Chamber and committees

As is to be expected with any Scottish Government budget, there are myriad opinions about how the money could be spent. I appreciate and understand the views of those who feel that we should have spent all that money on further increasing the Scottish child payment. We are, of course, increasing that payment to £40 a week for children under one, so there will be a Scottish child payment premium coming in.

The Government must look at what else we can do, not only in social security but in other areas, to tackle poverty and to assist families. That is why, for example, money is going into whole family support and the tackling child poverty fund to ensure that we are looking at some of the other drivers of poverty reduction in addition to income from social security. There are different policy proposals in the budget, further details of which will be given in the tackling child poverty delivery plan that we will launch in March.

Whole family support is an exceptionally important way of assisting families and providing support not only with income or income maximisation but in whatever way a family needs and at the time and in the place that they need it. That is coming across strongly from a lot of work that we are already doing in the fairer futures partnerships and we are seeing a real difference in the changes that we can make. That is also an important way of tackling poverty, in addition to the work that we are already doing on social security.

There will be an impact on the Scottish Government’s budget, because we will continue to mitigate, as far as we possibly can, the benefit cap in full. It is welcome that the UK Government finally said that it would scrap the two-child limit. That is an important policy that needed to be put in place, but, because it has kept the benefit cap in place, that means that there will be children out there who will not benefit from the lifting of the two-child limit.

That is not a situation that we want to be in in Scotland. As a result, we will have to increase the amount that we spend on mitigating the benefit cap, to ensure that everyone benefits from the lifting of the two-child limit.

It is something that we are very keen to look at, to see how it can be further expanded when we are looking at new funding. I would point out that the funding that the First Minister announced for the third sector as part of the whole family support package is a multiyear commitment, and we will look at what more we can do to expand multiyear funding.

Clearly, the fairer funding approach covers a number of areas, one of which is multiyear funding. It is very important; indeed, the feedback that we had from the pilot that we undertook showed that, as we would have expected, it made a difference to the third sector organisations involved by giving them greater certainty.

This financial year, it has been more challenging to look at expanding multiyear funding or other aspects of the fairer funding principles because the UK Government budget was so late, which has, in turn, made the Scottish Government budget late. As a result, it has been exceptionally difficult for the Government to be able to provide certainty to the third sector.

Therefore, a lot of the work that I and officials—not just in my area but across Government—have been doing has been on the timely notification of grants and on ensuring that letters of comfort go out to organisations as soon as possible. Indeed, we did that immediately after the budget was published. It is an on-going process—obviously, it could not be done for every organisation on the day of budget publication—but we are endeavouring to do all that we can to assist with the timely notification of grants. That is, of course, another important aspect, alongside the multiyear funding asks that we have from the third sector.

As we laid out in the budget, when we looked at how the two-child limit mitigation money will be spent, it includes money for the new Scottish child payment premium for under-ones, as well as additional spend on devolved benefits in mitigating the benefit cap, which Marie McNair talked about, and the increase in spending on the Scottish child payment with the inflation in case load.

There are clearly areas where we could have done joint work, and that was demonstrated as we went through the process. There was a UK Government task force on child poverty, and there were a number of areas where we could have worked together. There is an entire list of areas where we asked for the UK Government to take action and to work with Scottish ministers. It is unfortunate that that is not how the set-up works at the current time.

However, our door always remains open, because it is clear that the systems need to work better together to get people out of poverty. We are very willing to work on this, whether with the UK Government, other parts of the public sector or the private sector. There are possibilities, and I hope that the UK Government will take up those opportunities as it moves to implement its child poverty strategy.

It is important that we undertake analysis of the drivers of ADP expenditure. I said in my opening remarks that work on that was recently published. Many of the drivers are reflected across the UK, not just in Scotland. I do not think that it is surprising that the increase in the state pension age was one of the main drivers that was identified.

The agency is doing work on ADP to ensure that we are keeping an eye on case load numbers and the number of awards as a percentage of applications, and so on. Work is also being undertaken by Professor Linda Bauld and others to analyse the drivers of ADP expenditure, which will assist us with the forecasting of case load as we go forward. Again, I hope that that work will inform a greater understanding of why there has been an increase in ADP, so that we can perhaps have a more civilised conversation than we have had in recent weeks about the level of benefits in Scotland.

We will be able to estimate some of the costs of the recommendations of the ADP review. My officials are currently looking at that because, inevitably, the costs are based on a lot of assumptions. I am keen to be as open as we can about some of those costs so that people have a better understanding of the scale of them when we are discussing them. I have asked officials to see whether there is more that we can do, so that when we respond to the Edel Harris review, we can put some of the information into the public domain. That is useful only if I can assure myself that, in putting out those figures, we can be clear about the assumptions that we have made and the fact that they are forecasts and assumptions and so on. We want to have a sensible conversation about the issue, so I need to look carefully at the estimates to see whether they are robust enough. However, it is important, if at all possible, that we can move ahead with that.

Clearly, when it comes to cost, some of the most expensive aspects of the Edel Harris recommendations come in the section that talks about changes to eligibility. That is one of the key drivers. When we are discussing changes to eligibility, it is sensible to have an eye on costs. Cost would not be the only factor, but the Government is, rightly, always challenged on whether our social security spend is sustainable and whether we have a commitment to what we have in place at the moment, and we would not want to make further commitments to anyone unless we were able to carry those through sustainably.

Those are the types of issues that I am wrestling with as we draw to a conclusion the Government’s response to the Edel Harris review, to see how much detail we can give.

I have made it clear—and I have said this to Edel Harris—that, because I have asked officials to look at the review of reviews as well as the Edel Harris recommendations, we will continue into around mid-February. I have made her aware of that slight delay. That is to ensure that we have a response from Government that deals not only with her report but with other matters. We anticipate that happening within the next couple of weeks.

It plays an exceptionally important part in our work not only to tackle child poverty but to assist people, and it is exactly why the First Minister has placed such importance on the whole family support package and the role of the third sector in that. He and I—and, indeed, other cabinet secretaries and ministers—have visited a number of examples of the third sector delivering in our communities what is, in effect, whole family support. If that type of support can be provided to a family before they reach the point of crisis, rather than at the point of crisis, it will be far better for them, and far better when it comes to the effective use of public services.

I hope that all of us will conclude that the best thing that we can do is help people as early as possible, whenever they need it. Whole family support is an integral part of that, and the third sector is an integral part of delivering that support.

Campaigners are absolutely correct to continue to push the Government to go further in that area. We are conscious of the 2030 targets and are determined to meet them. The work that we are doing as we draft the tackling child poverty delivery plan that will be published in March is based on that credible path.

I go back to the point that income from social security is an exceptionally important policy driver within the delivery plan, but it is not the only such driver. It is important to look at whole family support, employability and transport, and at the areas in which people are telling us about the difficulties that they are having or the barriers that they face in getting into employment or being able to access support services in the public sector.

There will be further detail in the tackling child poverty delivery plan regarding whole family support and how we use the tackling child poverty fund to deliver further on that.