Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. Joy Lewis, Mariam Ahmed and Sara Medel Jiménez want to come in. We will go to Joy next.

I thank the panel for their opening statements and for the testimonies that they have already given. I have been furiously trying to take notes as I have been listening. It has been very helpful. I also thank you for everything that you have done during the past couple of years. It has been a significantly more difficult two years for the people that you represent than for many of us in Scotland.

My first question is about the financial security of the women that you support and the risk that women’s unfair responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work could get worse during the budget process. Farah Farzana, Joy Lewis and Mariam Ahmed might want to answer. Has the ability to find paid work and an income been put seriously at risk during the pandemic? You have already touched on some of that. What is the current picture of the financial situations of the families that you represent?

Yes, please—that would be helpful.

Earlier on, a comment was made about the unpaid work of people—[Inaudible.] That particularly struck me, because I can see how you will have had to put in considerably more hours of support. What do you think the solution to that is? Do you think that the people and organisations that you work with are getting enough financial support to recruit the number of staff who are needed to address some of the problems that you have raised?

I did not write down the name of the person who made that comment early on. If the person who said that remembers that they said it, maybe they could come back on it. Otherwise, maybe Mariam Ahmed or Farah Farzana could answer the question.

Thank you.

Good morning, panel. Thank you for your submissions and for your answers so far. I find the variation of allowances across the country quite staggering—for one age group, from ages 0 to 4, it can be anything from £77 to £200—so the conversation that we have had around the need for a national allowance has been really helpful.

Laura Caven, your submission said that local authorities can choose how they cover the cost of the 16 items as part of the allowance. Does that mean that, in some cases, it is not a cash payment, or is it always a cash payment?

That is really helpful and clear. In the discussions on the national allowance, has there been consideration of the required rate for the 16 items? How is that being established? Are the increases in the cost of living being considered as part of that? How do you see the rate and the payments working? Someone mentioned Social Security Scotland earlier. Does it have a role?

It absolutely does. Will you tell us a bit more about the legal mechanism that is used to determine who is eligible? What needs to change?

I thank the members of the panel for their testimony. I especially thank Micheleine Kane. From your description of what you have had to go through and the time that it has taken to get action, I am not surprised that you are fed up. Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. As Miles Briggs said, I hope that the committee and the Government listen carefully to what you have said.

I have a couple of questions, which I will run together in the interests of time. My first one relates to the issue of a national allowance, and it follows on from Jeremy Balfour’s. Micheleine Kane talked about the fact that someone two doors down can be offered a different amount. I do not think that that is tolerable, and I cannot see any other way to address it.

I agree with Alison Gillies that the first principle must be that there should be a race to the top. That is absolutely true. If the allowance was paid nationally, what would we need to do to make sure that everybody who needed to get money got it? Specifically in relation to the issue of whether children have been looked after, what mechanism could be used to ensure that the discretionary approach that might be applied to make sure that some people get money in a way that others do not could be applied nationally?

In a similar vein, I would like to ask Micheleine Kane how involved kinship carers have been in the national conversation about a national allowance. I fear that you have not been involved in that conversation, and I hope that you will be. I am keen to hear about that.

Also, who made the decision about which agency to make responsible for the kinship care service? Do you know why they did that?

Finally, I was really concerned about Alison Gillies’s point about affluent kinship carers ending up getting up more money than people who are worse off. Is guidance needed to fix that? How can we sort that?

It is—thank you.