Chamber and committees

It has been given extra tools through the Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2025. Additional information on audit will be provided, which will help. The work done during the progress of that act, which the Parliament recently debated and passed, will assist the agency. That is an example of an additional tool that will be in the agency’s armoury, once we go through the secondary legislation process in the Parliament.

I will provide some context on the timing of that. The UK bill that we are talking about has still not passed through the UK Parliament. It has not yet been finalised, so I go back to the point—

Do you mean in relation to social security in general?

Yes, the plan is a financial document, but the important aspect of such work is to take it back to first principles. We have a policy on reviews. We have clearly, and rightly, been challenged on the fact that the review percentage for the Scottish Government is different from that for the DWP; I went through that with Mr Hoy earlier.

We have taken it back to the first principles of what a review is supposed to do: to ensure that someone gets a benefit that they are entitled to, and that they do not get a benefit for which they are not eligible. That is a more robust way of reassuring ourselves that the system is working correctly—we take it back to that first principle of whether a policy is delivering as was intended.

No, Mr Marra—with respect, that is not what I said. We have talked about the steps that have been taken within Social Security Scotland to carry out the review of reviews. David Wallace, Ian Davidson, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, myself and others will undertake an overall analysis of our progress on that review, looking at the type of work that I mentioned in response to Mr Hoy and at where comparisons can rightly be made. The initial steps of that work have been concluded. However, we are still keen to ensure that we look at the wider aspects of the review process to make sure that the agency is delivering on the policy intent that Parliament agreed to.

It is up to the convener.

As part of every budget, we lay out the expenditure of the Scottish Government, part of which is on social security, and the income that we will receive. Decisions about tax are taken at every budget, although the First Minister has made it clear—to give people some certainty—that certain changes will not be made in the coming financial year.

The issue comes back to the choices that the Government makes. If tax is not increased, the Government must decide how to fund all its planned expenditure, of which social security is a part. We are in the foothills of the budget discussions but, if other parties wish to come forward with proposals on how to change the level of expenditure on social security or, indeed, with proposals for tax changes, I am sure that they will do that in due course.

I am sure that that figure is in my pack somewhere, convener. In essence, it is the money that UC is reduced by. I will get the exact figure to you.

I take your point. This is not just about eligibility, but that is the important aspect that makes the biggest difference when it comes to whether the benefit bill increases. I absolutely take your point that there are other ways to lift people out of poverty of a more systemic nature.

The work that is being done by Professor Bauld is exceptionally important because, now that we have had what is still a relatively small number of years of devolved social security, we are continuing to build on the impact of that system on child poverty or on the support for disabled people and their carers. Those aspects are looked at.

One of the other areas that we are keen to look at touches on the point that the convener made at the start about the impact on poverty levels of policy A compared to policy B. There is that which gets children and the family out of poverty immediately compared to a policy that will help that family to get out of poverty in the longer term, such as in five or 10 years. Things are never black and white, and it is not an easy comparison to make, but that is the type of work that we are doing to look at how many children are lifted out of poverty not just by social security policy but by changes to childcare and employability. There is also the additional layer of complexity of not working in silos, because a change to childcare might not make a difference unless we also ensure that there are supportive employability measures to go alongside it.

We are therefore taking a multilayered approach to that work as we develop the next delivery plan for tackling child poverty at the same time as we are going through our budget and spending review processes. Those two processes, for finance and tackling child poverty, need to be interlinked right across the Government as we do that forecasting. That is difficult, particularly when we look at longer-term impacts, but it is necessary when we are looking at policy choices.

We are still undertaking work with the DWP to get an understanding of what sits behind that £36 million—that is, what proportion of that £36 million is for disability benefits, what is for carers and what is for industrial injuries—because those will have different recovery proportions. We cannot do that piece of work alone; we need to do it with the DWP in order to get that information. Ian Davidson can provide some information—as much as we can provide, because two Governments are working on it. I do not want to put either of them in a difficult position.

That requires us to get information from the DWP. We will endeavour to do what we can to provide you with that information, but we need information from the DWP to assist us in understanding what benefit it is from. I also caution against an assumption that it has an impact on next year’s budget. It does not have an impact on one year’s budget. The work that we do to recover overpayments is done over time—it is not only about one year. With those two caveats, I would be happy to provide information if we can at all.