Chamber and committees

In effect, free schools meals are a passported benefit of entitlement from other benefits. We have a hybrid system here. Emma Roddick rightly emphasises the importance of raising awareness in school settings of Scottish benefits. As I emphasised earlier, there is already significant engagement with the education sector and local authorities on how we promote Scottish benefits in schools.

The challenge is that we cannot promote reserved benefits, because that is for the DWP to undertake, so as much as there is engagement with, for example, Citizens Advice Scotland and its work, it is a reality that reserved benefits are not promoted in the same way as Scottish Government benefits.

The interconnectedness of receipt of free school meals being passported from other benefits emphasises the importance of continued engagement with the education sector to promote take-up of Scottish benefits by individuals who interact with schools. That has been successful so far, but there is more that we can do and we will continue to do it.

Thanks, Ruari. It is helpful that you have set out the engagement with stakeholders, which is extremely important.

Before I bring in Vana Anastasiadou, I add that our strategy report discussed the limitations that are associated with estimating eligibility for disability and carers benefits, but it also identified the steps that we are taking to improve the data quality so that we can measure the take-up of those benefits more accurately. The steps include adding questions to the existing household surveys, amending questions in the surveys and exploring the feasibility of using health record data in due course. Proactive steps are under way to improve the situation.

Vana, would you like to add anything?

First, I say thank you to all those in the media who have shared information about Social Security Scotland. Part of the media’s role is to hold people to account, to scrutinise and to report, which is absolutely right, of course. When there is a positive story to tell and information that it is helpful to share, I urge the media to do that. I am grateful to all the individuals and media outlets that have done that so far, and I thank them in advance for what they will no doubt do in the future.

We really need to end the instances of some aspects of the media—thankfully, they are a minority—using terms such as “benefits cheats” and “scroungers”. That helps no one. We need to be in a position in future where such phrases are no longer printed in articles or elsewhere. The media will scrutinise the system, but we want to build integrity in the system and in the idea of social security, and that is a collective responsibility for us all, including the media and us as politicians.

Covid has, of course, impacted on all of us, not just in terms of the economy, our everyday lives and the health service. For MSPs, it has affected our ability to engage with constituents. It is, therefore, reasonable to note that it has also affected our approach to improving benefit take-up, but we have responded by adapting the ways in which we interact with clients and stakeholders, as you would expect.

We continue to gather insights to better understand how the pandemic is driving longer-term behaviour, which may impact on the channels that we use to promote benefits over the longer term. For example, we may use more radio and television and less print advertising, because people are not necessarily picking up printed materials in the same way as before, or in the same settings. We are always mindful that we should use a range of channels to be as inclusive as possible.

Covid has had an effect, and it has made an impact—[Interruption.] I am sorry—there is a radio going off. I will wait for silence, if I may.

Of course Covid has had an impact, but Social Security Scotland has been active and proactive in promoting our benefits throughout the period in the ways that it can. Committee members will have seen that on social media or through other mechanisms for stakeholder engagement and in the media. I will let Kirsten Sweeney elaborate on that from an agency perspective.

I thank Pam Duncan-Glancy for that important question. First of all, she will be aware that the cabinet secretary announced a significant new winter package of support, much of which is allocated to local authorities in order to help with funding at a local level.

Members will be aware that we committed in our pre-election manifesto to a review of the Scottish welfare fund in this parliamentary session. Work towards initiating that review is progressing significantly. I am happy to take that point away and come back to the committee with clarity as to where the process is with regard to initiating that review and the formalities that have to be considered in that process. I will do that along with further information for Mr Balfour on engagement in relation to funeral benefits and, although I have given Marie McNair significant information on the valuation of the pilot of CDP, anything more that I can add to that. I am also happy to update Pam Duncan-Glancy with a clear position on a review of the Scottish welfare fund.

Evelyn Tweed highlights an important point. We all have anecdotal evidence; I think of engagement that I have had, as minister, with individuals who have benefited from the social security system. Many people have heard about the support that is available to them when they were taking a child to school, visiting their general practitioner or passing through their community centre.

Engagement and collaboration with statutory services and the third sector are important. We need to give their role equal emphasis. Third sector organisations that operate in a variety of fields—supporting individuals who have disabilities, people who are in care and people who are carers—disseminate our information through their networks. The way that they do it is outstanding and makes an important difference. Also, their feedback to us on the experiences of the people whom they support is really helpful.

All those things make a difference. That is why, for example, we are funding welfare rights advisers in 150 GP surgeries in Scotland’s most deprived areas. That will make a difference to people learning about and accessing Scottish social security in the settings of other statutory services.

We have, throughout the period, taken a holistic approach to social security and maximising incomes. However, at the heart of the new strategy is recognition that benefit take-up is, as Evelyn Tweed emphasised, part of a bigger picture in terms of how we encourage income maximisation, how we tackle poverty and how we recover from the pandemic. That cross-system collaboration can be seen in our approach to funding welfare advice and health partnership workers, which launched in September. That is a cross-Government initiative that is funded from the health, communities and social security budgets, and it engages with different parts of society.

There is an income maximisation working group that brings together officials from across the Scottish Government to ensure that we have a co-ordinated and clear sense of the collective direction of travel. We want to provide joined-up support to wrap around people, and to make it as person centred as possible in order to drive better outcomes. A lot of collaborative work is already undertaken; the benefit strategy focuses on how we can improve and build on that.

I will bring in Kirsten Sweeney on the communication materials and when they are supplied to people. Perhaps that should be after we suspend the meeting—I am conscious of the time. Mr Briggs makes an important point around how the Government, collectively, provides that wraparound support for individuals. That is a key point of consideration for the Government in relation to Covid recovery and how we as a society move forward from here. I will leave it there.

I am sorry. I thought that we were finishing at 10:58.

First, I offer our gratitude for all the work that SCOSS does in evaluating regulations. Mr Briggs is aware that the SCOSS report on the draft adult disability payment regulations was recently published and we are still to formally respond to it. We will touch on that recommendation in our formal response.

We recently received an evaluation on the pilot, and I am happy to provide that to the committee ahead of the national launch on 22 November. Members should bear in mind that it was a pilot and part of the process of a pilot is to refine and to learn. One very positive outcome of the pilot was that 88 per cent of people who applied did so digitally. That shows that Social Security Scotland’s public-facing IT was accessible and its interfacing was a success, in that the people who participated in the pilot for CDP engaged with the IT successfully.

A number of factors arose that we have taken on board to consider ahead of the national launch. One is that some people who tried to apply for CDP were already on the UK benefit. They will be transferred in due course as part of the case transfer, and therefore they were unable to make an application. That shows that we need to do some awareness raising ahead of the national launch, and that has been factored in for consideration around 22 November.

Kirsten Sweeney might want to say more.