Chamber and committees

I am aware of that evidence. During this year, the SFRS developed a fire safety checklist for licensing authorities and applicants to complete, which helps the service to target its resources effectively using a risk-based approach. That is the right thing to do. Police Scotland is now assisting licensing authorities to complete fit and proper person checks as part of the process that they undertake.

Although resourcing is a matter for Police Scotland and the SFRS to consider, they have been planning this for some time, and we remain engaged in support of that element of the scheme. As I said earlier, licensing schemes are administered on a cost recovery basis through the collection of application fees, and we expect all the costs to be covered.

We will keep the matter under review. If Police Scotland and the SFRS raise the issue formally, we will look at it, but given the lead-in time, I anticipate that they will be doing this very much as part of the on-going work that they do on a number of schemes. We will keep the situation under review.

As I said in my opening remarks, many hosts have already submitted an application for a licence, and I thank them. The core component of the scheme is a set of mandatory safety standards. Many hosts will have already met those standards and therefore have incurred associated costs as a matter of best practice or compliance with the existing law. They will have had to do that.

Existing hosts who are yet to apply are encouraged to apply for a licence well in advance of the deadline. I re-emphasise that. Those who have already applied for a licence will have already met the costs of doing so; others will now need to do so.

I go back to the original comments in my opening remarks. This is a pragmatic solution in response to genuine concerns that have been raised by businesses during the cost of living crisis. It is a balanced response to that.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the motion that seeks approval for the draft order.

Legislation to establish a licensing scheme for all short-term lets was approved by the Parliament in January 2022 and the scheme opened in October 2022. Many hosts have now submitted an application for a licence and I thank those who have done so.

The licensing scheme has introduced a set of basic safety standards, which will help to protect guests, hosts, neighbours and communities across Scotland. Where there are other problems, such as noise, nuisance, littering, antisocial behaviour, the loss of residential housing stock and other adverse impacts on communities, the licensing scheme, together with the control area legislation—The Town and Country Planning (Short-term Let Control Areas) (Scotland) Regulations 2021—give local authorities the powers to address those problems.

We recognise that the cost of living crisis is placing significant pressures on businesses and individuals. Therefore, we have responded by taking a pragmatic approach to help to support hosts in recognition of those challenges. We are confident that the one-off six-month extension will give businesses more time to spread the cost of the licence fee and meet the scheme’s requirements. It will also assist businesses that are facing difficulties in procuring contractors to carry out necessary work, such as gas safety checks and energy performance certificate assessments.

Although the extension will give existing hosts more time to apply, I encourage those who have yet to do so to apply well in advance of the extended deadline, in order to join the growing number of licensed premises in the sector.

We will continue to work with and listen to stakeholders as we refine guidance, taking into account feedback from the early months since the scheme launched. Some businesses have raised concern about certain aspects of the operation of the scheme. In responding, officials have worked closely with licensing authorities to raise those concerns and look for solutions that resolve them.

The extension offers a pragmatic solution to genuine concerns that have been raised by businesses during the cost of living crisis, but we recognise that we cannot unduly delay action to ensure that all short-term lets are safe and that local authorities have the powers to tackle local issues.

I therefore ask the committee to support the motion on the order.

As I said, officials are processing grant proposals now. Unless they are for short-term funding or for projects that are coming to an end, we expect that multiyear funding will be put in place from now on for as many organisations as possible. There might be some for which that cannot be done, but I assume that that will be the default from now on. I am happy to keep the committee apprised of progress with this funding round when those decisions are made, if that would be helpful.

First, let me be clear that the draft budget sets out our plans to invest £69.7 million to support the scaling up of employability support to parents in 2023-24. That represents a reinstatement of the in-year budget reduction that the Deputy First Minister announced in the emergency budget review.

Although the decision to take £53 million as a saving in 2022-23 was not taken lightly—the Deputy First Minister laid out the incredibly difficult backdrop to having to make that emergency budget review—it was taken in recognition that employability interventions take a bit longer to have an impact and were unlikely to result in immediate increases in income for people. Although the decision has meant that services were unable to begin scaling up support in 2022-23 as we would have liked, the impact of employability was not factored into the modelling of the interim targets, for example, in recognition of the fact that there would be a time lag between someone entering support and their sustaining employment.

It was also noted in the published annex that the impact of employability as set out in the plan was quite optimistic, with outcomes potentially being achieved later and at a slower rate. I guess that a lot of that depends on the labour market and the backdrop of some of the other pressures and challenges in terms of reserved benefits for people moving into work. However, the reinstatement of that resource now means that that employability work can scale up as was anticipated in the plan.

It is fair to say that there has been a huge response to the widening of the Scottish child payment eligibility criteria. Clearly, that is a good thing, but it has meant that the staff at Social Security Scotland have been working extremely hard to ensure that people’s payments are processed as quickly as they possibly can be. I pay tribute to the efforts that they have made.

I do not know whether Kevin Stevens has any further figures that he can give on the processing of Scottish child payment applications or whether we need to come back to the committee on that.

Thank you, convener, for inviting us to the committee meeting today.

We have again faced a very challenging fiscal context in which to set the budget. We are all aware of the impact on our economy of the United Kingdom Government’s mini-budget and the effect of rising prices as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I am therefore pleased that we have continued to prioritise our resources towards taking steps to tackle child poverty alongside our other priorities of protecting public services and investing in the transition to net zero.

Within my portfolio, in 2023-24 we are committing £5.2 billion in social security and welfare payments, which will go directly to more than 1 million people in Scotland. That money will, of course, help low-income families through the cost of living crisis, support older people to heat their homes in winter and enable disabled people to live full and independent lives. That includes investing £442 million in the Scottish child payment, which is the UK’s most ambitious child poverty reduction measure and which we increased to £25 per child per week in November 2022, when we extended the payment to all eligible six to 15-year-olds. It is estimated that, in 2023-24, around 387,000 children will be eligible.

That investment underlines our commitment to delivering on our national mission to tackle child poverty, using all the powers and resources available to us to support families as far as possible and to tackle the underlying causes of inequality. It sets out how we will deliver on the priority actions that are set out in “Best Start, Bright Futures—Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026”, which was published in March 2022, with a key focus on long-term parental employment support, increased social security and measures to reduce household costs.

Across social security, our total investment is over £770 million above the level of funding that was forecast to be received from the UK Government through the block grant adjustments. That money will go directly to the people of Scotland who need it most.

We uprated the Scottish child payment by 25 per cent in November 2022, when we extended it to six to 15-year-olds, and we will uprate all other Scottish benefits in line with inflation—by 10.1 per cent in April 2023—at a cost of around £430 million. That uprating includes benefits for which that is a statutory requirement as well as those for which uprating is discretionary, in recognition of the difficulties that are being faced by many people due to the increased cost of living.

We are investing over £520 million to deliver devolved social security in Scotland in 2023-24, to ensure a simplified and compassionate system that will treat everyone with dignity, fairness and respect, and to provide people with an improved experience.

In February 2023, subject to the Department for Work and Pensions providing the necessary data, we will launch our new winter heating payment, with a stable, guaranteed annual payment of £50, which will help around 415,000 low-income individuals with their heating expenses each winter.

We are also investing £41 million—including in local authority administration—in the Scottish welfare fund, while delivering an independent review, to provide essential help to the most vulnerable people in our communities.

The budget also recognises the important role that carers play in supporting people with disabilities or long-term conditions. We will invest over £420 million through the carers allowance, the carers allowance supplement and the young carer grant. Alongside that, we will begin to roll out Scottish carer’s assistance by the end of 2023, with full national introduction in the spring of 2024. That will deliver an improved service that is designed with carers to meet their needs and in line with our principles of dignity, fairness and respect.

Within the budget, we are also making available £752 million for affordable housing as part of the wider planned investment of over £3.5 billion over this parliamentary session to deliver more affordable and social homes. We are making available £85.9 million for discretionary housing payments to support tenants who are struggling with their housing costs and over £12 million to support continued progress of actions in our ending homelessness together action plan, which focuses on homelessness prevention, rapid rehousing and housing first.

We are investing over £70 million in our Ukrainian resettlement programme to ensure that those displaced by the illegal war in Ukraine continue to receive a warm Scots welcome and that they are supported to rebuild their lives in our communities for as long as they need to call Scotland their home.

In conclusion, against the backdrop of a challenging economy and an on-going cost crisis, the budget, and my portfolio within it, continue to seek to prioritise action in our three main areas, including tackling child poverty.

I thank the committee for its pre-budget scrutiny and I look forward to taking your questions.

On your first point, yes. There was a scaling up of staff. There was an expectation that the number of applications would increase and, therefore, there was additional gearing up towards that. As I said, we will get those figures to the committee.

On the child poverty targets, I go back to the cumulative impact assessment, which we published in March. As you know, it projected that around 17 per cent of children will live in relative poverty in 2023-24. That is based not least on the impact that will be made by the Scottish child payment, which we have just discussed. We have done absolutely everything that we can, in a very difficult situation, to build into the plan the best chance of hitting those targets.

I highlight the current economic climate, much of which is outwith our control, including the impact of the cost of living on household budgets. That includes the challenges that people currently face—including those in work, who are not even entitled to the Scottish child payment. That is not the ideal backdrop against which to try to reduce levels of child poverty. Despite that, however, we are doing absolutely everything that we can, and we remain firmly committed to delivering on those targets.

As members will know, we will not know for sure whether the targets have been met until official statistics are available in March 2025. However, as I said, the plan is the right one, and that remains the case.

As Pam Duncan-Glancy and other members will be aware, however, the plan cannot take account of economic circumstances in the United Kingdom or decisions that are made by the UK Government. One example is the freezing of the local housing allowance rates—yet again, for a third year running—at 2020 levels. That is another real-terms cut, and I fear that it will exacerbate the situation for people in Scotland who are renting. In addition, it will have a negative impact on homelessness.

Something such as that has an impact on child poverty levels, but we cannot control it. That is just one concrete example—there are many others—of where decisions that are made elsewhere have an absolute negative impact on the plans that we have in place.

As you know, the welfare fund is being reviewed, and we did not set any restrictions on the review in terms of the recommendations and suggestions for change that might come out of it. That includes how the fund is delivered.

You will be aware that some of the issues that sparked the review concern inconsistency. For example, in some local authorities, the fund was underspent, while in others it was overspent. All those issues are being looked at as part of the review, and we should probably wait until the review is concluded. I am happy to come back to the committee once we see the recommendations.

Local government was made the distributor of the welfare fund very much with a view to its knowing local needs and being able to respond to the needs of local people who require crisis support. That would be more difficult for a national agency to do, for example, with regard to discretion in the use of the fund. As I said, however, we probably need to wait for the outcome of the review, which will be published this spring. As I said, I am happy to come back to the committee once we have those recommendations.

No agency could ever say that it was going to get absolutely every decision right first time within a certain timescale. What we can say about Social Security Scotland is that the customer satisfaction rates are very high indeed, which is in marked contrast to other agencies, particularly the Department for Work and Pensions.

The point about reconsideration is important. We are trying to ensure that, where possible, the agency gets the decision right first time, although that is not to say that there will not have to be some reconsiderations. That is about ensuring that all the information is available, which takes time. That information sometimes comes from external agencies, so it is not all in the gift of Social Security Scotland staff.

When we consider the volume of applications that have been received in quite a short space of time and the increase in the number of benefits and supports for which Social Security Scotland is responsible, we see that there has been a huge growth in the organisation. We need to look at the situation in context. Yes, some people would have wanted a decision sooner, and some are not happy and there has to be a reconsideration. Nonetheless, for the overwhelming majority of customers of Social Security Scotland, there has been a very good service and, as I said, customer satisfaction rates are very high indeed.

We should not be complacent, and we should always look at these things and engage with the feedback loop from those with lived experience. Again, Social Security Scotland is very good at checking regularly with those who receive support to ensure that any further improvements that can be made are made.