Chamber and committees

I always wonder how we look above the silo that we are operating in. When I was COSLA’s community wellbeing spokesperson, I had responsibility for looking at rapid rehousing transition plans and getting 32 councils to look beyond homelessness being just at the door of housing departments. Obviously, Glasgow has a different situation with delegated powers, but how can we ensure that areas that are working in silos look at their responsibility for the mental health budget and at what they can do to help to deliver on the local strategy?

In that light, is there perhaps a need for a transformational reform-type budget to be made available to drive decision making from other places, levering money and resource from other places into making those tough decisions? If not, you will be trying to make decisions in an ever-reducing budgetary context, and that makes it really difficult.

Good morning. I want to focus on prioritisation approaches. You have both already touched on that in the evidence that you have sent to us. Hamish Hamilton touched on the PBMA approach and the difficulties with it, and Duncan Black spoke about using a kind of slider to see what would happen in one place if more money were spent in another.

I am particularly interested in understanding IJBs’ approaches to situations in which they are faced with an in-year reduction in funding. We saw that in 2024-25, when the incoming UK Government took decisions that immediately impacted Scottish Government budgets in a way that then impacted local budgets. At that point, how did you decide where you were going to prioritise the spending, and what was the fallout from that? We have heard about firefighting this morning and decisions that had to be taken. Given the context of the delegated functions, your statutory duties and the strategic plan that you are working to, how do you prioritise spending in situations involving in-year budget reductions?

What is the long-term impact of the type of approach that we have discussed, involving year-to-year settlements, the requirement for more resourcing and the overspends that we see in different areas? I have heard from my health and social care partnership that there are major pressures in social care, so that is where the overspends are. Duncan, you have Glasgow City Council willing to underwrite and support the overspend in the homelessness budget at the moment. In the absence of that, how will you protect the mental health spend?

I guess that it is about community planning partners and everybody locally in an area working towards improving mental health and how that all joins up.

In 2016, the Scottish Government issued guidance that a prioritisation approach was the decision making process that should be utilised. If we think more widely, the survey of the integration authorities showed a stark picture as to how that is looking on the ground. In the absence of something as direct as a PBMA approach, how do we get our integration authorities to use prioritisation? Do you have any suggestions, considering the prevention agenda but also the big reform that is needed? How do you do that in the light of those things?

I am going to discuss the increased disability benefits case load. It has already been touched on quite a bit so, in the interests of brevity, we will try to just tease out some more responses to it.

If you look at the narrative out there, the increase can be seen in some quarters as a terrible thing, and in other quarters as the best thing. It is our duty to look underneath the screaming headlines that we sometimes see in newspapers, which I think lead to a toxic discussion about it and, perhaps, knee-jerk proposed reforms.

Has any real research been undertaken to understand what is driving the increase in people applying for and being successful in receiving disability benefits right across the UK? We are seeing it in every place and we have touched on some of the reasons, but if anybody could add any more detail, it would be really helpful.

What I am hearing from you both—it is what we have heard from the rest of the witnesses, too, I think—is that there is an element of failure demand driving up ill health or exacerbating health conditions that then tip into worsening health conditions, which perhaps leads people to apply for benefits that they might not have applied for before. However, underpinning that, there is the cost of living, which also drives applications from people who perhaps would not have applied in the past. Is that a correct summation?

Earlier, we spoke a little bit about the proposed PIP reforms that were shelved. Do the witnesses have any views on the likelihood of significant eligibility changes to PIP happening in the near future? If such decisions are made, how can the Scottish Government plan for their financial impact?

Look at the big issue of winter heating allowance changes and the guddle that was the fallout; this issue is even more complicated given the passporting and the intertwined nature of that. From this committee’s perspective, how we help scrutinise the Scottish Government’s response to such changes, should they come down the line, is a huge issue.