Chamber and committees

Good morning to the minister and his team. I have a couple of questions. First, when David Phillips, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, gave evidence to the committee, he talked about a “cliff edge” for some families, who fear losing out on their eligibility for SCP if they take on extra hours of work. I presume that now is the right time to go into it. What work are you and your team doing on that? What mitigation is there around that and what thinking is being done?

Secondly, I go back to Pam Duncan-Glancy’s question, to which I do not think that I heard an answer. Once ADP is fully transferred and is being run by Social Security Scotland, do you intend to increase that benefit as you have increased the other benefits that are now being run by the agency? Once all the transfers have taken place, do you see a further increase happening, or do you see the amount staying aligned with the UK figure?

I put on record my thanks to the kinship carers who gave evidence to us. I think that all of us who were there were deeply moved by what we heard.

I have two questions to follow up on Emma Roddick’s question. I appreciate that this is about good practice and how things work on the ground, but there is a lot of confusion around the definition of kinship care. For example, if kinship carers are defined in a certain way, they get certain benefits and help, and if they are defined in a different way, they get other benefits and face other issues. That is very confusing for those on the ground. Can further guidance be given, without legislating, in relation to the understanding of kinship care?

In our session last week, I was particularly struck by one individual who told us that two of their grandchildren were given to them because their son or daughter could not look after them. They had no follow up from social work for months—literally months—and when they did work to their house to adapt it to allow the children to stay, they were given no financial support. Such situations do not seem to be exceptional; they seem to happen a lot of the time, and part of that is down to definitions. I appreciate that that is how the system works in practice, but definitions matter, and I wonder whether further work could be done with COSLA on the support that is required. Certainly, it is inappropriate to leave a grandparent with children for several months without any follow-up at all.

Not only in kinship care but fostering, if the grandparents live in a different local authority area from the one that the child comes from, there have been issues with the fact that the local authority where the child comes from is responsible for the payment. Will that be examined? Is it a satisfactory way of working or would it be better for the local authority where the kinship carer lives to pick up the costs because it understands the child’s needs better? Is that being considered in the review, as well?

So local authorities in Scotland will have to pay it; they will not have a choice. Is that correct?

But not less.

I am on PIP at the moment. How much notice will be given to people of when they will be transferred to ADP? It is quite a long time. Is transfer being carried out geographically or alphabetically? How much notice will people be given that they are transferring from the DWP to the new agency?

When will detailed guidance on case transfer from PIP to ADP be published? Do you have a date for publishing it?

Good morning to your team, minister. I suppose that, for the record, I should point out that I am at present on PIP and will, I hope, transfer to ADP at some point. I declare that as an interest.

I think that you said that you would lay the regulations in May. Did I hear that correctly?

Has Social Security Scotland set itself a timescale for how long that review will take? Although it will, hopefully, be light touch, there is still the possibility that a person’s benefit might be taken away, and it will obviously be an uncertain period.

Let us say that a person is transferred over on 1 January. How long will that review take from the day that a person is transferred over? Is there a target date for that?

Do you have a timescale for that?