Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, Mr Walker and Mr Cameron. Thank you for joining us. How do you monitor social landlords on progress against the Scottish social housing charter, and how is that information used within your regulatory framework? We can start with that, then move on to a few other points.

Before I ask David Phillips to respond, I will expand the question a little bit. From your experience, which budget lines are likely to be targeted? The budget has cut £120 million from local government. Is the national health service budget, which has increased above inflation every year since the Parliament was established, one that we might look to? Where do you think ministers will look to find the money?

Good morning, panel. Thank you for joining us. I want to ask you to develop some of the points that my colleague Natalie Don was pursuing.

When Dame Susan Rice from the Scottish Fiscal Commission came to the committee, she outlined in quite stark terms the fact that the funding gap is set to reach

“three quarters of a billion pounds by 2024-25”.

That is very much on the horizon now, in relation to budgeting. Where is the financial management within the Scottish Government around that? Where is that future projection being costed into proposals? Each budget year, we are voting on that and seeing increasing levels going towards social security. However, that is a huge amount of money and, as Dame Susan Rice says, that

“money must be found from elsewhere in the Scottish budget.”—[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 23 December 2021; c 3.]

Are you aware of any work that is being done on how that will be financially managed in the future?

Thank you.

I appreciate that. I do not know whether you can commit to this, but it would be useful to the committee’s financial scrutiny to be able to see some of the potential flexibility within budgets. I do not know whether you had the chance to see the evidence session that we just had, but there is a lot of work to be done on a projected future spend that approaches £750 million. If we could have sight of more information on that, it would be helpful for the work that we are trying to do.

I have one quick question, because colleagues’ questions have covered a lot. It is about the work that we have to do with the minister in relation to the uprating of benefits, which we will come to under the next agenda item.

The Scottish Government has announced that six social security benefits will be uprated by 6 per cent from 1 April. Given the cost of living pressures, if that is the direction of travel in relation to uprating, what sort of cost does that present for the basket of Scottish social security benefits and what additional pressures will there be in the coming years?

That is interesting. Thank you.

We had a good run in this committee with regard to gremlins in the system.

Good morning, minister and officials. The £2.7 million for the uprating was found from flexibility in the budget, but as the cost of living crisis moves forward, have you identified any other money from flexibilities that you might come back to the committee on?

The key point that I am trying to get at is whether the uprating addresses potential unrealised additional take-up or unmet need. What are your projections for that? Most people would expect more people to seek some of those social security benefits. Where is that spend being targeted? If additional people come forward, has flexibility been lost?

Thank you for that. It sounds as though your postman has arrived.

What monitoring has taken place since handing local authorities the power to distribute that money? For example, in Edinburgh, there are a high number of hotel and bed and breakfast businesses. How did you monitor that support to see that it got into the hands of the different types of business that needed it most?