Chamber and committees

There has been a lot of independent analysis over the years. One of the most important reports has been the recent “Welfare reform report—Impact on families with children”, which was published in April last year. It estimated that

“Reversing key UK Government welfare reforms that have occurred since 2015 would bring an estimated 70,000 people out of poverty in Scotland, including 30,000 children, in 2023-24.”

That would very much help us to meet our child poverty targets.

Pam Duncan-Glancy makes a fair point. These are tough times for all sectors—whether it is local government, the third sector or public agencies—in terms of the quantum of finance that is available in the budget. Multiyear funding is important because it makes things easier by giving the certainty of funding availability. If we move to a position in which multiyear funding becomes the presumption and default, that will help with the planning of budgets.

We will work with third sector organisations to support them as much as we can. We need to look at how we can reform the way that we do things. That applies not just to Scottish Government agencies and public services but to local government. The Accounts Commission suggested that as a way forward, and that might have to apply to the third sector, too. We all have to look at, for example, the buildings, services and support structures that we use, to see whether they can be shared. We need to look at things differently. The pandemic has shown that different ways of working—which, before the pandemic, we might not have thought possible—have been achieved in a very short timeframe. In some ways, that flexible working can reduce infrastructure costs for organisations.

We need to continue to have those discussions, but I am not going to sit here and pretend that it is easy for any sector, including the third sector, which—as I said—we will try to support as much as we can.

We expect officials across the Scottish Government to work closely on that, to know what grant applications are in and to know which ones are likely to be approved or not approved. Sometimes that is important if a particular fund is under real pressure and we can look at whether other funds in Government can be brought to the table to support that. That happens fairly regularly.

It should not matter where the fund is located in Government. The same approach should be taken in the move to multiyear funding and towards the key priorities, which the Deputy First Minister has set out, of tackling child poverty, sustaining public services and moving to net zero. You would expect those priorities to be reflected through all the funds for the third sector across various parts of Government.

Will it be right in every circumstance? I am sure that there will be glitches on occasion. However, what I have set out is how we expect the system to operate, and we expect close communication to take place.

Yes, it is. I hope that our actions, whether it is through the £3 billion that has been allocated to help low-income households in the current financial year, £1 billion of which is available only in Scotland, or, going forward, through the budget decisions that we have made—not least the allocation of £780 million above the block grant adjustment for social security—are seen as active political choices and decisions about how we support household budgets and people on low incomes. That comes at a cost, if you like, with regard to the availability of funding for other things, but, in the current financial climate, it is absolutely the right decision and one that we would defend vigorously.

That is an important question. A number of processes are on-going across portfolios as they continue to assess the value and impact of policies. The vast majority of the programmes, policies and services that the budget funds are not necessarily freshly generated and announced at the point at which the annual budget is introduced; budgets are more likely to be reviewed and refined in the light of a number of factors, including the human rights dimension. A number of large policy areas have substantive evaluation programmes in place to assess the outcome of the spending programmes, and those deliver results at different points in the policy cycle.

We expect equality and human rights impact assessments to be a key part of that process but not the only factor in informing final decisions. Other considerations might include making budget adjustments due to changes in available resources to support the policy delivery, reprofiling the phasing of delivery and, as we did in the emergency budget review, focusing on other key priorities, which means perhaps not funding other things.

The equality and human rights impact assessment is key. Of itself, that is probably not a reason to change a budget decision, but it would be part of the assessment of the priority of that funding decision.

As I have said, and as Kevin Stevens said, it is not a target as such. It is more a measurement, alongside 69 others, around performance. With the charter being reviewed, the committee has an opportunity to look at whether the measurements are still fit for purpose. As I said, I will get the details on timelines and scope to the committee.

We should consider the growth of Social Security Scotland. When the charter was set out, back in 2019, it was a very different organisation, so part of looking again at the charter will be to reflect the fact that it is now a much larger organisation that is dealing with and processing applications from a far bigger group of people, and processing a larger number of supports and benefits. The context now is very different, and that can perhaps be looked at as part of the review.

I will pass that over to Kevin Stevens in a moment. I do not think that there is any attempt not to provide the data, or to be opaque in any way, with regard to the Scottish Fiscal Commission. It would not be in our, or Social Security Scotland’s, interest to do so, given the importance of the SFC’s forecasts and the adjustments that it makes on that basis. It is in our interest to ensure that the SFC gets that right, and that the forecasts are accurate.

Kevin, do you want to add anything in relation to the speed at which that information is provided?

The £85.9 million investment in discretionary housing payments provides critical support. The budget has increased from 2022-23 because of the funding that was added to mitigate the benefit cap as fully as we can within devolved powers. Anyone who is in receipt of housing benefit or universal credit with a housing element will be able to claim a DHP towards the amount that their benefits have been reduced by the cap.

In 2023-24, we will make £83.7 million available to local authorities to spend on DHPs, and the £69.7 million to fully mitigate the bedroom tax will help more than 91,000 households in Scotland to sustain their tenancies. We will invest £6.2 million from April onwards to mitigate the benefit cap and £7.9 million to mitigate the impact of other UK Government welfare cuts, including the continuing freeze to local housing allowance rates, to which I referred earlier, which has a major impact on renters, given that they have been frozen for the third year in a row.

Those are important investments, but they are out of a fixed budget. If those issues were fixed at source, we would be able to spend that money on something else.

We have written to the UK Government a number of times, asking it to use its levers. The First Minister herself wrote to the Prime Minister towards the end of last year. That letter included requests for things such as further financial support, particularly on energy costs, to be targeted at low-income households; the increasing of social security benefits in line with inflation; a permanent £25 uplift to universal credit, like the one that was made during the pandemic but then removed; the reversal of the two-child limit for UC and tax credits; and the abolition of the benefit cap. Although the UK Government has gone some way on the windfall tax, we thought that it could go further on that. We also asked for additional funding for devolved Governments—not just our own but others—to help to provide support to people.

We have made those representations on a number of occasions.

In 2023-24, as I just said, we are giving all local authorities an annual share of £30.5 million for homelessness prevention and an annual share of £8 million to support the rapid rehousing transition plans. We will look at how we ensure that the new priorities and recommendations that emerge from that group are reflected in the spend. I will obviously need to see what those recommendations are. Some of them might be around resourcing, but some of them will probably be more around prioritisation and how we use the existing money in the system to focus on issues of temporary accommodation and prevention.

I have also been meeting with housing conveners to look at what more can be done, particularly in those areas with the biggest problems, which I will come to in a second. I have been encouraging proposals to look at bringing empty properties back into use and to be more strategic. I have been encouraging local authorities to bid into the £50 million Ukraine long-term resettlement fund with a view to long-term investment—not just for displaced persons from Ukraine but to bring properties back that will be there for long-term use, which is important.

With specific reference to Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the vast bulk of issues around temporary accommodation lie, I have asked them to come forward with proposals and I have said that I will look favourably upon any that specifically demonstrate that they will make an impact on the use of temporary accommodation.

I understand that Edinburgh is working on something, although we have not yet seen the detail of it. Of course, Edinburgh received extra money last year for the affordable housing supply programme. I have made the offer and we shall see what comes back.