I welcome everybody back to this morning’s meeting of the Public Audit Committee. I am very pleased to say that agenda item 3 is further consideration of the Auditor General’s report on adult disability payment. I am particularly pleased to welcome to the committee Edel Harris, who is the former chair of the independent review of adult disability payment. Thank you for joining us—it is greatly appreciated.
We have some questions to put to you, but, before we get to those, I invite you to make a short opening statement to get us under way.
Good morning. I apologise for not being there in person. Thank you for accommodating my attendance via Zoom.
The publication of my report in July this year marked a significant milestone in the on-going efforts to assess and enhance the effectiveness of adult disability payment in meeting the needs of disabled people in Scotland. The independence of the review was welcomed. From the outset, my goal has been to ensure that the ADP system is fair, transparent and supportive and that it empowers those whom it serves to live with dignity and to enhance their independence.
Since the transition from a reserved system of social security to one that is led and managed by the Scottish Government, there have been several welcome and positive changes that are evident when you compare the Scottish system with the personal independence payment, or PIP, process. Therefore, my recommendations are designed, first and foremost, to build on those great foundations. In addition, they are designed to improve the overall client experience and to promote more timely decision making. In my opinion, most importantly, the final set of recommendations is designed to ensure that we have a modern, outcomes-focused and much more realistic approach to determining eligibility.
It is worth highlighting in this short opening statement that, throughout the course of the review, many people gave very positive feedback on adult disability payment and Social Security Scotland. They spoke highly of staff interactions and described feeling respected during the application process. In particular, they welcomed the lack of medical assessments and the short-term assistance that is on offer in Scotland, which is unique to Scotland. I heard the word “kindness” often, and I witnessed at first hand on my visits to the agency the culture and the values at the heart of Social Security Scotland.
Within my recommendations, the proposed changes to systems and policies—which include, for example, the provision of updated guidance and training—may be more readily achieved in the near term. Some recommendations come with a one-off cost, whereas others—especially those that relate to changes or potential changes to eligibility—will likely involve on-going costs.
As, I am sure, you can understand, estimating the change in benefit expenditure is challenging. Alongside the data that would be required and the assumptions that would need to be made in order to make robust calculations, there may also be some resulting behavioural changes by clients, so it may take time for changes in trends to become established enough for any costing analysis to be completed. Producing estimates of the scale of the impact on expenditure might be more straightforward where some of my recommendations relate to specific cohorts of people. In the report, you will see some illustrative examples.
I stress that this whole exercise considers only the potential extra costs of making changes. No work has been done or even been proposed on the potential wider benefits to the economy or to other state-funded services of making an investment in the people of Scotland. In an ideal world, decisions about eligibility would always be made on a human rights basis, rather than being led by cost considerations. However, I recognise the rising numbers and the gap between expenditure and block grant funding and the other financial limitations that the Government faces.
If social security is indeed viewed as an investment in the people of Scotland and a human right, as outlined in the charter and in legislation, I hope that ministers will use the findings of my review to design a truly world-leading disability payment system that is fair and supportive of disabled people’s needs now and in the future.
Thank you very much indeed for that opening statement.
When we took evidence from the Auditor General and his team on 1 October, he said some interesting things about where things were and what the Government’s response was to your review and your recommendations. We will get into questions about that, as well as costings, because, even though we are the Public Audit Committee, we think—as you do—that we are not concerned simply with the financial cost implications of the system; we want to look at how it is being run and whether it is producing the intended outcomes.
I invite Joe FitzPatrick to put some questions to you.
Good morning. I think that you have partly answered this question, but it would be good to hear about the background to the review, what spurred its being set up as an independent review and what its remit was. You have partly answered that, but could you give us a bit more detail on the remit and some information on how you went about carrying out your work?
Yes, I would be happy to. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice appointed me to chair the independent review in January 2024, work began on the review in February 2024 and, as you know, the report was published in July 2025. There was also an interim report, which was published on 5 November 2024.
The review took into account the analysis of the consultation on the eligibility criteria for the mobility component of ADP, which predates me—that was published in August 2023—and the analysis of the consultation and call for evidence on the daily living component of adult disability payment that was part of my review. That was published in June 2024. There were a lot of reports.
The Government asked me to look specifically at the activities and the descriptors—in other terminology, the eligibility criteria—that determine someone’s entitlement to ADP and, in particular, how those apply to disabled people who live with fluctuating conditions. It asked me to assess people’s experiences of applying for, receiving or challenging a decision about ADP or undergoing a review. That included the experiences of people who were unsuccessful in their application. It asked me to look at the consultation process, the specific guidance for practitioners and the guidance for decision makers to ensure that a rights-based model of social security was being applied. It also asked me to look at initial priorities on which early action might be possible, and those were outlined in the interim report that I mentioned, which was published in November last year.
The following issues were beyond the scope of the review: the purpose of ADP and the adequacy of payments. I have to say that the adequacy of payments came up a lot, but, as it was not in scope, I was not able to respond to some of the conversations that were had on that.
The Government also asked me not to look at the wider aspects of disability assistance—in other words, things that are not unique to ADP—and that was quite tricky. Those wider aspects include things such as supporting information and the special rules for terminal illness. That was quite challenging, because those are all parts of a client’s experience, so they came up naturally in the conversations that I had. I was not asked to consider whether there should be an alternative body to Social Security Scotland to deliver ADP.
In relation to the methodology, the most important thing to me, as someone who has worked with and for disabled people for almost my whole career, was to ensure that people with lived experience of a disability or a long-term health condition, and the organisations that support them, really had a voice and had their views and experiences listened to throughout the review. I hope that you can see that their input is at the heart of the report.
We had a comprehensive programme of engagement. I recruited an advisory group that consisted of 10 people who represented individuals with lived experience, as well as some welfare advisers who were very knowledgeable about ADP and the social security system.
11:15I will not go through the whole list, but there were a lot of engagement sessions. I cannot remember the number of meetings that I had, but it ran into the hundreds. We also did an online public consultation and call for evidence, which ran between June and August 2024. In addition, I met the Scottish Government—in particular, members of the policy team—and Social Security Scotland officials on multiple occasions, to try to get a better understanding of the policy landscape and all the internal processes that have shaped people’s experience.
As I mentioned, there was a consultation on the mobility component. In addition to that, Social Security Scotland did an evaluation of supporting information, and both those things formed part of my method of collating information.
Thank you. I guess that you were restricted to some extent, and the cabinet secretary would want a degree of focus. I assume that it would be her intention to act on your recommendations. Have you had any indication from the Scottish Government of when it will be able to respond to your recommendations?
Yes. It was set out quite clearly at the beginning of the review that there would be a response from ministers within six months of the publication of my final report. By my calculations, that would be by 1 February 2026 at the latest. I met with the cabinet secretary towards the end of the review and shared the final report with her, and she certainly intended to stick to that deadline. I think that everyone is expecting the Government’s response to the recommendations to be made public.
Do you expect the Government’s response to say how it will deliver on your recommendations, or do you think it will be more finessed?
Gosh—I have no idea. You can see how much hard work has gone into the report, not just by me but by the secretariat and everybody else, particularly the disabled people who have been involved in the review, and how much evidence has been gathered. I certainly hope that the response will be quite robust in responding to the recommendations—as you know, there are 58 of them—and saying whether the Government intends to implement none, a few or all of them. I have no idea, but I certainly hope that there will be a robust response. I think that disabled people and others who have been involved in the review would expect that.
Okay. Thank you.
When we took evidence from the Auditor General on 1 October, he said:
“I do not think that we are yet clear about the Government’s intention around the review.”
Edel, are you reasonably clear about the Government’s intention around the review?
I am certainly clear that it intends to respond to the report and my recommendations within six months of publication. Obviously, I do not know what that response will be—whether it will be a holding response or whether it will be, “We can implement some recommendations, but others will take more consideration or time.” I really do not know what that response will look like, but the Government has made a very public commitment. It is less about my expectations than about those of the people who gave their time and shared some very personal stories and experiences with me. I think that there is a high expectation among the disabled people’s community in Scotland and among welfare advisers, other key stakeholders and charities that the response will be published within six months of my report.
Thanks for that response. I invite the deputy convener, Jamie Greene, to ask some questions of you.
Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us. Unfortunately, I have to be the one who talks about money—this is the Public Audit Committee—but I will try to limit it to what is in your report and what we have already heard from Audit Scotland and what is in its report. I will link it to some of the comments you made in your opening statement, to tease out some of the other issues, which are not just financial but very much linked to the finances of the delivery of this devolved benefit.
I will not state the obvious, but both reports point out some of the fiscal anomalies of the Government in Scotland introducing different benefits of this nature. To take one snapshot, in the financial year 2023-24, more was spent than was received from the block grant—to the tune of £171 million. However, looking ahead at the bigger picture, the forecast seems to suggest that, by 2029, the figure could be as high as £700 million to £800 million. Of course, the numbers will vary as we work through those years, but it is a substantial amount of money.
Given that the Scottish Government has a mandatory duty to balance its books, have you identified any concerns that resolving that variance of spend versus what is received may affect other areas of the wider welfare budget or other social security benefits? What effect might that have on recipients of other benefits, for example?
I should caveat any answer to questions related to finances with the fact that I recognise that there is currently a gap in spending and that that forecast is based on none of the recommendations in my review being implemented—it is based on the status quo. I also understand that it does not take into account any changes that might be made within the wider United Kingdom. Again, I am focusing only on the changes that might relate to PIP and how that might impact the block grant funding for ADP. Of course, you could argue that, if the Scottish Government makes changes as a result of my review, there could be a reverse impact on UK Government funding, but we will park that for now. The caveat is that I am certainly not an expert in this area but I will do my best to answer your question.
I am not sure that I can add very much to Audit Scotland’s findings on this, but you might have seen that, in my report, I quote the Fraser of Allander Institute’s acknowledgement that the caseload for disability benefits is growing right across the UK, so it is not just a Scottish issue. However, the caseload is rising more rapidly in Scotland. I think that you heard from Audit Scotland about some of the reasons for that, although, during the course of my review, it was very hard to find evidence to determine what those reasons are. A lot of them are assumptions about things like the eligibility criteria remaining broadly similar, but Scotland’s system is seen as being much more accessible, and it has a simpler application and review process. There are also some very practical things that are different and that come with a cost, such as the awarding of short-term assistance, which is unique to Scotland, and investment in things like local delivery and the independent advocacy service. All those costs are not being incurred, like for like, in the UK system.
My answer to your question is that, if there is that gap of £770 million before any further changes or recommendations are implemented, a very comprehensive piece of work needs to be done on what the additional costs, over and above the £770 million might be if the Scottish Government intends to implement any of my recommendations. As I said in my opening statement, in all these conversations we talk about costs—I totally understand that—but, as far as I know, no work is being proposed to look at what the potential wider economic benefits of investing in disability payments could be for Scotland, for society or for other state-funded services.
Thank you very much. I will pick up on something that you just said that I find very interesting. That figure of £770 million is, of course, based on a number of assumptions, but it also assumes that the status quo will continue for the next five years and does not take into account the Government’s response to any of your recommendations. Therefore the obvious question is this. If, in an ideal world, from your point of view, the Government accepted and implemented all your recommendations, would that figure of £770 million go up or down?
I cannot give an accurate answer to that question, because some work would obviously need to be done. However, we can probably assume that, when you start improving a system, you will have one-off costs around things like case management system changes. Some of those are quoted in the report, but they are very rough figures. For example, just for the case management system changes, the estimate was between £1.27 million and £2.9 million. So, at this stage, you could probably work out numbers for some of the increased costs. There are also some examples in the report of recommendations related to specific cohorts of people. One of the recommendations is around the automatic awarding of short-term assistance, which would mean that people would not have to apply for it. Obviously, there is an element of choice involved, but, putting that aside, there would be an automatic awarding of short-term assistance when people were going through redetermination and appeal, and we have been able to put numbers on that as an illustrative scenario in the report.
We can try to cost some things, such as automatic entitlement if someone is already in receipt of a blue badge for mobility or if they are already in receipt of an independent living fund award, for example. However, I think that the bigger cost implications would be around the benefit expenditure, because if you change the eligibility criteria and if—there are a lot of ifs here—the changes in the eligibility criteria result in a higher number of people being eligible, the cost will obviously increase. I say “if” because I do not think it necessarily follows that, if you have a more modern, human-rights based social model and a disability outcomes-focused way of measuring eligibility—again, there are some examples of this in the appendices to my report—more people are eligible. My argument would be that these are people who are currently living with a disability or a long-term health condition who find that the current eligibility criteria and the application process are denying them their human right. It is very complex.
If the Scottish Government intended to review the eligibility criteria in the way I have recommended, a whole lot of work by people much cleverer than me would need to be done to analyse the costs. However, there is a broad assumption that, if you changed the eligibility criteria in the way that I have recommended, the outcome would most likely be a higher cost.
I understand that, and I am not passing any judgment, one way or the other, on whether that would be appropriate. However, I draw attention to what paragraph 40 of the Audit Scotland report says about the Scottish Government’s responsibility under the “Our Charter” principle of delivering value for money. More importantly, the Auditor General made an interesting point about understanding what effect taking a different approach to social security would have on other bits of the same budget, which support the same cohort of people but in different ways. There is a whole other area that you could expand on—it is maybe for another day—in terms of where you see these benefits being an investment and the ways in which they could bring down expenditure in other public services. That is probably quite a big and complex area of policy to look at, but it is an important one.
I do not mean that the words “value for money” mean different things in different circumstances, but I guess it depends on how you look at it in the context of what we are discussing. The policy intent, as I understand it, is that value for money is to be achieved not just through running a very efficient system, but also through the value that something brings to society by reducing things like poverty and enabling people to live more independent lives. As far as I am aware, the Scottish Government does not currently measure the success or otherwise of ADP in terms of poverty reduction or quality of life, so I would suggest that there is a gap there.
That is helpful. Thank you.
I have one or two quick questions. Paragraph 65 of the Auditor General’s report indicates that the feedback that was received by the independent review contained a recurring theme of disabled people highlighting stress and anxiety caused by delays in the system. Your review notes respondents’ frustrations regarding some of the processes that have been adopted by Social Security Scotland, with mention of the application process, processing times and the lack of communication. Can you tell us a little bit more about the areas that are causing the biggest issues and why they are doing so?
11:30
The less-than-positive issues that were raised by disabled people and other stakeholders related not to their overall experience, which was generally good, as I have already noted, but rather to their frustrations. In relation to some of the stories that I heard, “frustrations” does not go far enough, with some people talking about trauma. Some of their frustrations were with the processes that have been adopted by Social Security Scotland. The recurring ones that came up concerned the application process itself. It should be noted that the application form was designed with a lot of user testing and user input, and most people said that it was an improvement on the application form for the personal independence payment, but that still was probably the biggest issue. People were frustrated by issues including the technology, the form itself and the way that the questions are phrased.
Other recurring points of frustration included things such as the provision of supporting information and processing times, which came up consistently. There was frustration around the lack of communication, with people saying that, once an application was made, they did not hear for months or weeks about the status of their application, which caused a lot of anxiety. The telephone response times were mentioned and issues with third-party mandates came up, but I am aware that the agency is already doing something about that.
ADP is still a relatively new benefit, but those who work in the welfare advice space are now collecting a lot of data and are comparing decisions regarding different clients, and issues of inconsistency in decision making came up a fair bit.
The last few recurring themes concerned the lack of understanding of particular disabilities or conditions and the fear of losing an award if a redetermination request was being considered.
Those were the most frequently raised issues that seemed to be adding to people’s anxiety about the whole process. There was a lot of discussion around fluctuating conditions, and I think that I have already mentioned accessible communication.
The Auditor General highlighted that survey scores are positive overall, which seems to align with your consultation findings, but Audit Scotland also noted that it is not clear what levels the Scottish Government would regard as acceptable or whether it expects better satisfaction scores for PIP, given that the approach to ADP is different. Audit Scotland suggested that Social Security Scotland should consider setting such a level as part of its evaluation and include results around dignity, fairness and respect in the public performance indicators to measure success in that regard. Do you agree with that?
Yes, it certainly makes sense to me that, if you are setting so much store by treating people with dignity, fairness and respect, you would want to understand whether you are meeting those aspirations in at least the majority of client experiences. As you say, the percentages in the general customer client survey results—lots have been quoted in my report—are reasonable and good in a lot of cases but in some cases, such as the responses from people with communication needs, the percentages drop quite significantly. I do not have the page in front of me at the moment, but I think that the satisfaction score in that category was around 30 per cent.
I agree with the suggestion that you refer to in as much as I think that we want to see positive change, and we all know that the things that get measured and reported on are the things that we focus on in culture and behaviours. If a lot of store is being set by those values and principles, we should find some way of measuring them.
The majority of people I spoke to and engaged with during my review felt that, in the ADP process, they had been treated in a very person-centred way when compared with the way that they had been treated in the PIP process, and that people were kind. They spoke positively about the staff interactions.
That is very good to hear. The problem is that aspects of dignity, fairness and respect are very subjective and are difficult to measure. You get responses to your questionnaires and so on, and you do your assessments, but how do you evaluate that information in a way that helps Social Security Scotland to put in place positive changes in response?
I agree with your point to some extent. Dignity and respect are probably easier to measure if you are clear about how you will do that, but fairness is very subjective. Interestingly—and there is a section on this in my report—when we were looking at alternatives to a points-based system for making an award, because points-based systems are generally seen as being not very dignified and not in line with a social model of disability or a human rights-based approach, I could not find an alternative to them. We had lots of engagement sessions on the issue, because that approach was universally disliked. Ultimately, the issue came down to fairness, because disabled people and welfare advisers were saying that, if there is no form of measurement, it is impossible to challenge the fairness of a decision.
There are probably ways that you can measure how people are treated, but I think that the fairness point is probably more complex. During the course of the review, someone said to me that you could have two different decisions and they could both be right—that blew my mind for a little while until I stopped and thought about it. As soon as you bring human decision making, probability and so on into a decision-making process, some decisions might not appear to be fair for everyone. That is one of the challenges in the system.
I have one last question. Given the Auditor General’s comment that the Scottish Government lacks a clear framework to assess the overall impact of ADP, how might the recommendations of your review support the development of such an evaluation strategy?
The overall evaluation is important. I do not think that I addressed this directly, but I touched on it in the context of the purpose of ADP. If the purpose of ADP is to support disabled people with the additional costs of having a disability, there is a gap in that there is no evidence of what people are spending the money on and whether it is indeed helping to reduce poverty and promote independence and wellbeing. If you are looking towards an evaluation strategy, some of those things that I hinted at in the report would be relevant. At the moment, because it is still a relatively new disability payment, there are probably some other more fundamental things that we should be measuring and evaluating before we start looking at that bigger picture.
To be clear, because I am conscious that I am representing the voices of lots of different people who had many different opinions on things, I should say that there was also quite a body of disabled people who had quite an adverse reaction to the idea of any sort of measurement of how they were spending their adult disability payment. They had a real reaction to the suggestion that it might ever be part of an evaluation, because, obviously, that involves human rights around choice, privacy and dignity.
I want to follow up on what you were saying about eligibility and whether we monitor whether the payment improves people’s lives. You seem to be saying that there is no data on that, so we do not know what difference that has made to people, if any. Do you not think that there should be some research into that?
There is some research. From carrying out the review, I know that there was limited research on, for example, the additional costs of living with a disability. I do not have the page in front of me, but I think that I quote work that was done by the charity Scope to assess what those additional costs might be. That takes us into the conversation about adequacy of payment, which was definitely out of the scope of my review.
We have some evidence—not at an individual level but collectively—on what the additional costs of living with a disability might be. In my interim report, I made a recommendation or an observation that further research should be done so that we have a much better idea of what those additional costs might be. As far as I am aware, we do not currently collect any data, and I do not think that the Department for Work and Pensions does, either.
That probably goes back to the point about human rights. No one would ask you or I how we choose to spend our money, whether we are disabled or not, so there was quite a reaction when it was suggested that that could be part of an evaluation or a way of measuring the effectiveness of ADP.
I think that it would be quite complicated to do, but, as far as I am aware, Scotland does not collect that data at the moment.
You say in the foreword to your report that you are
“concerned with how the changes at UK level may impact disabled people in Scotland especially in relation to how people in receipt of certain rates of Adult Disability Payment may be entitled to other benefits.”
Can you expand on that?
Yes. At the time of writing the report, the UK Government had produced its green paper. Pretty quickly afterwards, as we will all recall, some of the changes were reversed—if that is the right word—and Sir Stephen Timms announced his review of the PIP assessment, which I think is due to report in autumn 2026.
I met Sir Stephen Timms on several occasions, during the review and more recently, to share the findings of my review and to advise on the methodology that was used in Scotland to ensure a genuinely inclusive process.
I am most concerned about how the changes at the UK level might impact on disabled people in Scotland, particularly where people are entitled to other benefits as a result of receiving a certain level of adult disability payment. That is referred to as passporting or passported benefits. There is a big fear in the community of disabled people about that at the moment, because, although the Timms review—I am certainly not an expert on the Timms review, but this is my understanding—is looking at personal independence payment, it is not looking at the potential impact of the removal of the work capability assessment for universal credit, which is being debated or discussed, and it is not looking at linking the universal credit health element to the PIP assessment. Again, I am not an expert in the detail of that—the committee probably does not need the detail—but decisions that are taken at UK Government level, not just related to PIP but related to that wider welfare reform, could definitely impact the lives of disabled people in Scotland.
Equally, if any of my recommendations were implemented, particularly those on the eligibility criteria, that might impact on both Governments’ conversations about block grant funding. That said, if we do anything in Scotland that increases the number of people who are eligible, we will not necessarily receive funding to meet the increased cost through the block grant.
11:45
That is a very topical subject.
I am not an expert on that.
You also say:
“The number of people receiving Adult Disability Payment is forecast to grow from 379,000 in 2024-25 to 703,000 in 2030-31.”
I had to pinch myself when I read that. According to the Scottish Fiscal Commission, that would lead to the costs rising from £3.1 billion to £5.4 billion. Those are huge sums. I presume that that figure would increase further if your recommendations were followed. All this is becoming rather unsustainable, is it not?
As I said a moment ago, there would potentially be one-off costs if some of my recommendations were implemented, particularly for additional training or systems changes, for example. Also, there could be additional costs if policy changes were made, such as the one that I mentioned earlier involving automatically awarding short-term assistance. However, let us say that we have activities and descriptors to better reflect people’s real lives, that we modernise things—in my view, the current system does not reflect modern-day life—and that we look more at outcomes rather than activities. If all those changes are made, as I am suggesting, it does not necessarily follow that more people will be eligible; it just means that we will have a fairer and more realistic way of measuring eligibility.
The figures that I quoted are from your report.
Yes, I know, but those figures just reflect the status quo. The final part of my report tries, where possible, to put numbers on some of the recommendations while noting that estimating change in benefit expenditure as a result of implementing any of the recommendations is an incredibly difficult thing to do at the moment, because we just do not have the data that we would need to make those calculations. The figures that are quoted simply look at expected increase in case load, irrespective of whether any of my recommendations are taken into account.
But you told us earlier that, if the Government followed your recommendations, it would cost more.
Yes. I think that, on the balance of probabilities, it would. I just do not have those numbers to hand. I am making the point that one-off costs would definitely be incurred if some of the recommendations were implemented, such as those on systems changes and on improvements to training. There would also be additional costs if some of the policy changes that I am recommending were made—for example, automatic entitlement for people who are in receipt of a blue badge or who are already in receipt of an independent living fund grant. I suppose that the biggest cost increase would be if benefit expenditure increased as a result of changes to eligibility.
If you make a system more modern, more outcomes-focused and better reflective of people’s real lives, and if you take into account things like fluctuating conditions, it does not necessarily follow that more people will be eligible, therefore the benefit expenditure will go up. That will be determined very much by what that new set of eligibility criteria looks like.
I hope that that explains it. On the balance of probabilities, you would have to argue that more people might be eligible, therefore the costs would go up, but work on that has not been done yet.
That is the way it looks to me, but I will ask you one final question. The report highlights the need for a more person-centred and trauma-informed approach to ADP. What specific changes do you think Social Security Scotland should implement to achieve this?
There are a number of recommendations in the report, particularly in the section on processes that work, which are about being a learning organisation and building on the good foundations that are already there. I cannot stress enough how, when people compared the ADP process to the PIP process, their feeling was that it was much kinder in nature.
In this meeting I have already talked about the things that cause frustration and stress. People used the word “trauma” often when describing their experiences of being assessed for PIP, so things like not having the medical assessments as part of the Scottish system have been welcomed.
Although the agency has started to do some work around trauma-informed practice, in my view, having spoken to agency colleagues and from gathering the evidence, information and stories from disabled people themselves, more could be done to ensure that, when clients are engaging with Social Security Scotland, there is an awareness not just of trauma in that experience but of the trauma that people might have experienced in their life. One of the recommendations in my report is that the agency do more in that regard.
Thank you. I have a couple of final questions. The first question relates to something that you were speaking to Graham Simpson about, not in the last set of questions but in the ones before that. An argument has been paraded in Scotland that the reforms or even the removal of personal independence payment in England and Wales have had no effect in Scotland because we have adult disability payment. However, as you have explained, reforms to PIP have implications for Scotland because of the passporting issue that you have identified, the Barnett consequentials that would potentially result from such reforms and the way in which the fiscal framework operates, which means, in other words, that if the benefit bill in Scotland goes up, the financial settlement that comes through the formula goes down. Can you confirm your view that there is a direct relationship between what happens with the Timms review and what the consequences will be for recipients of adult disability payment in Scotland?
Without knowing the outcome of the Timms review, it is difficult to answer with any great deal of certainty, but any changes to personal independence payment might have an impact on the funding. For argument’s sake, let us say that, at the end of the PIP review, there is some overall reduction in spend. That would have an impact. However, I have to say that when I last met Sir Stephen Timms he was clear that, although there was no additional money to be found, the review was not a cost-cutting exercise, and I suppose we should take him at his word. Obviously, though, any changes resulting from that would have an impact on the block grant funding at the higher level.
What most disabled people I spoke to were most concerned about or fearful of was the issue of passporting, which I have already mentioned. There are some proposals that the Government look at universal credit and link the health element to the PIP assessment. At the moment, that would be linked to the ADP assessment, but if there are any changes, that could have an impact on people’s income. There is also an issue around the work capability assessment. Again, when you look at a disabled person’s overall benefit income, at the moment some of it comes via adult disability payment, but some of it comes from benefits that are not devolved to Scotland. There is, of course, a risk that some of the changes, either in Scotland or at the UK level, could impact on the overall amount of money that someone receives.
Thank you. I will ask you another question to get your response on the record. You will have read the Audit Scotland report on adult disability payment. Do you agree with the recommendations that are made in that report?
Yes, I do. Although we were carrying out our reviews at broadly the same time and we did meet on a couple of occasions, the scope and the focus of the two reviews were quite different. I stress that the reviews refer to the current system. If there were any fundamental changes following my review, Audit Scotland might need or want to repeat its process, because obviously its recommendations are based on the here and now. I agree with all its recommendations; they make good sense. Most of its recommendations relate to things that were out of the scope of my review, so it is good to take the two reports together.
Thank you. That is very helpful. Finally, you have alluded already to the fact that your report makes 58 recommendations across a range of areas. That might not be quite as big a range as you might have liked; nonetheless, 58 is a lot of recommendations. Do you have a view about what the priorities should be for the Scottish Government in the short, medium and long terms? By February of next year, or hopefully even before that, if the Government said, “We accept the recommendations of Edel Harris’s independent review on adult disability payment” and you were in the Government’s shoes, which ones would you look to accelerate and implement in the short term and which ones might be more for the medium and longer terms?
I know that there are a lot of recommendations, but there are several that could be implemented relatively easily with no implications for recurring costs. Those smaller things would enhance the client experience, so I hope that they are received positively. However, if I had to prioritise overall—and it is a tricky thing to do, because obviously I think that all of the recommendations are important—I would highlight the recommendations in the part of the report entitled “A better future”. If Scotland continues to operate within the personal independence payment framework, although we can make it a more dignified and compassionate process, we are not fundamentally changing anything and we would not be meeting the aspirations that are set out in the legislation or the charter.
This is an opportunity in time. It is a very big opportunity to design a world-leading, holistic, person-centred disability payment system that is supportive of disabled people’s needs. If I were to be pressed further and could choose only two recommendations out of that “better future” part of the report, given the overwhelming response to the review and all the engagement and conversations that I had, those two would be removing the reference to a fixed distance in assessing mobility and replacing the 50 per cent rule with an improved application of the reliability criteria.
Thank you very much indeed for that clarity and for concluding the meeting with a very hopeful and visionary message of a better future.
Edel Harris, thank you for your time this morning. Your evidence has been very useful for us. We have a session with the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland coming up very soon. I do not know whether we will take the opportunity to press them to get a response earlier than February about their view on the recommendations that you have made in your very important report. We will make sure that you are aware of when that evidence session is, so that you can tune in or follow it later on.
11:59 Meeting continued in private until 12:19.