Chamber and committees

Thank you for that exchange. It was remiss of me not to say that we will have some other questions on the timescale later, but those have been pre-empted. I should have identified that as convener, but we are where we are.

We move to questions from our colleague Paul O’Kane, who is online.

Dr Witcher, it is not often that a witness comes to the committee, identifies the problems, then, in the same response, gives the solution and says that everything has been delivered, so I thank you. I have one brief further question, although I may come back in later, depending on time.

According to the paper that we read ahead of today’s meeting, you are keen that the expertise that is captured in SCOSS is used proactively as well as reactively. Alongside scrutinising regulations and legislation and making recommendations for what should be tweaked, altered, made clearer and so on, I think that you were talking about SCOSS taking a much more proactive role. A pattern is emerging in the interaction between devolved and reserved social security matters, and there is a suggestion that a piece of research—a bit of proactive work in relation to that—would be helpful. Can SCOSS currently not do that because it is not able to do it or is not resourced to do it? You mentioned it in your paper. Could you say a wee bit about that, before colleagues come in with some other questions?

I know that Mr Mason wants to explore the finances underpinning some of this but, before we come to that, I want to check something. Cabinet secretary, you keep talking about the fact that, if the eligibility criteria do not change, the outcomes will not change in terms of who qualifies for and receives the existing benefit or the new Scottish benefit. We heard a lot about the judgments being based on expert opinion and the reasonableness test in the eligibility criteria.

We also heard that the IIAC has identified four conditions relating to long Covid that could potentially allow people to receive benefits, and that is caught up in the process. However, there is a difficulty with that, because the recommendations that politicians and processes rely on experts making are not always accepted—in this case, potentially, by the DWP on behalf of the UK Government. The reason I am putting that on the record is to ask you what parts of the eligibility criteria might need to be looked at again and changed. Should the eligibility criteria always be expert led?

Good morning and welcome to the 31st meeting in 2023 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have apologies from our convener, Collette Stevenson.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take agenda item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I will ask about the voice of the worker, of lived experience and of occupational health in a moment, but I take it from your first answers that SCOSS will not be an appropriate vehicle for offering that kind of advice and that fundamental changes would have to be made to the structures of SCOSS to enable it to do so.

Welcome back. Our next item of business is an evidence session with Dr Sally Witcher, the former chair of the Scottish Commission on Social Security, commonly known as SCOSS. The purpose of this session is to gain further insight into what lessons for the Scottish social security system can be learned from what has happened up to now.

I warmly welcome Dr Witcher to the meeting. I thank her for accepting our invitation and I also put on record our thanks for all the work and effort that she has put into designing and supporting Scotland’s social security system up to now. Before we move to questions, I invite her to make an opening statement.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. You have made it very clear that the Government does not support the bill, but is it open to elements in it? Not supporting the bill is one thing, but being open minded about certain aspects of its contents is another. Are those issues being ruled out, or will they be considered as part of the Government’s wider consultation?

Thanks very much.

I apologise, convener. I feel as though I am nudging back slightly. I want to ask a little more about Ms Christensen’s aspirations to have an additional target or an additional part of the circular economy strategy, so I would like to turn to her in the first instance.

Ms Christensen, you have a very clear ask of the legislation, which does not always happen—quite often we hear about matters in general terms. It is to ensure

“the highest standards of environmental and human rights due diligence in Scottish supply chains”

and public procurement. I could not possibly disagree with any of that wording, but if it were to appear in the bill it would be reasonable to ask who should determine what a just supply chain looks like and how that would be monitored. I am interested in how we could monitor that and measure compliance with it.

That is a helpful answer, although it could be considered aspirational. That is not a criticism; I might be sympathetic to what you are suggesting.

As for reporting on the strategy every five years, the Government would be criticised if it had a strategy and did not measure its progress against it. Would you expect it to take reasonable steps or appropriate measures to meet those goals? Would it have to have regard to the variety of international frameworks that are out there? Could you put a wee bit more meat on the bones on that?

Just in case I do not get back in for a follow-up question, convener, may I sneak in a second point? Ms Christensen, I know that that is a big ask. I am not asking you to flesh out the whole approach, but perhaps you could give us an idea of what it might look like. Would it extend simply to the Scottish Government and its agencies on procurement, or would you like to see reporting and due diligence done in the whole of corporate Scotland?