Welfare Reform Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, February 23, 2012

Official Report 292KB pdf

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Work Programme

Item 5 is consideration of approaches to developing a work programme. I refer members to paper WR/S4/12/1/2, which, as the committee will note, makes it clear that the Scottish bill on welfare reform is likely to take up much of the committee’s time, certainly between spring and summer. In advance of the bill’s introduction, an initial round-table discussion on 13 March has been proposed, and that proposal has already been discussed with members to allow clerks to warn stakeholders that they should get the date in their diaries. The paper also invites initial consideration of the committee’s work programme following the bill’s passage.

I ask our clerk, Simon Watkins, to speak to the paper.

I want to update members on the Scottish bill that will come before the committee, because it will have a significant impact on the work programme. We understand that the bill will be introduced before Easter and that the Scottish Government wants it to complete its passage by the summer. That will allow the subordinate legislation, to which several members have referred, to be introduced in the autumn and the whole package of measures to be in place well before the old welfare system disappears on 1 April 2013.

On the one hand, the timescale for the bill is rapid. It allows approximately three to four weeks of consultation with stakeholders—probably three meetings at stage 1 and a single meeting at stage 2. On the other hand, it is vital that the new welfare system is in place by 1 April 2013, when the old one disappears, and we understand that the bill will be a short, enabling one.

A timetable of that nature implies regular meetings for the committee. The meetings will probably be almost weekly in the period immediately after Easter through to May. I wanted to make members aware of that. The clerks are drawing up a provisional timetable that will allow the bill’s passage to follow that timetable. We will circulate that in the next few days and meet members informally to run through it.

Given the timetable, the committee will need to make early decisions on how to handle the bill—at its next meeting, on 13 March, in fact. If the committee agrees, I propose that we consider that in private, which is the normal practice for a bill that has not yet been introduced, as will be the case with this one.

The detailed discussion on the bill can wait until the next meeting, but I wanted to make members aware of its impact prior to the discussion of the wider work programme. In the medium term, the committee has plenty of scope to undertake work of its own choosing and potentially some fairly innovative activity. Of course, the committee has the remainder of the parliamentary session to do that. It would be helpful to have an initial discussion to allow us to plan for some of that activity.

I open up the meeting to colleagues to ask the clerk technical questions or to make any comments on the paper—to add to the suggestions in it or to pass judgment on any of them.

I endorse the paper that Simon Watkins talked about, which sets out a sensible approach. In essence, it sets out three phases of work, which is a good way to think about the matter.

Kevin Stewart and Margaret Burgess talked about wanting to get the new bill through as quickly as possible. Although we cannot give a blank cheque and we need to see what the bill says, we should seek to make the process as quick as possible. We have an indication of the timescale for the bill, which will determine the initial part of our work programme. Thereafter, we do not need to fix our programme for the lifetime of the committee, although I return to my comments about the UK bill.

There are certainly areas that I want us to consider in the third phase, as it is termed, during which we can go into some of the issues in depth. Given the timescale, the programme that the clerks have worked out is sensible and we should agree to it.

I endorse much of what Jamie Hepburn said. I thank the clerks for putting together the paper. I cannot stress enough the issue about passported benefits, which has certainly been hitting my inbox a lot.

We should allow ourselves flexibility about our later work, because new issues are arising almost daily. During the early evidence, we will hear from folk about things that we have not yet thought about and impacts that probably no one has thought very much about, so it is probably best to allow flexibility in our in-depth look at the Westminster bill. We should not paint ourselves into a corner now in relation to the later stages of the programme, because more and more issues will crop up as we go along.

I totally agree with that. Jamie Hepburn and I discussed that issue earlier and we said at the outset that we want to retain a degree of flexibility, for exactly the reasons that Kevin Stewart set out. If we are to listen to those who give evidence, it should be for them to direct us towards the topics that they want us to consider and for us to respond as effectively as possible to the concerns that they raise. In essence, we are setting out a structure within which we will do all that, but we are keeping it as flexible as possible.

13:30

The paper was well produced and I am happy with the basic approach that is suggested, which makes sense. I take the point that several committee members have made about the need to proceed as quickly as possible with enabling legislation on passported benefits, because people are worried that there will be a gap. We will of course help to ensure that there is not a gap. It is important to prioritise that.

The suggestion that we should set up an inbox for e-mails is a good one. I am pleased that there is to be a mechanism for that input to inform the committee’s work, rather than just have it sitting there on the website.

I have one specific question. When we come to the second phase of our work, which is considering the enabling bill, is it the intention that we meet on Tuesday mornings? I would just like a vague idea for my diary.

In essence, we are scheduled to meet on Tuesday mornings. We have indicated that we need to set the ball rolling on 13 March. Because we want to have round-table sessions and begin to look at the Scottish bill, we might initially have to meet regularly on Tuesdays, but there will be flexibility.

But it will be Tuesdays.

It will be Tuesday mornings. If a short meeting of an hour or so would address a specific issue, we could do that in a Thursday lunch time rather than meet on Tuesday morning for one hour. That has been built into our thinking. In essence, we are scheduled to meet on Tuesday mornings, but we will try to work round that and be as flexible as possible about when we meet to address issues as they arise.

Okay. Thank you.

I thank members for considering the proposals. We have made a good start. I look forward to our meeting on Tuesday 13 March, at which we will set the ball rolling with our first round-table discussion. More information on that will come out as soon as we have it. Many organisations have already been contacted and have welcomed the opportunity to meet us and to guide us from the outset. We look forward to productive engagement with them as we progress. I thank members for attending.

Meeting closed at 13:32.