have had some very constructive conversations with the Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee convener, Kate Campbell. Despite the challenges, the council has taken some innovative approaches to try and use every lever at its disposal to increase the accommodation supply and work towards not using unsuitable temporary accommodation. The council flagged that meeting the end of September deadline will be challenging.

Other local authorities are in similar situations, but the vast majority are confident that they will meet the deadline. We are working particularly closely with the handful of local authorities—I am trying to remember how many—that will find the deadline difficult to meet. We will give them support to meet their responsibilities beyond the end of September.

I am happy to do so.

First, I thank all the parties represented here who have agreed to take part in the minimum income guarantee work as a kind of political overview and oversight, which is important in itself, because it is an ambitious thing to do. Having as much political consensus as possible on the principle is helpful. Creating a minimum income below which no one would fall is a different way of thinking about the support that people get. Of course, that is not just about the cash that people get—whether through work or support such as social security payments—but support in kind in the form of wraparound childcare or help with transport costs, for example.

Work has begun on that, and the expert group will be doing the heavy lifting on the detail of how that could work in practice. We think that we can make more progress on a minimum income guarantee than would be possible on a universal basic income. That is because, although a minimum income guarantee runs up against the tax and benefits system, doing it fully will give us some latitude to make progress and test some of the thinking about how a minimum income guarantee might work in Scotland without necessarily having full control over the tax and benefits system. We do not have that full control at the moment.

I am keen for us to get on with the work. I would like to get political agreement on some of the ideas that emerge from the expert group, which we could then test out. It is exciting. It will not be easy to do, and it will not be done a week on Tuesday; it will take some time. Again, I thank colleagues for their political support on that.

I think that we will be able to implement something. I am not sure whether it will be a fully-fledged, all-singing, all-dancing minimum income guarantee. We will be guided by the expert group, but I certainly think that we will be able to implement elements of it, and it might be that we do bits at a time. If the expert group recommends a change that could get us on to a stepping stone towards a full minimum income guarantee, we might be able to do that as part of a process of implementation.

If we could do that by the end of session 6, that would be good, and, yes, if it is possible, we will do that. If it is not possible to introduce a full minimum income guarantee, we would want to have stepping stones towards that. We will be guided by the expertise of those in the expert group. Paul Tyrer might want to say more about the work of the group.

Paul, is that additional money? [Interruption.] We might have to come back to you on that. I think that it is, but I want to confirm that. Is that okay?

That is a really important point. Almost a whole new set of volunteers appeared; they were people who had never volunteered before, but they wanted to look after their neighbours. A lot of it was very informal, but it nevertheless tapped into something very special and precious.

One of the challenges that we face is that, as the voluntary sector will tell you, there has been a bit of a fall-off in the number of traditional volunteers. Charity shops were closed for a prolonged period of time, and those who did their volunteering work in such shops got out of that habit or perhaps found other opportunities. As a result, a lot of charity shops are struggling. Indeed, when I spoke to people in some of my local shops last week, they said that they were struggling to find volunteers. We therefore need to play our part and send out a message to encourage people back into volunteering, including in more traditional settings, and ensure that they are supported.

It is a bit of a double-edged sword. We have work to do to ensure that we maintain the voluntary sector and all the services that it provides.

There are a lot of questions in there. Let me try to take them in turn.

It is important to recognise that the look and feel for clients will be very different—for example, functional examinations will be removed from the consultation. As you are aware, the DWP routinely carries out tests during assessments such as asking clients to touch their toes and so on. All that will be removed. Assessments will be replaced with person-centred consultations and I intend to address concerns about how the criteria are applied, including those relating to mobility.

A new way of making entitlement decisions for ADP will ensure that the criteria are more fairly applied to all clients. In relation to the engagement of local teams, the feedback from families on the pilot for child disability payment has been very positive, as a lot of time has been spent on supporting people through the system. If you translate that approach to ADP, there will be more staff-intensive support for people applying for the first time for ADP and for cases being transferred.

You mentioned the 20m rule and I understand stakeholders’ concerns about that. There are a couple of things to bear in mind. First, and you have used this expression, in relation to the safe and secure transfer, the DWP has been very clear that the criteria require to remain the same for people to be entitled to their passported benefits.

I recently raised the issue of policy divergence with the UK Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work. We want to diverge on policy and we have said that we will review ADP in 2023 after the cases are transferred. The UK Government has announced through its green paper that it wants to review disability payments and is consider making changes to them in the rest of the UK. I said to the minister that, given that policy divergence, we need to be able to develop and deliver policy that is suited to the needs of people with disabilities here in Scotland, without being constrained by concerns about the risk of losing passported benefits.

Ben Macpherson, who is Minister for Social Security and Local Government, wrote to the UK minister, who has unfortunately now moved on, explicitly asking the UK Government for assurances on the passported benefits issue. We have a journey to go on the issue; we do not have that assurance yet, but we have an agreement to discuss it on an on-going basis. At the moment, we need to make sure that people will get their payments and that they are not put at risk. Even though there are frustrations, which I understand, we cannot risk people not getting their payments.

However, I want to fully engage with the committee, SCOSS and the equality budget advisory group, which I met recently and which in its commentary recognised that people first need to have their benefits secured when they are transferred. I recognise that the review opens up opportunities for policy divergence and I want to work with the committee on considering those options.

I am sorry that that was a long answer, but it is a very complicated issue.