Welfare Reform Bill
The purpose of agenda item 4 is to allow the committee to comment on the United Kingdom Welfare Reform Bill, which is entering its concluding stages at Westminster. I hope that allowing everyone to put on record their views of the bill will let us get them out of the way, so that we can move on to deal with the substantial work that we will have as a committee. Once comments have been made, I will talk about how the committee intends to consult and engage with those who will be affected by the reforms and what actions the committee can take.
I support sensible welfare reform. I want people to be in work rather than in benefit. However, not everyone can work and not everyone has a job, so we have to reform the welfare system with a view to protecting those who need help the most. My starting point, therefore, is that, in order to have welfare to work, we first need to have jobs. Regrettably, the Welfare Reform Bill in Westminster does nothing to create a single job. Instead, it will hurt people who are trying to do the right thing, or who cannot, for a variety of legitimate reasons, find work.
The welfare reform policies that are about to be implemented will undoubtedly have a huge impact on Scotland. This may be a Westminster bill, but the Scottish Parliament will have a major role to play in reflecting on, exploring and addressing its impact on individuals, the services they need and the agencies on which they will rely to deliver them.
Welfare may be a reserved issue, but the Scottish Government has responsibility for various aspects of how the welfare system operates in Scotland, such as that in relation to homelessness. The Scottish Parliament and this committee in particular have to hold the Scottish Government to account for how it responds to the challenges ahead.
The welfare reforms are wide-ranging, varied and cross-cutting, and will affect the work of various Government departments and a whole host of authorities and agencies, such as those for local government, housing, justice and equality. If this committee is to be a worthwhile body, it must ensure that the Parliament considers all aspects of welfare reform as they come to bear in Scotland, and that every resulting change is assessed and dealt with fairly and effectively by the Scottish Government.
I echo many of the convener’s comments. I have no objection to the principle of welfare reform per se. Indeed, I think that most people would agree that the system is overly complex and confusing, and that a simplification of it would be welcome. That is the starting point from which I would approach the issue.
That said, as with everything in life the devil is in the detail. If we reflect on the evidence received by those parliamentary committees that have considered the issue—I have experience of this, having been, until yesterday, a member of one such committee, namely the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee—we will find that reactions to the detail have not exactly been effusive.
I will focus on four areas relevant to our work programme, the first of which is housing. It is clear from evidence that the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee heard that the proposed changes could have severe consequences for housing. It was suggested that the proposed underoccupancy regulations would impact on 94,000 social housing tenants and there are concerns about the impact of direct payments on rent arrears and evictions, and therefore on the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Act 2003. Witnesses who gave evidence to the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee said that they had no sense that the welfare reform agenda reflects housing policy here in Scotland or the UK Government’s housing policy in England.
The second area is child poverty. The Health and Sport Committee heard in evidence from the likes of Save the Children and Children 1st that the welfare reform proposals could have a negative impact on child poverty, which will concern us both generally and specifically in relation to the Scottish Government’s targets for tackling child poverty.
Thirdly, there could be an effect on kinship carers. It is fair to say that the system that we have already does not properly reflect the efforts that we have made in Scotland to support kinship carers. Perhaps we have an opportunity to remedy that, so we might want to consider the issue.
The fourth area that we should consider in relation to the bill is what has become known as workfare. It remains to be seen how successful that will be, but I note that a number of companies that said that they would take part are withdrawing from the scheme. It could have an economic impact in Scotland as it might create a disincentive for companies to create paid work. Why should they do that if they can take folk on under the provisions in the Welfare Reform Bill?
Those are my comments for now, convener. There are some other things that we could consider in our work programme, but I will turn to that under agenda item 5.
I support the concept of welfare reform. I suspect that most, if not all, of us can start from that positive position. However, we might differ in a number of respects. Most members will know that, when the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee expressed the desire for the Welfare Reform Committee to be formed, I dissented from that position in the report. I genuinely believe that welfare reform is necessary and that we need to work together to achieve it. I am disappointed that the Parliament has failed to agree to a legislative consent motion that would have allowed the Welfare Reform Bill to move forward in a more traditional manner.
I believe that the committee and its work should and must have the needs of the less well off in society at its heart. My concern is to ensure that at no point do we allow the committee to become a device to drive wedges between Scotland’s two Governments. I will take a positive role in the process wherever I can. I hope that I will be able to express what might be a minority view and to ensure that we maximise the effectiveness of the committee within that.
I am pleased to serve on this important committee, which has a big job to do. The starting point is, of course, the UK Welfare Reform Bill. Like others, I am absolutely in favour of looking at reforming many things, including the overly complex welfare system, but I have deep reservations about many of the provisions in the bill. In particular, as I have said in debates in the Parliament, I am concerned about the proposed 20 per cent cut in benefits to disabled people. As I mentioned in declaring my interests, I am deputy convener of the cross-party group on disability, and I am aware of the deep and real concerns on the part of disabled people and their representative organisations about the effect that the bill will have on their daily lives. It is important that that is a focus of the committee’s work as we consider how things will be implemented in practice.
I believe that the attack on disabled people represented by the bill is not in keeping with our intrinsic values in Scotland, so I hope that we do what we can within the constraints that we face because the bill emanates from Westminster and is, by and large, in a reserved policy area, until such time as we choose to do something different. I hope that the committee members will work hard together, as Alex Johnstone said, to do what we can to improve the potentially disastrous position that we envisage for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
13:15
Briefly, convener, I associate myself with your remarks. I do not support the UK Government’s position or the bill. Although we might have welcomed simplification of the welfare system, the opportunity has not been taken to improve it and the changes will be negative.
The changes to the welfare system will have a significant effect on Scotland and on devolved governance in Scotland. For example, reform will have a profound impact on housing policy, which is devolved. We need to be clear that actions taken by the Scottish Government cannot undo legislation on a reserved matter, but policy and legislation could have an ameliorative effect. I look forward to scrutinising the Scottish Government’s approach and to our further discussions on how we will protect devolved benefits, particularly those for which receipt of a UK benefit might act as a passport.
I, too, believe that the welfare system should be simplified, but the bill is rather destructive, to say the least. We should listen to what the folks who have already given evidence to other committees have had to say. At the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, it was quite obvious that folk did not know the detail in the bill, and the devil is always in the detail. Let us be honest about that.
It is good news that the Parliament has listened to organisations that called for the establishment of this committee, including Citizens Advice Scotland, Barnardo’s Scotland, Action for Children Scotland and Children 1st, to name but a few. We are doing our duty by listening to them and establishing the committee to scrutinise the bill to the degree that I hope we will.
One of the things that people are concerned about is passported benefits. We should deal with that as quickly as we possibly can so that people do not need to fear that they will lose out for a while. I hope that the committee will co-operate in that regard.
I look forward to speaking more to witnesses who are experts in various areas because I believe that, as they come before the committee, the Westminster bill will continue to unravel.
Like everyone here, I support the simplification of the welfare system, but that is not what the bill is about. It is about saving money. Although welfare is a reserved issue, the proposed reforms will have lasting and devastating consequences for many of our most vulnerable people. We heard that in evidence session after evidence session from the national organisations that Kevin Stewart mentioned. It is right to listen to them, because they work at the coalface with the disadvantaged and vulnerable people who will be affected by the welfare reforms, and they have told us that the effects will be devastating. It is therefore right that we have a committee that scrutinises the bill and its potential impact on our citizens.
Like Kevin Stewart, I think that the first thing that we have to look at is passported benefits. We have to get that sorted out—we cannot have people losing out because we have not dealt with the issue quickly enough.
It has been helpful to allow members to express their personal views before the committee starts to move together to engage with wider Scottish society.
I want to say a little about the committee’s role. First, I thank the organisations that have made effective representations to bring about the committee’s establishment. A number of colleagues have already made that point, and it is vital to acknowledge that the committee exists because civic Scotland demanded that the Parliament respond to it. I include all those who gave evidence on the legislative consent memorandum as well as those who made the initial representations to the Presiding Officer and via political parties.
In establishing the committee, the Scottish Parliament is sending a clear message that it appreciates the severity of the concerns about welfare reform. Our cross-cutting remit will let us scrutinise the complex impacts of the reforms on children, disabled people, carers, one-parent families, those who live in poverty or are at risk of being in poverty and many others, and I am sure that the committee will want its work to be led by the experience of individuals across Scotland and to take a collaborative approach with organisations that represent and assist those people. We want to hear from those individuals so that we can act as a mouthpiece for personal experiences. There is no more effective way of making Governments sit up and listen than publicising the real-life experiences of individuals.
The work programme paper proposes that the committee set up an inbox specifically for people to send in their personal experiences. That can also be done in writing, by phone, by textphone or in whatever format suits. Every representation received will be considered by the committee to inform decisions about the issues that we will focus on and, in gathering evidence on those issues, we will seek to use the most accessible and inclusive formats. In my view, formal evidence sessions in the Parliament alone will not suffice. Over time, committee members will need to visit people on their own turf to ensure that we get the most candid evidence from them in a more informal and relaxed atmosphere.
We want to spread as effectively as possible the message that we are here—and are here to listen. Among other things, we must link into the community outreach work that the Parliament has undertaken for disadvantaged groups, which might not know where to start to get their message heard. Of course, wherever appropriate, we will use the internet and the press to spread the word.
We also want to hear from organisations. The current benefits system is immensely complex, and public and third sector organisations face a huge task in advising individuals who are uncertain of the impact of reforms.
I imagine that we will want to work closely with the Scottish Government and local government to monitor the implementation process and ensure that all possible steps are being taken to mitigate the impact of change, including any disproportionate impact that UK reforms have north of the border. We want to share information with other UK Administrations to see whether approaches to mitigating the impacts of the UK bill elsewhere could be used in Scotland.
Having listened, the committee can add its momentum to bringing about change in a variety of ways. For example, it can commission and publicise research to highlight the areas of Scotland where, and the individuals and families for whom, welfare reforms are having negative consequences; it can make representations on the consequences of reforms to the UK Government and the Scottish Government by, for example, inviting ministers to appear; and it can convey case studies to the press to make it certain that the day-to-day reality of reform remains firmly in the public eye. We will do that as regularly as possible.
Of course, the committee can also promote chamber debates in which all MSPs can participate. The resulting resolutions can reflect the will of the whole Parliament and send clear messages to Westminster that the issue is of national significance in Scotland.
That is all that I want to say at this early stage in the committee’s life. We will now discuss the specifics of our work programme.