Chamber and committees

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.

Yes. That is why, when comparing someone who is in work with someone who is out of work, context is very important.

The other important aspect is the work that the Government does on employability schemes, to ensure that there is support for those who are out of work to get into work. There has been recent investment in both parental employability and disability-specific employability support.

My final point is that the targeted work that goes on, particularly in relation to those with low incomes, is to ensure that they get a level of support that allows them to provide for their families. However, as other organisations tell me regularly, that level does not allow those families to afford the essentials of life. The Scottish Government faces the challenge of increasing expenditure on social security because of the inadequacy of reserved benefits. I would say that the work that we do in social security is targeted at low-income families and is a method of uplifting income to provide further support. We have recently evaluated the impact of the five family payments. That work was produced in the past couple of weeks, and it can perhaps assist with the final point that you were making, convener.

Indeed. That takes me to my next point, which is the very important part that child poverty delivery plans play. Social security is only one aspect of assisting people with poverty; the others are about ensuring well-paid employment and allowing people to take part in education and training.

There are different ways of dealing with poverty. Social security is a very important one, and some of the evidence that has come to the committee and others shows that it is making an impact. However, we can tackle poverty in other ways. That is why there are several legs to the child poverty delivery plan stool: employment is one of them, and the way into employment through education is clearly very important, too. It ties into the wider opportunity costs that we have in Government.

I am happy to provide further information about eligibility for two-year-olds. It is not to do with being out of work per se. The terminology that was used—

Yes. The eligibility criteria are about providing families who would benefit from additional support for those young people—

That is because we know that one of the important aspects of childcare and other services is preventative spend. Creating generational change in young people’s lives is about the impact that we can make in the earliest years. That was the reason for the term “vulnerable two-year-olds”. We now talk about “eligible two-year-olds” in relation to early learning and childcare, but that type of preventative spend is an important part of our work to improve our longer-term rates and make systemic change in relation to poverty.

As I said in my opening remarks, we recognise that, by 2029-30, additional investment is projected to be around 3.5 per cent of the total Scottish Government resource budget. That is an increase of less than 1 per cent compared with the current year, but it is still an increase.