Chamber and committees

So, you are not able to say when you took the decision?

I think that has been the story all week—I have been jinxing the cabinet secretary, every time that we have debated.

That is not something that I have trouble with, cabinet secretary. [Laughter.]

I am sure that the committee will look forward to having further discussion about that.

I will move on to my substantive questions, which are about statistics and data in relation to the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, which colleagues will also want to cover. In the cabinet secretary’s opening statement and her responses to other questions, she referred to the Scottish child payment. She will know that I have been talking for some time about the need for data on the impact and effect of it, and I think that everyone shares that view. She spoke about the Government’s modelling. Is she content that the modelling will help us to understand the impact of the benefit?

We know that various models have been used that have suggested that 100,000 children have been lifted out of poverty, but I think that that is more about the number of children who have been kept out of poverty. Modelling is based on a projection of a number of different issues and different things that are done by the Scottish Government or other Governments, such as the uprating of benefits at a UK level. Does the cabinet secretary believe that we need to do more work to fully understand the impact that the Scottish child payment is having? Obviously, the child payment is supported across the Parliament.

For clarity, was the Government’s decision taken one week and one day ago?

The committee has also spoken about how we estimate poverty levels and how we consider a range of actions, as you have touched on.

We know that there are some challenges in relation to the family resources survey, and I think that that is true in several nations in the UK. We have seen interactions with the DWP in other parts of the UK to try to get more detailed data, and we have seen that at the local level—that happened in Glasgow, so that people could look at ward-level data.

It would be good to understand your engagement with the DWP to drill down into some of the data on a more local level.

That is helpful, and it is something that the committee will be keen to follow up on.

Finally, I want to ask about local data. Mr Doris touched on this point, in relation to the work in Glasgow that has been effective in identifying gaps in data, particularly on uptake of different social security payments. What more support can be given to local areas to improve their data sets, and what work might be done, potentially through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, to support local authorities in that?

That is another thing that the committee may be keen to return to.

Thank you. With your indulgence, convener, I will start with a brief supplementary question to Marie McNair’s last line of questioning. The cabinet secretary touched on her policy announcement on the two-child limit. I am sure that the committee will have a chance to discuss the matter at greater length, particularly when we scrutinise the budget. However, the cabinet secretary mentioned the speed with which she wants to act, the interaction with DWP, the need for data, and the child poverty task force, which is working at a UK level. She and I have discussed the two-child limit in the context of that work, so it would be helpful for me to understand when the decision was taken to make that announcement. I understand that it was put into the budget document a week and a day ago and that the Scottish Fiscal Commission did not have time to cost or analyse the decision. Given the speed with which the cabinet secretary appears to want to act, it would be helpful to understand when the decision was taken.

It is fair to say that there is cross-party consensus, and some of the frustration is that there was cross-party consensus across the manifestos for the 2021 election, which has been followed by a five-year parliamentary session. I do not deny that lots of things have happened in the course of both that election and the parliamentary session so far, but, as we heard at last week’s evidence session, there is a frustration that we will not have got to the stage of legislation in that five years.

I will move on slightly to other areas where people feel that there has not been progress. There is an opportunity for the Government to consider how it will use its remaining time in office to advance many of the issues that the minister hears when, for example, she comes to the cross-party group on learning disability or engages with people who have a learning disability.

At the moment, there is a significant issue with learning disability health checks, which I have been raising, particularly around the pledge that was made that everyone would be offered a health check in 2023. That has not happened. We know that funding of £4 million to health boards was attached to that pledge, but some health boards, including NHS Lanarkshire, have offered no checks at all. That is really concerning. I raised that with the First Minister on Thursday, but I am not sure that he fully grasped what I was asking about or had knowledge of it.

That is another totemic issue that speaks to the frustration of people who have learning disabilities, so this is a good opportunity to ask the minister to respond on that point, and to say what work she is undertaking to understand that picture and deal with the situation.