The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
There are two types of keyword search:
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 1141 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
On the bedroom tax mitigation versus free school meals, I do not look at it in that way. With the bedroom tax, we are carrying out a sense check on what difference the mitigation makes. One key reason why we continue to mitigate the bedroom tax—people just assume that it was abolished; it has not been, and we mitigate its cost—is that it is one of the ways in which we attempt to prevent homelessness and assist people. In essence, the mitigation of the bedroom tax is an important aspect of our housing policy that helps people to stay in housing. The benefit is not just about social security; in essence, it is part of housing policy that we deliver through social security.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Many of the aspects that you mentioned are equally available to people who are in and out of work. Eligibility is to do with whether they are deemed to be in poverty or in receipt of certain reserved benefits, so—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
No. We have covered quite a lot, and we will get back to you in writing with some of the details that the committee has asked for.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I say at the outset that our benefit expenditure is essential investment in the people of Scotland and directly results from conscious policy choices made by the Parliament in accordance with the unanimously passed Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018.
Investing in this way in Scotland’s social security safety net and targeting help to those who need it most is necessary to tackle more than a decade of Westminster austerity and continued cruel welfare reforms. The Scottish Government continues to deliver vital assistance for older people to heat their homes, to help disabled people live independent lives and to support low-income families.
Our social security system is proudly based on dignity, fairness and respect. It is fair, but it is robust, with applications assessed thoroughly so that those who are not eligible for support do not get it, but those who are eligible absolutely do. We are committed to ensuring that our finances remain on a sustainable trajectory.
This financial year, we are investing £1.2 billion more than the block grant adjustments that we are forecast to receive from the UK Government for social security, of which £649 million is to mitigate some of the worst impacts of Westminster policies—for example, the bedroom tax and the benefits cap—as well as the inadequate level of universal credit, which we established the Scottish child payment to combat. By 2029-30, our additional investment is projected to be just less than 3.5 per cent of the total Scottish Government resource budget, which is an increase of less than 1 per cent compared with the current financial year.
The importance of value for money for our benefits investment is set out in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, and is further underlined in our social security charter. It means, for example, that we have delivered £1.4 billion, paid to June 2025, to support children and families through the five family payments, including the Scottish child payment. That support is only available in Scotland. It also means more than £5.5 billion this financial year will go to support disabled people to meet the costs associated with everyday tasks such as washing, going to the toilet and getting dressed—tasks that people who are not disabled take for granted. That stands in direct contrast to proposed Westminster welfare reforms.
The UK Government’s chaotic approach to welfare continues to cause substantial and unnecessary difficulties, such as the intention to introduce a two-tier universal credit system, leaving people with disabilities or long-term health conditions with less money compared with existing recipients. I have been clear that the Scottish Government does not support and will not accept those changes, and we encourage and urge the UK Government to drop those remaining plans.
By contrast, it is estimated that our Scottish child payment, which has been described by Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Oxford as having an impact that is “stunning”, will keep 40,000 children out of relative poverty this year. It is no surprise that many leading charities have rightly called on the UK Government to follow our lead on the Scottish child payment, which could, according to the London School of Economics and Political Science, lift 700,000 children in the UK out of poverty overnight, and to follow our lead on abolishing the punitive two-child limit. Our modelling estimates that our action in that respect will result in 20,000 fewer children living in relative poverty in 2026-27.
On fraud and error, the Scottish public finance manual sets out clear expectations for managing fraud risk. It requires public bodies to promote an anti-fraud culture, maintain strong internal controls and actively minimise risk. Social Security Scotland has published a counter-fraud strategy that outlines its approach to preventing, detecting and responding to fraud. That is especially important given the nature of its work, which delivers public benefits with dignity, fairness and respect.
11:15Protecting the integrity of those benefits is essential not only for financial sustainability but to maintain public trust in the system. The organisation’s approach is grounded in zero tolerance to fraud but is also proportionate, ensuring robust controls without creating unnecessary barriers for clients. Balancing sustainability with our overarching ethos and principles is why I could not recommend legislative consent for some of the overpayment recovery measures in the UK Government’s current bill.
As delivery expands to 19 benefits by 2026-27, the risk of fraud naturally increases. Social Security Scotland has made strong progress in building the systems and capabilities to manage that effectively. Continued investment in technology, skilled people and robust systems will be essential and what has worked well to date must now be scaled and strengthened to meet future demands.
Our social security investment is making a real difference in people’s lives. The children I have mentioned are being kept out of relative poverty. The five family payments I have mentioned will be worth around £25,000 by the time a child turns 16. That is another example of why the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and other projects predict that Scotland will be the only part of the UK with falling child poverty levels next year.
With a backdrop of austerity and a continued cost of living crisis, we know how critical support is for households. That is why the Scottish Government is protecting the vital payments that are available today. Labour and the Conservatives, along with Reform, talk about cutting welfare spend with no regard to the financial struggles that many households face. The Scottish Government will continue to deliver our vital payments with our balanced budget each year, delivered by a system that is robust but fair, and administered to provide support to all our constituents.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Thank you, convener. I very much welcome what is my first time in front of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I will see whether I still hold that view at the end of the meeting, but it is a pleasure to be able to come and give evidence today.
I will bring in David Wallace to talk through the operational matters around the serious concerted effort within the agency in regard to the benefits that we are responsible for.
First, however, in relation to the item that was in the newspapers, it was particularly disappointing to see the way in which things were portrayed. There is no black hole in the Scottish Government budget and certainly the Scottish Government takes very seriously our responsibilities to ensure that we have firm policies for overpayments, of which fraud is one part.
As a Government, we looked very seriously at whether we should take part in some of the aspects of the UK Government fraud and error legislation because I was concerned about, for example, the ability to take money away from people’s bank accounts without due notice or consideration of their current circumstances. That is a concern for me, because that is not a person-centred approach; it does not take account of the impacts on that individual.
The other aspect is in relation to taking away driving licences. We all have areas in our constituencies—and, I am sure, constituents—where we can imagine that taking away a person’s driving licence would not help them to get a job or to be able to take their children to childcare, for example.
The impact of that on an individual is punitive in a way that does not help them to get into employment, education or training, or to be able to assist with wider family issues. I was greatly concerned about that type of measure. It is a tactic for dealing with overpayments that I did not agree with. What is important is our absolute determination to have strong and robust policies for overpayments, including those related to fraud, but we will not tackle that using the methods that the UK Government was suggesting.
We had a great deal of back and forth with the UK Government about whether we could continue working on historical debt, that is, debt that has been built up. We were unable to do so, which is why I declined further co-operation on that part of the bill. We will move forward to deal with that in a way that fits with the ethos of the social security system, but, as I said in my initial statement, is still very robust.
I am happy to bring in David Wallace if you would like further information about how we deal with issues relating to overpayments, fraud being one of those.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
There is an opportunity cost with all budget decisions right across Government. A current example is the mitigation of the two-child cap. The figures that I discussed in my opening statement relate to the current mitigation of the cap but we expect those costs to go up. The First Minister has made it very clear that if the UK Government’s child poverty strategy—which we now think will start at the end of the year after the budget, but that timing is of course up to the UK Government—were to include the scrapping of the two-child cap, we would no longer have to mitigate it and we would use that money on further anti-poverty measures for children. That is one example of the opportunity cost of what we are doing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I am talking about the additional investment that we are making, which is what we invest above the block grant adjustment.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Perhaps I can respond to the committee in writing with further detail on that, as childcare is not in my portfolio. Overall, however, as we look at childcare, we also need to consider the importance of having an offer that is available to everyone, whether they are in work or not, because it is not just about providing childcare to get people into employment; it is also about supporting young children. That important aspect should not be available only to the children of those who are in work, because it is about early learning as well as being somewhere for people to go.
There are issues with the expansion of childcare down south, which shows the importance of ensuring that staffing levels and supply are adequate. Again, you raise an important point in that, when we are looking at poverty, it is not just about social security. I recently undertook a visit to speak to young mums who are getting support not just on income maximisation but in relation to barriers to employability, such as whether they can access the types of childcare that they require and the fact that that has to work with the support that they get from the wider system.
A great number of people are in in-work poverty, so getting a job is not necessarily a route out of poverty for many—particularly for women, and not just for young women. It is important that we look at providing people with support even if they are in employment, if that work does not lift them out of poverty.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes. There will be an increase, and I absolutely recognise that. That is the crux of the matter, convener. There is a projected increase in our additional investment above BGA and a projected rise in overall social security expenditure for reasons that will have an impact not just in Scotland but in the rest of the UK and will therefore be covered by BGA.
We then get down to why those numbers are going up. If there is a demand call for those numbers to go down, people are, in essence, asking for changes to eligibility for benefits. What changes will people wish to make to benefits for carers, those on low incomes and so on? That is the only way that that trajectory will change.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Shirley-Anne Somerville
That is why I was very pleased either last week or the week before to attend the opening of the employability hub in Beith—