Contents
- Attendance
- Decision on Taking Business in Private
- Subordinate Legislation
- Social Security and In-work Poverty
Subordinate Legislation
Public Services Reform (Poverty and Inequality Commission) (Scotland) Order 2018 [Draft]
Public Appointments and Public Bodies etc (Scotland) Act 2003 (Treatment of Poverty and Inequality Commission and Scottish Commission on Social Security as Specified Authorities) Order 2018 [Draft]
Agenda item 2 is scrutiny of subordinate legislation. The committee will take evidence on the draft Public Services Reform (Poverty and Inequality Commission) (Scotland) Order 2018 and the draft Public Appointments and Public Bodies etc (Scotland) Act 2003 (Treatment of Poverty and Inequality Commission and Scottish Commission on Social Security as Specified Authorities) Order 2018.
I welcome Aileen Campbell, Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government. Welcome to your position, cabinet secretary. It is good to have you here. The cabinet secretary is joined by two of her officials: Paul Tyrer, head of social justice strategy, and Colin Brown, solicitor. I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.
Thank you very much, convener, and I likewise welcome you to your post on this committee. Thank you for the opportunity to seek the committee’s approval for the draft Scottish statutory instrument relating to the Scottish commission on social security and the new statutory Poverty and Inequality Commission. As you said, I am joined by Colin Brown from the Scottish Government legal directorate and Paul Tyrer, head of the social justice strategy unit.
I would like to thank you and the members of this committee for your continuing supportive engagement and scrutiny as we work to deliver these important new bodies. Due to the straightforward technical nature of the SSI in relation to public appointments, I also represent the interests of the Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People, Shirley-Anne Somerville, in this matter and I will speak to both SSIs in this statement.
First is the SSI that would allow the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland to regulate the public appointments of both commissions. Prior to the relevant provisions coming into force, the SSI needs to be approved in order for the commissioner to be formally involved. As outlined in the accompanying policy note, it would be possible for Scottish ministers to make unregulated appointments. However, the appointments process needs to be as rigorous and transparent as possible and the involvement of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life helps to achieve that.
As the committee is aware, these public appointment rounds have now commenced. I understand that Ms Somerville wrote to the committee on 4 September with information on the Scottish commission on social security appointment round, which is currently open to applicants and closes tomorrow, on 28 September. The commissioner’s code ensures that the appointment process is open, transparent and fair and that all appointments are made based on merit. I therefore hope that the committee will support this SSI.
The order under the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 will allow the Poverty and Inequality Commission to consider a wider range of poverty and inequality issues than those contained in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. The order is a pragmatic way of delivering a statutory Poverty and Inequality Commission with a wide-ranging remit. It will improve the exercise of public functions in regard to efficiency, effectiveness and economy by allowing a single statutory body to provide a wide range of independent advice on poverty and inequality.
That the commission should have this broad remit is something that Parliament and stakeholders clearly supported during the passage of the child poverty bill. As previously outlined during the bill scrutiny process, without this order, the commission would only be able to focus on child poverty, in line with the remit of the 2017 act. Some members will recall discussing that back in January, when this committee considered the draft order prior to further consultation.
Following further consultation, we have made very limited changes to the draft order. The most substantive change makes it more explicit that “lived experience” of poverty or inequality should be among the skills available to the commission. As my officials advised during the informal evidence session in May, embedding lived experience within the commission is a key consideration and we will seek to ensure that the members’ appointment round actively encourages applications from a wide range of individuals right across society. Other changes are stylistic—for example, changing references from section numbers in the bill to those of the 2017 act.
I hope that the committee will support both SSIs. I will be happy to answer any questions in order to assist your consideration. I look forward to contacting you in the coming months with details of the preferred candidate for the role of chair of the Poverty and Inequality Commission and to engage with you on considerations for the members’ appointment round. I thank you and look forward to your questions.
Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Are there any questions on either of the instruments before us?
Good morning, cabinet secretary. I have a question on the Public Services Reform (Poverty and Inequality Commission) (Scotland) Order 2018. The increased emphasis that the membership of the commission should include persons who have experienced poverty or inequality is welcome.
We discussed in private with your officials one of the disqualifying criteria; someone would be disqualified if they had ever been made bankrupt or been the subject of a trust deed. You can imagine that we want to have on this commission someone with lived experience of poverty, who has perhaps gone into bankruptcy or been the subject of a trust deed because of unemployment or something else outwith their control.
I know that there are barriers to changing the disqualifying criteria but is any work being done to try to remove that criterion so that someone with that experience could join the commission?
More generally, on the point about ensuring that we get a variety of voices to contribute, a lot of work has been done. We have attempted to use a broad range of approaches to ensure that people understand that they can take part in this commission. We are considering how we might make sure that the reach is as wide as it possibly can be when seeking members. I will ask Paul Tyrer to comment on the particular point about the disqualifying criteria.
The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 sets out that insolvency is a bar to membership of the Poverty and Inequality Commission. However, we discussed previously whether somebody who is part of a debt arrangement scheme would be able to apply. We provided advice to the committee that our view was that they would be able to apply to become a member of the commission.
Good morning, cabinet secretary, and congratulations on your appointment. You may be aware that it was this committee that really pushed for a statutory basis for the Poverty and Inequality Commission. I think that the committee did the right thing and should be commended for doing so. Angela Constance and her officials should also be commended for the way in which they responded to the committee at stage 2. That is why we are here.
I was particularly interested during the passage of the bill—and I know that other members have a similar view—in ensuring that certain things should be specifically mentioned in the delivery plan. Two of those areas would be single parents and people with a disability. Can you assure the committee today that the panel members you are about to appoint will be able to address the specific mention in the 2017 act of anti-poverty plans for those with a disability and single parents in particular?
I echo your comments about the work that Angela Constance and her officials did to respond to the clear request from the committee about the commission being put on a statutory footing. Part of the reason for being here today is to make sure that the commission is far broader in its remit than it would have been had it been narrowly focused on child poverty. I hope that that will enable us to include the issues that you raised about people with a disability and single parents.
I hope that that gives a bit of reassurance that this broader, wider remit allows us to make sure that we get the broad range of voices that we need within the membership of the new statutory commission to ensure that we can be held to account effectively on tackling inequality among particular groups and make the changes and progress that we need to make on the issues of inequality and poverty.
Good morning, cabinet secretary. We had a bit of discussion with your predecessor about how the interview process would take place. For some individuals, a formal interview would be off-putting and intimidating. Not everybody performs to their best in those. The consultation closes tomorrow and then there will be interviews. Will there be changes for people who may not have been through the process of a formal interview? Do you or your officials have any thoughts about that?
The Scottish commission on social security appointment round closes tomorrow and I understand that my colleague Shirley-Anne Somerville sent you the details and the pack for that. I hope that you managed to spread the word among your own contacts as well.
We are considering how to ensure we get as wide a range of applicants as we possibly can to the Poverty and Inequality Commission. We welcome any thoughts that you have as a committee about what other things could be done to support people who might not ordinarily view this as something that they would want to take part in.
09:15We have thoughts about having local awareness-raising events and ensuring that people feel supported in their applications. There are probably other ways in which we can tackle it, particularly in relation to the lived experience criterion for the inequality commission.
We are happy to engage with the committee on any thoughts you may have about what might be necessary to get a broader range of voices to apply for the commission. We probably need to think more generally about how we encourage people and how to make sure, if they do not get appointed in the first instance, that their interest in making a wider contribution to Scottish society is not lost.
That is very helpful. I am looking beyond the application, to how people are treated at interview stage once you have shortlisted them. If it is a formal interview, with four or five people behind a desk interviewing them, for some individuals that would not reflect their lived experience at all and they would not perform well or be able to explain that lived experience. What work can be done in the next months on that?
I take on board your points. However, I would point out that lived experience is a very explicit criterion for the application process. We will need to think through how people can be helped and nurtured along the way. Having that lived experience as an explicit ask and criterion for the members of the new commission is a big step in itself. It is for us to work out how we as the Government and in public life more generally help that to happen in reality as opposed to just being words in a criteria specification.
There being no other questions, we now move to agenda item 3. Normally, under agenda item 3, there is provision for a debate on the motions before us but I feel that we have had that exchange under agenda item 2. I invite Ms Campbell to move motion S5M-13766. Is the committee content to agree to the motion?
Do I need to formally move the motion first?
Yes. My apologies, Ms Campbell. I heard you move the motion in my head but that is not enough for the Official Report.
No, the voices in your head are not caught by the official reporters.
Let us do that again.
Motion moved,
That the Social Security Committee recommends that the Public Services Reform (Poverty and Inequality Commission) (Scotland) Order 2018 [draft] be approved.—[Aileen Campbell]
Motion agreed to.
I ask you now to move motion S5M-13768.
Motion moved,
That the Social Security Committee recommends that the Public Appointments and Public Bodies etc (Scotland) Act 2003 (Treatment of Poverty and Inequality Commission and Scottish Commission on Social Security as Specified Authorities) Order 2018 [draft] be approved.—[Aileen Campbell]
Motion agreed to.
Thank you. I will not get that wrong again, cabinet secretary. I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for their time. We will suspend the meeting briefly before we move to agenda item 4.
09:17 Meeting suspended.09:19 On resuming—
Council Tax Reduction (Scotland) Amendment (No 2) Regulations 2018 (SSI 2018/211)
Welcome back, everyone. We move on to agenda item 4, which is still subordinate legislation. The committee is invited to consider the Council Tax Reduction (Scotland) Amendment (No 2) Regulations 2018. I refer members to the cover note in paper 2. As it has done before, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, by division, drew these regulations to the attention of the Parliament on the grounds that they raise a devolution issue. The Scottish Government takes a different view.
For future regulations, the DPLR Committee has suggested a way to resolve its concerns and has written to the Scottish Government accordingly. The committee’s role is to consider the policy at this stage. Is the committee content to note the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
We will briefly suspend once more.
09:20 Meeting suspended.09:21 On resuming—