Chamber and committees

I know that the budget negotiations are private but the committee would be very interested to know if suggestions are made to nibble away at that investment in Social Security Scotland.

Marie McNair and Elena Whitham spoke about potential cliff edge concerns in the future, particularly if the Scottish child payment became much higher. There is a tipping point in the labour market impact. A taper is one way to militate against that, once universal credit entitlement has ended. There is also the idea of a run-on for a number of months, which is a wee bittie different from a taper. I know that that all costs money, so I am not asking you to commit to any of that, but does the Scottish Government look at those things in the round to future proof the direction of travel for policies?

Budget time must be just around the corner because I think that is the first reference that we have heard to the finance secretary’s sofa. Well done to Mr Balfour for that.

That is helpful. It is worth putting on the record that the near half a billion pounds a year that is spent on the Scottish child payment is not an overspend—that is planned expenditure. Of course the planned expenditure means that if you are spending £600 million on that, the forecast would be inaccurate and then that might be seen as an overspend. The reason that I am stressing the point that it is planned expenditure is because politicians and others do not see what the alternative choices are—I get that. If we are making that planned expenditure on the Scottish child payment or planned expenditure of £640 million to mitigate the worst decisions of Westminster, those are pounds and pence that we are not spending on other things. Some of the narrative that we have heard from witnesses so far is that, if we do not invest in other things that also support children and families and the most vulnerable—classroom assistants or health and social care support—that could also have a detrimental impact on the life experience of people who might otherwise have to rely on the social security safety net and that investment.

When you make planned investment in the social security budgets, do you look at the relationship between other budgets that could otherwise have more investment and could also help the same people that the Social Security Scotland budget spend helps? That theme came up time and again during our pre-budget scrutiny.

Good morning and welcome to the 24th meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee in 2025. We have apologies from our convener Collette Stevenson and from Michael Marra.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 3 and 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I was going to say that we were getting into a bit of a niche matter, although an important one.

Cabinet secretary, if you and your officials want to let the committee know examples of how you seek to drive efficiencies within Social Security Scotland, I am sure that that would be welcome. I am conscious that there is also a cost to auditing and budgeting individual items. There must be a balance made between how much it will cost for officials to get the cost of something, which could be greater than the cost of the thing in itself. I am sure that any reflections that you want to give us in correspondence about the efficiencies in the agency would be very welcome.

That is all that we have, cabinet secretary; we have reached the end of our evidence session. I thank you and your officials for being here this morning for our pre-budget scrutiny.

Agenda item 3 will be taken in private, so we will move into private session. Thank you.

Agenda item 2 is our final evidence session on pre-budget scrutiny. I welcome to the meeting Shirley-Anne Somerville, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, who is joined by her team of officials: Julie Humphreys, director, tackling child poverty and social justice; James Wallace, deputy director, social justice finance lead; and Ian Davidson, deputy director, social security policy. Thank you, cabinet secretary and your team, for joining us this morning. I believe that you have a brief opening statement before we move to questions.

The Braer oil spill happened in 1993, so the current legislation supersedes that example, but I appreciate why it was given.

I am getting my head around an issue that it might be best for Mr Whittle to come in on. Section 40 of the 2014 act, which has been cited by Kevin Stewart, deals with significant environmental harm. In my briefing, I see that there are also the Environmental Liability (Scotland) Regulations 2009, which set out that companies and organisations must proactively take “preventive or remedial measures”. I am learning as I go along, so I am sure that there are other parts of the general legislative landscape that I am not aware of. The deputy convener’s question was whether there are any examples from the past decade or so in which the legislative framework has not been fit for purpose to deal with a significant environmental incident. We do not have clarity on that.

I want to ask Mr Whittle a second question, because I will not be coming back in due to time constraints. Who decides what piece of legislation to use when seeking legal recourse? If the bill goes on the statute book, lots of people will be keen to see it used. However, it might be more appropriate to use section 40 of the 2014 act or the 2009 regulations. I am conscious of setting a legal precedent that determines the bar for what ecocide actually is and it is such a significant threshold that is meant to be reached. Mr Whittle, could you give me some reassurances?

Maybe I have picked up the previous evidence session wrong, and the point is about a lack of clarity rather than a flaw in the bill, but I wanted to draw that to your attention.