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Where does the extra money come from? You are talking about it being £1 a week and it being a “finger in the dam”. You are using all the phrases that the witnesses used last week, which is fair, but where does the extra money come from? It is extra money that has come from the Scottish Government to pay 200,000 people more than they were getting paid before. I accept that there are some potential losers, but surely we can see that the best is being done in the circumstances that we have.

Good morning, minister. I do not know whom or what higher power I have upset, but my heating has been off for the past 24 hours, with no immediate sign of a thaw to the pipes. I appreciate that I—quite rightly—would not qualify for this benefit, but a number of my constituents will, I am sure, be going through the same experience right now. When I called my factor, they said that they had had hundreds of such calls over the past two days. First, when was the last time that my constituents, or people in Glasgow, received the cold weather payment? Secondly, would my constituents now benefit from the winter heating payment?

Just one second, Pam.

You cannot make guarantees about February if you are not getting the detail until 31 January. It is just not feasible to make such a promise.

Thanks for that answer. Is it possible that the reason that most respondents to the consultation—I think that it was 76 per cent—agreed with breaking the link to the cold weather payment is precisely because a large group of people who could have done with that support have previously missed out? Can the minister outline how the feedback from stakeholders influenced the development of the policy? For example, was the inherent unfairness in the CWP the primary reason that the Scottish Government decided to break the link with it?

Thanks for that.

Emma Roddick raised a few of the points that I was going to make. I have been an Opposition politician. I was a councillor for a number of years in Glasgow, and I understand why Jeremy Balfour and Pam Duncan-Glancy are looking for a reason to abstain on the motion. Jeremy Balfour’s reason seems to be that the minister never made a phone call. Pam Duncan-Glancy’s seems to be that her constituents will now get more money than they would have got before, so she is going to abstain. That does not make any sense whatsoever to me. It is not an ideal policy, but it is the best one that we are going to get, given our fixed budget. I would have liked to see the committee vote as one to support it.

I cannot say for sure that it is, because I have not been involved in the discussions, but I do know that it is better than what we had previously and that it does not deserve the criticism that it has been getting from some members of the committee. We could be saying that we think that it could be improved and that we will be keeping an eye on it next year and in future years. We are working to a very strict timetable, and the other thing is that—

That is an area on which we will question the minister when he is in front of us.

Is it not clear from your answers that a lot of the issues that we are facing are down to not just the payment but all the other factors that people who are living in these circumstances are facing?

I could debate with you about the level of housing in some areas in Glasgow, but I had better leave that for another day.

The minister will be in front of us next week and we will ask a lot of those questions then.

My next question is for Mark Simpson. How does breaking the link with the weather align with the statutory social security principles? Does it impact on them, or is it in line with them?