Chamber and committees

Thank you.

Thank you, convener, and good afternoon, minister. Can you tell me how much money has been invested in project ADDER cities across England and Wales, and do you know what the Barnett consequentials would have been had Scotland bought into it?

It would be helpful if you could come back to us in writing on those questions, minister.

Finally, minister, before my time is up, what role does the third sector have? Clearly, it often works with local communities and knows those communities. Is the funding of third sector organisations, and working with them, key to your strategy in England and Wales?

The second area that I want to explore is the availability of treatment. Do you agree that, if someone wants to come off drugs and clearly needs treatment to do so, that treatment must be made available to them as soon as possible? A delay of even weeks or months on a waiting list will put people off looking for treatment. The key factor with this kind of prevention is ensuring that treatment is available when an individual wants and needs it.

As someone who has walked this journey for five years, I will vote for the amendments, but with a heavy heart. Unlike Evelyn Tweed, I see no excitement in the regulations. Both members of this committee who are actually on PIP and who have disabilities are voting for them with a heavy heart, and that says a lot about where we are today. The disability community is accepting this because nothing else is on offer. That is not what the Scottish Government offered us five years ago.

I and Ben Macpherson sat on this committee. We heard from cabinet secretaries. We heard from civil servants. We heard from stakeholders that they wanted a system that was radically different from what we have today. We are not addressing fundamental issues, such as mobility. We are not addressing people who have variable conditions, such as MS and epilepsy, who will still not get an award. They may be told no in a nicer way, but they will still be told no.

This is a lost opportunity for the Parliament and the country. We started five years ago with a blank piece of paper, and an opportunity to design something that would have helped those with disability to get the benefits that we need and deserve. In fact, that is what we were promised by the Scottish Government, and all that we have done today is paste over what we have had for many years. I hope that the cabinet secretary and the minister, Mr Macpherson, will hear what disabled people are saying about the regulations, perhaps not in public at committees but in private. It has taken five years to get to this point. I do not particularly blame the new agency. I do think that the Scottish Government has dragged the process out and has taken far too long.

I will vote for the regulations because there is nothing else on offer and we do not want to delay anything, but I do so with no excitement and with a heavy heart. I hope that any review will be speedy and will implement the changes that people in Scotland with disability deserve.

Yes.

Good morning, convener. I add my congratulations on your appointment. I look forward to working with you. I also wish Neil Gray all the best in his new role in the Scottish Government.

I have about four or five questions to ask the minister, but I will take them one at a time so that we do not get lost in them.

My first question seeks to develop the point that was just made about case law. What is the Scottish Government’s thinking about what will happen with case law that comes in once ADP is up and running? If a case is decided in a tribunal in Newcastle that affects somebody’s mobility, will that automatically be applied to Scottish case law? How will it be implemented, and who will make that decision?

To clarify, you have not had any direct discussions with the UK Government in the past 10 months about changing the criteria and how that would affect passporting. That all happened in the previous session of Parliament. You have not discussed that at all with any UK minister in the past nine or 10 months.

This is my last question on this theme. Minister, you were with me on the Social Security Committee as we chewed through the relevant legislation, and if you go back and look at the comments, particularly those of Jeane Freeman when she was cabinet secretary, you see that there was an expectation that the eligibility criteria would be very different by the time that we got to this stage. The only significant change has been around terminal illness and that, interestingly, was because of amendments lodged by me, Labour and the Greens.

What would you say to someone with MS or epilepsy or another variable condition, who might have a nice experience of the system but will still be turned down because they do not meet the eligibility criteria? We have waited six years for significant change around eligibility. Do you not feel that we, as the Scottish Parliament, have let those vulnerable disabled people down?