Chamber and committees

We continue to recognise the important work that is being undertaken to support Ukrainian refugees, and the Scottish Government remains committed to working with our local authorities on that. In 2023-24, we invested £3.2 million in local authority resettlement teams, building on the investment that we made in 2022-23. Funding of £30 million has been made available to local authorities in 2023-24 to support Ukrainians into longer-term housing and to prevent homelessness.

Funding also comes from the UK Government. We continue to press the UK Government to ensure that any funding decisions that it makes also mean a fair settlement for Scottish local authorities. We are concerned about some of the recent announcements from the UK Government on supporting our local authorities, and we continue to work with our Welsh counterparts to encourage a fairer settlement.

We will continue to support local authorities next year. There is a difference in the budget for that, because the number of Ukrainians in welcome accommodation has been decreasing and will continue to decrease as we move people out of welcome accommodation and into more settled accommodation. The budget and its profile will change over time as the number of Ukrainians in welcome accommodation changes.

For the sake of brevity, I will say that there is continuing revenue and capital support for local authorities to help Ukrainian refugees. I am happy to provide in writing both that information and information about some of the challenges caused by the decreasing level of support from the UK Government for our local authority partners.

For the sake of time, I will move on to the third sector. The First Minister reiterated our commitment to fairer funding at the Gathering last year, and we are determined to pursue those commitments during the budget process. We are still going through that process, but we remain committed to the aspects that the First Minister discussed at the Gathering, which include further work on multiyear grant awards.

We need to communicate to third sector organisations their levels of grant funding as soon as is practically possible, and before the end of March. We are working on the commitments that the First Minister made as the budget process continues.

We will certainly be able to provide the committee with information on how we have made progress on that, yes.

There are two parts to that funding. First, there is the child poverty practice accelerator fund, which supports nine local authorities with small-scale projects. That important fund was opened for applications last summer, and the announcement that was made today was on the successful applications.

Secondly, there is the cash first fund, which meets our plan to end the need for food banks—which, it is worth remembering, is the first plan of its kind in the UK. The fund will provide £1.8 million during the next three years to support a number of local partnerships and improve urgent access to cash in a crisis.

We do not provide cost estimates for individual benefits such as the two that the member mentions, because the Social Security Scotland system is an integrated one in which much of the work on new benefits builds on what is already there. We are not building separate systems for different benefits and attaching them together; there is one integrated system. That is important, because it allows some of the functionality that we design into the system, such as application forms or correspondence with clients, to be used for a number of benefits. That helps with overall costs and ensures that we are using the system as effectively and efficiently as possible.

The member asked about differences. I will explain pension age disability payment first. One particular difference is that there are inclusive application channels. One of the most important ones, which colleagues will already be aware of, is the in-person support through our local delivery service. That increased support is provided directly by Social Security Scotland and improves access. In essence, that will help to improve take-up rates, so that more people get what they are entitled to.

Some of the improvements coming through for pension age disability payment are similar to those that are already there in child or adult disability payments. For example, there will be new definitions of terminal illness, and short-term assistance will be available, along with important help in gathering supporting information.

The pension age winter heating payment will replace the winter fuel payment for winter 2024-25. We intend to deliver a replacement that will ensure a safe and secure transition for around 1 million eligible people. We have committed to the fact that no one will lose out once we take responsibility for pension age winter heating payment. Under a like-for-like replacement for the winter fuel payment, everyone who is currently eligible to receive winter fuel payment will continue to receive the benefit that they have been entitled to.

The member is right to point to that recent work by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The JRF estimates that, if the universal credit standard allowance was set at £120 per week for a single adult and £200 for a couple, that could lift 1.8 million people out of poverty, including 600,000 children, across the UK. That recent report provides stark figures on the number of children who are being held in poverty because universal credit is not fit for purpose.

We will protect the £41 million investment that we are making in the Scottish welfare fund, which will deliver support right across Scotland, which is on top of the continuing investment in discretionary housing payments—which mitigate the bedroom tax—and a number of other measures.

That might be an aspect of how the Scottish child payment could be developed in the future. The way in which the payment was introduced makes that rather impossible, but it might be possible to change the statutory underpinnings for the Scottish child payment when the bill on those statutory underpinnings comes to Parliament soon, and we might be able to look at a more nuanced approach.

The Scottish child payment was delivered as it was to ensure that that happened as quickly as possible. The time between policy decision and implementation was only 18 months, which was the quickest introduction of a benefit either in Scotland or the UK, and was an important aspect of this Government’s anti-poverty measures.

We were well aware that our decisions would mean a decrease to that budget. We are still working through how we can use that budget in different ways to allow more innovative finance, in order to get the maximum number of homes for our budget. That work is on-going and it is important that we continue to look at the different ways of financing, to ensure the maximum number of homes. I will bring in Sean Neill on that. We are continuing to work on how we can maximise that budget, which will, of course, vary the impact assessment at the end of the day.

I draw members’ attention to one of the caveats in the Homes for Scotland report, which says that it does not think that the headline figure given in the report is the actual number of homes needed in Scotland. I appreciate that that figure attracted a lot of attention, but I caveat that with the part of the Homes for Scotland report that says that that is not actually its belief and that not that many homes are actually required.

Forgive me, Mr O’Kane, but my post-flu brain has forgotten the other part of your question. With my apologies to the convener, please say again what that was.

It was about working with stakeholders.