Seòmar agus comataidhean

The fund is important, as you said. Many local authorities top it up, which is making a big difference in these difficult times.

The independent review, which was externally contracted, is under way. The first phase of research is nearly complete and the second phase will begin next month. The aim is to develop a credible evidence base that can inform future policy improvements, including any decisions about the level of funding, the delivery of the fund and the criteria and guidance for it.

There is a keenness to get it done as quickly as possible, but it is a substantial programme of work. It includes a review of the existing evidence as well as qualitative research with all 32 local authorities, key stakeholders and, importantly, applicants to the fund. It will take several months to do work of that scale and complexity properly. We need to do it once and do it well so that it generates reliable conclusions that are based on credible evidence. We expect that the final report on findings will be published early next year.

I should also say that the review is being supported and guided by a review advisory group, which includes representatives from a range of internal and external stakeholders. However, I am happy to keep the committee apprised of its progress.

You make an important point. As you will be aware, we see it as a duty of the Scottish Government to ensure that people access the social security benefits to which they are entitled. You will be aware of the second benefit take-up strategy, which was published last October, I think, and which set out how we are working to ensure that people can access the support to which they are entitled. At the heart of that is a recognition that benefit take-up is part of the bigger picture of maximising income, which is so important at the moment, given the cost of living issues.

We are investing £10 million over the current session of Parliament to increase access to advice in accessible settings. That includes expanding the welfare advice and health partnerships through location in general practitioner surgeries, which is working well. GPs and other health staff can signpost people to a service just down the corridor to find out what they might be entitled to. A person might be at the doctor because of worries about debt and money, which are impacting on their mental health. We are joining the dots there.

Obviously, we encourage the UK Government to take a more joined-up approach to the promotion of benefits. We will seek to work with it where we can because a number of reserved benefits, such as universal credit, are gate-openers to supports such as the Scottish child payment. Therefore, we encourage the UK Government to do more, particularly at the moment, on promoting and raising awareness of what people might be entitled to.

I reiterate the point about the £3 billion—every pound is a prisoner, as the saying goes. We already provide support to households that is not available anywhere else in the UK, particularly to low-income families. The consequentials that Miles Briggs refers to are those from the household support fund, which was routed through local government in England. We already provide a range of supports—some of which are routed through local government—that are well in excess of that.

I do not want the impression to be given that money is being spent on supporting low-income households in England but is not being spent on such support here in Scotland, because we have already gone well beyond some of those supports. We continue to consider what more we can do within our financial constraints.

Thanks very much, convener.

I am acutely aware that households across the country are facing a serious cost of living crisis and that those on the lowest incomes are being hit the hardest. Many of those households are likely to then carry an increased burden of debt.

As I said earlier, through the budget for 2022-23, the Scottish Government has allocated almost £3 billion to a range of supports that will contribute to mitigating the impact of the increased cost of living on households. That includes work to tackle child poverty, reduce inequalities and support financial wellbeing, alongside social security payments that are not available anywhere else in the UK. It includes investing £83 million for discretionary housing payments, including £68.1 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and an additional £14.9 million to mitigate the damaging impact of other UK Government welfare cuts.

In response to the crisis, we took the decision to uprate eight Scottish benefits by 6 per cent and to invest a further £10 million in our fuel insecurity fund to support households at risk of severely rationing their energy use or self-disconnecting. Our Scottish welfare fund provides a vital and important safety net to those who are most in need. We have committed £41 million to that fund this year. That offers significant financial support for those living in Scotland, and it will provide a protection for those on the lowest incomes.

Ensuring that people have enough money to live on, that they are receiving all the benefits and entitlements that they should be receiving, and that they are appropriately supported around their debts are priorities for the Scottish Government. That is why we are committed to maximising benefit take-up, as shown in our benefit take-up strategy. We are investing more than £12 million this year to support free advice services to help people to maximise their incomes and manage their debt.

We know that there is more to do, which is why we have committed to increasing the accessibility of advice over this parliamentary session. We will continue to work with advice services to understand and respond to the on-going impact of the rising cost of living and to ensure that our limited resources support the people who are struggling the most.

Can we come back to the committee on that specific point?

My understanding is that local authorities have the power to write off debt of any type if they choose to do so, provided that there is no expectation of recovery. Obviously, ministers do not have the power to require local authorities to write off debt. Any decision making has to be done on the basis of individual circumstances. Even if resources could be found, in the current climate, given the reliance of local services on council tax collection, taking a wholesale approach would be a very difficult message to send out. We have to be very cautious about that.

There is also work going on in the Improvement Service, which is trying to improve the way in which council tax is collected. We have the council tax reduction scheme in Scotland, which means that no one should have to meet a council tax liability that they are unable to afford. I guess that our role in the reduction scheme has been to try to ensure that people on low incomes are not required to pay a council tax rate that they cannot afford. The reduction scheme has been important in that way—it has benefited a lot of people and helped them to avoid falling into arrears.

I will hand over to Tom Arthur in a second. If there are recommendations from the committee on good practice and not such good practice, it is important that COSLA and local authorities hear those. I would point back to the Improvement Service’s report “Collaborative Council Tax Collection”. It is not the most interesting of titles, but it is an important report, which highlights the existing good practice by some local authorities in improving council tax collection outcomes and the way in which that system operates. The fact that the Improvement Service has got involved in looking at what good practice is demonstrates that local authorities recognise that there is an issue there.

We would certainly encourage local authorities to look at that report and its recommendations. However, if the committee can add weight to that with its own recommendations—if there are some for local government and COSLA in particular to look at—that may be welcomed.

Thanks, convener, for inviting us to the committee, alongside Kate Forbes, to help you to explore the impact of the resource spending review on social justice and social security. Tackling child poverty is our national mission and, of course, it is one of our four resource spending review priorities. When we published “Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026” in March, we set out our actions to tackle child poverty, including increasing social security support, taking action on employability and fair work, and investing in more warm affordable homes.?

The resource spending review underpins key actions to tackle child poverty, including in relation to childcare, transport and employability. Notably, it commits more than £23 billion for social security payments that will provide direct support to more than one million people in Scotland each year. That includes almost £1.8 billion for the Scottish child payment, which will increase to £25 per eligible child per week when the payment is extended to under-16s at the end of the year.

Modelling conducted as part of developing the tackling child poverty delivery plan projected that, with progress to date and the package of measures planned, around 17 per cent of children will live in relative poverty in 2023-24, 60,000 fewer than when the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act was passed in 2017. That will drive child poverty in Scotland to the lowest level in 30 years, against a very challenging backdrop. Importantly, the actions set out lay the foundation for the transformation in our economy and public services that will be required to meet the 2030 targets and set Scotland on a path to sustained poverty reduction.

As we navigate the cost of living crisis, these interventions, currently and over the next four years, will be all the more vital in supporting household incomes. Through the budget for 2022-23, the Scottish Government has allocated almost £3 billion to a range of supports that will contribute to mitigating the impact of the increased cost of living on households. That includes work to tackle child poverty, reduce inequalities and support financial wellbeing, alongside social security payments that are not available anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

The resource spending review provides a multiyear funding framework, which will bring to life our tackling child poverty delivery plan and provide direct support to those who need it most. I look forward to hearing your questions later.

You made an important point. I recognise that we need to understand the impact that debt and money worries can have on mental health, and we are working with stakeholders to tackle that issue and ensure that our services have the reach that they need to.

In our mental health transition recovery plan, we committed to further develop a response to those whose mental health has been affected by issues relating to debt, and we are working closely with a range of organisations—including Citizens Advice Scotland—to tackle that. We have worked with Support in Mind Scotland and the Money and Pensions Service on the development of a money and mental health toolkit. The toolkit is designed to help people understand, manage and improve their financial health and mental wellbeing. It will be distributed very soon, mainly through GP practices with some distribution among social prescribing networks and Public Health Scotland. It will also be possible to download it from the Mental Health and Money Advice Scotland website. We understand the links and we are trying to ensure that that is built in to the services provided.

You might be aware of the Scottish Government’s “Welfare reform report: Impact on families with children”, which was published in April. If not, it is definitely worth having a look at that, because it found that reversing key welfare reforms, some of which you mentioned, would bring around 70,000 people out of poverty, including 30,000 children. It looked at the removal of the £20 per week uplift, the two-child limit, the removal of the family element and the benefit freeze, and it also looked at universal credit work allowances and the taper rate, on which there has obviously been a positive move. In essence, if those reforms were reversed, it would help to put £780 million more per year into the pockets of Scottish households.

We have spent a lot of money on mitigation, and I outlined some of that in my opening remarks when I mentioned the mitigation of the bedroom tax and the benefit cap. If we did not have to mitigate those, and decisions on those things were reversed at source, we would be able to spend the money we currently spend on discretionary housing payments and the benefit cap on other supports. We therefore reiterate our call—as I do when I meet my counterparts in the Department for Work and Pensions and the UK Government—that that would be the best way forward for all of us.