Chamber and committees

With caveats.

I think that my colleagues will return to that imminently.

The bill is apparently silent on whether those who report breaches will be granted anonymity within the process. Is there a risk that groups or organisations that have to work daily or routinely with large landowners might be deterred from reporting breaches or raising concerns if anonymity is not secured? Do you have any thoughts on that?

You were nodding your head, Dr Doble, but the Official Report will not capture a nodding of the head—sorry.

Is the £5,000 figure about right, or is it too limited?

My understanding is that if the proposed land and communities commissioner became aware of or suspected potential breaches—however they became aware of them—they would not under the bill have the power to kick-start their own investigation. Is that a weakness in relation to the system?

There will be a division.

For

Doris, Bob (Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn) (SNP)
McNair, Marie (Clydebank and Milngavie) (SNP)
Stewart, Kevin (Aberdeen Central) (SNP)

Abstentions

Balfour, Jeremy (Lothian) (Con)
Clark, Katy (West Scotland) (Lab)
O’Kane, Paul (West Scotland) (Lab)
Smith, Liz (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)

I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for their contribution to today’s meeting, and I also thank fellow committee members for how they conducted this morning’s debate.

We now move into private session.

First of all, as far as etiquette is concerned, it is completely fine to intervene on the convener. Indeed, you absolutely should do so, given that I specifically mentioned your comments.

You have again made a really important point: there will always been in-year budget revisions, and sometimes things go up and sometimes they go down. Ms Clark, you have identified a budget that is going up, but lots of other budgets are going down as a result of those revisions, and the Scottish Government must look at things in the round. I look forward to seeing what decisions the Scottish Government makes, and our committee will scrutinise them on a cross-party basis. That was a helpful intervention.

None of us wants to be in a position of letting politics get in the way of this important winter fuel payment being delivered to some of the most vulnerable pensioners. I suspect that most or all of us will wish that the benefit were being paid on a universal basis, but that is not to be at this stage. I will leave my comments at that.

As no other member wishes to speak, do you wish to sum up, cabinet secretary? You can waive the right—it is fully up to you.

Mr Balfour, if you really want me to do this, I will be happy to look at the Official Report for those occasions either in the chamber or in committee when you have questioned why we were building the system in the first place, and scrutinised the cost of the system and said that it might be more affordable and cheaper simply to run it from Westminster. If you have not said that, I will happily apologise, but I think that that has been a pretty consistent position of yours.

However, let us not personalise this issue between us. I am trying to make the point that there is a balance to be struck between having a flexible system and a system that provides value for money, that is cost-effective and which delivers the policies that we intend to deliver. That is the only point that I was trying to make, Mr Balfour, so I offer my apologies—I did not mean to trigger you with my contribution.

I thought that Katy Clark’s contribution was incredibly helpful. I hope that I am capturing correctly what she said, but she asked what more could have been done in spite of the decision from Westminster. That speaks to mitigations—although I will not mention them, as I want to stay away from the politics of this.

Katy Clark also asked what more could be done once the Barnett consequentials become clear. Again, that points to an uncertainty in the Scottish budget, not just until the Chancellor of the Exchequer gets to their feet, but until the consequences are known.

We are where we are, and we all understand why that is the case. This is not really a moment for politics—my understanding is that we do not pass—

As no other members wish to contribute, I will take the opportunity to make a few remarks myself. I wish to reflect on Mr Balfour’s comments about whether the system could be designed to be more flexible—in effect, designing a targeted system that could respond if such an eventuality as the one that we are discussing should happen.

I am just thinking about the politics of this. I say this genuinely and sincerely to Mr Balfour, but had the Scottish Government spent money putting in place a system that could change winter fuel payments to make them a targeted, rather than a universal, payment, some members of the committee—possibly Mr Balfour—would have been wringing their hands about the additional costs that that would incur, and they would have said that it must mean that the Scottish Government intended to move towards a targeting policy.

Perhaps I am being unfair to Mr Balfour, but in the past he has always made it clear that perhaps we do not need a Scottish social security system, and that we should deliver all social security benefits from Westminster—