Chamber and committees

Do you mean the cost of the agency agreements?

We estimate that it will require an extra £5 million to meet the cost of national insurance contributions within Social Security Scotland. The committee will be aware that there is a staffing level of around 4,500 full-time equivalents, which is a significant workforce. The net impact of that increase will have to be met.

The overall net impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions for the Scottish budget remains unknown. We are still waiting for clarity from the UK Government on what additional funding it plans to provide. I am sure that the committee can appreciate that such a level of uncertainty about something that has a significant impact, not just on the agency but across the public sector, is of great concern.

It is estimated that the change could add more than £500 million in costs for directly employed public sector staff. However, if we include the staff who deliver public services more widely, such as general practitioners and dentists, it will increase to more than £700 million.

The committee will, I am sure, be aware of the letter that the First Minister and the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 3 January, which was widely supported by many organisations in the public sector and the voluntary and third sectors, raising concerns about the ENICs decision and seeking clarity on that funding. That clarity is key as we look to finalise budgets. I am sure that the committee would wish the Government to get on with spending our budget from 1 April, but the lack of clarity does not help.

Certainly.

We are determined to do everything that we can to decrease the use of temporary accommodation, particularly for children.

It is not just a challenge for the Scottish Government; stakeholders have said that one of the biggest drivers of homelessness is the local housing allowance. It is disappointing that it seems that the local housing allowance will be frozen, after an initial change. If we want to reduce the number of people who are homeless, it is not just about impacting on the number of people who are in temporary accommodation, but about trying to prevent homelessness in the first place.

In the budget, we will do everything that we can to drive that level down. Decisions could be made elsewhere that would assist us in that work as well.

It is a really fair point. Part of the reason for having pilots is to demonstrate impact and therefore to be able to make the point to a service provider that it might wish to continue the approach in its mainstreaming budget, if it has had such a significant impact.

Another useful aspect of the pilot schemes is that they demonstrate not just that an approach is good for the client and the people who we are here to serve but that there are potential savings to be made in relation to other public services. For example, temporary accommodation is exceptionally expensive, so in addition to the moral reason for driving down the use of temporary accommodation, it is exceptionally useful and effective for us to do that for budgetary reasons, because councils and service providers will not be spending money on temporary accommodation. Therefore, if we can get the right prevention duties in place, there are ways to save money.

As we set out in the debate on Tuesday, the draft budget prioritises much of the work on child poverty, whether that is the increased investment in breakfast clubs and employability services or mitigation of the two-child cap.

Due to the Government’s mission to eradicate child poverty, and in recognition of the on-going cost of living crisis that many people are feeling across the country, we are continuing to allocate more than £3 billion per year to policies that will tackle poverty and the cost of living.

As we have done previously, we will publish a detailed analysis of the breakdown of that as part of our annual progress report, which is due to be published at the end of June. The estimates at this point suggest that we will allocate more than £3 billion to assist low-income families amid the cost of living crisis.

If I can put it simply, we base our budget on the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecast, and the only way that the benefit forecast will go up is if the assumptions that we are looking at in that work suggest that more people will be entitled to and claim the benefit, meaning that benefit take-up will go up. Those are the reasons for that.

We can certainly provide the assumptions that underlie the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecast for that increase. In essence, our budget is based on the assumptions in its working.

Good morning, convener. This budget will protect and build on the substantial investments that this Government has already delivered for the people of Scotland. In total, the budget will deliver almost £64 billion of funding in 2025-26.

The budget protects the social contract at the heart of this Government’s approach, continuing free prescriptions, ensuring that no Scottish student pays tuition fees and providing access to free bus travel for almost 2.3 million people. It continues to deliver a social security system that is based on dignity, fairness and respect, and a national health service that is free at the point of use.

It will also go further, renewing and reinvesting in Scotland. The draft budget allocates an additional £1 billion for social justice, which will take our budget to £8.2 billion in 2025-26. The budget mitigates where United Kingdom Government policies undermine our efforts to tackle poverty. We will reinstate a universal pension-age winter heating payment and provide funding to begin work to develop the systems to deliver the mitigation of the two-child cap, which could lift 15,000 children out of poverty.

In line with Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts, we are investing a record £6.9 billion for benefit expenditure in 2025-26, providing support to around 2 million people—that is one in three people in Scotland—and the money will go directly to those who need it most.

We are investing around £750 million more than in the 2024-25 budget, supporting disabled people, supporting older people to heat their homes in winter, and helping low-income families with their living costs. That investment is £1.3 billion more than the level of funding forecast to be received from the UK Government through the social security block grant adjustment.

The budget invests an additional £172 million in affordable housing, which will help to keep rents lower and will benefit around 140,000 children in poverty each year. That investment contributes not only to tackling the housing emergency but to our target of 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. Although individual projects require to be identified locally by councils, the budget provides enough for around 8,000 homes.

We invest more per person than any other UK nation in measures to help people remain in their homes. We will provide approximately £97 million in discretionary housing payments in 2025-26, which is an increase of £7 million, to enable councils to offset the UK Government’s bedroom tax and benefit caps and to cover shortfalls between housing benefit and rent. That is in addition to homelessness funding provided through the local government settlement.

I recognise the financial pressures on the third sector and the additional pressure that the UK Government’s decision to make changes to employer national insurance contributions places on many organisations in the sector. The 2024 programme for government commits the Scottish Government to making improvements to grant making, including greater clarity and consistency of existing arrangements.

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

We must ensure that the system is based on the right decisions being made. If people are staying on the case load, it is because they are entitled to be on it. Nobody stays on the case load if they are not entitled to be part of it. That is a very important aspect of our work.

In the past, under DWP systems, the review process was exceptionally onerous and a barrier to people continuing to receive money to which they were entitled. We have reviewed our review process for child and adult disability payments, so that will have an impact.

However, we should get back to first principles. The important aspect is whether people on the case load are entitled to their benefits. If they are, they should not come off it.

As Liz Smith knows, the Government must produce a balanced budget every year, so budget decisions will need to be taken every year to ensure that that commitment is met. We are continuing to make that important investment in families that are in deep poverty. There is much evidence and research from stakeholders that demonstrate that lifting the two-child cap would be the single biggest policy change that we could make to lift children and their families out of poverty.