Thank you very much, convener, and thank you, committee members. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here this morning. I place on record my sincere thanks to everyone who has given evidence to the committee so far either in person or in writing.
Our whole approach to building a new social security system for Scotland has been to make use of the knowledge and expertise of those with lived experience of the existing system under the Department for Work and Pensions. That includes, of course, the bill that we are discussing today, whose genesis lies in the consultation that took place over the summer of 2016. We received 521 detailed responses to the consultation, and we published all of them in February along with our findings and independent analysis. Since the consultation, I have attended more than 70 individual meetings with more than 50 separate individuals, groups and organisations ranging from Age Scotland to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and from the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland to Shelter. Alongside that, key stakeholders have kindly made many other contributions to our thinking.
The bill is the way it is because of our wide-ranging, detailed and on-going engagement work, the scope of which now goes well beyond our consultation to encompass our expert advisory group, the experience panels and the stakeholder groups covering both policy and delivery. Because of that engagement work, we saw before we introduced the bill the need to ensure an appropriate balance between primary and secondary legislation, and we built into the bill a mechanism to address that. Members will have read paragraph 12 of the delegated powers memorandum, which we published alongside the bill back in June. It says that
“the Scottish Government is live to concerns about the effect of this approach on the opportunity for the Parliament to control the detail around the different types of assistance during the Bill’s passage. The schedules attached to ... sections 11 to 17 are a way of ensuring that ... members will be able to control what may ... be done using the power to make provision about a particular type of assistance. In this way, members will be able to exert just as much control ... as they would if ... the ... rules were set directly on the face of the Bill.”
We have therefore addressed by design the need to strike the right balance between primary and secondary legislation.
We have also taken steps to address another key concern: the need to ensure that our secondary legislation receives the input and scrutiny that it requires. We are committed to producing illustrative versions of some of the regulations that we will make under the bill, and I was pleased that, last month, we were able to share with the committee the first illustrative drafts of our planned best start grant regulations. Those have also been shared with stakeholders, and, last Thursday, I took part in a discussion with our best start grant reference group. We have sought feedback on our illustrative regulations to ensure that we get things right.
I feel the same about the bill. For example, sections 11 to 17, in which the bill specifies that assistance may or may not be given in the form of money, do not say that the individual should always have a choice of whether or not to receive their assistance in any form other than cash. I believe that our policy memorandum makes it clear that we would wish the individual to have that choice. Indeed, our intention is that individuals should always have that choice, and I will make changes at stage 2 to make that clear.
Similarly, we heard a great deal during stage 1 evidence about independent advocacy. As Inclusion Scotland has put it, advocacy
“is vital to ensure that the rights of those who cannot properly communicate their needs are upheld”
and
“helps people to access advice and services that they would otherwise be unable to engage with due to communication needs”.
I am grateful to Inclusion Scotland and others for their evidence on the matter—in particular, the clarification that advocacy does not mean
“mediation, giving advice ... or speaking up for someone when they are able to express themselves”.
I am happy to say that we will take steps to address that issue at stage 2.
We have also responded to concerns about independent expert scrutiny, which we all accept is about more than just the scrutiny of legislation, important though that is.
Members are aware that the short-life working group that was made up from members of our disability and carers benefits expert advisory group has begun the work that I tasked it to do. I am grateful for the time that its members took on Tuesday of this week to update me on their thinking so far and for the discussion that we had then. They are working at pace. I know that they have had a discussion with the committee, and they will hold a workshop with a wider group of stakeholders later this month.
I hope that the committee found the session with the working group useful. You will appreciate that a number of interested parties—myself included—are keen to hear more about the committee’s views on the issue, and I hope that we will be able to discuss it further this morning. It is an issue on which the Government, the Parliament and stakeholders need to work together to get it right. As I have said, stakeholder evidence and our continued engagement with the wide community of stakeholders who have an interest in the legislation is the foundation of the bill. That principle has guided us in the bill’s development and drafting, leading us to make the legislation clear, accessible and flexible by putting the cardinal points into primary legislation and the detailed rules for the operation of our Scottish benefits into subordinate legislation.
We have continued that direct involvement since the bill was introduced, through the 2,400 volunteers on our experience panels, and we will go on doing so into the future. The experience panels have been established to run for at least four years, by which time the new Scottish social security system will be in place, our new agency will be up and running and we will be delivering benefits to the people of Scotland.
I am happy to take any questions that the committee may have.