Seòmar agus comataidhean

Paul McLennan, who joins us online, will ask the final questions in the session.

We will move on to questions on debt and mental health.

I thank both cabinet secretaries for coming to the committee this morning. We will gather together the questions that members did not get to put to you and write to you with them.

We will move on to questions on the delivery of money advice. To start off, we have Pam Duncan-Glancy, who is online.

Thanks. It is helpful to set that scene. We move to questions from Miles Briggs, to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy.

Paul McLennan has questions on debt and mental health.

I refer members to paper 2 for background information on the instrument. I had a slight concern with regards to ensuring that pregnant women would always have the right to apply in their own right and that that would supersede any other applications, but information on that is laid out in the paper. I am therefore happy to just put that on the record, and note that it has been dealt with.

As there are no other comments, are we happy to note the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

Yes, because I anticipate that, should such information be withheld and the person be provided with the reasons why, there would have to be an appeal process. We will ask the clerks to write to ask for clarification on that. Do members agree to that approach?

Members indicated agreement.

I cannot say what the rationale behind that would be without having the clinical background, and we do not have anybody from the Government here to answer that. We could write to the Government and ask for that to be clarified.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. At next week’s meeting, we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy on the subject of the resource spending review. We will also hear from the cabinet secretary and the minister in the final evidence session of our low income and debt inquiry. We were due to have that session today, but it had to be postponed.