Chamber and committees

I will make just a couple of points.

We need to be really clear about what happens with consequentials. The fact that a secretary of state says that something might happen in July is not an appropriate basis for our deciding how to use that money, because, as you have said, convener, one budget might go up while others go down, so—

Ms Clark might agree with that principle, but she might want to check with everybody else in her Scottish Labour parliamentary group to ensure that nobody double counts the consequentials that we get and asks us to spend more.

Members might all agree on that aspect with regard to the consequentials, but—and I am speaking from bitter experience here—other members might well raise other aspects, and we will get asked to spend money more than once. That is not how we make a budget. I acknowledge that Katy Clark and Paul O’Kane in particular have been consistent on this issue, but, year after year, when it comes to, say, in-year adjustments or some other budget, we get calls to spend more money than we have. That is why I am sceptical. That said, I am, of course, happy to work with members, and I have heard the suggestions that have come forward.

Deputy convener, if you will bear with me, I will just bring up one other issue. All social security systems are built to deliver the Government’s policy intent, and I ask the committee to give some thought to exactly what it is asking this agency to do. Mr Balfour has said that he is disappointed that the system cannot deal with flexibilities, but how many flexibilities does the committee want us to build into it? We might have wanted to target the payment—or somebody else might have wanted to, even if we did not—but should it be targeted on the basis of age, benefit entitlements or whether a person is in a couple or is single? Do you want us to target it on the basis of geography or income levels?

There are many variations that we could, theoretically, have built into the system at great cost, but I have no doubt that, when we came back before the committee, Mr Balfour would, rightly, be challenging us on why we spent money building a system that did something that the Government did not intend to do. After all, the possibilities and variations are almost limitless. If that is the type of system that Mr Balfour wants, I have to tell him that that is not how our social security system is built, nor is it how any other social security system is built.

Let us be really cautious about the practical challenges and costs involved in the suggestion that the system must be more flexible. It has to be built with specifics in mind. I have given but a few examples of how we could build a system that dealt with theoretical changes that might or might not happen in the future under a different Government, and all of them would have been a waste of public resources.

In many ways, the response was made clear during the budget yesterday. The two-child cap was not lifted and the bedroom tax was not scrapped, and we will therefore have to continue to mitigate the effects of those policies. We already spend around £134 million to mitigate the worst excesses of some of the UK welfare policies.

Clearly, some types of support are available in England. In Scotland, we provide support that is not available in England. For example, we have the Scottish welfare fund—

I would certainly be happy to provide further information in writing to the committee about how quickly changes to social security systems can be made. That is clearly an issue that all such systems have, so I will refer to it in writing if that is convenient, deputy convener.

No. To be absolutely clear, had we been able to go forward with a universal benefit, Social Security Scotland was ready to do so. There were no issues at our end with taking that forward.

Our taking on delivery next year will give us more time to adapt the system, and I am confident that the system will be changed in enough time to allow the agency to deliver it next year.

An important part of the consultation was enabling people to respond on different types of payment, now and in the future. There were differing views on that.

The options that were then available to the Scottish Government when we got the information through were much narrower. We had built a system based on universality, which was the system that we would have been able to deliver. However, if we were unable to deliver it, it would have to be something that the DWP could do under an agency agreement. At that point, we had available to us a much narrower field of practical options.

With the greatest respect, convener, I would push back on that again. We cannot discuss the right to housing—which I give as an example—without considering what would not be within scope. The human rights bill is limited in scope because of the Supreme Court judgment. I want to change that, because that would increase what is in scope on housing, for example. It is because we want to strengthen the bill that we want to go further on some aspects. I am acutely aware of the limitations on what the Government can do on the human rights bill, and I want it to go further. I hope that Ms Gallacher does, too.

Sure. There are two areas in particular where we can make demonstrable progress over the next 18 months. One is capability-building activities; the other is the tracker tool. The work that people wanted us to do on the tracker was outlined in SNAP 2. It would, in effect, monitor and support the implementation of human rights recommendations from the international treaty bodies. We have worked together with international partners to understand what already exists and how that might need to be adapted—or not—for Scotland-specific circumstances.

I am very keen to see what can be done on the tracker tool quickly, to look at what we can learn from those who already use it and to see whether stakeholders would be content for us to move forward quite rapidly on that measure.

Things are made slightly more difficult, if I can put it that way, because we are not a signatory to treaties. However, we need to get past any practical difficulties. I hope that our very different relations with the UK Government might help us to make progress on that.

You are quite right to demonstrate how that tool could be used. I will bring in Kavita Chetty to respond on some of the practicalities that we are already looking at.