I will say a few words—thank you, convener.
I welcome the opportunity to address the committee on the draft budget for 2015-16, which sets out how we will focus our tax, spending and borrowing plans to achieve three primary objectives: to make Scotland a more prosperous country; to tackle inequality; and to protect and reform public services. It also sets out the commitments that are designed to tackle the poverty that continues to blight society.
The committee is well aware that the UK Government’s welfare reforms continue to cause concern to a great many people and organisations across Scotland, and the Scottish Government’s priority is to mitigate the most harmful effects of those reforms as part of our wider efforts to tackle inequality. In 2014-15, we allocated £81 million to that, and we have maintained that level of funding in the 2015-16 draft budget. That funding will maintain investment in the Scottish welfare fund and will assist councils in supporting everyone who is affected by the bedroom tax. It will also enable us to invest in a range of third sector initiatives for income maximisation and to tackle poverty, particularly in support of our new child poverty strategy, which was published earlier this year.
The 2015-16 draft budget includes a range of other measures that will support our welfare reform mitigation activity. We will provide additional investment of more than £200 million in housing, we will roll forward our contribution of £23 million to fill the cut in funding from the UK Government for council tax benefit successor arrangements and we will deliver the £9.4 million people and communities fund for 2015-16, which has a refreshed focus on the promotion of social inclusion and tackling poverty, including the mitigation of the impact of welfare reform.
To deliver those measures, we are working in partnership with a range of organisations, including the third sector and local authorities. That collaborative approach will go some way to meeting the challenges that have been imposed on us by the UK Government, but the continued investment that we are making—which, when the council tax reduction scheme is included, comes to more than £100 million—can go only so far in mitigating the worst impacts of the reforms. The scale of the cuts is immense, and we are constrained by the powers and resources that we have. If we had full powers over welfare, we could do much more to fully protect our people and tackle the inequalities that persist in Scotland. With full powers over welfare, we could bring greater coherence to our tackling poverty agenda through better alignment across childcare, child benefit and other measures to tackle child poverty.
I will be happy to take any questions that the committee has.