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Pam-Duncan Glancy has questions for Peter Kelly.

I have no indication that anybody wants to come in.

We have come to the end of our time, which was too short; we could probably ask a lot more questions. If the witnesses think that there is something that we need to hear or that you want to underline, please write to us. That would be interesting and helpful to our questioning next week on council tax and insolvency. It was important for us to hear what Zahra Hussain said about the debt and mental health form sometimes being ignored, as well as the cost barriers to it.

I thank everybody for their attendance.

Thank you. I see that Emma Jackson would like to respond, too.

Thanks for that. It was important to hear the message regarding people getting multiple texts and e-mails from their creditors, which had an impact on a lot of people’s mental health. When your phone is buzzing and you do not know if you want to look at it, it is the same as when the envelopes land on the mat, but it is continuous and sometimes goes on throughout the night.

Pam Duncan-Glancy, who is online, is next to ask questions, followed by Paul McLennan.

Welcome back. The members of our second panel are all joining us remotely. I welcome Zahra Hussain, mental health and money advice senior adviser, Mental Health UK; Hannah Brisbane, public affairs assistant, Scottish Association for Mental Health; Rebecca Stacey, senior research officer, Money and Mental Health Policy Institute; and Wendy McAuslan, development co-ordinator, VOX Scotland.

We are running late and are quite short of time, so we will move straight to members’ questions.

I have a question, but I ask the witnesses to answer it in writing. Yesterday, there was a report from the Lloyds Bank Foundation entitled “Deductions: Driver of Poverty”. A huge part of it is about the deductions from benefits that Sarah-Jayne talked about earlier.

In my experience of working with people who were in debt, perpetual deductions from benefits was always the big issue. The drivers for that include recouping of advances, or people having been surprised by historical debt from the clunky tax credit system. Obviously, those drivers mean that people can never get out of debt because they have essentials to pay for. Could your organisations write to us to say whether they agree with the report’s recommendations about writing off historical debts and doing a full review of the system of clawback from benefits, which are, essentially, the minimum that people are supposed to live on but are not means tested? It was very interesting to hear Sarah-Jayne Dunn or Emma Jackson talking about how once benefits hit the bank account they are not protected. The committee would like to hear your thoughts on that report and its recommendations, if that is possible.

Thank you for coming along; I am sorry that we ran over time. We will pause for the panels to change over and to take a short break.

Who did you want to direct those questions to, Pam?

Thanks for that, Zahra. I think that you have painted a picture of the firefighting that you are doing on the front line with people who are trying to navigate the situation that they find themselves in.

I will bring in Hannah Brisbane and Wendy McAuslan. I should say, though, that members have lots of other questions, so we should keep things brief.

Thank you, Foysol. Your sound dropped out a little bit. The question is about whether there is a specific impact on the BME community. Who do you want to answer that question, Foysol?

Thank you, Rebecca. I can see that Zahra Hussain and Hannah Brisbane want to come in. We will go to Zahra first.