Chamber and committees

I suppose that anything to do with targeting complicates things—people have to start filling in forms, they have to be assessed, and there is the question of where we draw the line with regard to level of disability, age and so on. Jack Evans, is it better to have a simple system or should we target a bit more?

Well done. Mr Evans?

Ruth Boyle, Jack Evans is relaxed about having a complicated system, but we have already had suggestions about targeting disabled children, rural children, teenagers, babies, single parents and minority ethnic people. Would that not become horribly complicated, or is having a bit more targeting the way to go?

My colleagues might follow up on some of what you have said, but I am interested in the fact that, even though we have a simple system at the moment—there is one figure across the board—the uptake is still quite low. My gut feeling is that, if we complicate it more, that might hit the uptake, but I will leave that one just now.

The other question involves tapering. Again, having the payment decrease as people’s income increases complicates matters, as it means that people or their employers have to feed in information. However, there is a kind of fairness about tapering, as it prevents people coming to a cliff edge where they lose everything at one go. Ruth Boyle, do you have any thoughts on that?

Therefore, although you are changing some of the dates for when things are starting, there will not be any serious impact in the current year, 2024-25. Can you put any figure on that?

Good morning. Jeremy Balfour asked you about increasing the Scottish child payment right across the board, but another suggestion has been that we should target it more at those in greatest need—for example, those in severe poverty or perhaps those living in rural areas, where there can be extra expenses. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Mr Sinclair?

There is some one-off support for having a baby, is there not?

That is fair enough.

We have looked at scrutiny. The committees are meant to scrutinise each of the commissioners. There are seven commissioners at the moment, but there are also other outside bodies. For example, the Economy and Fair Work Committee scrutinises the Scottish National Investment Bank, and we scrutinise the Scottish Fiscal Commission—although, technically, it is not a commission for the purposes of our inquiry. It is not the case that each committee has just one or two such bodies to look at; there is already quite a landscape of bodies out there.

Does whether a body is called a “commission” or a “commissioner” make a difference? Children have a commissioner, rather than a commission. Does it matter whether it is a Government commission, such as His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary or His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland? Those are Government commissions, whereas we have Parliament ones. That would make a difference from your point of view, because the corporate body would not scrutinise a Government commission, but would it make any difference in practice?

In those cases, the budget comes from a different place. Do we know whether it is a parallel process? Do the other commissioners go to the Government and ask for a budget, in the same way that the parliamentary commissioners come to you and ask for a budget? I presume that that is what happens.