Chamber and committees

Why have staffing requirements increased so much since the programme’s business case was published in February 2020, given that the key policy decisions for in-house assessment, local delivery and plans around the Scottish child payment, for example, had already been made at that point? Also, given the recent announcements by the First Minister, will the organisation grow beyond the 3,500 staff that are currently envisaged?

What size do you expect the organisation to be, given the change from the initial estimates to the 3,500 we see now?

Yes, thank you, convener. The question is about spend and budgets, which is probably the most important stuff. What is your view of the variance that we have seen between budget and actual spend to date?

That is helpful. Reading into that, has any work been done on how that could disincentivise people—separated parents specifically—from taking a shared-care approach?

That is very helpful. This will be my final question on staffing. What is the organisation’s strategy on skill sets? We touched on that in our conversations. You are looking to recruit 400 advisers for hubs across the country. What workforce challenges have you discovered in doing that? Concern was expressed about the potential destabilisation of other services if individuals who are currently working on the front line elsewhere come into Social Security Scotland. That may have been specifically about Dundee, given that you have already been drawing on the recruitment pool there. That was one of the conversations we had. Where are you with that specialist skill set strategy and identifying individuals?

Following that answer, is it fair to say that we are likely to see a change in the regulations being brought to committee quite soon?

On that point, do you know what levels the DWP has been asked to look towards for debt recovery on behalf of Social Security Scotland? I had a look at your accounts and from what I could see it is estimated that around £17,400 was detected for internal fraud but, as you have already said, no overpayments have even been classified. What does the work that the DWP is doing for Social Security Scotland look like, given that you are transferring that to another organisation?

I think that it would be helpful if we had certain data around the number of cases specific to Social Security Scotland, especially with the transfer of PIP and so on, where there will be more of a live issue.

I want to ask some questions about staffing and recruitment, following our meeting and the useful conversations that we had in Dundee. When is the workforce strategy likely to be finalised?

When it comes to financing, what do you think is needed, especially for private residents? We are expecting people to meet significant costs. Other than boiler scrappage schemes and interest-free loans that are backed by the Government, do you have any suggestions about how we could enable private residents to meet some of the future costs?

We have all scribbled down “German system”, so we will go away and investigate that.

Would anyone else like to comment?