Social Justice and Social Security Committee
This report considers the challenges for committees scrutinising broad social justice policies, and how they can harness relevant frameworks and other committees' expertise to improve accountability.
The Parliament agreed on the 15 June 2021 to establish the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. The following issues fall within our remit:
Social justice
Welfare policy and social security
Child poverty
Homelessness and rough sleeping
Violence against women and girls and domestic violence
Poverty action measures
Third sector and social economy
Kinship carers
Minimum income guarantee
Refugees and asylum
Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator
Since the Committee was set up, we have looked to bring increased focus and greater accountability to the social justice aspect of our remit.
Social justice is a cross-cutting issue, the tools with which to improve social justice in Scotland lie across different policy areas, sectors and governments.
Cross-cutting has become a widely used term across public, private and third sectors. It usually refers to issues that affect, or ‘cut across’ different policy areas, departments or organisations
Cross-cutting work is often needed to ensure progress on a particular subject area.
For a cross-cutting approach to be successful departments or organisations must collaborate effectively. They must also have a shared understanding of the issues, and have shared data and frameworks to support analysis and evaluation of progress.
Within the context of this report our focus is on those who develop, deliver, and scrutinise public policy to address social justice issues.
The Parliament’s Conveners Group acknowledged that policy areas and remits have become increasingly complex over time. The cross-cutting nature of public policy means that there are many areas of scrutiny that would benefit from a cross-committee perspective.
The Group identified cross-committee working as a particular priority during discussions on the Group’s strategic priorities at the beginning of the session.
We have already worked with several other committees to bring a social justice perspective to a range of issues, and these activities can be found in Annexe A.
This report identifies a number of long-standing common cross-cutting themes in our work that have arisen across the diverse subject areas within our remit. These are also likely to be a feature of other committees' work. We take a view on how these impact on implementing social justice policies and shine a light on how closer collaboration between the Scottish Government, local government and the UK Government can make a positive difference to progressing social justice.
By highlighting how social justice issues relate to other committees' remits we hope to support committees to include social justice aspects in their future scrutiny work and to share their progress with us.
We would like to thank the many organisations that have contributed their views and the individuals who have spoken with us about their personal experience. This has helped us to not only consider specific issues within our remit, but also examine wider cross-cutting topics like progressing social justice.
Social justice is a concept that originates in political philosophy but is widely used in both ordinary language and social science, often without being clearly defined. Social justice encompasses many of the issues covered in our remit, particularly poverty, child poverty, and a minimum income guarantee. It also includes concepts covered by other Parliamentary committees, particularly equalities, human rights, and sustainable development.
The term is regularly used in connection with inequity in the distribution of income, goods and rights. It is therefore strongly linked to a human rights approach to poverty reduction. A report for the UN commented that—
In the modern context, those concerned with social justice see the general increase in income inequality as unjust, deplorable and alarming. It is argued that poverty reduction and overall improvements in the standard of living are attainable goals that would bring the world closer to social justice.i
Every year in February the United Nations (UN) uses World Social Justice Day to bring attention to specific social justice issues that States can focus on throughout the year. This year's focus is on achieving social justice through “Overcoming Barriers and Unleashing Opportunities for Social Justice”.
Social security is a form of “social protection” and has an important role in achieving social justice.
Through the payment of benefits Governments can, for example, relieve poverty, redistribute income and provide targeted support to meet additional costs (for example, the additional costs faced by disabled people). They can also pursue wider economic and social aims through the social security system, including encouraging participation in the labour market, providing income stability and economic stimulus in downturns, and changing behaviours.i
The Scotland Act 2016 gave the Scottish Parliament and Government powers over benefits falling within certain categories. It also provided power to top-up reserved benefits and to create other new social security benefits. The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 established a framework for the new system.
Social Security Scotland currently administers 13 benefits. A further six benefits will be launched over the next few years.ii
Last session the Scottish Government set out policies that contribute to social justice in its Fairer Scotland Action Plan. These were based around five ambitions for 2030:
A Fairer Scotland For All
Ending Child Poverty
A Strong Start For All Young People
Fairer Working Lives
A Thriving Third Age
There are 50 selected actions that were to be undertaken between 2016-21. Progress made on the Fairer Scotland Action Plan, the First Minister's independent advisor on poverty and inequality's Shifting the Curve report, and the Life Chances of Young People in Scotland report was published on 9 December 2020.
This session the Scottish Government has set up a Working Group to consider a minimum income guarantee (MIG). This is a certain level of income that no-one should fall below. It can be provided through wages, social security and, potentially, by reducing costs through provision of services.
The Fairer Scotland Duty (the Duty) came into force on 1 April 2018. This places a legal responsibility on named public bodies in Scotland to actively consider (‘pay due regard’ to) how they can reduce inequalities of outcome caused by socio-economic disadvantage, when making strategic decisions. The Duty applies to all strategic decisions irrespective of whether the decision is focused on addressing poverty or inequality.
The Fairer Scotland Duty guidance explains—
This is a complex, multidimensional problem, closely related to poverty. Having less access to resources can mean that individuals fare worse on outcomes including health, housing, education or opportunities to work or train, and these negative outcomes can reinforce each other. Adversity in childhood can have life-long impacts, and growing up in poverty is associated with poorer educational attainment, employment prospects and health inequalities.i
The Guidance further states—
The economic shocks of, for example, the financial crisis in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted and further exacerbated the socio-economic disadvantage experienced by people in Scotland. These kinds of profound effects on disadvantage make assessments under the Duty even more important if we are to make the lives of people experiencing socio-economic disadvantage measurably better.ii
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the Regulator for the Fairer Scotland Duty and is closely involved with monitoring and the development of best practice for the Duty. The Duty applies to Scottish Ministers, to regional health boards, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Services, amongst others.
The National Performance Framework (NPF) also offers a way to track progress on social justice. There is a National Outcome for poverty for example. However, to get a full understanding of how Scotland is performing in relation to social justice, you would need to examine a number of National Outcomes and their respective indicators, for example the National Outcome for Communities, Human Rights and Children & Young People.
Another approach to tracking social justice, is through the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement (EFSBS) which is published each year alongside the Scottish Budget. According to the Scottish Government, the EFSBS sets out its assessment of the impact the budget makes to equality and fairness, and how these considerations influence its budget decisions. It links relevant National Outcomes and the human rights engaged.
We note that the Fairer Scotland Action Plan covered a number of actions many of which were delivered during the last Parliamentary session. There were, however, a number of actions that were still in progress or noted as a continuous programme of work. Two examples are—
Action 9 - We will reform public services to deliver the highest quality service to users, with dignity and respect at their core - In progress
Action 44 - We will improve employment services for disabled people - Continuous programme of work.
According to the Scottish Government, the Action Plan is the start of a long-term commitment to help shape a fairer Scotland and a Citizen's forum would help to set out new fairness actions for this session of the Parliament.
It is essential that long-term action plans maintain continuity and are transparent to support Parliamentary scrutiny. The last publicly available progress report on the Fairer Scotland Action Plan was in December 2020. We ask the Scottish Government when we can expect the progress report for 2021. Also, what are the Scottish Government's next steps for the Fairer Scotland Action Plan in this Parliamentary session.
We note that the Minimum Income Guarantee interim report was due at the end of 2022. We ask the Scottish Government when the interim report is now expected to be published.
We know that the cost of living crisis has had a significant impact on people's lives, particularly those in low income households. This was highlighted by our Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Low income and the debt trap report, which showed that more people were getting into debt for everyday essentials and that public debt was a significant proportion of the debt owed by households. The crisis has also impacted on the effectiveness of some of the Scottish Government's social justice policies, for example, meeting the interim child poverty targets has been made more difficult.
It is therefore even more crucial that committees scrutinise public bodies to ensure they have completed assessments under the Fairer Scotland Duty (the Duty) for their strategic decisions. Public bodies decisions should aim to have a positive impact on socio-economic disadvantage and the inequality of outcome for both adults and children, as everyone is aware the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis exacerbate existing inequalities.
We would like to see committees build scrutiny of the Duty into their ongoing work, where appropriate. To help committees with this task, the Guidance to the Duty also lists case studies and resources committees might find helpful for planning their scrutiny.
Through our budgetary work we have tried to identify whether it is possible to look at the Scottish Budget through a social justice lens. This has proved to be quite challenging as many of the policies relevant to social justice are cross-cutting and either do not have specific budget lines or are spread across a number of budgets. Spending on social security is more clearly defined in the budget process.
We recognise the Scottish Government's Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement continues to develop and is helpful in getting a clearer understanding of spending on budget priorities and groups of people impacted. Though, as noted in our most recent budget report, we need the National Performance Framework (NPF) to be more closely aligned to financial decision-making to aid transparency and accountability. We look forward to the forthcoming review of the NPF and how this could help committees to gain a clearer understanding of progress towards social justice in Scotland. We intend to engage with the Finance and Public Administration Committee's scrutiny of the NPF when it comes to the Parliament for its formal consultation role.
What plans does the Scottish Government have to make social justice policies more transparent to assist committees when scrutinising whether public policy is achieving national social justice outcomes.
Contributing to social justice outcomes requires actions across many portfolios and individual policy areas. This can bring challenges for Parliamentary scrutiny.
There are several Scottish Government policies that have particularly strong social justice aspects to them and are within the remit of other committees.
For example, the Scottish Government's proposed human rights bill will incorporate four United Nations Human Rights treaties into Scots Law, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, which falls within the remit of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Law Committee. Policies on early learning and childcare and reducing the attainment gap are within the remit of the Education Children and Young People Committee also contribute to social justice aims. Similarly, ensuring that economic strategy takes account of social justice issues would be the primary responsibility of the Economy and Fair Work Committee.
In terms of our remit, when we wrote to the then Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, Shona Robison, on 8 July 2021 seeking an indication of her priorities for session 6 relevant to our remit, she responded on the 28 July 2021 setting out her key social justice priorities—
Tackling child poverty
Support for people on low incomes
Tackling food insecurity
Delivery of social security.
More recently, we note the Scottish Government's 2023-24 Budget sets out its aims to address three key priorities—
eradicating child poverty;
transforming the economy to deliver a just transition to net zero; and
achieving sustainable public services.
Whilst we acknowledge that most policies could be viewed through a 'social justice' lens, there are two key policies we consider essential to promoting social justice outcomes. These are tackling child poverty and a just transition to net zero. These areas require sustained, cross-committee scrutiny to ensure that progress is being made. The following sections consider this in more detail.
We are aware the Conveners Group and the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee are already looking at co-ordinating scrutiny action on Net Zero.
The Conveners Group's net zero scrutiny strategic priority progress report notes that climate change and net-zero are complex scientific, socio-economic and environmental issues, and so require whole-society solutions. In their 7 December 2022 report to the Scottish Parliament, the Climate Change Committee concluded that in the Scottish Government—
“There is little evidence of cooperative policy planning, which is now undermining the achievement of Scotland’s more ambitious short-term goals.’.
The progress report also states that "As discussed at Scottish Parliament sponsored COP26 events, this lack of policy coherence is mirrored by the challenges faced by the parliament, and parliamentary committees, in delivering effective scrutiny of the Scottish Government on these issues - the challenge of scrutiny coherence."
The Just Transition Commission has a role in providing scrutiny and advice on the Scottish Government's draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan. In its letter of 15 February 2023, the Chair of the Commission, Professor Jim Skea sets out a number of high level considerations, including—
Inequalities – sectoral Just Transition Plans should begin with an assessment of the current ‘state of the sector’. This should document in plain terms existing inequalities within a given sector (including those related to income, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, age, and regional disparities including remote, rural and island areas) and identify the key systemic factors contributing to these inequalities. Each plan should seek to redress these as a core strategic objective, as well as setting out realistic and achievable actions towards the delivery of fair outcomes
Equity –a just transition approach requires that the costs and benefits of transition be shared equitably. To demonstrate this, Just Transition Plans should map out clearly what the costs and benefits are, who will benefit, who is vulnerable to negative impacts and what these are, who will pay more for the transition and which groups will pay less.i
A just transition presents many opportunities for Scotland to achieve social justice objectives. This is an area we are keen to engage with. Tackling poverty could be prioritised through the move to a green economy. We also recognise that social security measures could be needed to support individuals affected by the transition. Also, marginalised groups or low income households could be negatively affected by the unintended impacts of green policies. As such, we are keen to discuss with the Just Transition Commission its work and how we can integrate these aspects into our scrutiny work.
The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 includes statutory targets to reduce child poverty. Progress is measured by child poverty statistics, released annually along with annual progress reports required by the Act. The current delivery plan, Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026 was published on 24 March 2022.
It continues the focus from the first plan on the six priority family typesi and on three drivers: employment, cost of living and social security benefits. It sets out ‘Scotland’s offer to families’, based around three areas—
Providing the opportunities and integrated support parents need to enter, sustain and progress in work
Maximising the support available for families to live dignified lives and meet their basic needs
Supporting the next generation to thrive.
Interim targets are due to be met by the end of this financial year - 2023-24. We will not know whether this has been achieved until 2025 as the 2023-24 statistics will be published in March 2025.
We took evidence from stakeholders on the new Delivery Plan on 21 April 2022. This was followed by our session on the Resource Spending Review on 23 June 2022 where we heard from Shona Robison, the then Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government and Kate Forbes, then Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy about prioritising tackling child poverty.
We subsequently wrote to committees about our inquiry into parental employment and child poverty and asked whether committees had undertaken any relevant work or planned to do so. The Education, Children and Young People Committee shared its work on the Impact of COVID-19 on children and young people living in deprivation and the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
The Public Audit Committee held evidence sessions on 6 October and 10 November 2022 in response to the joint Audit Scotland and Accounts Commission briefing on Tackling Child Poverty. The briefing sets out recommendations for the Scottish Government and local government. The Committee agreed that addressing child poverty is a serious and urgent issue. In particular, it agreed with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland who stated—
“the failure to properly address child poverty is having a catastrophic effect on children across Scotland, and we are not doing enough to address that”.
Due to the broad cross-cutting subject matter of child poverty and the infrastructure needed to help parents into employment (e.g. childcare, transport and digital connectivity), several committees may have a specific interest in addressing child poverty, parental employment, or both.
Only by working collaboratively can we take a holistic approach to consideration of the individual policies needed to make progress in this overarching policy. This collaborative approach would strengthen scrutiny of the Scottish Government's "national mission" to eradicate child poverty and ensure progress is made and driven forward where required.
Over the course of the Parliament there have been numerous successful approaches to committees working together with a shorter-term focus, for example, on the National Planning Framework or in relation to scrutiny of bills.
A recent example of where committees have continued to come together to scrutinise a cross-cutting policy area is the work on reducing drug deaths in Scotland and tackling problem drug use. This has seen the Criminal Justice Committee, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and the Social Justice and Social Security Committee hold evidence sessions and participate in a Parliamentary debate on the topic since February 2022.
We want to develop a wider understanding of the work committees are undertaking on social justice issues. This will help to inform the focus of our work, where there might be potential gaps, and scope to collaborate. We hope this report helps committees with their scrutiny of social justice issues. However, we are interested in what we could do to make it easier for other committees when they look at areas related to social justice. This will help us to hold the Scottish Government's to account on social justice statutory duties and to ensure policy commitments are being actioned to deliver intended outcomes.
We look forward to continuing to work closely with other committees to bring a social justice perspective to their work and to capitalise on the opportunities to draw on committees' expertise on matters within their remit that progress social justice.
As set out in the introduction to this report, our remit is made up of diverse subject areas. At the start of the parliamentary session we held several stakeholder evidence sessions to understand the different subject areas within our remit in greater detail and to hear from stakeholders about their priorities. The Committee's Annual Report 2021-22 details this work.
In addition to these sessions, we have continued our focus on scrutinising the Scottish Government's progress on tackling child poverty, delivery of devolved social security and the financial resourcing of policies within our remit. All these activities have helped us identify where there are common themes and areas of shared concern arising across the different topics within our remit.
Many of the cross-cutting themes identified are likely to also feature across other committees' remits. We note that some of the cross-cutting themes identified in this report are long-standing issues.
Cross-cutting issues witnesses raised with us are—
Governments and accountability
Responsibility for policies relevant to social justice are shared between UK, Scottish and local Governments. We heard that UK decision-making can impact on the effectiveness of devolved policies and services and, conversely, that Scottish Government decisions can impact indirectly on reserved matters e.g. social security. In addition, there were concerns that UK and Scottish Government policy decisions impact on local authorities' ability and flexibility to deliver policies and services to address social justice issues.
Funding
Sustainability and the longevity of funding was identified as crucial to the delivery of social justice policies. Funding for prevention and early intervention work were highlighted specifically in this regard. Insecure and single-year funding for the third sector, which often provide public services that contribute towards social justice, was an issue. Understanding spending and whether it is delivering the required outcomes on cross-cutting issues, like tackling poverty, is considered to be much more difficult.
Equality, intersectionality and human rights
A lack of progress towards mainstreaming of equalities, with gender being highlighted particularly strongly was raised. There is a need to take account of intersectionality in social justice polices and delivery of services. Lived experience is critical to the design of policies. Helping people to achieve their human rights and ensuring those rights are respected in policy development is essential to achieving social justice.
Data
Better data collection is needed to help target new and existing social justice policies. Also, data sharing needs to be improved to help anticipate service delivery needs.
Homelessness
Homelessness is a barrier to achieving social justice. Homelessness can be a sign of the economically marginalised, for example, disabled people or people from ethnic minorities. Homelessness can also be a barrier to achieving social justice as people find it more difficult to access services.
Digital inclusion
Many marginalised groups are the most likely to be digitally excluded. Digital exclusion presents barriers to people’s connection with, and engagement in, all parts of the system of public services and debt advice. A multi-channel approach is therefore important.
National emergencies
The pandemic has highlighted existing inequality and barriers within current systems. It has, however, also led to better joined up and partnership working across sectors. Lessons must be learned from the pandemic to prevent crisis occurring again. During emergencies there are additional pressures on services and frontline workers. The pandemic and cost of living crisis has brought the need for prevention and early intervention into sharp focus. These approaches can prevent costly crisis interventions.
Poverty and social security
Every policy and investment decision should be considered with a view to reducing poverty (including child poverty). Employment used to be a route out of poverty but now two thirds of children living in poverty are in working households. Growing up in a family experiencing poverty can impact on educational attainment and other opportunities, which in turn can limit life chances. Poverty is a particular issue for sole carers, lone parent households, or households in which there is a disabled child or adult. The importance of social security as a safety net for those on low incomes, including specific groups such as disabled people and carers was underlined.
Sustainability
Jobs created in the green economy are very important to tackling poverty. There needs to be a strengthened focus to create a wellbeing economy, with a just transition, where social justice is integrated. Energy efficient social housing is needed for low income households to help keep their bills down, as well as more accessible housing for disabled people.
Social justice has been prioritised by various governments during the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament. They have had different key focuses, such as housing, social inclusion, welfare and most recently poverty with a key priority of tackling child poverty.
Evidence we've gathered has shown that there are issues around accountability and governments, equalities and human rights, data, digital inclusion, homelessness, national emergencies, and poverty and social security. All of which have an impact on achieving social justice in Scotland.
We note that some of the cross-cutting issues identified in this report are long-standing, such as, joined-up working and the collection and use of data. Achieving progress in these areas would require concerted effort by relevant governments and public bodies and this is made more complex as policies, funding, delivery partners and measurement frameworks develop and change.
To kick-start our work on these barriers we have prioritised the collection of data and the cost of living crisis (national emergencies), as these are critical to moving forward several issues within our remit, though we will continue to scrutinise other common barriers in the course of our scrutiny work.
We are committed to tackling the social justice issues within our remit. With a broad remit it can be more difficult to target scrutiny to maximise its impact. By identifying and focusing on the barriers identified we aim to assess progress in tackling them over the course of the session. This report, and the information we received from other committees provides baseline information. We intend to continue to gather evidence from stakeholders and the Scottish Government and report again before the end of the session.
We ask the Scottish Government what actions it has taken to remove long-standing, cross-cutting barriers to progressing social justice in Scotland.
The Deputy Convener of the Local Government, Housing and Local Government Committee attended a Social Justice and Social Security Committee roundtable on homelessness and rough sleeping on 4 November 2021.
The Social Justice and Social Security Committee held an evidence session and engagement event on the Scottish Government’s Fuel Poverty Strategy and wrote to the Scottish Government and Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, which has lead responsibility, on 14 November 2021.
The Social Justice and Social Security Committee shared the work it had undertaken on the tackling child poverty strategy to inform the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s inquiry into health and wellbeing of children and young people in a letter 29 November 2021.
The Social Justice and Social Security Committee held two roundtables on 3 and 10 February 2022 to consider refugees and asylum seekers. A member of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee attended.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee held an evidence session on Part 4 of Covid Recovery and Reform Bill - Tenancies. The lead committee was the COVID-19 Recovery Committee. Evidence session attended by the Convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee on 8 March 2022.
The Social Justice and Social Security Committee held a debate on it report Robbing Peter to pay Paul: Low income and the debt trap which included the cost of living crisis on 1 November 2022. Both the Health, Social Care and Sport and the COVID-19 Recovery committees contributed to the debate.
The Social Justice and Social Security Committee contributed to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee's consideration of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill at Stage 1 by holding two evidence sessions and writing to the Committee on 8 December 2022.
The Social Justice and Social Security Committee contributed to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee's debate on its inquiry into health inequalities on 14 December 2022.
The Criminal Justice Committee is co-ordinating work on reducing drug deaths in Scotland and tackling problem drug use with the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Representatives of the three committees have met on 1 and 2 February, 15 September 2022 and 22 March 2023, as well as participating in a debate on 31 May 2022.