The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-09190, in the name of Michael McMahon, on the impact of welfare reform.
15:05
I am pleased to open the debate on behalf of the Welfare Reform Committee.
I am sure that members remember from their school days the end-of-year school report, in which their teachers assessed their achievements, failures and areas for development for the next year. As the motion notes, it is almost a year since many of the provisions of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 came into force on 1 April 2013. The debate presents us with an opportunity to report on the performance of those United Kingdom Government welfare reforms, and I am afraid that the end-of-year report is riddled with “fail”, “could do better” and “needs to pay more attention to those whom welfare reform is affecting”. We also have a great deal of concern about welfare reform’s future performance.
I hasten to add that that view is shared by the majority, but not all, of the committee. I am sure that Alex Johnstone will not agree with that assessment of UK Government welfare reforms, and I hope that those differences of opinion will be aired during the debate. I can see Mr Johnstone licking his lips already.
If we assessed welfare reform on its contribution in class, it would be awarded an F. In economic terms, it is taking money out of the Scottish economy. In April last year, the committee was presented with research commissioned from Sheffield Hallam University on the impact of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The headline figure had the UK Government’s package of welfare reforms losing the Scottish economy a staggering £1.6 billion per year. The committee recently commissioned Sheffield Hallam University to conduct further work, this time examining the impact of welfare reform at ward level.
The impact of welfare reform on the individual has been a key focus for the committee’s work to date. We have delved below those alarming figures to assess the impact on the people of Scotland. Through the your say initiative, we have tried to give a voice to ordinary people to tell us what welfare reform means for them. We have invited anyone who wishes to write to us with their personal stories, and they have certainly done that.
To date, well over 100 individuals have taken the time and effort to contact us with their experiences about the impact of welfare reform on their everyday lives. We have held four formal committee meetings at which individuals have delivered their personal testimonies to the committee. In 15 years as an MSP, I have never heard such extraordinary, moving, shocking and painful evidence.
I refer to the evidence from Scott Wilson, a 46-year-old with young-onset Parkinson’s who recently separated from his partner of 20 years. Having lived in his home for 25 years, he is now subject to the bedroom tax. When he asked the council where his pregnant daughter and disabled son would sleep when they came to stay if he moved into a one-bedroom flat, he was asked, “Have you ever heard of inflatable beds?”
I refer to the evidence from Henry Sherlock, who is blind and was asked to raise an empty cardboard box in his work capability assessment but not to take it anywhere. He could not, as he needed to hold his white stick in one hand.
I refer to the evidence from Audrey Barnett, who has multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus. She worked until 2008, when she was awarded retirement on medical grounds—that is an important point. Her application for employment and support allowance contained details of her medical conditions and a letter from her general practitioner stating that they were progressive, unpredictable and incurable. The Department for Work and Pensions assessed her as being in the work-related activity group and judged her able to prepare to return to work. Her former employer was the DWP.
The courage of the men and women who have come before us has been humbling, and the committee has certainly sought to address the concerns that have been raised in those powerful evidence-taking sessions.
The main focus of our recent work has been the bedroom tax, on which we have taken extensive evidence and commissioned research. The committee’s interim report, which was published at the end of January, concluded that the UK Government should abolish the bedroom tax or give the Scottish Parliament the power to do so. That view was held by the majority of the committee, along with a belief that the cost of the bedroom tax to tenants is
“iniquitous and inhumane and may well breach their human rights”.
I do not believe that treating people’s homes as merely bricks and mortar—the homes of approximately 65,000 disabled people and 15,000 homes with children—is acceptable in this day and age. The reality for many is that they cannot pay and they cannot move. To make the situation even more frustrating, it is entirely possible that the bedroom tax is costing the public purse more to implement than it is saving. Armed with our evidence and our awareness of the bedroom tax monster in our midst, we have looked in detail at the on-going attempts by local authorities and the Scottish Government to mitigate the impact of the bedroom tax.
As the Scottish Government has detailed in its response to our report, it is committed, if the cap on discretionary housing payments is not removed, to put in place a scheme during 2014-15 that will make funding available to social landlords to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax. We welcome the steps that the Scottish Government is taking in that regard, but I ask the Minister for Housing and Welfare to provide some further insight into how the scheme would work.
As the scheme is for the next financial year, how would it work for a tenant who has not received or applied for a DHP this year and has not paid some or all of their bedroom tax liability? Would the funding write off those debts? Would the scheme encourage tenants to apply first for a DHP, and then, if they did not receive it, to let the landlord know they would not be paying the bedroom tax? Would the landlord then make a claim on the fund and write off the debt? I am sure that the committee will scrutinise closely the detail of the Scottish Government’s scheme, if it is required, in the coming months.
Another key area of the UK Government’s welfare reforms that the committee has considered is the employment and support allowance, specifically the impact of the work capability assessment. Welfare rights and disability organisations have raised with the committee concerns about how the assessments take account of mental health problems and fluctuating conditions. Some have termed the assessment centres the equivalent of Lourdes. Many people arrive with debilitating health conditions, but miracles occur in the assessment centres, where decisions are taken that the people who entered with those conditions are now fit for work as their health has miraculously been restored.
A cross-party delegation from the committee visited an Atos healthcare assessment centre in Edinburgh, and we have also seen what happens with the DWP decision makers in Bathgate. We are concerned that, of the nearly 60 per cent of people who have undergone an initial assessment for employment and support allowance who have been declared fit for work, 40 per cent have appealed against the decision and a staggering 38 per cent of those have been successful.
Last year, the committee had to resort to making a freedom of information request to the DWP to gain access to statistics on return rates for further medical evidence that was requested from GPs as part of the work capability assessment. The statistics suggest that GPs are failing to provide further medical evidence to Atos, which is one of the reasons why a large number of people are being told that they are fit for work only to have that decision overturned on appeal. People are being deemed fit for work when that is clearly not the case.
As Anne Begg, chair of the Work and Pensions Committee at the House of Commons recently stated, Atos has been the
“lightning rod for hatred and upset”.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the assessments have been devised by the DWP and are not Atos assessments. Atos desires to leave its contract before August 2015, which gives the DWP an opportunity to adopt a new approach before a new contractor is put in place.
In addition to the bedroom tax and employment and support allowance, we have scrutinised devolved aspects of welfare reform, on which we have more leverage. That includes the council tax reduction scheme and the Scottish welfare fund, both of which have been welcomed by the committee. There has been initial concern that uptake of the welfare fund has not been as high as expected. The committee was pleased to note during its budget scrutiny that the criteria for qualification for community care grants and crisis grants has been amended to take down some initial barriers to access. However, it appears from the first official statistics on the Scottish welfare fund, which cover April to September 2013, that performance is mixed across local authorities. Some are not meeting their spending expectations and there are variations between local authorities on the percentage of applications that they are accepting and the speed with which applications are being processed. The committee will explore all those issues with local authorities and the Minister for Housing and Welfare at its next meeting, on 18 March.
The committee has also turned its attention to other areas of investigation. In its first evidence session on food banks, it received alarming evidence from Ewan Gurr of the Trussell Trust that the number of people who are using food banks in Scotland increased from 17,000 last year to 56,000 this year. Dr Sosenko of Heriot-Watt University told the committee that Lord Freud’s statement that the increase in food bank use predates welfare reforms is “factually incorrect”. He said that welfare reform
“has become a major factor fuelling demand for food aid.”—[Official Report, Welfare Reform Committee, 4 March 2014; c 1308.]
The committee will also look to explore the related issue of benefit sanctions and consider the level and appropriateness of their use by Jobcentre Plus. We will start by taking evidence directly from people in Glasgow who have been subject to sanctions, and before the summer we will visit the DWP to consider the implementation of the universal credit pathfinder area in Scotland. We will consider the concerns that have been raised about how people will cope with universal credit, especially with the direct monthly payments for rent, and the difficulties that are involved in equipping people with sufficient digital ability to complete forms for benefit applications.
The final issue that I will raise in relation to welfare reform’s report card is attendance. Attendance is a vital component of performance, but to date we have seen no attendance from the UK Government ministers at public meetings of the Welfare Reform Committee. We have issued a number of invitations to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Welfare Reform and, most recently, the Minister of State for Employment to come and give evidence to the committee, but to date all have been declined. We have an outstanding invitation to the Secretary of State for Scotland, and I only hope that this debate highlights why his attendance and that of his colleagues is vital to our work.
The reforms are failing to achieve their aims. They are failing to pay attention to the people who are directly affected and failing to offer a safety net to the most vulnerable people in society when they require it. This end-of-year report card concludes “must do better”.
I move,
That the Parliament notes that many provisions of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 came into force almost one year ago, on 1 April 2013, and that the Welfare Reform Committee has, over the past year, examined the impact of these, including the under-occupancy charge (commonly referred to as the bedroom tax), passported benefits and the Scottish Welfare Fund, and is committed to examining the role of foodbanks and increased sanctions, as well as the introduction of personal independence payments and universal credit.
15:18
I welcome this Welfare Reform Committee debate and I commend the committee for the work that is has done, which has provided a valuable contribution to the evidence on the impact of the UK Government’s welfare reforms in Scotland. As Michael McMahon said, the stories that the committee has heard from front-line services and people who are affected have told the story of the impact that welfare reform is having on citizens throughout Scotland, some of whom are extremely vulnerable. The committee is to be commended for managing to get people to come forward and tell those stories. We appreciate that doing so has been very difficult for many of them.
The motion notes that many of the provisions in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 came into force on 1 April last year. They include the abolition of discretionary social fund payments and responsibility for council tax benefit successor arrangements being localised to Scotland. The Scottish Government successfully put in place arrangements for both of those things. A lot of work went on behind the scenes to get the schemes in place in time. In April last year, we established the Scottish welfare fund, and we topped up by more than £9 million the money that the DWP passed on to us for local welfare provision. We have also committed to maintain the fund at £33 million for 2014-15 and 2015-16. Our actions will ensure that we continue to support some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland.
I know that there has been some criticism of the fund—Michael McMahon raised some of the issues—but we must remember that it is a new scheme, it was set up in time, the money has gone out to local authorities in time, and they have worked hard to get the money out there. After a slow start, the fund is now picking up, and we are clearly on track to reach the monthly spend that we expected local authorities to have. It is also clear that, had we not topped up the fund by £9.2 million, it would have been exhausted before the end of the financial year.
I know that the Welfare Reform Committee has taken a keen interest in the development of the fund, and I am grateful to it for its input throughout the process. It has offered thoughtful insights from the early days of establishing the section 30 order that allowed for the introduction of the fund. More recently, it has offered support for our approach in its report on the draft budget, which was published in December last year. I look forward to engaging further with the committee when we introduce the welfare funds (Scotland) bill later this year.
As Michael McMahon mentioned, last year we created Scotland’s national council tax reduction scheme following the UK Government’s abolition of council tax benefit. Working with local government, we are providing an extra £40 million for 2013-14 to protect more than half a million people from the UK Government’s 10 per cent cut in funding and maintain entitlement to support. We and our local government partners will roll forward our commitment to mitigate the funding gap next year, and our continued joint working with local government will enable us to maintain our support for the scheme. I appreciate the committee’s support for the council tax reduction scheme and the Scottish welfare fund.
As the committee has heard in its evidence sessions and as we all know, many of the cuts and changes continue to cause extreme anxiety to people in Scotland. There is growing evidence of real hardship as those changes take effect.
As has been said, last week the committee discussed food banks with key stakeholders. I note that that discussion explored concerns about the significant increase in the numbers of people who use food banks. I have said previously and repeat that it is unacceptable that anyone in a country as prosperous as Scotland should have to rely on food banks, and I, too, share the committee’s concerns.
Following the publication in December of the report that the Scottish Government commissioned, much more is known about the extent of emergency food aid in Scotland and the major role of UK welfare and benefit changes as causes of that substantial increase. Stakeholder evidence last week reflected the findings that welfare reform, benefit delays, benefit sanctions and falling incomes have been the main factors that have driven the increase in demand. The UK is already one of the most unequal societies in the developed world, and this simply provides further worrying evidence of the unfair impacts of the Westminster Government’s welfare cuts programme on some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
Of all the changes that have been introduced, there is one that is particularly unfair: the bedroom tax. I welcome the committee’s interim report on that, which was published on 31 January. I have written to the convener, and for the benefit of members I want to make a few comments in response to that report. I also want to reiterate the Scottish Government’s clear position that the UK Government should abolish the bedroom tax. That position is supported by the Welfare Reform Committee’s report; a majority of Scottish MPs in Westminster; the Scottish Affairs Committee’s interim report; the United Nations rapporteur; a majority in the Scottish Parliament; and, I believe, the majority of the Scottish people.
The committee’s report looked at the impact on local authorities, housing associations and voluntary agencies, all of which are incurring additional costs as a direct result of the bedroom tax. Although the Scottish Government is taking action to protect those who are affected, it is the UK Treasury and the DWP that will see savings that result from the bedroom tax in Scotland. Those savings will have been made at the expense of not only individuals and families across Scotland but local and devolved budgets.
In the meantime, we are spending significant amounts of Scotland’s money—at least £258 million over 2013-14 to 2015-16—to mitigate the worst impacts of the reforms, which include, of course, the bedroom tax.
As I said to Parliament last week, we could have used the money for other things, such as investing more in health and education for our people and in growing Scotland’s economy. It cannot be right that we have to divert money away from other services to deal with the consequences of policies that we do not want in Scotland.
I have also made it clear on more than one occasion that the Scottish Government cannot fully mitigate the impacts of all the UK Government’s cuts and reforms. We are now beginning to see the effect of the stricter sanctions regime. We heard from Michael McMahon about the impact that the work capability assessment is having, particularly on disabled people and those with mental health issues and long-term illness. As I said last week, this is about the UK Government’s policies. Atos does not set the policies; it is the UK Government that sets the policies and Atos carries them out on its behalf.
We have to recognise that the work capability assessment is not working; it has been reviewed four times and there must come a point when the UK Government has to recognise that it is not fit for purpose. It has been tinkered with and tampered with—the UK Government has tried all sorts of things—but it is simply not fit for purpose. We all know about—and the committee has heard about—the severe impact that it is having, particularly on disabled people.
I spoke a bit about the bedroom tax, which has been a major focus of discussion and a focus of the committee’s work but represents only a small portion of the projected cuts that will take place across the Scottish economy. We are about to see the impact of the 1 per cent uprating of benefits. When that starts to kick in, it will put more pressure on already struggling families and on front-line advice services. I am sure that the committee will also follow that issue with interest.
I look forward to taking part in the committee’s evidence session next week, and to taking part in further debates initiated by the committee and listening to members talk about the impact that welfare reforms are having the length and breadth of Scotland.
I call Jackie Baillie, who has six minutes or thereby. There is quite a bit of time for interventions, if anybody wants to have a go.
15:27
Thanks very much, Presiding Officer.
I begin by complimenting the Welfare Reform Committee on all its hard work. It has been diligent and has carried out robust scrutiny of the welfare proposals from the UK and Scottish Governments. As Michael McMahon rightly pointed out, the committee has taken a considerable amount of first-hand testimony from people who are experiencing the hard edge of welfare reform, which I think has been particularly instructive for our debates.
As I said when we debated the issue previously, I do not disagree with the need to reform welfare, but I fundamentally disagree with the use of reform as a guise for nothing more than cuts. Without any shadow of a doubt, the reforms are swingeing cuts that are completely arbitrary and which hit the disabled and the poorest in our community the hardest. So much for David Cameron saying that the cuts would be borne by those with the broadest shoulders.
This morning, the Deputy First Minister and I attended the launch of the publication “Poverty in Scotland 2014—The independence referendum and beyond”, which sets out the challenges and some of the policy choices that we face in the context of the swathe of welfare reform that is coming at us. One thing that was clear among those at the launch was that they did not want the Scottish Government’s focus on the independence referendum to cloud its view of the action that needs to be taken now. There was agreement on that point.
I will say a little about the opportunities, starting with the bedroom tax. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is a completely wrong-headed policy. I hope that the Tories abolish it with immediate effect. Using such a crude financial instrument to fix a problem with public sector housing supply is actually quite daft. For the avoidance of doubt, I point out that there was no option at all in Scotland for all the people who are affected to move to smaller properties. I have been told that only 20,000 one-bedroom properties are available for let and that we would need a further 60,000 to effect all the moves that are required. The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has suggested that as few as 3,500 smaller properties could be available in any given year. Whatever the figure, it is clearly not enough.
I totally agree with the member about one-bedroom properties, but does she agree that, even if they are built, they are not a terribly good idea? Housing associations have not been building them for some time now, and in any case most people want a spare room for a variety of purposes.
I could not agree more, not least because housing policy in Scotland has been moving in the direction of building lifetime housing and allowing flexibility in room numbers. As I think Linda Fabiani said in a previous debate, we might talk about properties and housing, but the fact is that these are people’s homes. We should not lose sight of that.
It has taken the best part of a year and the persistence of my colleagues on the Labour benches, Govan Law Centre and the no2bedroomtax campaign, which brought a petition to the Public Petitions Committee, to get the Scottish Government to respond to our call for full mitigation of the bedroom tax. I want it to be scrapped and I am very pleased that both the Scottish National Party and Labour are committed to its abolition. However, I have to say that it is not good enough to make people wait until 2015 for a general election—or 2016, in the event of independence—for it to be abolished. People need and deserve our help now, and I was very pleased that John Swinney set money aside in the budget to mitigate the bedroom tax fully. That shows what we in the Parliament can do when we come together.
The bedroom tax should never have been a referendum issue, and the SNP should not have left people with a growing burden of debt and little comfort until 2016. I am pleased, therefore, that the SNP has recognised as much. After all, the Scottish Parliament was created exactly for times such as these, and our combined action has effectively banished the bedroom tax from Scotland.
Will the member give way?
I will in a second.
I have two remaining concerns. First, the discretionary housing payment budget appears to be heading for an underspend. I know of authorities such as West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire that have been very proactive in seeking out those who are likely to qualify, but that is not happening in Argyll and Bute and beyond. I hope that the minister will investigate the cause of that and will assure us that as much money as is available will be fully spent.
Secondly, I understand that when the minister met the Scottish Affairs Committee on Monday, she ruled out any possibility of helping people who fell into bedroom tax arrears this year.
Will the member give way?
I am happy to do so.
I point out that although I am not accountable to the Scottish Affairs Committee I showed it the courtesy of attending, which is not a courtesy that ministers down there will show the Welfare Reform Committee. I assure the member—I think that the record will show this—that I did not, as the Press and Journal said, rule that out. I make it clear that that is simply not the case.
I am very grateful for that intervention, which I will take in the positive spirit in which it was intended. I hope that we can open discussions about the possibility of using some of the underspend that clearly exists to help people who have been badly affected by the bedroom tax this year. I take that comment as a very positive commitment.
With regard to the discussions that John Swinney promised we would be involved in on the mechanism for agreeing the money to mitigate the bedroom tax and getting that out to local authorities and housing associations, I do not want to be difficult but April is rapidly approaching and I have not had a phone call, an email or even a text. Perhaps the minister can take that away with her.
The minister has already said that the Scottish welfare fund has a projected deficit this year. In this case, power has been devolved to the Scottish Government, yet it has had difficulty in getting the money out of the door. I understand the minister’s point that it is a new scheme, but the need is self-evident—people are queuing at food banks. Although I am pleased that the minister has reported progress and said that there will be an evaluation of the fund, I think that we are in danger of turning back the clock in our understanding of welfare. Instead of giving people money, we are handing out goods. That is incredibly disempowering and should not be the norm if we believe in the principle of independent living. There have been reports of delays in the payment of crisis grants, a lack of flexibility in interpreting the guidelines and problems with local authorities not giving grants to people who have been sanctioned by the DWP. Many of those people have mental health problems or learning disabilities.
In closing, Presiding Officer—
Swiftly, please.
There is no doubt in my mind that welfare reform has had a devastating impact on people across Scotland. We must do our best to soften that impact, and we call on the Conservative Government to change its mind.
15:35
We return to welfare reform as an issue for debate in the Parliament for the second time in just over a week. Our debate last week was, by its very nature, somewhat adversarial but, despite the committee convener’s comments in the early part of today’s debate, I will try not to be as adversarial as I was last week.
It is important that we recognise the necessity of welfare reform. The welfare system in the United Kingdom has evolved over a very long period of time, often as a result of need or necessity and sometimes as a result of a political desire to achieve objectives that did not reflect a welfare need. Too often when people who worked in redundant industries became unemployed, successive Governments that found it too difficult to find them jobs developed the habit of reclassifying them and moving them on to the scrapheap. The unfortunate individuals who found themselves being bypassed by the economy were the motivation for the work that Iain Duncan Smith has done in attempting to reform the welfare system.
I therefore start with the need for reform. The reforming zeal of Iain Duncan Smith has not found friends in the Scottish Parliament. Although I am an admirer of the man, I realise that many in the Scottish Parliament do not believe that he has taken the correct route. The first thing that the Scottish Parliament needs to do is realise that welfare reform is necessary and must be addressed. I commend the Labour Party and Jackie Baillie in particular for the way in which they have acknowledged the need for reform, but I recognise that my kind of reform and Jackie Baillie’s kind of reform might be very different indeed.
We need to talk about how we will reform the welfare system over time. In Scotland and in the Scottish Parliament, we have something to contribute to that process, and I would like us to do more in a positive sense rather than simply oppose the changes that are being implemented.
Will the member give way?
No, thank you. Not at the moment.
The issue of welfare reform is developing an additional dimension in Scotland, where it has been gradually moving up the agenda of the referendum debate. In Holyrood, members of the Government and, in particular, SNP back benchers talk persistently about welfare reform as if it is somehow unnecessary or undesirable. Rather than hear from the SNP about its opposition to any kind of reform whatsoever, I want to hear more from it about how it would like to reform the welfare system.
Will you give way?
Will the member take an intervention?
I want also to hear a lot more about how welfare would be financed. It is suggested too often that in an independent Scotland there will be no welfare reform and no limit to the amount of money that will be ploughed into welfare.
Will you give way?
As a consequence, back benchers must display the figures. I take the opportunity to—
Will the member take an intervention?
No; I will take an intervention from Mr Stewart.
Mr Johnstone, as you are very well aware—I am sorry, Presiding Officer; I should be talking to you.
Mr Johnstone, you are very well aware that this Government spends tonnes of money on trying to get a hold of folks who are cheating the system. I wish you would do the same with the multinationals who are dodging taxes and wasting billions of pounds. We would not have to worry so much about welfare reform then, eh?
I invite everyone to speak through the chair.
I fully agree with the concept that everybody should pay their taxes. As a consequence, we might have more money to spend in the longer term.
However, we must address the issue of cost. If we are to have a different welfare system in Scotland—should the SNP be successful—we must know what it will cost. When the First Minister was asked repeatedly today what the cost of his policies might be in future, he was unable to tell us anything. Our problem is that in an economy in which the money that Government raises is likely to drop rather than rise, we have to be able to understand the likely cost.
There are a number of key issues that we need to address. I think that there is a weakness in the work capability assessment. The number of appeals that take place—particularly the number of successful appeals—indicates that there is a flaw. However, a considerable amount of work has been done to improve the work capability assessment in an attempt to reduce the number of appeals. In fact, Michael McMahon said that one of the reasons for work capability assessments being overturned was that information becomes available—particularly from GPs—during the appeals process that was not available at the time of the original assessment.
The key thing about the work capability assessment is that we must have some measure of an individual’s ability to work. Surely the idea is not that we have some self-referral system.
Will the member give way?
The member is in his last minute, Mr Robertson.
Rather than make the mistake of having no assessment at all, we must make the assessments work.
There is a long process ahead of us in bringing in universal credit and the personal independence payment, which are complex new benefits. However, I believe that if this Parliament were to work together with the Government south of the border, we could implement the changes much more smoothly than if we simply maintain the current stand-off between the committee, the minister and the Government in the south.
We come to the open debate. I call Annabelle Ewing to speak for six minutes or thereby, to be followed by Mr Macintosh.
15:42
As a member of the Welfare Reform Committee, I am pleased indeed to have been called to speak in the debate. As we heard in the very powerful contribution from the committee convener, the work of the committee has been wide ranging and the committee has been forensic in its attempt to get to the bottom of the impact of the UK welfare reform agenda on the lives of our citizens and, indeed, on devolved policy areas.
The title of the debate is “Welfare Reform”, but that is a bit of a misnomer, because the fact of the matter is that we are talking about welfare cuts. What has clearly emerged from the committee’s work so far is that the cumulative impact of Westminster welfare policy is unfair and corrosive, and embodies a dismantling of the safety net that should underpin the welfare system of a civilised country. What is striking, too, is that that is not a partisan political view but a view that is held widely across society in Scotland, where fairness is still regarded as a fundamental of how we wish to be and of the kind of country in which we wish to live.
What is fair about forcing someone with motor neurone disease either to take in a lodger or to lose their housing benefit? Why should a recently bereaved widow be harassed by the state to give up her family home or face losing her housing benefit? In all conscience, how can we hold our heads up and argue that forcing someone with a progressive neurological condition to have repeated work capability assessments is a fair and civilised way to proceed? Surely even Mr Johnstone would not seek to defend the indefensible in that regard.
I completely agree with what the member says about fairness. That is the big picture. Does she agree that the DWP was set up to be about fairness and caring for people but that it seems to have lost its way and to be all about rigidly imposing and interpreting rules?
I thank my colleague for his intervention, with which I agree. We must be careful to differentiate the thousands and thousands of excellent hard-working staff in DWP offices, who, when they go home at night, must feel heart-sore indeed, from the policy that is driven by the Westminster Government in Whitehall.
It would have been helpful if we could have explored those issues and other questions with the UK Government directly. As we have heard, however, the UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, and his minister, Lord Freud, have repeatedly refused to come before the Welfare Reform Committee in public session. What insulting and patronising behaviour on the part of those out-of-touch Westminster politicians. Regrettably, as the committee convener informed the chamber, we can now add to that list of insults and slights to the work of our committee, as the Minister of State for Employment, Esther McVey, has now also refused to come before the committee in public session. Who do those people think they are? What have they got to hide? If their policies are so great, why are they not prepared to defend them in Scotland, in public, in our democratically elected Parliament? Whither the respect agenda now?
It is clear to me that those Westminster politicians are running scared. How could they even start to defend, among other policies, the mess that is the personal independence payment? I will say a few words about that policy, which the committee will shortly look into. Leaving to one side the very significant cuts to disabled people’s budgets that its implementation will entail—that merits a whole debate in itself—we should also consider the absolutely shambolic way in which that benefit has been rolled out to date.
We need look no further than the National Audit Office report that was published last month, which stated, inter alia, that PIP will cost almost three and a half times more to administer and will take double the amount of time to process than disability living allowance; that, within six months of the PIP’s introduction, a backlog of 92,000 cases has built up; and that claimants are waiting an average of 107 days—terminally ill claimants are waiting 28 days—to have their cases decided. What a shambles.
On the ground, even longer delays are being experienced. As Inclusion Scotland said in its very helpful briefing for today’s debate, that means that disabled people are being left for very long periods without any benefit support to meet their care and/or mobility needs. That is just not good enough. We are talking about the lives of real people—people who, in order to get on with their daily lives, already have to overcome significant hurdles that many of us cannot even begin to imagine.
I have a constituent—I will not disclose their name today—who has cancer, who has recently had very considerable surgical intervention and who will require further surgical intervention and treatment. Unsurprisingly, they will not make it back to work, at the most optimistic assessment, before August. Let us be clear: my constituent wants to get back to work. No PIP award has yet been made, and my constituent’s debts are mounting. What stage have we reached, after nearly four months? We are waiting for the Atos health assessment to be carried out, yet in an email received yesterday afternoon, the DWP said:
“They (ATOS) are unable to provide any timescales due to the volumes they are experiencing.”
What aspect of my constituent’s very serious and comprehensively recorded treatment for cancer under the national health service is it that Atos, the DWP and the UK Westminster Government need to assess? Why are my constituent’s hospital records not sufficient? How can the state treat people in that way?
It does not have to be like that for our country. We have a choice of two futures. We can choose to take control over our own welfare system and ensure that it meets the priorities and beliefs of our people in our country, or we can continue to be controlled by and tied to the Westminster system, which pursues policies such as the bedroom tax—policies that we did not and would never vote for—and treats our vulnerable people so unspeakably.
We can see £12 billion of further welfare cuts coming down the line, and we can see the risk that 100,000 more children will be pushed into poverty in Scotland. It does not have to be like that for our citizens, because we can change our future. We can have a better future by voting yes on 18 September this year.
15:49
I am not sure that much has moved on in the week between this debate and our previous one on welfare reform. However, if it does nothing else, the motion before us this afternoon allows us to send out a clear message about how much importance we give to the issue of welfare reform, how much it worries us and how much it is impoverishing not just the constituents we serve but the society in which we live.
I want to pick up where I left off in last week’s debate by focusing not simply on the impact of the welfare cuts but on what our response should be. Before I do, I have a couple of points about how misguided and damaging the Tory welfare agenda is that I did not have time to make in my speech last week.
First, I want to highlight the point that just as we have finally come together to unite in resisting the bedroom tax, we are being overtaken by a new threat: the impact of increasing numbers of longer and tougher sanctions. It is not simply that sanctions on benefit claimants have risen from 27,000 a month to more than 69,000 a month; the seemingly arbitrary unfairness of the new regime is particularly hard to stomach. Stories are legion of people being sanctioned for missing jobcentre appointments because they were at an actual job interview or a training programme or for not updating their curriculum vitae properly. The fact that more than half of all appeals against sanctions are successful tells it all.
What I find depressing is that there is no evidence that this, frankly, quite brutal use of sanctions is working. There is no evidence that the accompanying policy of botherability and hassling people who are already under the stress and pressure of joblessness or poverty by threatening to take away their welfare, food or house is getting people back into work. The UK Government’s review of the use of sanctions is due to report in spring this year. I hope that ministers will not solely look at improving the system to eliminate poor decisions but will take into account the cumulative effect of the whole welfare reform programme, because just one of the impacts of welfare reform is the threat of a hardening of attitudes against the poor across the country.
To my mind, the welfare reform agenda is a deliberate attempt to paint a false picture of poverty and joblessness, to individualise misfortune and to perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes. It is deliberately designed to undermine and contradict our feelings of empathy, our understanding and our sense of community. I believe that one of our responses should be to challenge any such attempt to stigmatise the poor. Our main weapon in doing so is simply the truth. An excellent report was produced by the churches last year called “The lies we tell ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty”, which begins with a quote from the great Methodist John Wesley, reminding us that none of this is new. He said:
“So wickedly, devilishly false is that common objection, ‘They are poor, only because they are idle’.”
Here we are, 250 years on and the welfare reform agenda promotes that same line of thinking, that same misconception that the poor are lazy, addicted to drink or drugs, profligate, on the fiddle, securing benefits as a lifestyle choice and, in the meantime, driving this country into debt.
Not one of those statements is true—or at least they are no more true about the poor than they are about the rich or the rest of us. However, just last month the Prime Minister himself had to be pulled up—again by the churches—when he tried to claim that the number of workless households had doubled over the past decade, when the increase has actually been around 5 per cent. It is up to all of us here in the Scottish Parliament to challenge those who would divide the poor into the deserving and the undeserving. Welfare is not about them and us; it is just about us.
Alongside the importance of challenging and changing attitudes, we can take a number of practical steps to help those affected by welfare cuts. I believe that most of us have been surprised and troubled by the fact that the funds made available to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax and to help all those households who might be falling into debt, rent arrears and possible homelessness have not yet been allocated to those in need. Shelter carried out a survey up to the end of December and found that although 10 local authorities had spent the expected two thirds of their discretionary housing payments budget, eight councils had spent less than one third. As Shelter pointed out, the DHP funds that come from the Department for Work and Pensions cannot be carried over into 2014-15: it is use-it-or-lose-it money. Given that we know that there are rising levels of hardship in many communities, one of our priorities must be simply to encourage those who are eligible for assistance to actually apply.
The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and others have highlighted what we can do to improve the Scottish welfare fund. As with discretionary housing payments, the Scottish welfare fund is undersubscribed. We know that tens of thousands of people are in such dire need of immediate assistance that they are turning to food banks, yet they are somehow not able to access the SWF, the main vehicle to provide families with crisis funds. Food aid is not a long-term solution, nor a particularly desirable one even in the short term. As I highlighted in Stuart McMillan’s recent members’ business debate, Oxfam has said that its experience of food shortages around the world is that giving out cash, not emergency food parcels, is a more effective and far more dignified approach.
Barnardo’s has suggested that local and national Government need to work in partnership in deciding how to put the SWF into legislation and get that right. They can learn from the food banks how to provide crisis support in as accessible a way as possible. Support should be local and community based and a wide range of organisations, including those in the voluntary sector, should be involved in making referrals. The application process should be simple, not complex, and decisions should be more consistent and more immediate.
I will make one further point. Perhaps the most important announcement in recent days to help us to resist the impact of the welfare reforms has been the one on the Labour Party’s guarantee to give a job to all young people who are out of work for more than a year. I recognise that a job by itself is not the full answer. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has pointed out that more than half the people in this country who are in poverty live in a working family, but work is still the best way to help people to help themselves.
In the Scottish Parliament, we can do our bit to turn that job into a decent and rewarding job—a job that provides a sense of wellbeing. Earlier this week, I was disappointed that the Scottish Government accepted none of the amendments to the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill that were designed to do exactly that, such as amendments on the living wage, trade union recognition and pay ratios. However, the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities indicated her sympathy with the intention behind the amendments and I believe that she said that she would work to include such proposals in guidance.
We do not have to merely sit here as passive victims of the Tory welfare reforms; we can take a range of actions. We can mitigate the effect of the worst of the cuts, challenge attempts to stigmatise the poor, support people back into employment and—perhaps most important—give people hope.
15:56
I agree with a lot that has been said, with the exception of everything that Alex Johnstone said. I am also unlikely to agree with anything that Willie Rennie says, because he is a partner in what is—as Ken Macintosh said—the demonisation of the poor in our society.
When I joined the Welfare Reform Committee, it had already done some work. The committee’s convener, Michael McMahon, does a sterling job. Everybody on the committee—I include even Alex Johnstone in this—cares about what is happening to people. Most of us want to do something about that.
Jackie Baillie is right to say that the Welfare Reform Committee has an innocuous name. It should be called the welfare cuts committee, because cuts are what is happening. We hear from academics—we heard from Sheffield Hallam University and Heriot-Watt University about the impact of welfare reform and the rise in the use of food banks as a result. We also hear from experts and professionals in the field.
As Michael McMahon said, we hear from ordinary people like us—most of us are ordinary people—who are affected by this stuff. It always strikes me, when I tell people what committees I am on—
Will the member give way?
No, thank you—I would like to get on.
Ooh.
Ooh, nothing—I would like to get on.
People ask whether we enjoy the work of our committees, and we can usually say, “Yes—it’s interesting,” but I absolutely hate the Welfare Reform Committee. I hate going to its meetings, because I find them depressing and heartbreaking. I hate every moment of them. However, that feeling is nothing in comparison with how those who are directly affected by so-called welfare reform feel, such as those who have been so brave as to come to the committee—there are many of them, some of whom have been quoted—and those who come to our constituency offices day and daily to discuss the direct effects on them.
I turn to the bedroom tax. Jackie Baillie mentioned how, in this country, we have always built homes for life. I was a housing professional before I was elected. We were proud that we built homes for life. John Mason was right. We did not build many one-bedroom houses, because we were creating homes where people’s families could expand and reduce and where they could remain if they hit hard times and ended up with a disability.
This lot in Westminster have come along and said, “If you are in a social rented house, you just get a wee shot of it until you cannot afford it any more. Times have got hard—cheerio. Away you go into the private rented sector. And by the way, you’re not good enough to have a spare bedroom for your family to come and visit you.” It is appalling. I am proud of what we did in housing over many decades.
Iain Duncan Smith does not have the bottle to come to a committee, but he came to an informal meeting and told me that Scottish housing has suffered from mismanagement because we do not have enough one-bedroom houses, then sent his civil servant to the committee to say that in public. It is appalling.
What else have we got? Work capability assessments. A constituent of mine—again, I will not name them—who is a hard-working man with a wonderful family had a terrible accident. It was no fault of his own—the type of thing that could happen to any one of us here—and he is badly damaged by it. He has been called for a work capability assessment by Atos and he is worried sick about it. It is disgusting.
We have heard about sanctions, and personal independence payments and universal credit are coming down the line. We are talking about poverty in our country. The resource-rich country that is Scotland has poverty. Fifty per cent of children who live in poverty are from working households. It is awful.
In this week’s Sunday Herald, Ian Macwhirter said:
“poverty has returned to Scotland in a way I could never have imagined a decade ago.”
He is absolutely right. Who among us would have imagined that in Scotland the use of food banks would increase from 14,318 claimants in 2012-13 to more than 56,000 in 2013-14? Is that the best that we can hope for in Scotland, sitting on a Welfare Reform Committee in a Parliament that is not allowed to take full responsibility for its constituents’ welfare? I despair at the knowledge that we could do so much better, but of course we have no control over welfare in Scotland. We can mitigate—the Scottish Government is trying to do that through additional community care grant and crisis grant funding—but only by moving money around within the constraints of an ever-shrinking fixed budget.
Chancellor George Osborne has not finished yet. He has announced that a further £25 billion in public spending cuts will be required after the 2015 Westminster general election. I say sorry to my colleagues on the Labour benches, but I am not convinced that things would be any different with a Labour win. I will say what I am convinced of: I truly believe that an independent Scotland would not elect a Government that would treat people like this. Regardless which party was elected, it would not treat people like this—it would not be able to.
I will leave the last word to Denis Curran who, with his wife Cathy and other volunteers, runs my local food bank, Loaves & Fishes. It used to help people who were really down. Now it helps ordinary families and hardworking people. Denis told us about those who walk up to 4 miles to get to the food bank and about a recent call from a social work department, asking Loaves & Fishes to give a family of four food that needed no cooking, because the family could not afford the electricity. That is what it is like for people out there. Denis really got to me when he said:
“People come to us and they are broken. Do you know what it is to stand with somebody whose heart is breaking because they cannot feed their weans?”—[Official Report, Welfare Reform Committee, 4 March 2014; c 1282.]
That is what is happening while we are sitting on a ridiculous Welfare Reform Committee looking at the effect of what we are allowing those in Westminster to do. It is not good enough. We could do so much better and I want to have the responsibility of so-called welfare reform, to look after the people of Scotland. I want it here.
16:04
I thank Michael McMahon and the committee for undertaking their work. I understand that it has not been easy to hear direct evidence from people who are facing the unintended consequences of welfare reform. I understand that that is difficult.
As an MP for the four years, I saw many people come through my surgeries who faced difficulties as a result of changes in the welfare system. At that time, the changes were being introduced by the Labour Administration. I remember, in one particular case, a young man almost crawling across the floor to present his work capability assessment form, which revealed that he had no points whatsoever, which meant that he was regarded as not having passed that test. We eventually managed to get that decision reversed, so that the system worked in his favour, rather than against him. I have had many people come to me to complain that they had to wait for four months for their claim to be assessed because of the move towards centralised call centres, which was a change to the welfare system that caused absolute chaos.
Difficulties through welfare reform are not new, but I understand that the committee has taken evidence that has in some instances been quite harrowing. All I can say is that Liberal Democrat members—and Conservative members—are listening. I meet representatives from Citizens Advice Scotland, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Poverty Alliance and many other groups to try to address some of the concerns that they have about the welfare reform programme. I work with them and, in some cases, I have secured changes, just as I have done on a constituency basis.
We need a welfare system that provides a safety net in tough times for people who are in difficulties. However, to hear some of the members in this chamber who say that the welfare system is being dismantled, one might think that the budget is going down. It is not. It is going up—it is increasing. We need to be careful with the language that we are using. I understand that some of the reforms are difficult, but to say that the system is being dismantled is a gross exaggeration. The budget is increasing, and it is doing so because people need support during this difficult time.
Does Willie Rennie accept that, although the budget as a whole might be increasing, the budget for individuals is decreasing? He used the term “safety net”, and surely the benefits levels were a safety net. How is it possible to cut out part of the safety net, as is the case with the bedroom tax? How can people possibly live with that cut?
All parties in this chamber say that they are in favour of welfare reform, but I hear very few members making practical suggestions about how the cost of welfare can be reduced. There is no doubt that the cost of welfare has to be controlled. Everybody I hear talking in politics says that they do not want an out-of-control welfare budget.
My second point is that we need a system that makes work pay. Many people have come to my advice surgeries and told me that they would not be applying for one job or another because it would not pay them to do so. We cannot have a welfare system that effectively traps people in poverty and on welfare. We need a system that incentivises people and makes work pay.
Does Willie Rennie agree that for the many individuals who are affected by welfare reform and who suffer from degrees of mental ill health, it is cheaper to allow them to continue to have that occasionally needed extra room in their house than it is to have them end up in the hospital system, the costs of which are substantially higher? Some effects of welfare reform on people with mental ill health are not only harmful to the individuals but are economically illiterate.
The reason for the Harrington review within the DWP was to ensure that the issues about mental health that Stewart Stevenson has rightly identified were taken into account. However, we cannot simply say that because a person has a mental health issue, they should not be given the opportunities that everyone else is given in the system. That is why the system should always be there to support and encourage.
I would like a much more personalised welfare system. I would like people to have the power at local level to make changes. It is a big welfare budget, it is a big system, and we need to take care when we are implementing it.
Linda Fabiani does not have a monopoly on caring. I came into politics because I care about people’s livelihoods. I find it rather offensive to hear someone say that I, Alex Johnstone and others do not care about people who are struggling to make ends meet. If Linda Fabiani really believes in what she says, I would say that the SNP’s white paper should reflect what she says. However, the reality is that the white paper relies on Ian Duncan Smith’s plans being implemented almost in full. Members are shaking their heads—they need to read the white paper.
Will Willie Rennie give way?
I will not, just now.
In the first year of independence, the SNP would adopt exactly the same budget as the budget that is predicted for Scotland as part of the United Kingdom. If the £4.5 billion cut was so evil, we might have expected that the decision would be reversed and that that would be reflected in the budget in the white paper, but it is not. Members who accuse others of not caring need to follow their rhetoric with actions. They need to implement their words in policies and to make hard choices—because politics is about hard choices. We cannot simply wish away the difficulties. The reality is that the SNP is committed to implementing Iain Duncan Smith’s plans in full. That is what is reflected in the white paper.
A year ago, there was a debate in the chamber about the changes to child benefit. There was fury. The Deputy First Minster said that the changes were fundamentally wrong, but that is not reflected in the white paper. Members in this chamber need to match their rhetoric with actions. If they do not, they do not deserve to be listened to.
I am afraid that I must ask members to keep to six minutes from now on, please.
16:11
I agree with my colleague Linda Fabiani that most of the speeches in the debate thus far have been very good. Like Ms Fabiani, however, I think that the speeches from the Tory and Liberal side have left much to be desired.
Willie Rennie has just talked about the increasing spend on welfare. Let me give him some suggestions that would reduce the welfare budget a bit. Atos was handed £208 million for its contract for Scotland and the north of England, and it expects to make a profit of some £40 million from that contract. I believe that the money would have been better spent in providing for the poor folk in our society.
I totally agree with Kevin Stewart on that point. However, it is fair to point out that, when the contract for PIP assessments is rolled out, Salus—which is an NHS agency—will also make a profit. It might be worth putting on the record how much Salus expects to make out of the contract.
I do not think that any of these things should be commercialised at all, but that is the system that the DWP has set up. Although many folk blame Atos and others, the reality is that they are following the commands of their masters at the Department for Work and Pensions. I believe that that is wrong.
I say to Alex Johnstone that the Westminster Government will go all-out to find so-called benefits cheats, who are a minuscule number of folk, but will do nothing to catch those—multinationals, in particular—who evade paying tax in this country. We also have the stupidity of some of those companies also being subsidised and paying rock-bottom wages so that folk who are in work are reliant on benefits. If the Westminster Government is to reform the system and make work pay, it must look at the tax system and deal with the minimum wage.
Will Kevin Stewart take an intervention?
No, I will not. I have only six minutes.
However, paying the minimum wage is not what the Tory-led Westminster Government is about; it is about hitting the poor the hardest.
Last week, I spoke of some individual cases in my constituency; I talked about a man with ankylosing spondylitis who was told that it might be best for him to split up with his wife because he would get more money that way. That advice came from a minister; that is a ridiculous situation. I also talked about folk in my constituency who have progressive illnesses but who are having to go for work capability assessments time and again, which is a waste of money and is absolutely soul-destroying for those people. It is all complete and utter nonsense.
I turn to a new subject that has not been raised to any great degree at committee or in the chamber—the local housing allowance. I am very grateful to Crisis for the information with which it has provided me for the debate—in particular, to Neil Guy, who has done a lot of research on the subject.
As a result of the change from the 50th to the 30th percentile for LHA, the extension of the shared accommodation rate to include people aged up to 35, and the uprating of LHA by only 1 per cent a year, another safety net is being taken away from many people, which will cause a huge amount of hardship.
At today’s First Minister’s question time I talked about housing in Aberdeen, so let us look at the situation there. The average monthly rent for one-bedroom properties is £662, and it is £1,005 for two-bedroom properties. However, the local housing allowance for one-bedroom properties is £525, and it is £650 for two-bedroom properties. People who live in the private rented sector who need to claim housing benefit until they find another job could face a shortfall of £137 a month if they rent a one-bedroom flat, or £355 a month if they live in a two-bedroom flat. What makes the situation even worse is that, because of the extension of the shared accommodation rate, housing benefit for people under 35 who lose their job, are single and are living in a one-bedroom private flat would leave them with a shortfall of £359 a month. The Tory argument to those people would be that they should find themselves a flat in the social rented sector because it may be a little bit cheaper. However, the reality is that such properties are not available and a waiting list of some 8,000 exists for council accommodation in the city.
That ill-thought-out nonsense and the removal of safety net for our poorest people is unacceptable. The sooner we have the powers to deal with welfare in this place, so that we can put a stop to such nonsense, the better.
16:17
It was sobering to listen to the stories that Michael McMahon recounted about individuals who have been affected by welfare reform. Such stories remind us that at the end of the day, when we have political knockabout in the chamber and try to score points against each other, and when we argue our cases with vehemence or vigour, it is often human beings who are affected by politicians’ decisions.
As many members have said, we are not talking about scroungers, malingerers or people who are trying to fiddle the system; rather, we are talking about ordinary men and women and, unfortunately, children, who are affected by politicians’ decisions. Furthermore, they are affected by decisions that do not necessarily have to be made.
I understand that there must be change as Alex Johnstone said. Jackie Baillie and others made that point. The system is imperfect and there is no doubt that improvements could be made. Unlike others, I to some extent do not doubt the sincerity of Iain Duncan Smith when he first started to look at the system. I accept that he was shocked profoundly when he visited Easterhouse and saw how many people are living in poverty. Unfortunately, once he was in a position to do something about that, we saw a mixture of naivety and, in a sense, helplessness from his perspective, because he had lost the argument in the UK Government and with the Treasury about what welfare reform should be about. We are seeing the Treasury driving a process that he is implementing and which is having a very human effect on individuals the length and breadth of the country.
Things could be done differently but, unfortunately, a very particular course of action has been taken. I regret the fact that the Liberal Democrats are giving cover to such a course of action.
I agree that the UK Government should, as Margaret Burgess said, abolish the bedroom tax, and I would like it to go as quickly as possible. However, I say to those who have spoken with such vehemence about what will happen after 2016 that if they want the bedroom tax to go, the earliest opportunity that we will have to abolish it in full—assuming that the Liberal Democrats and Tories do not change their minds on it—will be 2015. I hope that, when it comes to the general election—unlike the last time, when the SNP encouraged people in England to vote for the Liberal Democrats—Margaret Burgess and her colleagues in the SNP will encourage people in England to vote Labour to get rid of the bedroom tax at the earliest opportunity.
Like others, I have mixed views about the contributions that food banks make. As, I am sure, many members have done, I have contributed to the work of food banks in my area and will testify to what I have seen them do in Barrhead and Johnstone in my constituency. However, as many others are I am torn, because it is a disgrace that in 21st century Scotland so many hard-working families have to turn to food banks to survive. Jackie Baillie was right to talk about how demeaning it is for people to have to rely on handouts of food rather than being given the resources to look after their families.
The Trussel Trust, which does a fantastic job, has highlighted some case studies, including the instance of Sarah in Renfrewshire, who was made redundant while she was pregnant. Her husband then had a nervous breakdown and lost his job. The family hit crisis point and lost their home. She became too malnourished to breastfeed her baby. To ensure that their two children could eat, the parents skipped meals and, in two years, lost more than 8 stone between them. They were then affected by a bureaucratic error in the benefits system and, because of that error, faced a six-month sanction, which was overturned only when legal action was threatened. They have since received a backdated payment, but no family should have to face that indignity or bear the consequences of it.
As Jackie Baillie and others have said, irrespective of the debates on the constitution, there are things that we can do now; there are things that the Scottish Government can do. If members want to look at an example of practical things that can be done, they need look only at the sterling work that Renfrewshire Council has been doing. It has a no-evictions policy for tenants who engage with it and has allocated £5 million to combat and mitigate the impact of welfare reform. It has recruited a team of staff to give advice and support to those who are affected, it has put the maximum that it is allowed into the discretionary housing payment fund and will spend all its allocation from the Scottish Government of the Scottish welfare fund. As well as that, it has set up a poverty commission to examine the issue.
However, Renfrewshire Council is one of the minority of councils that, the year after next, will face a reduction in its council funding from the Scottish Government. We cannot expect such councils to do fantastic work helping the poorest people in our society when we are squeezing their budgets. There are things that we could do, and the first one is to free up councils to help people who are in need in their communities.
16:24
Once again, we are debating welfare reform, as we did recently. I am sure that this will not be the last time.
The subject comes up in many scenarios. This morning, at the Equal Opportunities Committee, we considered fathers’ involvement in their children’s upbringing and the challenges that fathers face. One issue that was highlighted in that session was the experience of some fathers at the Jobcentre Plus, where they felt that staff were less supportive of single fathers than of single mothers.
The committee heard about a single father with a very troubled child. The child had already spent part of his life in care, but the father was under real pressure to take a job despite the fact that his child needed a parent who was available if the school started having problems. Those issues obviously affect single mothers too; the committee was simply considering them in a particular context at its meeting today.
We debated welfare reform fairly recently, so my approach today will be slightly different from the approach that I took in the previous debate. I asked my staff to highlight a particular case that I could use as an example without mentioning the individual involved. They came up with the following case that they have been dealing with in the past three months.
I am not arguing that my constituent has not made mistakes; my argument concerns how she is being treated and why the system has become so rigid and impersonal that we have lost sight of the bigger picture. Annabelle Ewing spoke about fairness today, and Ken Macintosh took a similar line in his speech, which I whole-heartedly endorse.
The DWP is meant to represent us as wider society in caring for people who have hit hard times, and yet that is not coming across. If anything, the DWP seems to be becoming less caring, and I have to say that I personally find some of the individual cases quite upsetting.
My constituent’s letter says:
“Dear John Mason... I got this letter”
—from the DWP—
“the other day about my claim. Just writing to see if you or one of your staff can call them. I have no one else to ask and am due to get paid next week on the Friday. I have appealed against it”
—the letter—
“as I did not go to the assessment as I had a GP appointment on the date. I have sent my appointment card to the DWP and a letter. I have been very ill. I need to be paid next week on the Friday. I do not have money coming in. I have my gas to pay next Friday so I need to be paid and I have kids. Just see if you can call them. I need get paid and am worried sick. I have got kids to get food for. Please help.”
My staff and I had already been involved in other aspects of that case, and in February we received a copy of a letter from the DWP addressed to the constituent, which said:
“I have looked in to your claim and any deductions which were being made at that time. Unfortunately I have not been able to view the actual letter which we sent you as this has been deleted from our system.”
Given that the letter was written 49 days previously, I find it bizarre that it was deleted from the system.
More encouragingly, the letter went on to say:
“The decision to disallow your ESA was subsequently revised as it was accepted that you had good reason for not attending the WCA and your ESA was reinstated.”
We seem to have made some progress on that case, but it should not take an MSP, an MP or anyone else to get involved to ensure that somebody gets the money that they need to live on.
I am delighted that in Scotland we have been able to put together funding to plug some of the gaps, but we are clearly not going to be able to plug all of them. Although the bedroom tax is serious and has hit the headlines, it is only the tip of the iceberg.
The Welfare Reform Committee’s report from last April mentions that housing benefit reforms—the bedroom tax—have resulted in modest losses of £50 million. That can be compared with £500 million from incapacity benefit changes, £300 million from tax credits and £290 million from the 1 per cent uprating of most working-age benefits. Those figures are huge, and they do not even include sanctions, which are not officially a cut but are in practice a real cut for real households.
Members received a number of good briefings for today’s debate. One came from the SFHA, which mentions that point. The SFHA states:
“We are concerned that sanctioned tenants are unfairly losing their Housing Benefit. Of our members we surveyed, most reported having tenants who have accrued rent arrears directly because they have had their JSA sanctioned. Being unable to prove their income during the period of the sanction, tenants have their benefits stopped and are unable to claim backdated Housing Benefit. With no income, tenants have no money for rent, fuel or food.”
Willie Rennie made the point in his speech that the budget is going up. The budget for welfare has to go up because it is countercyclical, but the reality is that individual households—which we have been hearing about today—are having their benefit cut.
Alex Johnstone mentioned Iain Duncan Smith and the fact that reform is needed. I am happy to accept that. I was interested to note that Hugh Henry gave Iain Duncan Smith the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions. I must admit that I am unsure about his intentions. I know that my friend Bob Holman, who happens to be a member of the Labour Party and who has also worked in Easterhouse, is much more sceptical about Iain Duncan Smith.
Kevin Stewart made the point that one of the reforms that is needed is that work has to pay. When I was at Westminster, I was taken aback that the statutory minimum wage is the responsibility of a different department from welfare. I do not see how the two can be separate.
In conclusion, we need to keep our focus on welfare reform but, whatever happens in September, surely this Parliament needs to take on this area.
That brings us to the closing speeches. I call Alex Johnstone, who has six minutes.
16:30
This has been a less bad-tempered debate than the one that we enjoyed last week. It has begun to encourage individuals to start taking a more detailed view of the welfare reform process, yet we have had the same old stories being repeated time after time. As we heard from Willie Rennie, welfare budgets continue to rise very quickly. The welfare budget in Scotland is rising as we speak, so the overall headline figures are certainly positive.
If we look under the surface of a number of issues that were raised during the debate, we discover some confusion and some difficulties. One of those issues is the Scottish welfare fund, which was devolved from the DWP into the hands of the Scottish Government. I concede that the Scottish Government has added substantially to the funds that are administered under that heading. However, in the Welfare Reform Committee last week, one food bank gave us the figure that a third of all its referrals are people who have first gone to the Scottish welfare fund and have, in effect, been turned away and referred to a food bank instead. When we consider that the fund is significantly undersubscribed in many areas, we see that there is a problem that we have to work on.
Ken Macintosh raised that issue, and he also said that the best form of welfare is work. I think that we can all agree about that. We should note that, in spite of many of the criticisms that have been made, the UK Government has been working on that issue on more than one level, not least with the substantial increase in tax thresholds, which means that the low paid in work are paying a great deal less tax than they paid in the past. That is a significant factor in the Scottish economy and one that is not given adequate credit when we discuss the issues here in the chamber.
I move on to some of the things that other people said. We heard an emotional and, I have to say, honest and effective speech from Linda Fabiani. I would expect nothing less—Linda is one of those honest people who says what she feels. She said that she feels that we could do so much better, but again we had no explanation of how we could do so much better. What would Linda Fabiani do differently?
Will the member take an intervention?
Sadly, there is some evidence that the Scottish Government has no intention of doing anything differently.
In the early days of the Welfare Reform Committee, we became one of the few committees to meet in the chamber. Committee members lined themselves up along the second row of chairs, and at the far end we had members of the Scottish Government’s commission on welfare, whom we were able to question at some length about their plans for changing welfare in an independent Scotland.
I remember asking the commission members specifically how they would deal with tax credits. I got a straight answer on that subject: they said that they did not have to worry about tax credits because they had no intention of changing anything until after the implementation of universal credit and the abolition of tax credits. That indicated to me that the Scottish Government, at that time at least, had no plans to change the welfare system before it achieved the holy grail of independence.
The truth is that the rhetoric is not likely to be matched by actions and that much of what we have heard today is policy being made on the hoof and is largely uncosted. Kevin Stewart said that the sooner we have the powers to deal with welfare, the better, but there is simply no evidence that the Government has any plans to use those powers.
We have to address one or two key issues that have been raised, one of which is, of course, the issue of discretionary housing payments. I would like to say a little more about DHPs and how they are being used.
The initial £13.4 million that the Department for Work and Pensions put into discretionary housing payments was first topped up by an additional £20 million from the Scottish Government, with an additional £15 million subsequently being made available. The problem is that we do not seem to be able to get the money into the hands of the right people. The Government needs to look seriously at how the money that it is making available is ultimately used. It would be a tremendous disappointment if money were to be made available and the funds, like the Scottish welfare fund, ended up not being used for the purpose for which they were intended. A little more work by the Government in that area could result in less disappointment at the end of the day.
Finally, we have heard on more than one occasion in the debate my colleague Kevin Stewart from the north-east telling us that the real difference in a future Scotland would be that we could collect more business taxes and, as a result, we would not have to worry about how we spent them.
Will the member take an intervention?
Will the member take an intervention?
The only evidence that I have from the Government on how it intends to tax businesses is that it intends to cut corporation tax by 3p in the pound. If that is an indication of how the Government sets its priorities, it is clear that those priorities differ substantially when they are expressed at the back of the chamber in a welfare debate from how they are expressed at the front of the chamber during First Minister’s question time.
16:37
Welfare reform needs to be seen in the context of probably the worst cost-of-living crisis for decades. The minimum income standard tells us that the cost of a basket of essential goods and services has gone up by around 25 per cent in the past five years. We know that wages have stagnated or, at worst, have gone down in real terms.
We face two significant problems. One is that in-work poverty is increasing. We absolutely need to do more to make work pay rather than have the welfare system subsidising employers. I genuinely say to the Scottish Government that there are real opportunities to put a requirement in the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill to pay the living wage. We should not miss those opportunities, because we spend billions of pounds on public contracts. It matters to us that the standard of delivery of those contracts matches the highest standard possible. Paying the living wage to staff and valuing them if they work under those contracts matters.
The second significant problem is the scale of the benefit cuts. I say as politely as I can to Willie Rennie that benefit cuts to individuals and families are being made, so I genuinely do not know where he gets his figures from. Perhaps the number of claimants is increasing but, at the launch of its document today, the Child Poverty Action Group did not make up the projections that demonstrate that the number of children who are likely to be plunged into poverty as a result of welfare reform may be as high as 100,000. Willie Rennie’s comments and figures simply do not add up.
I was simply making the point that it is a gross exaggeration to say that the welfare system is being dismantled. I recognise some of the points that Jackie Baillie is making and what that organisation has said, but that was my point.
Okay. My criticism was that Willie Rennie also said that we should not describe the cuts as benefit cuts, when it is clear that there are benefit cuts.
Before I turn to contributions from members across the chamber, I want to return to the minister’s intervention during my speech. The minister helpfully made it clear that, when she was at the Scottish Affairs Committee, she did not rule out removing the debt from those who are in bedroom tax arrears this year. Does that mean that she will do that and that arrears will be wiped out for those who have struggled to pay in 2013-14? I am happy to take an intervention from her on that point.
I was going to deal with that in my summing-up speech. At the Scottish Affairs Committee, when I was asked whether we would make available additional funding to write off arrears for the current year, I said that we have committed £20 million to discretionary housing payments and that a discretionary housing payment can be made to write off rent arrears. I said that we would look at the available balance, if any, at the end of the financial year.
Thank you, minister—that is helpful.
Michael McMahon set out clearly the impact of welfare reform on the people who came to the committee to give the personal testimony that shaped our knowledge and thinking. Alex Johnstone said that he would not be adversarial, but he then had SNP members jumping up and down in unison when he asked them to describe what the welfare system would look like in an independent Scotland. Although I genuinely think that he was using that as a bit of a distraction and was being just a little mischievous, I agree that there is not much detail in the white paper. It is legitimate to ask questions and to want to know the shape of any future welfare system, because it is one thing to make promises and another to make the sums add up.
Hugh Henry was right to talk about Renfrewshire Council, which has been proactive. Along with others such as West Dunbartonshire Council, it has sought out people who would benefit from a discretionary housing payment. Those councils will spend their budgets fully, but not every other council will do so. I ask the minister to evaluate their work and consider what we can learn from it.
Ken Macintosh spoke in detail about sanctions, the number of which has more than doubled. In September 2013, the total number of sanctions against benefit recipients reached its highest level, with about 900,000 benefit claimants sanctioned. DWP figures show that 45 per cent of ESA sanctions are given to people with mental health issues, a learning disability or behavioural conditions such as autism, but that those people make up only 30 per cent of ESA recipients, so something is clearly wrong. The situation must be urgently reviewed, not least because sanctions now last longer—the minimum is four weeks and the maximum is three years, for goodness’ sake. If we are getting sanctions wrong, we absolutely cannot subject people to them for that length of time.
Alex Johnstone described Linda Fabiani as honest. I simply observe that Linda said that she does not particularly like Alex, so I do not know what is going on there. However, she rightly reminded us about the history of our policy making on houses, which is that we built homes for life. That is why the bedroom tax absolutely cuts across that policy area.
Linda Fabiani also appeared to suggest that no welfare measures are devolved, whereas community care grants, crisis grants and council tax benefit are devolved and the independent living fund is going to be devolved. She and other SNP members simply say that, if people vote yes on 18 September, everything will be all right. However, the issue is not about where the power lies; it is about what we do with it, and the SNP has to provide us with lots of detail about what its answers would be.
16:43
We have heard a number of stories from members across the chamber about the real impact that the welfare reform cuts are having on families and individuals across Scotland. Going back to those stories makes the situation real and shows the reason why we must do something about it. We have heard a lot about the bedroom tax, and I am sure that all members have constituents who have felt the impact of it and who are struggling to meet their housing costs. That confirms that the Scottish Government was absolutely right to take action to help those who are affected.
I will say a bit about why we think that discretionary housing payments are the best way to mitigate the bedroom tax. Discretionary housing payments can be paid at the outset when someone makes a claim for housing benefit, or at the start of the year, and they can be paid for a 12-month period, which can take away stress from people for that time. The payments can prevent people from building up arrears, which I think is critical. People should not build up arrears, and we should not tell them that they have to do so before they can get assistance.
That cap must be lifted. Indeed, it brings us back to the issue that Jackie Baillie highlighted of an underspend in some councils. The reality is that the DWP’s allocation of the money does not match the need in Scotland and if we can get the cap lifted we can make the Scottish Government’s share of the money go further and ensure that it gets to those who need it.
April is a matter of weeks away. Are we seriously still waiting for a letter from Lord Freud? Are we not putting in place contingency plans to ensure that payment reaches the people who need it most before the beginning of April?
We have made it very clear that the £20 million that we have agreed for discretionary housing payments will be made available to local authorities from 1 April, and we will be looking at how to get the additional £15 million out to those who need it most.
However, we must be very careful and ensure that what we are treading into does not have unintended consequences for those on means-tested benefits. These payments cannot be seen simply as a source of regular income that goes into people’s rent accounts. That would affect their benefits, because we are talking about a means-tested benefit. Arrears have to be built up before the money can be paid out.
We are working very carefully on the matter, and we have had three different pieces of correspondence with Westminster to get it resolved. Lifting the cap is an easy solution that will cost Westminster nothing. It will be able to make its savings in the way it wants to make them and the Scottish Parliament will be able to help those affected in the way it wants to help them, which is to add to the discretionary housing payments.
Going back to earlier comments about the use of powers, I think that this is a kind of abuse of power. Although the move will cost Westminster nothing, it will simply not let us do anything about mitigation. Does the minister agree that that is why we should have these powers here?
Absolutely. Given that there is no valid reason not to lift the cap, we have to wonder why this position is being taken. Alex Johnstone said that we just want to take on the UK Government head-on but it seems to me that it is the other way round. We have given that Government a solution that will work for us, that the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland want to put in place and which will not cost it anything, but it is still not willing to do it and we have to ask why. Perhaps Alex Johnstone and Willie Rennie can get us the answer to that question.
If the cap is lifted and the funding is available, everyone who applies for a discretionary housing payment from 1 April should be entitled to it. It is as simple as that. It should not require any strong means-testing measures or onerous work by local authorities; the process is very simple and flexible and the guidance very clear.
Willie Rennie suggested that the Scottish Government has said nothing about what a welfare state in an independent Scotland would look like. However, we have produced funding projections that the expert working group on welfare has agreed are correct. Given that Scotland’s spend on social protection, including pensions and welfare, is lower than that for the UK as a whole, it is clear that we can afford a decent welfare system and support our public services. We have set out in “Scotland’s Future” the kind of system that we want and, having heard the stories that have been told in this chamber this afternoon, I know that that system will be fairer, more just and closer to what our people want than what we are getting from Westminster. That is something that we can do. No matter what—
Will the minister give way?
I have only a few seconds left—
Just on that point, minister—
I am sorry—I have only a few seconds left. I have taken quite a bit of criticism in the debate from Willie Rennie and others. Alex Johnstone said that we heard the same old stories but I have to say that what we heard from him was the same old story that we hear every time he speaks on welfare in this chamber.
Not once in my opening speech did I mention the referendum, independence or the constitution. However, I note that both sides of the better together campaign raised the issue in theirs. It was not me who focused on the referendum today.
Will the minister give way?
I am sorry, but I am not taking any more interventions.
It started on your benches.
Order.
The first speech did not come from these benches.
We have heard from a number of members that working is better for people, and it is better. Jackie Baillie mentioned in-work poverty, which concerns us all. The Scottish Government has been criticised for not taking action, but we have taken direct action on youth unemployment to ensure that 10,000 young people in Scotland can get a job and training from day 1 of their unemployment. That is the preventative approach and it is better for them than having to wait a year and being forced into a mandatory scheme. We have also taken action on the council tax reduction scheme and the Scottish welfare fund.
I might not have time to go into all the details of that, but money is now going out and if guidance has to be changed again, we will change it. The money must get out there, but we must recognise that the Scottish welfare fund cannot make up for all the ills caused by UK benefit cuts. It cannot do it. The welfare fund is £33 million. We heard from John Mason about the cuts that we are still to see coming down the road. We heard from Kevin Stewart—
Come to a conclusion please minister.
—about the local housing allowance. We know that a lot more cuts are to come.
I agree with my SNP colleagues that we need to have control of welfare and employment in the Parliament. That means having control of all Scotland’s finances.
I am afraid that you really need to close.
Only with those powers in this Parliament can we have a welfare system that meets Scotland’s needs.
16:51
I begin by thanking all members for taking part in today’s debate, which has been useful and constructive. It has been the second debate on the subject in two weeks, but I do not think that there is anything wrong with that. The issue demands and merits this Parliament’s frequent attention.
I thank my committee colleagues and the clerks for their work during the past months. We do not always agree with one another, but I think that we work well together overall. I include in that Mr Johnstone, who is often a lone voice on the committee.
Above all, I would like to thank those who have given their time to speak to the committee, whether they are from sectoral organisations that are interacting with the welfare reform process or individuals who have been directly affected. I particularly thank the latter group. Linda Fabiani made the point that it was difficult to have to listen to evidence from those individuals, but it was essential to hear it.
During the first Welfare Reform Committee debate last year, I said:
“Behind all the figures that are detailed in the report that we debate today are individual stories and individuals who are being impacted. I reassure those individuals that the committee will focus on them as it takes its work further forward.”—[Official Report, 23 April 2013; c 18866.]
I very much hope that those individuals feel that that has been the case. As has been mentioned already, the committee has the your say process, which is an open process that lets individuals engage with the committee on their own terms. I will try to talk a little more about that later.
The convener rightly presented the report card of the DWP and the UK Government. I want to give an alternative report card, which is that of the committee itself, although it is more a self-assessment than a report card. Before that, I will comment on one aspect of the UK Government’s performance that the convener and Annabelle Ewing picked up.
Yesterday, the convener wrote to the UK Government Minister of State for Employment, and in the letter he set out:
“The Committee feels strongly that evidence from a UK Minister is important in its current work of scrutinising the impact in Scotland of the revised benefit sanction regime.”
That letter came on the back of Esther McVey refusing to attend a public session of the committee. Despite repeated invitations, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Minister for Welfare Reform Lord Freud have similarly refused to attend a committee in public session. That is despite the fact that the Secretary of State for Scotland has given evidence on child poverty to the Health and Sport Committee, and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has given evidence to our Finance Committee and Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. All those sessions were in public.
I will not labour the point, but if any of the three UK ministers who have thus far refused to attend our committee are watching today, I urge them to reconsider and ask them not to hide behind the shield of responsibility to the Westminster Parliament as an excuse for not coming to meet this Parliament’s Welfare Reform Committee and hearing our evidence.
I turn to some of the work that the committee has done and the work that we have planned. As a number of members, including Linda Fabiani, said, the committee commissioned work from Sheffield Hallam University. Its report found that financial losses arising from the reforms will hit the most deprived parts of Scotland hardest; when fully implemented, welfare reform will take more than £1.6 billion a year out of the Scottish economy; and the biggest financial losses—of £500 million a year—will arise from reform to incapacity benefit.
That evidence was well received, not just in this Parliament but by wider civic society. On that basis, the committee has commissioned further research from the university to look at the impact of welfare reform at a ward level. That research, which will show the local area impact, is due to be published in May. I am sure that all members will look forward to seeing it.
I turn to the bedroom tax, which is an issue that has demanded a lot of this Parliament’s attention. The committee has dealt with two petitions on the issue—one presented by the Govan Law Centre and the other presented by the no2bedroomtax campaign. The committee commissioned research by Professor Gibb, of the University of Glasgow, which looked at the scale and depth of the impact of the bedroom tax. Findings, which were published last October, included the fact that, despite the financial pressure of the bedroom tax, social housing tenants are resistant to downsizing in Scotland and that the pull factors that keep people in their homes and existing communities are outweighing the push factor of the bedroom tax. People view their house as their home—it is more than just bricks and mortar.
The committee published its interim report on the bedroom tax in January 2014. The headline was that the committee called for the abolition of the bedroom tax by the UK Government and that, failing that, this Parliament should have the power and resources to do so.
The research from Sheffield Hallam University found that, proportionately, the bedroom tax was one of the smaller changes, but it does of course have a big impact on those who are directly affected, so it is right that this Parliament and the Welfare Reform Committee in particular focus their attention on it. I emphasise that the report that we published in January was an interim report; the committee will continue to look at the issue.
Another area of the committee’s work has been to engage with the local authority pilots that the DWP and the Scottish Government commissioned on various strands of universal credit. Along with the convener, I visited West Dunbartonshire Council and New Horizons Borders—a third sector organisation based in Galashiels. Other members of the committee went to other areas. Some of the discussion was about whether the pilots would have a meaningful impact on the roll-out of universal credit.
Digital literacy presented a particular challenge. In West Dunbartonshire, approximately one third of households have broadband at home. I know that that is an issue elsewhere, too. Concerns have been raised by the likes of Citizens Advice Scotland about the UK Government’s digital by default agenda. It is an important issue on which the committee will continue to focus.
I said earlier that I would speak about the your say process.
One moment, Mr Hepburn. There is just far too much chatting. Can we take the next one minute and 30 seconds to listen to Mr Hepburn?
I certainly appreciate that, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much.
The your say process is an open process to enable any person who wants to contact us to do so. Where colleagues in the chamber have constituents engaging with them who are experiencing problems with the welfare reform process, I suggest that they encourage them to contact our committee.
The convener mentioned Scott Wilson, Henry Sherlock and Audrey Barnett, who gave very telling evidence to the committee. They all came to the committee through the your say process. John Mason, Annabelle Ewing, Linda Fabiani and Willie Rennie also mentioned experiences of their own constituents. Hugh Henry was absolutely right to characterise that type of evidence as “sobering”—that is the least that we could describe it as. The your say activity has been very important in informing the committee in its work.
I see that I am now desperately running out of time. There is a further huge range of activity in which the committee is engaged. It is examining direct payments, personal independence payments, sanctions—which have been raised as a particular concern—and food banks. Those are all issues that we will consider.
I hope that it gives some reassurance to the Parliament to know that the Welfare Reform Committee is actively engaged in this process. More importantly, I hope that it also gives members of the public that confidence.