Chamber and committees

We can certainly take that away and consider whether some local authorities have best practices that could be supported.

I accept the point that the landscape can be confusing. One of the areas that we are looking at is whether we can have single sources of information and support. It may be that we can pull in some of the support that is delivered by local authorities to ensure that people looking at what they might be entitled to can get a bit more clarity around that from a single source of advice. We can certainly look at whether there is anything more that we need to do around guidance.

There is. That might be through the national work on the provision of benefit take-up information encouraging people to take up their entitlements. A number of platforms can be used to promote that information, but nothing beats human interaction. That might involve support through schools—encouraging every part of the public sector to see its role in promoting information and advice.

I recently visited a school with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy. The headteacher was clear that part of their role was to support families, particularly those on low incomes. They had advice evenings, bringing in advice givers and encouraging and incentivising parents to come along so that they could get that information.

It is about using all such opportunities, such as the GP surgery, the school, and health visitors for interaction and to signpost people because, although take-up rates for the Scottish child payment are pretty good, at beyond 80 per cent, 20 per cent of people who are entitled are not getting that important support. We need to look at all avenues.

You raise an important point. As I said earlier, we have placed a sharp focus on six priority family types, but those families are, of course, all different in the challenges that they face. How do we ensure that we understand all those challenges? We have published a series of evidence reviews alongside our first three annual child poverty progress reports. One of those is on lone parents, one is on black, Asian and minority ethnic families and one is on disability. We should not take a one-size-fits-all approach. I mentioned having more bespoke solutions for families. Each family is different, and those with different protected characteristics clearly face further challenges.

On the data, I note that it will always be difficult to pick up small populations in sample surveys, so it is important to support those surveys with the development of other evidence. Qualitative and what I guess will be called participatory research with the priority families is key to understanding the barriers and what works for those families in tackling poverty. The additional reports will help us with that, and we are actively looking to develop data linkage to allow better analysis of those small populations. The data and intelligence network has an on-going project to link the school pupil census and health records. If that can be done, it will provide a more granular level of information.

Having said all that, I add that one of the most important things that we can do is to listen to what families tell us about what the barriers are. I mentioned the three pillars earlier. When it comes to employability, for example, if one parent has a disability, or if parents are from the BAME community, they are going to face additional barriers to employment compared with other families, for all the reasons that we understand. Likewise, lone-parent families will have to overcome childcare barriers, as well as the other barriers that they face.

We need to understand that, and our solutions in the delivery plan need to recognise that one size does not fit all. We need to work alongside families and with trusted folk who know them, instead of pitching up with an agency. Those trusted folk, who are often from third sector organisations, can help us to have a conversation about what will make the difference for a family and help them to overcome some of the issues that people face in moving on to the world of work.

The transition period is difficult for young people, full stop, but young carers’ transition into adulthood is even more impacted. We provide a number of supports to carers. Perhaps Shirley Laing can provide more information.

That is a very pertinent question. We have committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, of which at least 70 per cent will be available for social rent. We have also committed to 10 per cent of those homes being in remote rural and island communities. We have increased to £23.6 billion the total that is available for delivery of social and affordable homes in this parliamentary session. That continued investment in social housing will ensure that even more people can access an affordable home, which will further drive down child poverty. The links between affordable housing and child poverty are clear.

Progress with affordable housing delivery is reported through quarterly official statistics publications, along with more detailed annual outturn reports. An estimated 2,100 households with children were helped into affordable housing in the year ending March 2021. Keeping social rents lower than market rents benefits approximately 110,000 children in poverty each year. We have had the affordable housing supply programme for many years, but it has become more important as an investment that is also one of the levers to tackle child poverty.

We have made good progress so far, and there is more to be done. Obviously, there has been a Covid impact, because construction was paused for a period during the pandemic, and construction and labour costs are very high at the moment, which has impacted on the price of some projects that are coming through. However, housing associations and councils are working really hard to keep that pipeline of projects coming through, so that we can keep the momentum going here. Also, local authorities and housing associations are operating in quite innovative ways, such as off-market purchases from private sector developers, as well as purchasing on the open market, in order to meet the particular needs of families. There is a flexibility there, which allows us to try to meet needs.

Earlier, I mentioned the need for more larger homes. It would be fair to say that we need to get better at ensuring that homes can meet the needs of people with disabilities and complex needs. There is more that we can do in that space, and I am keen to support housing associations and local authorities to get that right for folk.

“Housing to 2040” laid out a longer-term vision to ensure that standards are continually improving, and that more and more homes are barrier free and more flexible as people’s mobility changes over the years. There is more that we can do in that space to support people with particular complex needs, and we are looking at that at the moment.

I do not think that the approach is targeted enough and, essentially, people will have to pay the loans back over time. The crisis will impact on a far wider range of people than those who are currently within the official poverty statistics. More people who have just about been keeping their heads above water will suddenly not be able to do so, and they will be caught within the cost-of-living crisis.

Our response has to be as targeted as it can be in order to help those who are most impacted. I really fear for people’s ability to keep their heating on and put food on the table. Although we will look to do more, we have already been focusing support to make sure that we help those who need it most. There are on-going discussions about what more we can do in that space and, as I said, there will be further information about that through the budget.

I do not think that we can mitigate every part of the cost-of-living impact on a fixed budget, but we can make sure that our support is targeted at those who are most in need.

I will come back to Gillian Mackay and the committee specifically on the discussions with retailers, but we have been engaging with the business sector generally about what it can do on costs.

We have engaged with the energy sector, for example. I was in a meeting with Michael Matheson and representatives of the big energy companies in which they were asked what they were going to do by way of support to consumers. We have been calling on the UK Government to take urgent and tangible action against increasing energy bills.

On food costs, we have been supporting a number of initiatives on food poverty. We have been trying to take a cash-first approach in supporting people. The food banks have done an amazing job, and those who run them have been supporting our strategy towards a cash-first approach, which has become very important in the current climate.

You are right that retailers have a responsibility, too. The profits of the supermarkets increased substantially during the pandemic, whereas that was not the case for other sectors. I would certainly call on them to do what they can to recognise that people are going to struggle to afford the increased prices of their food products. They have an important role to play. I am happy to follow up on the detail of that with the committee.

I would first point out that a good chunk of the £41 million winter support package that I announced before Christmas will help to deal with fuel poverty through third sector organisations, so there is money going out the door to help people in the here and now. The new low-income winter heating assistance will, as Carol Mochan has said, replace cold weather payments with a guaranteed annual winter payment of £50 to around 400,000 low-income households, which will be an investment of £21 million in 2022-23.

Of course, the UK Government could make a payment right now to all those eligible for the cold weather payment. We are moving to the new benefit as quickly as possible, but Covid had an impact on our ability and the ability of the Department for Work and Pensions to expedite some of the new benefits as we would have wanted. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, a lot of the work was paused on both sides so that there could be a focus on providing life-and-limb support to people.

We think that the UK Government can go further. I have already mentioned the cut in VAT on energy bills, and we have also urged it to review the obligation costs on energy bills to reduce the premium paid by households that rely on electric heating and to help unlock the deployment of low and zero-emissions heating. We do not have the power to set or change energy tariff levels, but we are continuing to engage with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets and to urge the UK Government and energy suppliers to go further with the support that they can provide in a way that helps the most vulnerable.

As for the medium to longer term, I am sure that the committee will be aware of the significant investment of more than £1 billion in energy efficiency programmes to make homes warmer and cheaper to heat. That will be quite important as people face the rising energy costs.

We will continue to do what we can on energy, food and all the other costs. It is also perhaps worth mentioning the Scottish welfare fund, which was allocated additional moneys as part of the winter support package. It is a flexible fund that local authorities administer and which people can access if they are struggling to pay for things. We have tried to put out information on the fund through support structures such as welfare advice and the national helpline to ensure that people can access what they need in order to find the right source of support for them.

First of all, I will say a bit about the commitment to the new £500 million whole-family wellbeing fund, which is being prioritised within what was a tough budgetary envelope. We have talked a lot about this already, but the impetus for the fund was the need for early intervention and prevention rather than crisis intervention, and it will help with making what needs to be a transformational shift towards those types of services. In 2022-23, £50 million will be deployed, with a focus on building capacity for more significant investment from 2023-24 onwards.

It is a cross-portfolio budget. It looks at how we provide early support, and the six priority family types are obviously key to that. It is not about supporting business as usual and doing the same thing; it is about enabling a shift in the way that we deliver family support services. It relates very much to keeping the Promise and other key strategies. If we get that right, I think that it will have a huge impact on our ability to do things differently.

As I said earlier, we are looking at how we can support families through all the budgets that I have outlined to help them through what will be a really tough time. Again, if the committee would find it helpful, I can provide a more detailed breakdown of all the elements of the budget across portfolios that I think will have an impact on the money in people’s pockets. I have given a flavour of that, but I am happy to give a more comprehensive list, if it would be helpful.

There are clear links between the experience of child poverty and poorer health outcomes across a range of measures over the course of a child’s life, including healthy life expectancy. As I have said, our approach is to ensure that we are working on this right across Government, including in the health portfolio and what it can bring to the table. Earlier, Clare Haughey talked about early intervention and some of the work that is being undertaken to get that right and to ensure that the right interventions are put in place. The target that was set in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 allows us to take a holistic look at a wide range of action to tackle child poverty.

We need only look at some of the work done by, for example, Harry Burns, who set poverty and child poverty in a public health context. The challenge for us all is to see poverty and child poverty not as inevitable but as products of society and its structures; we need to understand that if we are to move the barriers and address the structural issues that set children on a path to poverty as soon as they are born.

We have some levers for addressing that, but it is frustrating that we do not have them all. Sometimes in the work that we do and the decisions that we take, we feel like there is a pushback in decisions that are made elsewhere; indeed, I have already mentioned the £20 cut to universal credit. That can be difficult, but we have to use every lever that we have as a Government to make progress on child poverty. Viewing it as a public health issue is certainly the right thing to do.