Seòmar agus comataidhean

I call Pam Duncan-Glancy, who is online.

Welcome to the 15th meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Does the committee agree to take item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session for our inquiry into low income and debt problems. We had our first formal session on 28 April. Today, we will hear from two panels. The first will consider the delivery of money advice service and key issues for people on low incomes, and the second will focus on debt and mental health.

I welcome our first panel to the meeting. We are joined online by Peter Kelly, director, the Poverty Alliance; Sarah-Jayne Dunn, policy manager for financial health, Citizens Advice Scotland; and Anne Baldock, financial inclusion team leader, One Parent Families Scotland. With us in the room is Emma Jackson, national director Scotland, Christians Against Poverty. It is fantastic to have a witness in the room for the first time since the pandemic. Our colleagues Pam Duncan-Glancy and Foysol Choudhury are joining us remotely.

I want to mention a few housekeeping points before we kick off. Those of you who are online should put an R in the chat function if you want to come in on a question, and please allow a few seconds for broadcasting colleagues to turn on your microphone before you start speaking. Emma Jackson can indicate that she wishes to come in by raising her hand, and I will make sure that I see it. Given that she is sitting in front of us, we will endeavour not to direct every question at her.

Moreover, our witnesses should not feel that they need to answer every question. We have a lot of questions to get through, and with four people on the panel, we will be a little bit tight for time. However, if anyone wants to add any comments, please let us know. We have about an hour.

My colleagues will now ask questions in turn, starting with Emma Roddick.

Thank you for that example—it is really important for the committee to hear that.

Peter Kelly and Anne Baldock would like to come in—I ask that you do so briefly, please. Emma Roddick will then ask a follow-up question.

I ask Anne Baldock to be really brief.

That is very interesting, and I am certain that this committee and my committee will follow closely the data that you say shows that self-disconnections are reducing. That does not chime with the evidence and the reality that we are seeing on the ground.

Sticking with data, there is not enough disaggregated, gendered data—as is usually the case—but there is strong circumstantial evidence that women are at a higher risk of experiencing circumstances known to make households more vulnerable to fuel poverty. I am thinking here about lower pay, women who have caring responsibilities, and women who head single-parent families. It is important that policy makers understand what role gender plays, and that they respond accordingly.

What gendered analysis did the UK Government do prior to agreeing to lifting the price cap? How do you intend to monitor its impact on women?

Thank you. It is a question that I will put to everybody at every opportunity that I have, because we do not have enough disaggregated gendered data for most things.

I am convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, which has taken harrowing evidence that people are facing unimaginable choices and that support services are already extremely stretched. You talked about the global crisis and the rest of the world, but the situation appear to be disproportionate across the UK.

Evidence to date suggest that supports that the Government has announced will not adequately alleviate the impact of the energy crisis, especially for the most vulnerable households, some of whom have already self-disconnected because of soaring costs. The risk of wholly avoidable deaths looms large this winter.

Pre-payment meter households pay more than direct debit households. What justification is there for vulnerable people paying a premium for their energy? The committee heard yesterday from Ofgem that that is needed to balance the risk to the suppliers, but what protections are in place for those households and what more should be done? Could a social tariff, which was proposed by Scottish Power in a previous meeting, play a role?

Thank you.

Thank you, convener, and good morning.

I am also the convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, and we have been taking a huge amount of evidence recently about debt and poverty. As you can imagine, that is an area that that committee is acutely focused on.

Several times, Mr Lawrence has mentioned that the current situation is unprecedented. To the people at the sharp end who we are taking evidence from, the situation feels like a return to the days when you could not afford a bag of coal, you had no heating and you had no means to cook some food.

Following on from Mark Ruskell’s questions, I will look at some data. If we think about winter 2021-22—the period that we have just come through—how difficult an increase in prices was that for consumers in Scotland to cope with? Have there been more self-disconnections? We know that there were self-disconnections already. In my local authority area, a couple of years ago we uncovered that around 300 people had self-disconnected. Will self-disconnection only increase as we go forward?