Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, November 30, 2023

Official Report 623KB pdf

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Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1

Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session on the Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill. This member’s bill, which was introduced by Mark Griffin MSP on 8 June 2023, is currently undergoing stage 1 scrutiny. We have already heard from four panels of witnesses, and next week we will hear from Mark Griffin, the member in charge of the bill.

I welcome to the meeting Shirley-Anne Somerville, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and from the Scottish Government, Kirsten Simonnet-Lefevre, solicitor, and Risga Summers, policy manager. You are all very welcome, and thank you for joining us to aid our scrutiny.

Cabinet secretary, I believe that you have a short opening statement to make before we move to questions.

Thank you very much and good morning, convener. I very much welcome the opportunity to contribute to your evidence sessions on Mark Griffin’s Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill.

As the committee will be aware, the Scottish Government intends to oppose the bill, because we are committed to undertaking a more wide-ranging public consultation on our approach to replacing the United Kingdom-wide industrial injuries scheme with employment injury assistance. The results of that consultation will have a major impact on the Scottish Government’s views on whether to replicate the UK Industrial Injuries Advisory Council in Scotland. Only if we decide to replicate that can we look at what that body would look like.

As members will know, the industrial injuries disablement benefit is currently delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions under an agency agreement that runs to March 2026. The committee will also be aware that there are particular complexities associated with replacing the scheme, which was introduced in 1948 and is delivered using an almost entirely paper-based system. More than 100,000 paper files relating to Scottish awards are held in a number of warehouses, contrasting starkly with the largely digital systems associated with the benefits that have been devolved to date.

It is therefore vital that we continue to work closely with the UK Government to address those challenges in a way that protects the interests of current clients. Although that considerably constrains our ability to make fundamental changes in the short term, I am committed to considering how employment injury assistance can best meet the needs of the people of Scotland, while protecting payments to current clients, which is, as always, our utmost priority.

Mr Griffin’s bill would introduce a Scottish advisory council without employment injury assistance being in place. Until Social Security Scotland began to deliver employment injury assistance, we would not be able to make any legislative or operational changes in response to any recommendations made by the proposed council. The only way to make changes now would be to renegotiate the agency agreement, which might put clients’ existing payments at risk. It is therefore my view that it is not logical to introduce a statutory advisory council before our policy approach has been settled, because of policy development and in order to make the best use of resources while giving value for money.

That said, I very much recognise the arguments made by Mr Griffin and some stakeholders for establishing a Scottish equivalent to the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council. I am also aware that many people would like to see changes made through the introduction of employment injury assistance, including the modernisation of the scheme. The responses to our 2016 consultation demonstrated a wide range of views on the current scheme, including from those who want some aspects to be maintained.

The committee has heard many of those views from stakeholders in the course of its scrutiny of the bill. However, it is important to clarify that the bill does not make changes to the criteria, nor does it automatically mean that new conditions, such as long Covid, would be considered as industrial diseases. Instead, the bill largely replicates, in Scotland, the functions of the IIAC, of which the committee has heard extensive criticism.

It is also important to note that many areas where stakeholders would like to see reform, such as occupational health and safety and employment law, are reserved to the UK Government. It therefore makes more sense to wait until we have a clearer understanding of the level and form of advice, expertise and scrutiny that will be required, before legislating to introduce an advisory body.

Indeed, that is why we have committed to exploring those issues through a public consultation, and to establishing a stakeholder advisory group to implement the recommendations that emerge from that consultation. I do not want to pre-empt the consultation’s outcomes, but the advisory group would be able to consider the kinds of questions that have been raised in response to Mr Griffin’s bill. For example, it could consider questions of long Covid and the gender disparity in the current scheme, and it could also consider the current provision of scrutiny and advice in the context of the existing UK Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and the Scottish Commission on Social Security.

Our position is, therefore, that the question whether to establish a statutory Scottish advisory council is best considered as part of our wider work on industrial injuries, alongside the range of questions that stakeholders and recipients of those benefits expect us to consider. For the reasons that I have set out, the Scottish Government will not support the bill.

I look forward to any questions that the committee has on the issue.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. You have made it very clear that the Government does not support the bill, but is it open to elements in it? Not supporting the bill is one thing, but being open minded about certain aspects of its contents is another. Are those issues being ruled out, or will they be considered as part of the Government’s wider consultation?

As I tried to lay out in my opening remarks, it will be necessary to look at many of the issues that have been raised by stakeholders and by Mr Griffin directly as we carry out our wider consultation on industrial injuries. That is why it is important that we look at those things in the round instead of looking just at one part of them.

I would describe this as being asked by the bill to design a part of a jigsaw when we do not know what the whole jigsaw looks like or even what jigsaw we are trying to build. That is the challenge that we are facing. A number of pertinent issues have been raised, and I do not think that there would be any problem with any of them being raised as part of the consultation. In fact, I would expect them to come up.

It is clear that the Scottish Government will have to think carefully about the kinds of knowledge and expertise that will be necessary to advise ministers on social security with regard to industrial disease and injury. Can you give us a little bit more information about the kind of knowledge and expertise that you think will be vital?

We will need great knowledge and expertise, which is why we want to hear from a range of people, whether they be scientists, occupational health professionals, trade unions or, importantly, those who are already on the current scheme. That has always been the defining way in which we have developed our social security system in Scotland.

The expertise and knowledge required for any future advisory council will depend on the shape of employment injury assistance. Perhaps I can give you one example, convener. The current IIAC membership reflects the medicalised eligibility criteria for IIDB. You heard in your evidence sessions many criticisms of those criteria and of how the IIAC operates; if employment injury assistance were to depart from IIDB at any point in the future, the kind of knowledge and expertise that might be required could be very different.

Again, I go back to the fact that it is difficult to know exactly the type of knowledge that we will want on any future council until its role and remit are decided. That is why the membership should be decided when we know that role and that remit, and that will very much depend on the shape of the benefit.

I will ask about the voice of the worker, of lived experience and of occupational health in a moment, but I take it from your first answers that SCOSS will not be an appropriate vehicle for offering that kind of advice and that fundamental changes would have to be made to the structures of SCOSS to enable it to do so.

The committee is well versed in SCOSS, having met it in the past, and as you will know, it was set up with a specific remit. If we were to ask it to undertake anything different, that would require a change of remit and a change of expertise.

However, I hasten to add that, until we know what the remit will be, we will not know whether we would suggest a different type of council or a change to SCOSS. I refer the committee to Dr Mark Simpson’s suggestion in a previous evidence session that SCOSS could, for example, have a sub-committee on that issue. That is but one area that could be taken forward; there are many others, but it very much depends on the type of benefit. We would then roll on to what the council—and its membership—would be and where it would best sit.

The committee has become aware of a gap that exists—and, indeed, became particularly aware of it a couple of weeks ago, when we heard from Lucy Kenyon of the Association of Occupational Health and Wellbeing Professionals and Professor Ewan Macdonald. They highlighted the need to collect better and more robust data in the workplace on emerging trends and issues regarding industrial injury and illnesses. Trade unions and occupational health are keen to be part of the partnership that plugs that gap and collects that data, and the Health and Safety Executive—which, unfortunately, is not giving oral evidence to our committee—has a role to play, too.

Cabinet secretary, will you say a bit more about which organisations and bodies have a significant role to play here? Do you accept that there could be a gap? Which bodies, individuals and groups could help to plug that gap in relation to data and emerging trends around such illnesses?

Stakeholders raised a number of interesting points in the evidence sessions on this issue, and it is important that we look at where there are concerns. One of the complicating factors is that much of what has been talked about, including health and safety at work, is reserved. That creates a number of challenges. For example, the IIAC has an observer from the Health and Safety Executive at every meeting; because occupational health and safety is not devolved to the Scottish Government, it would be difficult to replicate that prevention role, which raises a question about how a Scottish body would engage on the important subject of prevention. A discussion definitely needs to be had, but it is complicated by the nature of the devolved/reserved settlement.

I am very keen to explore the issue in depth and will keep coming back to it. It is important that we look at the issue in the round and at the wider challenges that we have with regard to, for example, how to work with the Health and Safety Executive and other reserved agencies on ensuring that the body is fit for purpose. I very much hear what has been said on the matter, and I have heard the concerns of trade unions and others. That is why it is important that we look at the issue through a broader lens than the bill allows.

Just for my own clarity—without getting into any wrangling over whether occupational health or health and safety should be devolved or reserved, and irrespective of where those powers sit—do you believe that there should be clear roles for the Health and Safety Executive, occupational health and our trade union movement?

If you are talking about what would happen with our employment injury assistance, the Health and Safety Executive is clearly one example that we would need to look at. With respect, I am not going to suggest any solutions in that respect while we have yet to carry out the consultation on the bill.

However, I very much hear what you have said about the suggested gaps and the fact that we will need to work together, despite the fact that the matters are reserved. Regardless of where the powers lie, we will need to work together, as we have done with the DWP on the devolution of powers.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. We move to questions from Marie McNair.

Good morning to you, cabinet secretary, and to your officials.

Our committee is keen to ensure that, as much as is possible, the bill delivers on the aspirations of all the witnesses. Do you believe that it meets those aspirations with regard to assessment?

Having read and listened to the witnesses’ evidence, I am concerned that many of their concerns will not be answered by the bill. They have, quite rightly, raised specific concerns about the current council and the current benefit. In my mind, they will not be resolved by the setting up of another council alongside the current council, because much of what has been discussed is around the eligibility criteria, which do not change, and how an individual is assessed, which does not change either. Nor does the bill, in its definitions, change the medicalised nature of disability.

My worry is that people will think that the bill will solve certain issues—it will not. They have rightly raised concerns that need to be addressed, but they will not be addressed by the setting up of a council that will not be able to make any changes or by the fact that Scottish ministers would not be able to act on the suggestions that the council, if it were put into being, would make to us.

09:15  

Thank you.

With other transfers, there have been minor adjustments to eligibility criteria. Is it possible that we could include, for example, widely accepted asbestos-related cancers, or is safe and secure transfer where we are going?

I think that we need to be careful when we talk about specific conditions or disabilities. As I watch this process, I have a concern about specific conditions being brought up, particularly, with the greatest respect, by a politician—not any member of this committee—who talks about getting a council set up to do something important about a particular condition. Politicians should not be determining the conditions that would be part of the scheme. Our role is to set up the eligibility criteria and the process and then leave it to experts and advisers to advise on what the changes should be. Again, I urge caution to those who think that being part of the scheme is the solution to a specific injury or a specific condition.

When it comes to the changes that can be made, the committee will have heard me and my predecessors always talk about safe and secure transition. That is important, because our first responsibility is to those who are already on the benefit. If we are looking to make changes—for example, to eligibility—we run the risk of having a two-tiered system. Indeed, we have had the same discussion on every single benefit that has been devolved. It is inherently unfair; moreover, because one set of people would be referred to by certain rules, while another group of people would be referred to by others, it would be—if I can put it this way—inherently legally problematic.

Therefore, our ability to make changes while case transfer continues very much faces challenges. That is one of the other aspects that we need to look at. It is important always to reflect on our responsibility to those who are on the benefit and our responsibility not to set up a two-tiered system, given the legal challenges that that would present.

Theoretically, some changes could be made. At that point, we would very much be talking about changes at the edges to ensure that those legal problems were not allowed to happen. We would be tinkering at the edges of a scheme that many of your stakeholders have said is inherently and systemically unfair and would not be dealing with many of the challenges and problems that they have raised in their evidence.

Is the Scottish Government still planning to re-establish a stakeholder advisory group on industrial injuries, as mentioned in your letter to the committee?

Yes, we are. That is very important. There have been suggestions that part of the role of the council that would be set up through the bill would be to advise on how a new benefit might look in the future. With the greatest respect, we do not need to have primary legislation and a council established in order to do that. For every other benefit that we have had, very successful stakeholder groups have been established to take forward points raised in consultations. I presume that the people who have been suggested for membership of the council are exactly the type of people who would be on that stakeholder group. Importantly, though, others would be involved, too.

We could put in place that stakeholder group as a way for experts and people with experience of the current system to feed into policy development, as we have done previously. It would play that role until the new benefit is in place, at which point we would move on to permanent bodies whose role and scope, as I have said before, would be determined by what the benefit looked like. We do not need a council to be in place to do that—there are stakeholder groups that can do that for us.

I have previously asked for assurances that Clydebank Asbestos Group would be included in that advisory group, and I hope that the role that it plays will continue.

Finally, do you envisage the core principles of Mr Griffin’s bill being covered in your consultation on employment injury assistance?

Obviously, people can say anything that they want to during the consultation process. I have met Mr Griffin in the past to discuss the bill, and I thank him for the conversations that we have had. I appreciate that he has found it frustrating that the Government does not support his bill, but I have certainly valued the time that we have spent discussing it.

The bill has, to date, raised many issues, and that will greatly assist the wider consultation when it takes place. Mr Griffin has gathered an exceptional amount of evidence and carried out stakeholder engagement, which we welcome. We will have that in mind as we shape how we move forwards. Although the stakeholders who support Mr Griffin’s bill might be disappointed that the Government is not supporting it, we have heard what they have said, and the challenges that they have highlighted will be taken forward in our future wider consultation.

Does the cabinet secretary not accept that setting up a council now to do the work to inform the policy approach will mean that any changes are ready for implementation sooner? She has spoken about a stakeholder advisory group. In the light of what she has just said to Marie McNair, does she see that body as performing the same function?

I think that the cabinet secretary accepts that the current scheme is not fit for purpose—she called it “inherently unfair”. I am told that only 7 per cent of people who currently receive the benefit are women. I am not sure whether that is the exact figure, because it is difficult to get the information, but it is clear that the vast majority of people who receive the benefit are men and that that does not reflect who is being injured.

If the cabinet secretary accepts that the current scheme is not fit for purpose, does she also accept that we need to start the work on framing what a new benefit might look like as soon as possible, if we are to achieve a satisfactory benefit? Yet again, she will be responsible for a benefit that is not fit for purpose, as we have seen with other social security benefits.

I am not sure whether you are saying that we have benefits that are not fit for purpose at the moment.

Perhaps it is not helpful to get into the current benefits. To a large extent, you have simply mirrored what is happening down south, which many of us hoped would not be the position. Our hope was that we would be doing something better. However, let us not get into that discussion. Let us focus on whether the employment injuries benefit is fit for purpose

I am not a referee but, if the cabinet secretary wants to respond to Katy Clark’s comment, I ask her to do so briefly as there was a substantive question before that.

I will be brief, because we have an important issue to discuss. I am afraid that that was an unfortunate dig at our system, given that Social Security Scotland’s client surveys provide evidence that people have seen an inherent difference and that they feel that they are treated with dignity, fairness and respect. I would more than welcome the opportunity to rebut that more fully, convener, but perhaps that is for another day.

On the substantive point, I have set out why I think that a stakeholder group can take on the type of role that has been suggested for the council until a benefit goes live. We have not needed a council or group to be set up to advise us in this way for any other benefit. Through the work that we have done on other benefits, we have proven that we can work well with stakeholders and those with lived experience to design a benefit.

It is important that that is done at the right part of the process. We need to do the policy development before considering what the actual system might look like and before we start building it. Our experience has shown how we can devolve benefits, transfer cases and make up new benefits that are only available in Scotland with stakeholder engagement. I would be confident that those who have been involved, for example, in the disability and carers benefits expert advisory group—DACBEAG—have felt that the committees concerned have been exceptionally worth while, and that they have shaped the benefits that they have addressed.

On the aspect around women, it strikes me that the current benefit has inherent flaws in the way that it is set up, as it is very much based on a system that was set up for traditional heavy industries where the employees were mostly male, and the scope of the benefit has not changed. I return to the point that that concern will not change if the proposed council is set up, because the eligibility will stay the same. Eligibility is perhaps the problem that has led to a lack of women coming forward; it is not that we need another council to do more research on other areas.

There are issues around women and around the use of a medicalised rather than a social description of disability. There are systemic issues, which we will need to consider in the context of the benefit. None of those will be solved or changed if the council is put in place.

Surely the point is that the council would do work to inform decisions on eligibility. Would that not add to the policy process?

We have had stakeholder working groups for every other benefit. DACBEAG is the most obvious example, but there have been others, and such groups have shaped eligibility and policy development. In going through a process for every other benefit, we have had stakeholders, experts and advisers in place, who have been able to shape eligibility and take part in policy development with us. We have not had to pass primary legislation to set up a benefit, not knowing whether it would actually be of use in its initial format. The process that we have gone through has helped us with shaping eligibility when we have eventually set up the benefit. There are other, simpler ways of doing that, which do not require legislation, and we have done that in the past.

Surely the lesson that we have learned from previous experience is that, if we do not start the work soon and do it as quickly as possible, we end up taking on the schemes that already exist for extended periods. Surely we now have an opportunity. Whether it is an advisory group or a council—whatever we call it—we should surely try to implement as soon as possible a body that would do the work to inform the policy approach. What is the timeline?

The timeline for the benefit has changed, as we set out previously, because we moved to include the Scottish child payment in our work. The big change to the timetable was that public announcements were made about the changes to timeframes to allow us to work on the Scottish child payment.

09:30  

I am keen to progress the consultation early in the new year to seek views on how we will move forward. What that implies for the timescale depends heavily on what comes from the consultation. If people wish us to move forward with a similar type of benefit to the one that we have now, the timescale for that would be different from what it would be if people wanted an utterly different benefit—for example, one that moves away from medicalised to social definitions of mobility. The timeframe depends on what people want us to do when the consultation responses come in—whether they want minor or large changes.

Let us presume that the consultation says that work needs to be done to inform a new benefit. What would the cabinet secretary’s timescale be for her stakeholder advisory group? How quickly will that work start?

We expect the consultation to come out early in the new year and I expect the work on the stakeholder group to begin within that scope. I want to consult people on who would be in that group. I will not do that through the public consultation, but I want to take advice. Obviously, if the committee has views on who should be on the group, I would welcome those, but I see no reason for it to wait until the public consultation is over. Work on that can begin early in the new year, when we move forward with the public consultation.

Thank you for that exchange. It was remiss of me not to say that we will have some other questions on the timescale later, but those have been pre-empted. I should have identified that as convener, but we are where we are.

We move to questions from our colleague Paul O’Kane, who is online.

I will continue from where Katy Clark left off.

The committee has heard significant criticisms of IIDB. For example, Ian Tasker told the committee that it is

“no longer fit for purpose”.

Given those criticisms, is it still an option to introduce EIA largely unreformed? Does the cabinet secretary recognise the criticisms of IIDB and does she view it as acceptable to introduce a benefit in that state?

People will have their views about what the short-term measures and longer-term changes should be and will express them during the consultation. I have already made points about the importance of safe and secure transition for case transfer.

A lot of the points that Ian Tasker, for example, brought up concerned suggestions about changes to eligibility being implemented at the same time as case transfer. I have already pointed to the challenges that that would create, given the potential introduction of a two-tier system during that time.

However, I hear the criticisms of the current system loud and clear. I am sympathetic to the people who would like to see changes through the new benefit when it is fully devolved and administered by Social Security Scotland. We have to be realistic about the timescale that some of that might require. I always go back to the fact that, if people want us to make large-scale systemic changes to the essence of the benefit, that will take longer than keeping the core of the current benefit and making changes around the edges. Nonetheless, I very much take the point that there are inherent problems with the benefit that will need to be examined.

We might not deliver all the changes overnight but, on the journey to where we might get to, we can make changes, as we have with other benefits. However, as part of the consultation, I am open to hearing what those changes would look like for people and how much time they would want us to take to make very large changes. Making such changes might take longer than some people would like but, if people want to see big changes, it will take longer to develop the policy for those.

It is interesting that the cabinet secretary talks about timescales and the length of time that it will take to do things in this space. The Scottish Government has made repeated commitments to bring forward the consultation, but it has been continually delayed. The committee was told in September that the consultation would happen this year. The last month of the year starts tomorrow. Therefore, where is the Scottish Government in the process of formulating the consultation? Why have there been such repeated delays? What has prevented the Government from providing clear timelines on this?

As I think that I mentioned already, one aspect around the timeline was that we put the Scottish child payment into the social security programme. I made that announcement in my previous role, I think. Since the reshuffle and coming back into post, I have taken the time to look at this very carefully. There are inherent challenges with regard to this benefit that are completely different from the challenges with any other benefit that we have had devolved to us. That has made me look at the process again to check where we are at with it.

I cannot stress enough the challenges of moving a benefit where the information is kept in a number of warehouses. I do not think that we even know how many warehouses the Scottish cases are in, but they are kept in a paper-based format in a number of warehouses. They are not stored in an easily transferable way and they are absolutely not digitised. There are challenges in dealing with that and there are costs related to the different ways that we might want to deal with that. We might need to think about different ways of dealing with it, because it is a very different system.

We are absolutely committed to taking the process forward, but it involves different challenges to those of any other benefit that has been devolved to us. Those are expensive challenges, because it is a non-digitised benefit.

The cabinet secretary has made that point a number of times. The issue is that the pledge to carry out a consultation is now three years old. Can the cabinet secretary give the committee any sense of the timescale for the consultation? As I said, the last month of the year starts tomorrow. Clearly, you are not going to deliver a consultation this year, so is there any indication of when it is going to happen?

I have already said to other members that I would expect the consultation to begin early in the new year. With the greatest respect to Mr O’Kane, I must say that, as well as the announcement on the Scottish child payment, work on social security has been impacted by Covid. I ask him to please bear that in mind when he talks about what has happened in social security in the past three years. During that time, we have continued to see a number of the most complex benefits in relation to disability that we have had devolved to us go live and be successfully implemented.

On this benefit, yes, we need to move forward. However, I have been taking time to look at the benefit since I came into post, because I recognise that there are challenges that we need to look at that will not necessarily be resolved in a simple fashion and that there are inherent problems involved that we will need to look at in great detail.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast that spending on IIDB will be £84 million this year, falling to £81 million in 2027-28. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that the budget saving there is, in essence, because people are dying? People are not able to make a claim and they are dying. Does she recognise that that is a serious issue?

The Scottish Fiscal Commission makes its forecasts based on the current eligibility for the current scheme, as it does with any benefit. Obviously, it cannot take into account any potential changes that could be made to eligibility until the Scottish Government has designed the benefit.

I know that Mr Mason wants to explore the finances underpinning some of this but, before we come to that, I want to check something. Cabinet secretary, you keep talking about the fact that, if the eligibility criteria do not change, the outcomes will not change in terms of who qualifies for and receives the existing benefit or the new Scottish benefit. We heard a lot about the judgments being based on expert opinion and the reasonableness test in the eligibility criteria.

We also heard that the IIAC has identified four conditions relating to long Covid that could potentially allow people to receive benefits, and that is caught up in the process. However, there is a difficulty with that, because the recommendations that politicians and processes rely on experts making are not always accepted—in this case, potentially, by the DWP on behalf of the UK Government. The reason I am putting that on the record is to ask you what parts of the eligibility criteria might need to be looked at again and changed. Should the eligibility criteria always be expert led?

It is important that those aspects are expert led, both in the design of the policy and in the implementation of the policy once it is in place. Previously, you heard evidence—I think that it was from Anna Ritchie Allan, but it might have been from someone else—that the current scheme does not fit with the social security charter. From my reading of that evidence, there was a real desire for us not to copy something that embeds inequality and discrimination. That was an important aspect that was brought up.

Some of the challenging aspects around eligibility that I have already mentioned include the medicalised description of disability, which does not fit with how we do things in the rest of the devolved settlement on social security—that is but one example.

I am aware that the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council has done a great deal of work on long Covid and has made recommendations to the DWP—I understand that the committee has heard evidence on that. However, I recognise that, although those recommendations have been with the DWP for some time, it has not made a decision on them, and I have asked for an update from the DWP on when it expects to be able to make a decision on long Covid.

I hear people’s frustrations about the fact that, when the current advisory council makes a report and hands it to the DWP, decisions are not made quickly. Again, I point to the fact that there is nothing in the bill that would change that, so people’s frustrations about the timelines and the decision making would not change if the bill was enacted.

I will focus on the financial side of things. We have asked previous witnesses about the financial memorandum. If the council were to be established—I accept that the Government is not keen for that to happen—do you think that the figures in the financial memorandum are realistic?

I think that it makes a number of assumptions about what the council would do and how it would operate. Again, as I said, I do not know whether the figures are realistic, because I do not know what the benefit will look like that it will be advising on. I can only look at what the bill suggests that the council would do in a situation in which the DWP is handling the benefit on behalf of the Scottish Government through the agency agreement. In that case, we would have a council that might or might not undertake its own research, or that might commission research, and that would submit its conclusions to the Scottish ministers, but the DWP would not have to act on those conclusions. Again, I would query the value for money that that would provide.

09:45  

Concerns have also been raised about duplication and whether any council that was set up would duplicate work that is already done by the IIAC. If there were to be duplication, that would be a concern.

In addition, the committee has heard from a number of stakeholders that the proposed research budget is insufficient to enable a meaningful impact to be made. There is a question about whether the amount of money that the council would get would be enough to enable it to carry out good research. Even if it carried out good research and came to conclusions, the DWP would in no way be obligated to act on those conclusions. There are concerns about that.

You raise quite a lot of points, one of which is about research. I understand that, at the UK level, there is only £100,000 for research, which seems incredibly low. The bill proposes a figure of £30,000 for research. Do you get a lot of research for £30,000, as far as you know?

No, you do not. Part of the challenge with the way in which the current council is set up—again, the committee has heard about this—is that there is an expectation that a lot of the research or work is done in a voluntary capacity. I do not want to pre-empt any consultations that the Government might take forward, but it would not seem a sensible or professional way to proceed to make it an expectation that people would do that work voluntarily.

The IIAC carries out a tremendous amount of research, but you do not get much for the figure that you mentioned. Therefore, I would query whether a sum of £30,000 would be sufficient and would genuinely question—if that sum was given to the proposed new council—what the Government or anybody else would be able to get out of that process.

Another cost that has been mentioned is that of the information technology set-up. We all know that IT costs sometimes run out of control. An IT set-up cost of £50,000 has been suggested, with annual maintenance costs of only £7,000. Those figures seem quite low to me.

I point out that, although it might be the case that IT costs sometimes run out of control in other areas, that has not been the case in Social Security Scotland. I want to put that on the record.

I take your point that there is a concern about public agencies and large IT systems. Again, it is difficult to assess the proposed costs when we do not yet know what the benefit will look like. In fact, I would say that it is impossible to do that, because we do not know what benefit we will be fitting into that system. Therefore, I would not be able to say one way or another whether the proposed costs are relevant, because we are talking about a part of the jigsaw that is yet to be designed.

You have made the point that, even if a new council was set up and it recommended an expansion of who could receive benefits, that would not necessarily happen, for a variety of reasons, one of which relates to cost. If the council was set up and it recommended that more people should get benefits—more women, for example, or more people with other injuries or diseases, or perhaps stress—where would the budget come from? The fire service has been looking for support to deal with cancer-related issues, and there are teachers with stress and so on. This is not in the bill, but if the figure of £84 million, or £81 million, that has been mentioned were to double, would that be financially feasible?

Again, I stress that none of the changes that have been suggested would come from the bill, because the DWP is not obligated to act on any such changes. However, if changes were to be made to include a greater number of women, the cost would go up, which would affect the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecasts. That would have to come out of the Scottish Government’s block grant, because we would be making additional asks of the social security system that would not be covered by the DWP and would therefore have to be found from our relatively fixed budget, as has been the way for every other benefit change that we have made. When you add that all up, it is a large amount of money. It is right to ensure that we are delivering the social security system that we want in Scotland but, as always with such asks, there is a financial cost that must be met from the Scottish block grant.

I am also on the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I do not want to overlap too much, but that committee is concerned about the number of organisations in Scotland. This is a small country, but we are getting more commissioners and more councils, commissions or whatever we want to call them. Am I right in saying that there is an assumption in the Government that we should not set up new bodies, except as a last resort?

Yes. We look at these things case by case. If something new is being delivered, we ask whether that can be done by changing the remit of a current body. The example was given of changing the remit of SCOSS but making what is being proposed a sub-committee. We would have to change SCOSS because it was set up for an entirely different structure and does not have the expertise to deal with these matters at the moment. That is one example of a place where you could look at using a current body, rather than setting up a different one, because, as you rightly point out, there are inherent costs in setting up new bodies. We must take account of those and, if we can simplify that process or use agencies and bodies that are already in place, we should certainly look to do that in the first instance.

Without pre-empting the coming consultation, you are saying that that could be an option and that all the advice, research and other functions could be fitted into an existing body, instead of setting up a new one.

We would certainly want to ask whether people think a different body is required or whether a current one could be adapted. What that council would look like and where it might sit depends entirely on what we want that council to advise the Government on. We may be looking at a very different benefit.

I have one final financial question. It is not directly related to the bill but is about the financial exposure that is caused by demand-led budgeting within social security, which the new Scottish benefit will be subject to. You said that your officials are in contact with the IIAC and the DWP about long Covid in connection with current benefits. Does that include any modelling of the financial exposure for the Scottish Government over any agency agreements, if the DWP was to accept those? That is the first part of my question.

What horizon-scanning work is the Scottish Government doing? You can set that out in writing if you want to, cabinet secretary. Without pre-judging what any new eligibility might look like, what future financial exposure do you anticipate for the Scottish Government? I am mindful that, if Scotland does the right thing—as we absolutely should do—but the UK does not change anything, that will increase pressure on the Scottish budget. That is not directly connected to the financial memorandum to this bill, but there is definitely a correlation between the aspirations of this bill and the financial exposure of the Scottish budget and Scottish Government. Is there anything more that you can say about that?

Demand-led budgeting within social security is a challenge for us. If the DWP were to make a change to its system in respect of long Covid, we would receive a block grant adjustment for that, so I am not concerned about any changes that the DWP might make, because there would be an understanding that, if it changes its eligibility criteria or number of cases, we would expect the same.

In effect, the impact should be reasonably neutral. The difference comes when we make changes up here that are not made down south, which—inevitably—puts major pressures on our budget. I would be happy to provide an update on how much above the block grant allocation we provide to social security because of the changes that we have made to the current devolved benefits and because of the new benefits that we have brought in.

We have not gone into horizon scanning in great depth, because that would very much depend on what the benefit looked like. The number could be quite large; that would depend on what came from the consultation. We will stress the financial implications, as we always do in consultations. When people look at introducing things, that comes with a cost that needs to be met from the block grant.

This is always a dangerous thing for a convener to say, but I do not think that colleagues have any other questions. No one is catching my eye—mind you, I am not looking at anyone.

We will end the evidence session. I thank the cabinet secretary and the two officials who supported her; we appreciate your attendance. We will suspend briefly while we change panels.

09:56 Meeting suspended.  

10:01 On resuming—