Chamber and committees

It depends on how you look at the questions. Do we look at the experience of the pandemic and think that there are no lessons to be learned and that we should be quite happy to put through significant primary legislation in a matter of days? On other occasions, members of Parliament would rail against making significant changes to primary legislation in that timescale. Generally, in my experience in Parliament, that is not viewed as a desirable approach.

Nobody saw the pandemic coming. We were aware that there was a likelihood of us experiencing some kind of pandemic, but that did not prompt us to review our statute book. Now we have had the pandemic—actually, we are still going through it; believe you me, some of us certainly are—and we are trying to adapt the statute book to learn the lessons from it so that we can put in place proportionate powers that can be scrutinised by Parliament through the normal legislative process, which is what we are going through just now, and Parliament can decide whether it wants to change the statute book to enable the provisions.

That is the type of thinking that has gone into the legislation to ensure that we do not have to rush significant primary legislation through Parliament in a matter of days. We take stock, learn the lessons from the pandemic and put in place powers—with sufficient parliamentary scrutiny—that enable us to act accordingly when a situation arises.

There is a lot in this area that we need to look at further. I welcome the report from the DPLR Committee. I had a thoughtful discussion with that committee when I appeared before it a few weeks ago. It was quite pragmatic in understanding the challenge for the Government, which is that the made affirmative procedure generally takes about 40 days. That procedure can be utilised with greater urgency, subject to parliamentary consent at a later stage. The DPLR Committee was exploring whether there was some other approach that we could take, which might be a halfway house or a partway house within all that. I am happy to explore that. I think that the point that Mr Fraser made—I did not quite catch the academic’s name—

We have to be careful here. Mr Mason will recognise the benefits of digital interaction, which we can see in all walks of life. We are trying, through the provisions in the bill, to make a set of pragmatic moves that will enable us to reform our public services in the light of the experience of the pandemic, where the technology allows us to do so.

We must always be mindful of whether everyone can participate using such platforms. If not, there is a need to have alternative arrangements in place to ensure that all parties can participate effectively in the administrative process that is involved. Although the digital approach suits many people, we must ensure that all individuals can access services accordingly.

As I said in my answer to the convener, they are broadly comparable. The provisions in England and Wales have been in place for in excess of 10 years, as I think I said earlier. Situations of this type were envisaged in the legislation that was considered by the United Kingdom Parliament, and the United Kingdom Government has been able to operate under many of its provisions, supplementing them under the emergency legislation that it has introduced.

Either I will have to defer to my officials to give me further guidance on whether it has been used or we can write to you, convener, to clarify that. Unless my officials can add detail now, I propose to write to you.

Will the member give way?

I am grateful to Mr Briggs for giving way. His argument for the importance of the Scottish child payment is well made. Does he not think that he should follow it through and enable the payment by supporting the Government’s budget, which he singularly failed to do earlier this year?

The Government is acting as swiftly as it can to put in place the Scottish child payment measures that will have an effect on children in Scotland. We are moving at pace to achieve that, and the steps that we have announced today demonstrate the substance of the Government’s endeavours.

The third element of the strategy is about employability support. With the increased resources that we have set out, there is a focus on additional support for early learning and childcare and for transportation costs.

Other flexible funds have been made available to our partners in local government—I will come on to its funding in a moment—to assist 12,000 people into employment. Long-term employability is crucial to tackling child poverty. Getting individuals into long-term sustained employment can be of benefit.

We do that through the employability support that we have in place and through measures that are already being implemented by the Minister for Social Security and Local Government to strengthen the position of people who have disabilities.

The strategy covers these three areas: social security, tackling the cost of living and employability support. The most charitable that I can be about the Opposition’s reaction to the plan is to call it somewhat grudging.

Where does the member get his facts?