Chamber and committees

Thank you, minister. We move to a question from Pam Duncan-Glancy, who joins us remotely.

We move to questions from Emma Roddick, who joins us in the room, followed by Natalie Don, who will join us remotely.

Before I bring in Pam Duncan-Glancy, I have a question on the back of Jeremy Balfour’s questions.

A handful of people have contacted me in the past couple of weeks because they were expecting to be on a natural transfer pathway from PIP to ADP but are now all of a sudden being triggered with reviews from the DWP that they were not expecting. Although they had letters that said that they would not be reviewed until the end of 2022, there seems to be a flurry of people in that situation. Will those individuals now be subject to a managed transfer process, which will mean that it will be slightly longer before they get on to ADP? There seems to be a lot of confusion among people who are now subject to reviews that they were not expecting.

I am definitely happy to write to you on that, minister. It is reassuring that you have not noticed a trend in that regard. That is helpful.

Thank you, minister. As we have been talking, you have answered a number of other questions that members had, so I have been getting a flurry of messages on my phone to say that they have no further questions. Therefore, that brings us to the end of this evidence session. I thank you and your officials for coming this morning and giving evidence.

I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

Thank you very much, minister. Our first group of questions concerns the transfer from personal independence payment to adult disability payment.

Thank you very much, minister.

Marie McNair joins us remotely. She will be followed by Emma Roddick, who joins us in the room.

We heard quite a lot about that issue, because there is quite a big variation in payments across the country. As my colleague Jeremy Balfour highlighted, that can involve top-up payments or things that happen because a local authority chooses to do them, or because certain aspects are subject to interpretation of the guidance. The work that the collaborative is going to do in helping to shape how that guidance can be changed and updated will be invaluable.

I, too, thank my colleague Kaukab Stewart for securing this important debate.

First, I want to take a moment to remind us all how we got to where we are today. The former Tory Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, said:

“Alongside what we have already done with the mandatory work programme and our tougher sanctions regime, this marks the end of the something-for-nothing culture”.

I repeat:

“the ending of the something-for-nothing culture”.

Let that sink in. That treats those of us who have been recipients of UK social security as if we have been taking something that we do not deserve—as if we are feckless, lazy and grubbing.

The stigma of that experience still lurks in the recesses of my mind. Thinking back to when I used my income support to buy my baby son’s babygrows from charity shops, I was not thinking about the circular economy nor about reducing, reusing and recycling. I was trying to figure out how to make the small amount of money that I had go further, in a time before baby boxes. Wow! How 24-year-old me could have done with one of our amazing levellers, the baby box. That, too, is seen by people in some quarters as being “something-for-nothing.

We should make no mistake about it: benefit sanctioning is a political choice. We have yet to be presented with any real and tangible hard facts that show that removing people’s only source of income—income at a level that is so low that it is already recognised as being the minimum amount that a person needs in order to survive—has any positive outcome. It is a choice that politicians have made and it is a culture that they have created, in our UK benefits system. It is punitive and punishing—all stick, and scant carrot.

I worked as a senior caseworker for a member of Parliament, and I will never forget the benefit sanctions cases that we had coming into the office—they were people who were in desperate need of support. I did not see, standing in front of me, people for whom hunger and destitution were an appropriate punishment for their missing an appointment—for being on a late-running bus, for being ill, for having the audacity to have to collect kids from school at the same time as a DWP appointment, or for not showing evidence of 35 hours of job searching. Who knew that a person could actually demonstrate 35 hours of job searching? That blows my mind.

I saw many people who were experiencing multiple and complex trauma being retraumatised by a system that was designed to be hostile, designed to end the “something-for-nothing culture” and designed to reduce people to being so hungry that they would open a can of soup to drink it cold, straight from the tin, in a food bank, because they had not eaten for days and their pittance of a hardship payment was gone within seconds of their receiving it.

What kind of country creates a system that is designed to punish people for being poor and for having everyday real-life situations, like those that I have outlined, happen? I ask members to imagine that, each time they missed an appointment or did not manage to finish something in the time allotted, they lost a full month’s pay. Now, I ask them to imagine losing six months’ pay while they are living a chaotic life that is beset by substance use and trauma, and is built on a foundation of adverse childhood experiences. Is that someone who is living the high life and getting something for nothing? I proffer the radical thought that the life choices of that individual would be continually knocked, and that the imposition of harsh sanctioning would, in fact, only add to and exacerbate the deep poverty that they are experiencing.

We can contrast that with our Scottish social security system, which is being created with dignity and fairness at its heart. It is lifting people out of poverty and supporting folks, instead of punishing them.

As a former front-line homelessness worker, I welcome the cabinet secretary outlining how the Scottish Government is working to tackle homelessness. However, does she share my frustration that actions that the United Kingdom Government has taken—particularly the deeply damaging £20 per week cut to universal credit—risk undermining our efforts?