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Unless James Wallace can help me with that directly, we might need to get back to you in writing.

The UK Government has in place its task force, which is due to respond reasonably soon. I still hope that the UK Government will do the right thing. As I laid out earlier, it has been clear from all the evidence over many years that that is the single biggest intervention that the UK Government could make to lift children out of poverty. If it does so, I would, of course, welcome that.

The UK Government has already made exceptionally minor changes to universal credit. Mr O’Kane referenced one of those changes in his speech during the Tuesday debate. That points to the fact that changes could have been made earlier, but the UK Government has chosen not to make them. In that space, we will continue to work as quickly as possible to mitigate the two-child cap. However, I still call on the UK Government to abolish it, because continuing to mitigate the bedroom tax, benefit cap and two-child cap are key challenges for the Scottish Government.

Separate to the task force—I know that it is looking at social security—there is an on-going review of universal credit. Unfortunately, the devolved Administrations do not have a seat at the table of the overall task force, which is for UK Government ministers. There is a four-nations sub-committee, which precludes Scottish Government ministers or officials from being aware of what is being discussed at UK Government level.

In some ways, that is fair enough—it is the UK Government’s task force—but the challenge for all the devolved Administrations is that changes that could be made in the task force because of the reserved and devolved complications that we have mean that what is decided by the UK task force could have significant implications for what happens up here. There is a real need for that task force to take account of what is happening in Scotland, and I hope that that is happening. Those are the points that I and other devolved Administrations make in the four-nations sub-committee.

In essence, the resource for that is already planned within the budget. I can give some examples to try to bring this to life a bit. For example, a specialist resource is being secured through the head of organisational capability and transition that will support a newly established project team that reports to the social security and programme leadership teams. The programme and the agency leadership teams are working jointly on that. I also mentioned the establishment of the delivery and change function, which is led by the director for delivery and change and social security, and that will drive the transition.

The committee can see that there are lines within the budget as it has been outlined, and expenditure within those lines, to ensure that the change programme is happening and that there is a smooth transition.

Mr Balfour will be well aware that we have been blessed by the fact that we have had quite a stable group of leaders in the programme and the agency throughout the devolution of social security. That is exceptionally helpful, because we have the key skills and we have people who have known one another and worked together for many years. We are determined not to lose that skill set as we transition from programme to agency.

There has been a great deal of discussion with the third sector since the UK Government’s announcement on ENICs. Very soon after the announcement, I had a meeting with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to discuss its views on the implications for the third sector, and its public pronouncements speak for themselves. Unless I am mistaken, SCVO, along with a number of other third sector organisations, was named as supporting the letter from the First Minister and the president of COSLA to the UK Government. We are keeping very close to SCVO and other third sector bodies to talk about the impact of the increased contributions, and we will continue those discussions with them. We will continue to do our best to represent their concerns directly to the UK Government, as they are also doing directly.

As I said, we tried to get out as many early notifications as possible before Christmas. This is the first week back after Christmas, and we did not have capacity to gather all the information before I came to the committee today, but we will provide it in writing. I appreciate that we are on a journey with regard to the length of grants, but the pilot has been welcomed by the third sector as a definitive move that we have made. We have moved from something that we were trying to do to something that we are delivering with the pilot. I will provide the details of that across portfolios to the committee.

Thank you, and good morning. I am pleased to be here to give evidence as part of the committee’s post-legislative scrutiny of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. This is a very important part of the committee’s and the Parliament’s work, and I look forward to reading the committee’s recommendations in due course. Ending child poverty is the foremost priority of the Scottish Government, and of the First Minister, and I look forward to setting out some of the impacts that the act has had in driving that mission forward.

I am heartened that, in the evidence that the committee has seen and heard so far, there is wide agreement that the act has had a positive impact. It has had a positive impact on focusing efforts and investment on tackling child poverty; on ensuring that child poverty reduction remains a high priority in all sectors; on fostering collaboration between organisations at local level; and on driving the delivery of policies that serve to support people in poverty across Scotland.

The act has led to a sharpened and intense focus on child poverty in the Scottish Government, and it has helped to shape policy with regard to how we deliver employability support, childcare, transport and a host of other policies that span all ministers and portfolios. Ministers have collaborated increasingly closely over this time, and that has culminated in the recent formation of a Cabinet sub-committee on child poverty, which has elevated our oversight arrangements and further strengthened our approach. The sub-committee builds on the learning from the actions that we have taken, and it will create more opportunities to co-ordinate policies and maximise our collective impact on child poverty. That is essential, because the scale and nature of the challenges that we face have changed dramatically since 2017 as the result of Covid, the cost of living crisis and other global events.

I have spoken to the committee many times about our transformation of social security provision in Scotland, which is establishing a radically different system that is built on dignity, fairness and respect. The act has been an important impetus for some of that work, and the Scottish child payment is an example of a policy that was designed and delivered with the clear ambition of reducing child poverty and which is now delivering crucial support to families.

Scottish Government modelling from February this year suggests that the Scottish child payment will keep 60,000 children out of relative poverty in 2024-25. In total, it is estimated that Scottish Government policies will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty in that time, with relative poverty levels 10 percentage points lower than they would otherwise have been.

I was glad to hear in the evidence to the committee how policies that are implemented at local level are bringing critical support to families and how the act has transformed the way that national and local government, third sector organisations and all our partners in this national mission engage with one another to drive forward progress and create a fairer, more equal Scotland. That is the collective approach that was envisioned for the act from the beginning, and I hope that, through the inquiry, the impact of the act has been clear for members to see.

Much has been achieved since the act was introduced, but, collectively, there is still so much more to do to improve the lives of those families who experience poverty, and I am grateful for the time with the committee to discuss that further.

Some of the challenges around data gaps are around the six priority groups, because some of the numbers involved are so low. When looking at a particular policy area, it is sometimes difficult to trace the numbers through in order to measure the impact on, for example, poverty levels when ethnic minority families use employability services and then go into employment. There are many steps to take to measure what is quite a small subset of the population. That is among the challenges that we have.

The other aspect is intersectionality. The National Advisory Council on Women and Girls is very keen that the Government continues to do more on that and it is right to challenge us on that. Again, that comes down to the challenges. People do not live in the simple silos into which the Government might wish to put them so that we could have clear data sets. Life is not like that. We all know that and it is an additional layer of challenge that we need to put on ourselves. That work is in progress. The national advisory council is right that we still need to do more on intersectionality.

The estimate for take-up of the Scottish child payment in Glasgow that the Scottish Government works on is 89 per cent for 2023-24. That is produced through rigorous analytical processes within the Government. However, clearly, I have noted what Glasgow City Council has said. Officials will reach out and work with the council to see why we have that discrepancy, because it is important that we get to the bottom of that.

Even if it is the higher 89 per cent Scottish Government figure, that still leaves too many families who do not have access to a payment that they are entitled to. In relation to Scottish child payment take-up, it is important that we think about whether there may be particular families who are not accessing the support that they are entitled to.

Last week, I think, Paul O’Kane asked me a question about ethnic minority families. That is an important example of the fact that, even with high take-up rates, we need to work on particular priority family groups, whether that is in relation to the Scottish child payment or other things. I hope that that reassures Mr Doris that we believe that the take-up is higher but that, regardless of that, we are keen to work with the council to understand where the figure came from and how we can improve it.

The timing in relation to the Scottish Fiscal Commission has been laid out by the Fiscal Commission itself, and I note its remarks on the matter.

Clearly, the two-child benefit cap has been on the Government’s mind for some time, and our policy position has been exceptionally clear for many years that we believe that it should be taken away at source. We had hoped that that would happen with the change in Government, but it did not. Therefore, in the run-up to the budget this year, the Government had discussions about how that could be done. Mr O’Kane will be aware of when we told the Scottish Fiscal Commission about that.