Chamber and committees

We have seen the closure of Edinburgh Filmhouse and the loss of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The current economic crisis is affecting Scotland’s cultural landscape, and the withdrawal of this year’s winter festival fund will only intensify the problem for the cultural sector. What good does it do for the cabinet secretary to be flying around the world promoting Scottish culture if cultural institutions and festivals in his constituency are closing down for good?

Anyone from the panel will do, but Suzanne Munday has talked quite a lot about getting involved with ethnic minorities. I have worked with you before, so it is nice seeing you again. My question is quite general: is there anything missing from the bill?

Thank you. Does anyone else want to come in? Does anyone feel that there is anything missing from the bill?

Good morning, panel. I have a very small question. Is there anything missing from the bill that would be required to give effect to these principles?

Again, I have a general question. Will the charter have a particular effect, or is it more of a public relations exercise? I will ask Paul Traynor.

I am running out of time, as I have a lot to go through.

What that agile approach has produced so far is a minimum viable product to onboard the initial social security benefits. As we have heard, it has automated only two so far, and too many benefits still rely on the DWP systems. What we do not know is how easily the system can be scaled, how well a scaled-up version will function and, crucially, how much any of that will cost. We already know that IT costs for Scotland’s social security system have soared to more than £250 million, from initial estimates of £39 million. Jeremy Balfour noted those additional costs.

When we on the Labour benches raised those questions in May’s debate, there was no answer from the Scottish Government on any of them. I suspect that that is because it does not have the answers. Audit Scotland certainly does not seem to think that it does. The consequence of that is that the Scottish people are being asked to take much of this purely on faith. Again, we need to note the looming £760 million black hole in the budget for Scottish social security benefits, as identified by Audit Scotland.

We cannot take on faith alone such a large and important part of the functioning of our social security system. The Scottish Labour amendment also notes the problems with take-up of the devolved benefits, as mentioned by my colleague Pauline McNeill. Pam Duncan-Glancy rightly noted that that could be solved by automation, but it has not yet been. The minister noted in his opening remarks that Scottish Labour’s amendment engaged in “wishful thinking” in suggesting that automation had proceeded faster, yet he also said that the Scottish Government is not quite where it wants to be on the take-up of benefits.

Surely, that raises the question of why the Government has presented us with a motion declaring a job well done. Put simply, it is far too early for the Scottish Government to congratulate itself on matters of devolved benefits. For that and many other reasons, I commend the Scottish Labour amendment as a dose of reality.

It is a pleasure to close the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. Once again, less than six months after those in the Scottish Government last patted themselves on the back over their delivery of social security benefits, they have presented us with another motion of self-congratulation. Once again, the motion does not represent the reality on the ground and, once again, the significant points of caution in the Audit Scotland report on Social Security Scotland go unanswered.

My colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy has already noted the apparent lack of priority given to the automation of social security. Moreover, she has highlighted the amount of benefits that are still being left to be administered by the DWP, which is surely nothing to congratulate the Scottish Government on, if the entire point was for it to do things better.

The Scottish Labour amendment highlights many of those on-going problems, which were left out of the Scottish Government motion. There are many problems waiting down the line in relation to the delivery of Scottish social security benefits, but I will focus on the so-called agile approach that the Scottish Government is overseeing in its IT system.

The theory is that that allows Social Security Scotland to be adaptable and to focus on must-have systems for launch before building on them later. Those systems will be crucial if automation is to work. However, in May, the Audit Scotland report made it clear that that approach has trade-offs. It says:

“For Social Security Scotland to operate efficiently and effectively, resources will be needed over the longer term to continue systems development and replace temporary and manual processes.”

It continues:

“The scale of this is not fully known and will need to be planned for alongside other government priorities”.

This remains a huge step in the dark by the Scottish Government.

Reports that were published this past week show that people in Scotland’s most deprived areas are 74 per cent more likely to die of cancer than those in the least deprived areas. Is the First Minister content with that level of disparity in health outcomes between Scotland’s richest and poorest? If not, what will the Scottish Government do about it?

To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to small businesses through the cost of living crisis. (S6O-01490)

I thank the minister for that answer, and I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I have been contacted by business owners in the Lothian region, particularly those with restaurant businesses who have been operating for decades but now find themselves having to close for good thanks to the perfect storm of Covid, a staffing crisis and, now, the cost of living crisis. As that is happening across multiple sectors, does the Scottish Government share my fear that we might have preserved our economy through the worst of the Covid pandemic, only to see it hollowed out by the latest crisis?