Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2024 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have received no apologies today.

Our first agenda item is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take item 7 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is consideration of a Scottish statutory instrument that is subject to the negative procedure. The instrument’s main purpose is to amend a range of regulations in relation to the past presence test and the requirement for a genuine and sufficient link to the United Kingdom by removing references to “social security system” so that the genuine and sufficient link simply needs to be to the United Kingdom.

If members have no comments on the instrument, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any further recommendations in relation to the instrument. Are members content to note the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

Yes.

Before Neil Ritch comes in, I note that Professor Jung had his hand up to come in on the previous question. I will let Neil answer this question and will then bring Professor Jung back in.

Before we finish up, I would like to ask your views on how the Scottish Government could work better with independent funders. Can you share any best practice stories with us?

Agenda item 3 is our final evidence-taking session as part of our annual pre-budget scrutiny. This year, our focus is on how the Scottish Government’s approach to fair and efficient funding can support the on-going effectiveness of the third sector.

I welcome our panel of witnesses: Erica Judge is director of fundsat Inspiring Scotland; Neil Ritch is Scotland director of the National Lottery Community Fund; Professor Tobias Jung is a professor of management at the University of St Andrews; and, joining us online is Karin Earl, who is funding manager at the Robertson Trust. Thank you all very much for accepting our invitation.

Before we move to questions, I want to make a few points about the format of the meeting. Please wait until the member asking the question says your name before speaking and please give our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn on your microphone before you start to speak. Karin, please indicate with an R in the Zoom chat-room function if you wish to come in on a question.

I ask everyone to keep their questions and their answers as concise as possible. Bob Doris will start us off.

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2024 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have no apologies.

Our first item of business is consideration of a Scottish statutory instrument that is subject to the negative procedure. The main purpose of the instrument is to enable all children and young people who are looked after by a local authority and who are placed for adoption with a council tax reduction applicant to be considered as part of the applicant’s family for the purposes of calculating council tax reduction.

Unless members have any comments on the instrument, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument. Are members content to note the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

That concludes our public business for today. We now move into private to consider the remaining items on the agenda.

Good morning. I will flip your comments on ring fencing round a wee bit.

Professor Heald, you touched on reckless decisions that have been made in some local authorities—more so, as you mentioned, down south. Recently, I asked a Government-initiated question on reserves in each local authority. Some of the reserves that are held at local authority level are particularly significant. Will you comment on that?

Okay. That is lovely.

Professor Heald, would you like to comment on PFI?