Chamber and committees

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

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?

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?

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

I thank my fellow committee members and the clerks for their work in producing the report. We can all be proud of the report, even if the situation that it describes falls far short of ideal. As a member of the committee, I also thank the many organisations that gave evidence to us for their invaluable contributions. I agree with my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy that it was an eye-opening experience.

The committee convener highlighted the section of the report relating to school meals debt. My colleague Martin Whitfield noted how little the threshold for free schools meals has changed in the past 20 years. I hope that the Scottish Government will look at the aspect of that that is under its control and make it part of any efforts to combat child poverty.

I agree with Paul McLennan that it is incredibly important, in relation to the issues discussed in the report, that the UK Government ensures that benefits are uprated with inflation. Maggie Chapman rightly noted the fundamental problems of low pay and in-work poverty and the need to address those.

I am grateful to Gillian Martin for highlighting the lack of data regarding people from ethnic minorities. That is a problem that we face all too often in the Scottish Parliament. My colleague Michael Marra noted the value of Scottish Labour’s cost of living plan and how a Scottish Labour-run council has been doing great work to take action on the cost of living.

A common theme that came up again and again in the committee and is represented in the report is that of false economy. We have systems in place to try to mitigate the effects of poverty and to try to ease people out of debt but, as Douglas Lumsden noted, the failure to provide and promote early intervention can lead to later, more costly interventions.

Evictions are an example of that. The committee heard that there is no moral or business case for threatening a tenant who is in arrears with eviction. The committee was told that the cost of evicting a single male with low support needs is in the region of £24,000. We begin to see a picture whereby every eviction is a failure. It is a failure of the system that should have been there to help and yet did not—it is a failure of the social safety net. That failure costs us even more in the long run.

Miles Briggs expressed his hope that UK Government policy on welfare could be looked at, given that the committee has heard that it perpetrates poverty in relation to young parents. I welcome that.

We see similar problems in the approach to debt—missed opportunities that cost more later. We cannot afford—monetarily or morally—to apply such false economies across our society. It is clear that we need interventions where they are most effective in people’s lives. Such interventions often end up being more cost effective for the state, too.

I urge the Scottish Government to think very carefully about its policy response to the committee’s report. We must be vigilant against a penny-pinching approach to early interventions.

Pam Duncan-Glancy highlighted the impact of funding cuts on the third sector organisations that are operating on the front lines of the crisis. The nature of that false economy—of trying to save money on early intervention services—can lead to catastrophic costs further down the line. Those costs can be greater both for the Government and for the real lives of the people behind the figures and case studies that we have heard about today.

I hope that the Scottish Government takes note not only of the scale of the challenges ahead, which the committee has highlighted, but of the strategic thinking that will be required to deal with them.

Good morning. Most of my questions have been answered, but I have one small question for the minister. Has the Scottish Government considered the impact of the cliff edge on social mobility?

In cases where home education is a matter of necessity, what support can the Scottish Government provide to ensure that children have the connectivity and the equipment that are needed for a modern education?

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact of its announced £37.6 million reduction in the budget for concessionary travel. (S6O-01397)