Chamber and committees

To be absolutely clear, you are seeking to amend section 41(2) but you want to keep it in some form.

Do you not accept that it is an overreach of politicians into the legal world?

Section 41(6) contains a power for the Scottish ministers to make regulations to allow category 1 regulators to extend the scope of their authorised legal business rules to capture other services provided by the businesses that they regulate in addition to legal services. The Law Society has questioned what other services the Scottish Government is thinking about that the power could be used to cover and that are not already covered by legal services as defined in the bill. It is suggested that the power may allow ministers to change the definition of legal services “by the back door”. What is your response to that?

I will push the minister on that. I get the feeling from that answer that they are not happy with it and want further negotiations. Is that a fair summary?

I am reflecting on all the evidence. We are trying to future proof legislation that will probably last for several decades. Are you confident that the bill does not give too much power—not necessarily to your Government or the next Government but to Governments beyond that—to ministers, which could be misused in the wrong hands, or are you confident that safeguards are in place?

Okay; thank you.

Thank you. That is helpful. I seek clarification on just one point. In the previous session of Parliament, the deputy convener and I had a very helpful visit to Victoria Quay, where we saw how the whole system was being designed before it was up and running. Both of us have also been to Dundee previously.

Have the changes in respect of application forms been made by officials in the Scottish Government or by the agency itself? Where does the responsibility lie for the changes that are being made now?

In relation to the monitoring side, will Social Security Scotland monitor the number of individuals who get a different level of award on ADP than they received on CDP?

I totally understand that, but, as a member of this committee, I want to know whether in two years’ time it will be possible to say that X number of children got CDP and that, after they were transferred, X number of people now get ADP. I understand that there are different eligibility criteria, but will that monitoring be open to scrutiny so that we can see whether people’s awards are higher or lower? My concern is that there seems to be a lack of data collection in Social Security Scotland, so it is very difficult to monitor some of that. I appreciate that there are different criteria, but will we be able to see the numbers clearly in black and white?

Good morning. I feel that there is a slight sense that you are putting your head in the sand. I appreciate that we can all cite cases, but I have a constituent who applied in June whose case was not looked at until September. At that point, they—not Social Security Scotland—were asked to get the evidence. I appreciate that Twitter is not the place for everything, but the number of comments on Twitter about people’s personal experience show that the situation is not how you are recording it today.

There is a real issue with regard to the length of time that people are waiting. I appreciate that it is a different way of doing it, but for us to simply say, “We are perfect; DWP is rubbish” does a disservice to DWP, and that is also not the experience of many people who I come into contact with.

What conversations are you having with Social Security Scotland, not just to get the story that it wants to tell you but to find out about the experience of real individuals? We are all getting casework from people who say that they are having a very negative experience with Social Security Scotland. We want it to work, but it will not work if people are having that negative experience.