Seòmar agus comataidhean

Welcome to the 11th meeting in 2024 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have no apologies today.

Our first item of business is a decision to take agenda items 5 and 6 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Are members content for the committee to recommend to the Parliament that it approve the appointment of Peter Cawston, Kim Dams, Taliah Drayak, Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Paul Fletcher, Louise Hunter, Ross McQueenie and Rami Okasha as commissioners?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 3 is our last evidence-taking session on the Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. Today we will hear from the Scottish Government, and I welcome to the meeting Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and accompanying Scottish Government officials: Iain Hunter, the bill team leader, and Kayleigh Blair, from the legal directorate. Thank you all for joining us today.

I believe that, before we move to questions, the cabinet secretary would like to make an opening statement.

Thank you very much for that. I invite Roz McCall to ask a quick supplementary question.

We will move on to theme 3, on challenging decisions.

Moving on to theme 4, which is overpayments, I invite Jeremy Balfour to come in.

We will move to theme 7, which is compensation recovery.

Thank you, cabinet secretary and officials. That concludes the evidence session and our public business for today. The committee will now consider all the evidence that was received at stage 1 and will report its findings in May.

Thank you—that is lovely. As no one else wants to come in, I will just say that I whole-heartedly agree with all of you. It was heartening to hear about the number of people who had applied.

We have also heard from speaking to the selection chair how robust the process was. It is good to see a diverse range of nominees in the room and online with us today. Thank you all for your feedback.

Are members content for the committee to recommend to the Parliament that it approves the appointment of Professor Stephen Sinclair as chair of the commission?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much for that opening statement, cabinet secretary. We will kick off with some questions.

I will start with theme 1, on new forms of benefit, which covers part 1 of the bill. Do you think that it would be beneficial for care experience assistance to be subject to the general statutory framework for social security, including the statutory principles, appeals, the take-up strategy, annual uprating and scrutiny by the SCOSS and the charter? If so, why not provide that in the bill, in keeping with most other forms of Scottish social security?