Yesterday, the First Minister told the Parliament that we are facing an unprecedented situation that requires an unprecedented response, at scale and pace, to help people who are most at risk in our community. I want to be clear to the chamber and to the citizens of Scotland that our actions will be guided by doing all that we can to protect the health, welfare and wellbeing of the people of Scotland.
We are in the midst of a worldwide public health emergency that is now being strongly felt here in Scotland. None of us has gone through anything like it before, so we need to respond in new ways. That means being flexible, adaptable and ready to respond to challenges as they arise. We want to show our support to all sectors and people in Scotland, and that support will be provided through funding, through communication and through our actions. Scotland’s response to the pandemic will require everyone—councils, the third sector, businesses and communities in their widest sense—to work together and to step up to the challenge.
The First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport and the chief medical officer have already clearly set out the groups whose health is most vulnerable to Covid-19, and whom we are looking to shield most urgently. We will be working with third sector partners that have contact with, and already support, those who are clinically vulnerable to ensure that people receive the right advice on what precautions to take. Those who support them will also have the best information available on how to keep people safe.
Our focus, of course, will be on the people and communities that are most at risk financially and socially. However, wider society will also need our help, and we must recognise that many people will not be used to asking for or accessing such support. This pandemic will disrupt lives like never before, and it will cause financial hardship and have a negative impact on our wellbeing. Actions might include ensuring that people can access funds or food in times of financial crisis, that homeless people are looked after, and that people are not lonely or feeling cut off with nowhere to turn if they are social isolating or social distancing.
We will do our utmost to respond but, as the First Minister said yesterday, we need to be open and transparent and to acknowledge that we will not always get things right. However, people should be assured that protecting and supporting our people during these unparalleled times is the absolute focus of the Government.
As a Government, we know that we must respond differently in these exceptional times, and that we cannot do that on our own. Therefore, we will work with partners and organisations in all sectors to ensure that those who are able to step up and support people and communities are enabled to do so by the Government. The nature and scale of the pandemic mean that a dynamic and adaptable response is required, so our funding package will be focused on delivery, not bureaucracy, and support, not red tape.
We want all sectors, whether the private, public or third sector, to think about what they can do. Our collective response will be directed by the fact that local authorities, local businesses, community groups and the third sector know and understand the support needs of their communities the best.
Today, on behalf of the Scottish Government, I will announce significant resources. However, let me be clear that, unless we work with local partners, the impact of our investment will not be felt by those who need it most, so my message today is that, if we can help our partners to help the people of Scotland, we will. Our partners should tell me their solutions or ideas to help those most in need, then we can work together to provide at pace the support that is required to do that.
I announce today that the Scottish Government will be making £350 million available to support people in need.
The £50 million in Barnett consequentials from the United Kingdom Government’s hardship fund is being passed directly to local authorities to support their local resilience and hardship plans. The hardship fund for councils in England will be going to shore up their depleted welfare funds and provide more council tax relief. However, for two reasons, that will not happen in Scotland. First, we have maintained our support for the council tax reduction scheme over the past few years. Secondly, we will provide additional funds to support the scheme, if necessary, thereby freeing councils to use this money to directly address their local needs in the best ways that they see fit.
We will also provide an additional £45 million for the Scottish welfare fund, which is administered by our partners in local government and which makes community care and crisis grants available to those in need in times of crisis and emergency. That more than doubles the current £35.5 million fund and will be accompanied by an increase in flexibilities and new guidance to make sure that the fund is able to fully support people in times of financial crisis.
We have a robust council tax reduction scheme in place that is already supporting more than 450,000 people and is ready to support more. Of that £350 million package, £50 million will go towards supporting the increased demand for Scottish social security benefits and the increased cost of the council tax reduction scheme that we expect to see.
We will establish a £70 million food fund to support households—including those of older people—who might be worried about accessing food, whether due to an income drop or self-isolation. Local authorities will be able to use funds to support those who receive free school meals and to work with all organisations in all sectors, including community groups and local businesses to co-ordinate the response. Funds will also be available to support strategic national activity.
We will provide £50 million for a wellbeing fund to provide support to our third sector partners in the main—but others, too—that will require additional capacity to deal with, for example, the societal challenges that are caused by self-isolation or distancing, which may compound the vulnerability of those who are already living in difficult circumstances, such as those experiencing fuel poverty or those at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
A £40 million supporting communities fund will be established to underpin the inspiring work that is already under way in our neighbourhoods and communities, which will prove essential to our nation’s resilience.
A £20 million third sector resilience fund will be established to help our valued third sector cope with cash flow and business health.
Finally, we will keep £25 million in reserve to allow us to flexibly respond and react with agility to the challenging times ahead that we cannot at this point plan for.
It is with such flexibility and responsiveness that we will respond to those who are seeking to help others. Just as we are responding nationally as a Government, we know that groups and organisations large and small want to do the same. In many cases, they are already planning their response so that they can support those who they work with every day and their local communities.
Some have already approached us with their plans and sought our assistance. I will provide three examples of us agreeing funding today to let that support start immediately.
Last week, Age Scotland asked whether we could help it with a significant expansion of its helpline to increase its capacity to deal with a rise in the number of calls from about 100 a day to around 1,500 a day. Today, the First Minister announced that we are providing £80,000 to allow Age Scotland to provide that essential support to older people.
I am pleased to confirm today that we will be working in partnership with Social Bite to enable free food and essential supplies to be delivered to organisations working with those in need in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. We have made £500,000 available for that initiative, which will provide up to 3,000 meals daily and will be up and running by Friday.
We also want to help local grass-roots organisations. The Health Agency, which is a small grass-roots organisation in Wester Hailes—one of the most deprived areas of Edinburgh—asked us today for assistance to allow it to establish a volunteer buddy system that will provide a check-in phone call to people in their community, to ensure that crucial social connections are maintained and to provide food packages for the next three months to around 400 families in a community where around 85 per cent of children are eligible for free school meals. We said yes to the £65,000 that the Health Agency needs to work with the partners that it has lined up to take forward that response.
Those are just three examples of organisations large and small that are stepping up when society needs them; we will support them to do so.
We are also taking action to support people who rent their homes. This is a time for all landlords, whether in the social or the private sector, to be flexible and adaptable to their tenants at a time of national and possibly personal crisis. If tenants experience issues with paying their rent, they should go to their landlord and explain the issues. We, as a Government, and society as a whole, need landlords to help their tenants immediately as part of an overall society response. We cannot have people being made, or at risk of being made, homeless at this difficult time.
Today, we have written to social landlords to urge them to be flexible and to provide support and advice to tenants who experience financial hardship. We expect them to meet that challenge and support their tenants at this difficult time, when benefits might take time to be applied for or paid. We know that social landlords have their tenants’ interests at heart, and national and local government will work with them to help with their contingency and resilience planning.
In the private sector, landlords will need to be equally supportive during the public health crisis. We need to get the balance right between protecting tenants and ensuring that landlords can continue to provide housing. To support that, through legislation, we will address a temporary change in the current Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016. Currently, landlords can move to eviction if a tenant is in arrears for at least three months in a row and if at least one month of rent is unpaid. At present, first-tier housing tribunals will not uphold that if the reason for non-payment of rent is a delay or failure in the payment to tenants of welfare benefits, such as housing benefit or universal credit. That is a crucial part of our current legislative protection. The temporary change that we will make goes further and will increase that rent arrears period from the current three months to six months. We do not want private sector landlords to be disadvantaged by a lack of rent. However, the reality of what we face means that, if landlords do not support their tenants, it is not just the tenants who will be negatively impacted; all of society will pay the price.
Many landlords have mortgages, and the banks have agreed a three-month mortgage holiday. We commend that and we urge private landlords who need that facility to apply for it. However, we need more; we need that holiday to be increased to six months and to provide for all mortgages, including buy to rent. Therefore, we will write to UK Finance and the United Kingdom Government to urge them to move to providing six-month holidays for all mortgages. Such a move would help tenants and landlords across the UK who need that vital support. To paraphrase Fiona Hyslop from yesterday, just as the people helped our financial institutions at a time of crisis, now it is the financial institutions’ time to do the same.
That is our response to Covid-19 with regard to supporting communities. Using the powers that we have, we will build on the support systems that are already in place. We will step up our support, but we are aware that the safety net of statutory sick pay and 85 per cent of welfare benefit spending lie with the UK Government, including all policy and administration over income replacement benefits. Therefore, if they are eligible, I urge people to ensure that they get statutory sick pay. If they are not eligible and they have a fluctuating or reduced income or hours, or, unfortunately, have been made unemployed, I urge them to access universal credit, which is a benefit that covers a variety of elements, including income replacement and rent elements and child tax credits.
Many people might not have accessed the welfare benefits system before outside child benefit or a pension, but that is what the social security system is for. That is the social contract we pay into: we pay for the safety net so that it is available in our time of need. This is definitely our hour of need.
Given that it is a time of great need, and although we welcome the actions of the UK Government to date, there are actions that only the UK Government can take, because that is where policy and administration of sick pay and welfare benefits lie. The numbers of people who rely on them will increase.
I understand that the UK Government is considering ways to further support individuals. In that regard, now would be a good time for it to reconsider its approach to welfare and to look to increase child benefit, increase the levels of sick pay and increase universal credit. UC must be made more flexible. Hardship grants—not loans—need to be made available.
The UK Government must also lift the benefit cap, increase housing allowance rates and, most importantly, reverse the cap on children. I appreciate that those are suggestions that the UK Government has been opposed to in principle before, but these are not normal times and I would urge it to reassess those policies, given the unprecedented challenges that we face. I say that not to score political points but because of the impending and massive need to support those who are already in hardship and those who will be plunged into hardship because of the impact of the pandemic. If the UK Government takes those actions, we will welcome that unreservedly.
Among the many negatives that we are seeking to mitigate today, what gladdens my heart are the countless acts of kindness and empathy that I have seen on display. There is no getting away from the fact that this is an uncertain time for everyone, including the Government. Life as we know it is postponed. We need to get used to a new normal. Although there is a medical need for social distancing, we cannot—we must not—forget that connectedness and kindness help to sustain our wellbeing.
Our communities are strong and they are resilient, and it is that strength, along with a deep desire to help, that is motivating so many groups, charities, organisations, businesses and, importantly, individuals, to do what they can to look out for one another, particularly those most at risk. That community response has been fantastic, is to be commended and is to be emulated. We know that people will want to help others and we know that we need to keep people safe.
Our first step has been to establish the funding packages that I have just outlined to the chamber. Our next step will be to move to directly work with partners and community groups to ask how they can help harness that community spirit, to back up the measures to support people that I have outlined and to fill the gaps in lives that people may now face.
We will work fast to provide advice and information on how the public can help to fulfil that urge and determination to help, because I have seen that it is there in abundance and we need to harness it for the public good. We need to provide a safety net for people experiencing hardship, and we also need to provide a community safety net for people without close families or friends nearby to help them through these challenging times. If any groups or organisations can safely support others in their community—whether it is with befriending phone line services, helping people with the messages, walking the dog or other things that might help people cope with the social isolation and loneliness that they could now face—we encourage them to do so.
We are also aware of the pressures that will be created by people staying at home and the potential impact for services that offer support for victims of gender-based violence. We are offering weekly teleconferences with stakeholders to review impact and demand on services. Information on the support services that are available will be widely disseminated.
Scotland’s response to tackling Covid-19 will primarily and rightly be a medical and scientific one, but the human qualities of kindness and empathy are critically important to helping our country emerge from this tough challenge.
I look forward to members’ questions.