Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for those answers. I move to questions from members. We will start with Emma Roddick, who is in the room, then Pam Duncan-Glancy, who joins us remotely. The first set of questions is about the prioritisation of social security.

We will move on to questions on flat cash allocations and the impact on child poverty.

We have run to our allotted time, but I want to bring in members who have not spoken yet. Miles Briggs has some questions, as does Paul McLennan, who is participating online. We will put in writing the remaining questions that members want to put to the cabinet secretaries, because we need to leave enough time this morning for the final evidence session in our inquiry, which we must report on quickly.

I thank both of you for your opening statements. We come to questions from members. To kick off, we will hear from Paul McLennan, who is participating online. Paul has questions about accessing money advice, which will be followed by questions about the delivery of money advice.

Thank you, Pam. Helpfully, you have asked Jeremy Balfour’s questions for him. Foysol Choudhury, who is joining us online, has questions about the delivery of money advice.

Before I move on to questions from Natalie Don about creditor processes, I want to ask about the council tax reduction scheme. The scheme is unique to Scotland, and many households are availing themselves of it. We heard from quite a few witnesses that the landscape was sometimes confusing, depending on which local authority they were in, and that the letters were not always clear about how the benefit had been calculated. Is there any role for the Scottish Government in making the guidance clearer and the processes for uptake simpler?

Thank you, and welcome to you both. The committee has quite a lot of questions to get through and we have a specific amount of time allotted to that, so if members and cabinet secretaries could keep their questions and answers concise that would be fantastic. I will kick off.

The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government has already alluded to this. Yesterday, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth mentioned the figure of around £3 billion that is being deployed in this financial year across the range of supports that are helping to mitigate the impacts of the cost of living increases that we are seeing across the whole of the UK. Could the cabinet secretaries expand on that for us and outline to the committee how the Scottish Government believes that that aligns with the priorities that are set out in the resource spending review? It would be very helpful if they could specifically mention the areas that the committee is interested in.

Before we move on to the impact of flat-cash allocations on child poverty, I want to stick briefly with the conversation about demand-led budgets, but with regard to the uptake of benefits. Many UK Government benefits are not taken up, which obviously has an impact on the envelope of resources that come to us. How can we ensure that we prioritise at both Government levels? The Scottish Government needs to ensure that people take up the benefits that we already provide here, but how can we work with the UK Government to ensure that it has a campaign so that people recognise what they are entitled to and so that uptake increases? That will then help to passport people on to benefits here and will also potentially increase the money that we have available in Scotland for that.

Is that helpful for you, Emma?

We move to questions from Pam Duncan-Glancy, who joins us remotely, then from Jeremy Balfour, who is in the room.