Chamber and committees

:It is interesting that you mentioned community planning partnerships. Having been a member of one, I know that the overarching aims of an entire area and all the community planning partners stem from that body—all the decisions flow from it. That was a very helpful comment.

I will spend some time speaking about the barriers to physical activity, which we have spent a lot of time discussing in your answers to my colleagues.

I was trying to think about the entire ecosystem of sport and physical activity. I used to be the chair of our local sports council, the chair of the leisure trust and the COSLA spokesperson who covered the area. We are missing how to pull all that together, as has already been mentioned. Everybody is responsible for their part in the system. If we think about barriers, cost and being able to access things in your local area, is there a space for empowering our communities a little bit more? We could think about community asset transfers or where local communities have taken on assets and widened out access to people, or about supporting social enterprises such as Biosphere Bikes down in Girvan or Cycle Station near my house—social enterprises that provide people with access to cycling and bikes. Is there a golden thread that we are missing? How do we pull it all together so that all the bits of the system support people to engage in physical education and activity?

10:15

:That is helpful—thanks.

:That is good to hear—thank you.

:Thanks—that is helpful. I do not know whether we have time, but I know that Jon Doig wants to come in.

Before I get into that, it is probably worth mentioning that, under the DWP’s universal credit system, claimants are usually given all their housing costs by default. That is another instance of people having that choice—in that case, to make payments directly to their landlord. Obviously, they can choose to do that, but that is not the default position.

That brings me back to John Halliday’s comments on the principle of giving people the ability to make these decisions. I am not saying that people do not get themselves into extreme difficulties through non-payment of rent, and whatever might follow from that, but it is another part of the system where the same approach is taken.

My actual question is on the effectiveness of the funeral support payment in addressing funeral poverty. I do not know whether eligibility for it should be expanded, or whether the flat rate needs to be increased, but I would be keen to hear from our witnesses on that aspect.

09:45

With regard to eligibility, I am also concerned about people at the other end of the age spectrum. I am thinking about young people who might find themselves in a situation in which they have to take responsibility for a funeral of a parent or somebody who had been looking after them. For example, they might be a student and might not be eligible for the FSP. As John Halliday pointed out, there are people on contributions-based benefits who are on the low-income end of the spectrum who are tipped into poverty after a funeral. Has a call been made for the system to be changed to deal with that?

I have a question on that. My understanding is that the traditional role of the funeral director is to shoulder that burden and take it away from the family at a time when it is difficult for them to have to try and pay lots of people all over the place. How does the respectful part fit into the approach that you have outlined? I understand that it would take the pressure off the funeral director and would mean that they would not be left with that debt. Of course, if Social Security Scotland were to give the money directly to the interment authority, that would also remove that risk. However, would that change the traditional role of the funeral director, which is currently the trusted organisation in that regard?

As a former welfare benefits adviser, I will pose a question about something that I would probably not have wanted any of my clients to have been dealing with. Something that Gerry Boyle said made me think about this: is there not a mechanism just now whereby Social Security Scotland knows when a claimant has received a payment and has not used it for its intended purposes? Is there not such a way to look at that at the moment? In any other situation, you would know—well, I suppose that if a crisis loan were not used for its intended purpose, there would be no comeback on that either.

Is there no look back to see whether something has been used? Are any statistics collected on such incidents, or do we not really have a full understanding of how many there are? I would imagine that, if there is not such a mechanism, there is no ability to ask for the money back when there has been an overpayment by Social Security Scotland.

There are calls for a payment of around the £2,184 mark, which would cover the lower-end costs of a simple attended funeral. However, when we are looking at a situation in which a lair and interment fees, if there is not already a lair there, would be more than £2,000, as it is in the local authority area where I stay, I am trying to figure out how the costs to the funeral directors and the person can be managed within the envelope of a funeral support payment and whether there is any movement in the system that means that it is not entirely on the funeral directors to reduce those costs.

10:00