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The next item of business is consideration of the legislative consent memorandum on the Welfare Reform Bill. I refer members to paper ICI/S4/11/9/4. As set out in the paper, members are invited to note that the draft report on the LCM on the Welfare Reform Bill will be considered by the committee at its next meeting on 23 November. Members are invited formally to note the information provided by the LCM and to give views on any additional matters, beyond those highlighted in the evidence, that they wish to be incorporated in the draft report. Does anyone have any comments on the paper?
From my recollection of the evidence session, the issues that have been identified in the paper are the ones that we would want to pick up on. It might be useful to have a trawl through the witnesses’ evidence to see whether there is anything else that we should add.
I think that members and the clerks will do that before the draft report is produced.
You might recall that, after the evidence session, I broached the subject of possibly getting a Westminster minister to come before us at a joint meeting with other committees to discuss the welfare reform proposals. I do not know whether anything has been done about that.
We will report to the Health and Sport Committee, which I think is looking at that angle. If the Health and Sport Committee has a minister up, there is nothing to stop members of this committee attending the meeting and asking questions.
Could we ask whether the Health and Sport Committee has made that request?
Yes. We will get Steve Farrell to do that.
What is there is good, but it would also be good to flag up the relationship between the housing benefit reforms and the 2012 homelessness commitment. We can argue about whether the reforms are good or bad, but the impact on a legislative requirement of the Parliament is a slightly different angle.
I think that that will form a big part of our homelessness inquiry.
It would perhaps be worth welcoming the Government’s approach to the matter, because it is not allowing the timescale to be dictated to it and it is waiting to see all the available evidence.
Are members content to note those two points? We will obviously have a more detailed discussion of the issue next week.
Before we move into private session, on behalf of the committee I thank Jackson Carlaw for his contribution to the work of the committee and its predecessor in the previous session of Parliament. We wish him well in his new role.
Thank you very much, convener.
As previously agreed, the committee will take the remaining agenda item in private.
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