Item 5 is on the future delivery of social security in Scotland. The committee has been on fact-finding visits to Inverness and Glasgow to hear about the implementation of universal credit and the specific experience of ethnic minority and refugee communities.
Michael McMahon, Clare Adamson and John Lamont visited Inverness to find out about the practical implementation of universal credit. Christina McKelvie, Joan McAlpine and Margaret McDougall visited Glasgow and had individual meetings hosted by Amina women’s group, Govanhill Housing Association and the Scottish Refugee Council.
I would like to hear feedback on the visits. I invite Clare Adamson to let us know what went on in Inverness.
I put on record my thanks and the thanks of the other committee members for the opportunity to visit Inverness and the programme that was put together, which was facilitated by Highland Council. We saw a number of panels, all of which were very informative in their own respect. It was certainly a very useful and worthwhile visit.
My overall impression is that the roll-out of universal credit is fraught with manual intervention in the process, which gives me great concern about sustainability in rolling it out across the country. People have managed to find fixes to the problems in the area, but there are concerns about whether those are scalable in any way or able to be replicated across the country. That poses a real challenge.
I will read out some of the findings from the day. We were looking at the rural aspects of universal credit, which causes transport, time and expense issues for everyone who has to attend for interviews. There is also a digital exclusion issue in the area. People might not be able to access the internet, but some of the forms are available only on the internet, which is a bit of a problem in some rural areas.
The fact that some of the work is seasonal and fluctuating—as indeed is some of the housing—is an issue, because I would say that the housing element of universal credit is by far the biggest problem encountered. The housing cost element of the benefit that makes up universal credit is causing the majority of problems in the area. Eighty to 90 per cent of those on universal credit are in rent arrears, which is in comparison to 12 to 15 per cent of those on other benefits. The average rent arrears for a non-UC tenant is £200, but the average for a UC claimant is over £1,000. It gets even worse if people are in temporary accommodation, where the average arrears is £2,100.
A claimant on universal credit will potentially be in arrears from the minute they apply, because there is a five-week period before they receive any payment whatsoever; they are almost in an arrears situation right from the point of applying.
The stakeholders who we spoke to felt that, if the housing part of it could be devolved to those in the council with the expertise, it would be much better, because they are used to dealing with issues associated with housing benefits and rents, whereas the DWP seems to have no history in that and no expertise or understanding of some of the impacts on private landlords in particular.
There was discussion about universal credit being paid on a single day of the month. That issue was highlighted by many of the people working in the housing office. It is paid on the day of the month of the date of application, which often does not suit the housing office in terms of rent payments and calculations for council tax support. There is some flexibility around payment within the system, but it is a very manual process. People can request to be paid more frequently, but it is done by manual intervention—obviously the scalability of that as universal credit is rolled out is of huge concern.
Temporary accommodation costs are very difficult. Universal credit does not cover most of those costs, so it is being subsidised by discretionary housing payments by the council. There are 11 live cases in Highland at the moment, although that is expected to increase as universal credit is rolled out. Given the sometimes transient and chaotic situation of people who are in temporary accommodation, landlords can be left in the position of having had no payment at all. Indeed, if somebody moves to a new landlord, that new landlord receives the whole payment. There is nothing in the system to deal with that. The landlords are basically asked to speak to one another to sort out such situations. That is obviously a really difficult situation for landlords to be in, with no guarantee of rental income.
There are still issues with data sharing. Many of the updates have to be done manually and there are delays in the system.
There is also an issue with universal credit being dealt with through call centres. Because front-line job centre staff do not have access to the full details of someone’s claim, they are able to offer very little face-to-face support. At the moment, staff use either automated transfer to local authority systems, ATLAS, or the customer information system, CIS, to see the whole picture of a person’s benefits, and the process for universal credit is causing real difficulties with any issues or problems that might come up.
When we spoke to the claimant group, everyone said that they did not have a problem with the idea of universal credit; the problems were all to do with its implementation, the fear of sanctions and inconsistent advice about the operation of the system. Another huge issue that emerged—and on which we have taken evidence from Citizens Advice Scotland—is that because universal credit stops as soon as a person goes into work, that person can be left for a significant period of time without any money before they get their first wage. That is a disincentive to taking up employment, and it was suggested that it was almost better and easier for claimants not to tell the DWP that they were in work until they had received their first wage and then gone into arrears. The fact that there was no scaling or flexibility in the system in that respect was also an issue.
All the clients we spoke to expressed anxiety about the system and the changes. Moreover, we found that, although benefit advisers had implicit consent to speak to the DWP about JSA queries, there was no such consent with regard to universal credit, and it was sometimes very difficult for advisers to work with the DWP on resolving issues and getting queries answered.
As for the local authority’s point of view, the delays in roll-out are causing issues for the council, which is trying to balance its support staff to meet the needs of universal credit. It was felt that, eventually, there would be a reduction in the number of people needed to provide support, but the delays were causing real personnel management problems for councils and it was expected that people would have to be moved in order to support landlords rather than the other way round.
Another point was that the grant for the administration of universal credit is decreasing faster with the time that the roll-out is taking; in other words, the grant for dealing with the roll-out is reducing. The bulk of the roll-out has still not happened, and problems are foreseen in that respect, too. Councils also expressed concerns about the contact with the DWP and said that the inconsistency of information and misunderstandings about how things might develop could impact on procurement, particularly the use of budgets to procure employability projects.
As for the DWP, it felt that the Highland operational delivery forum was working well. It was feeding in problems that had been raised and resolutions to the things that were being encountered and, in the long term, those matters should be fed into the roll-out of universal credit to other areas and across Scotland. It said that this was very much a testing and learning environment and that things were improving, but my concern with such statements is that people’s lives are being greatly impacted on during that testing and learning process.
The local authority is working very closely with the DWP; indeed, it is trying to coach DWP staff on providing debt and personal budgeting advice. It has also co-located money advice officers in DWP premises, and it felt that such an approach was working very well in supporting claimants in difficulty.
It was suggested that the forthcoming digital account should allow claimants to manage their benefit. Of course, the caveat is that we have all heard about information technology solutions that will fix everything but which, in the end, do not meet the requirements when they are rolled out. It was also suggested that telephone appointments would be offered to people in very remote or rural areas, but there remains a question about how successful, sustainable and scalable that is.
One of the big benefits of universal credit is that the claim is basically paused if somebody moves into work. That makes it easier for people to move in and out of seasonal work without having to go through the reapplication process that is required at the moment. That is seen as one of the plus sides.
My final point is on non-dependant deductions. The increase in those deductions means that a family with a non-dependant child entering work now needs to consider the household income. Families need to ask whether the additional income from somebody moving into work is financially worth while overall. An example was given of an older couple with a young person moving into work, whose income would now have an impact on the housing benefit for the overall household, despite the fact that the young person was not a tenant in the house. That was raised by the council as a specific issue with the DWP, but the DWP did not recognise that as a barrier to work.
It was a very informative session. Good panels had been put together and we all benefited greatly from the visit to Highland Council.
Thanks to Clare Adamson and all of those who helped to make the visit a success.
Christina McKelvie will now take us through the visit to the Amina women’s group.
I place on record my thanks to the women at Amina, who do an amazing job. It was nice to go back to visit them after a long period of absence—I used to be involved with them in a professional capacity. We had a really interesting day and my thanks go to the clerks for the support that they gave me on that day.
We had a presentation from the centre’s climate change group. There had been a consultation of 40 families from different ethnicities across the south of Glasgow, which found that 70 per cent of those surveyed were in fuel poverty. That had a huge impact, as more than 10 per cent of their income was spent on energy costs. The majority of those 70 per cent were also receiving benefits. The consultation looked at the effect that being in fuel poverty was having on participants’ health. It found that 40 per cent of participants were stressed because of the worry that fuel poverty caused, and half of the sample felt that their health problems were caused or exacerbated by it. All this was leading up to a discussion on access to the workplace and how that affects the impact of welfare reform.
In a further study that the centre carried out in the north and south of Glasgow, which covered 100 families, 69 per cent of the participants were found to be in fuel poverty. The results were very similar to those of the first study and, again, a majority of the people surveyed were receiving benefits. Both consultations found that most people were unaware of, and therefore not accessing, the support services that were available in the area. That clear message came out of both studies. People said that they did not know what help was available to them if they could not heat the house and that the situation was exacerbated by language barriers and social isolation—some people were in lonely situations.
The presentation gave rise to a conversation about layers of deprivation and discrimination and about the barriers that some people face. We had a group of women with us who were very quiet to start with, but when they started to tell their own stories and give us their testimony we saw clear examples of how the layers of discrimination exist for women and children. A number of factors kicked in, such as childcare costs and people having enough in their benefits to buy school uniforms and to put food on the table or heat the house. For women whose kids have grown up, age kicks in as a barrier to accessing employment. Some of the women sitting around the room were underemployed—they were teachers or had different occupations but did not have access to those job markets. That conversation led to the main reason why we were there: a discussion about access to employability, work capability assessments and that type of thing and the impact of welfare reform.
11:45Amina has been running its own employability project for a year. It has found it difficult to signpost women who use its service on to other organisations or schemes, because they are never guaranteed to get the language support that they need to communicate effectively. For some women, just turning up at the jobcentre was terrifying because there were two bouncers on the door. We do not think of such matters as everyday issues, but, for women who come from an environment that is different from ours, just facing that barrier right on the doorstep can be too much.
A number of the women were also advised that they could not bring someone to support them. If a person is nervous and has had to face a number of barriers just to get themselves through the door, having someone there to support them, even if it is just to give them confidence or to articulate some of their feelings should there be a language issue, is extremely important because interpreters are not offered for most appointments. Some said that, when they go to the jobcentre, they are allowed to bring their friend, support worker or whoever; others said that their jobcentre does not allow that at all. That is a clear example of inconsistency across jobcentres.
There are also barriers to participation in schemes such as the work programme, with the women facing obstacles that relate to their faith, their gender, what they are expected to do in the workplace, the environment in which they are expected to work and language support. A huge issue for them, which most of us probably do not even think about, is whether they fit in with the culture of a workplace. That is another layer of discrimination that places further obstacles in the way of their being able to access mainstream work programme opportunities.
A number of the ladies who were in the room mentioned that they had spent 10 or 15 years bringing up their kids. They were ready to enter the job market or to access work experience, further training or continuing professional development in order to gain professional qualifications. However, they found doing so very difficult. They were quite miffed that the apprenticeship programmes offered by organisations are only for 16 to 24-year-olds, because most of the women in the group who were of that age were bringing up their kids. That is another stark difference between the age groups.
The Amina employability project workers are trying to link into the work programme, but they are finding that quite difficult to do. They want to offer their programme to the work programme in order to allow some tailored support for people. The crux of the matter comes down to the need for a conversation in which someone sits down and works out a plan for a person based on all their experience and worthwhile contributions while dealing with some of the barriers. That would help.
The group’s main concern seemed to be health issues. They felt that, if they could get their health issues supported properly, under control with the right package of care, they would be more confident and able to go back to the workplace. A three-point plan was mentioned, which I will say a wee bit about later. The women thought that the first step would be to get their medical issues resolved, but there seems to be a lack of understanding among some jobcentre staff of how some health issues impact on a person’s ability to enter the workplace. The issue was not that the women were not motivated to enter the workplace; rather, it was that some of them were just not able to do so. Their evidence was very similar to what we heard in yesterday’s have-your-say session on people’s experience when they go for work capability assessments. In that session, we heard that, although people probably could go out of their door and walk 20 yards, they would be in bed for the whole of the next day as a consequence. The women felt that such issues were not being resolved but that, if they could be, that would help.
The other part of the discussion was about further study and work experience. People who have been out of the job market for 15 or 20 years need to be allowed to take almost baby steps to return to it. Some of the women said that it is a bit of a vicious circle because, although they would quite like their health issues to be sorted out because that would give them the confidence and ability to go back into the workplace, being in the workplace would help with their depression about their health condition. Most of them identified that as an issue, but they have not yet identified ways to resolve it. However, for those who were about to take those first steps, they had good ideas on getting up in the morning, being able to study and so on.
They also suggested that it would be beneficial to have individual support. That is when I took off my politician’s hat and put my social worker’s hat back on. I asked them how that would work and whether it would be a key workers system in which one individual would support each woman on all the issues and provide holistic support, including support for interviews. That is exactly the system that they were looking for. It would be difficult to replicate that system across the land, but the results would be extremely worth while. As far as the group that we talked to were concerned, that input would create a really good output.
Another issue was how to build up trust in the system. The women told us that, if they had a key person, key worker or nominated person, they would build up trust in that person, who would work through the system with them and, therefore, build trust in the system. That seemed to be a clear understanding.
I will flick to the wee notes that I took.
One of the biggest barriers for most of the women who had kids was childcare costs and the lack of tailored childcare. One woman was offered a job that involved starting at 6 am, but she had small kids and there was no facility to have somebody come and ensure that the kids got up and out to school. There were personal issues such as that. Another big issue was that some general practitioners charge £20 for signing the DWP letter. With that in mind, I asked the group that we had around the table for the “have your say” session yesterday whether they had been charged in that way, but none of them had been. It is a bit like the issue of jobcentres allowing people to support claimants in that the practice seems to be inconsistent across the board. We should perhaps take that issue a bit further.
Another big issue was the impact of underemployment on people’s motivation and their participation in the system. If someone was a senior teacher or a scientist back in Afghanistan but they are not allowed to use their skills or abilities to give something back, that can have an impact. It seemed that most of the people wanted to give something back to the system that has supported them, especially those who had come from a refugee background.
Thank you, Christina. I also thank the Amina women’s centre.
The clerk, Simon Watkins, has a prepared note from Margaret McDougall and Joan McAlpine. Do you want to give us the gist of it, Simon?
I will report back, on behalf of Margaret McDougall, on a meeting with refugees in Glasgow at the Scottish Refugee Council and, on behalf of Joan McAlpine, on a meeting with officials at Govanhill Housing Association to look at the issues that affect Roma groups in the south of the city. I will stick to the main headlines. One reason why the committee opted to carry out the visits was to see whether there are specific welfare issues that affect those groups that we had not come across in dealing with the main stream of the issues. For both those groups, there are such issues.
The biggest issue for the refugee group is the switch from being supported as refugee asylum seekers and applicants—when there is support from the Government for accommodation and living expenses—to being accepted as refugees and granted status in this country. When that happens, the existing support continues for 28 days and, in that time, they have to put in place everything that will allow them to claim benefits if they need to do that. However, that never happens, because 28 days is not long enough to allow people to get a national insurance number and apply for benefits and so on, so they all basically become homeless during that period and the responsibility then falls on the local authority to house them. At the moment, the system just does not seem to work for anyone. Of course, putting people in homeless accommodation results in increased costs to the local authority and to those people.
That is the big issue for that group, but there are some perhaps less important issues. There is a concern that many people sign the claimant commitment without realising what they are signing up to. We have heard about that issue elsewhere, but it seems to apply particularly to refugee groups. There is also concern about how digital the access to the welfare system is becoming. Many refugees have language issues and issues with physically accessing the necessary equipment to respond online.
A final point is about the English language requirement. People who apply for JSA have to undertake mandatory English classes if their English is judged to be not good enough, but there is a question about the quality of the training that is provided and the fact that it lasts for a maximum of only 20 weeks, with—at most—15 hours a week. At the end of that period, most people will not necessarily have good enough English to be able to get a job. A particular concern is that many people organise English classes for themselves before they are granted status but then have to stop those classes and switch to the mandatory classes. There were a lot of complaints about that.
Those were the main issues among the refugee group.
The meeting in Govanhill looked at issues for Roma groups in the south of the city. Those people are exclusively either Slovak or Romanian citizens and, as such, they are covered by specific employment and right-to-reside rules. Last year, the rules were changed and made stricter so that people now have to demonstrate that they have been undertaking genuine and effective work, and that has quite a high barrier attached. They must have been earning £150 a week, which is equivalent to the minimum wage for 24 hours a week, over a period of months. That is particularly a problem for people in those groups because a lot of their employment is informal and some of it is paid below the minimum wage, so they have trouble in proving that. Alternatively, some of them might have worked in the past but not have any records of it because, at that stage, the rules were different.
The main problem is that people become completely ineligible for benefits and are, in effect, destitute. We discussed a little what happens to people in that situation and found that they seem to disappear in some shape or form, but it is not clear whether they go back to Slovakia or Romania or remain within the local community.
We explored the knock-on effects of that. Rights to passported benefits for children, such as free school meals, all disappear. One factor that the housing association has uncovered is that the main local primary school, where the population is about 80 per cent Roma, has a lower level of free school meals than the levels in the most affluent parts of Glasgow, because the children are not eligible as their parents are no longer on benefits. The council and housing association are trying to tackle that, but that is a measure of the problem that exists locally.
Thank you, Simon. Please pass on our thanks to the Scottish Refugee Council and the Govanhill Housing Association for allowing Margaret McDougall and Joan McAlpine to carry out that work.
At our next meeting, on 15 September, we will start taking oral evidence on the inquiry into the future delivery of social security in Scotland.
11:57 Meeting continued in private until 12:02.