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I welcome the opportunity to assist the committee with its consideration of the draft regulations, which will provide a long-term solution to ensure that individuals who are fleeing crises overseas can access Scottish social security benefits quickly when they arrive.

Until now, we have had to introduce emergency regulations each time a crisis has occurred. In recent years, we have brought forward emergency changes following the evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021; the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022; the escalation of violence in Sudan in 2023; the escalation of violence in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, the Golan Heights and Lebanon in 2023; and, most recently—in September last year—the escalation of violence between Israel and Iran.

The Scottish Commission on Social Security has welcomed our intention to introduce general crises regulations to reduce reliance on emergency legislation. We have aligned our approach with similar changes that the UK Government has introduced for benefits that it administers. That will ensure that there is parity across the UK for people who arrive here after a crisis abroad.

The regulations will remove the habitual residence and past presence requirements for benefits to which those tests apply. That will apply to British nationals and third-country nationals who already hold leave to remain in the UK, do not require such leave or have been granted humanitarian leave. As immigration law remains reserved to the UK Government, the Scottish Government cannot create new immigration routes or protection schemes.

The regulations will apply where the UK Government has provided public information to advise British nationals to leave a country or territory or has arranged the evacuation of British nationals from that country or territory, or where a person has been granted leave for humanitarian reasons. They will provide a clear exemption for people who arrive via schemes such as the Ukraine scheme or the scheme for the recent medical evacuation of children from Gaza.

The regulations will also extend the temporary absence provisions for people who are stranded abroad due to a crisis, which will enable payments to continue for up to 26 weeks.

In addition, amendments to the best start grant will allow families who are escaping crises to receive the higher-rate pregnancy and baby payment for second or subsequent children, even if their first child was born before they arrived in the UK. That reflects the reality that many families may have been forced to leave belongings and essential items behind.

The past presence and habitual residence tests appear across both UK-wide and Scottish social security legislation. Applying them would mean that people who arrived unexpectedly as a result of a crisis would be unable to receive support until they had spent sufficient time in the UK or the common travel area, which they could not reasonably prepare for in advance. The regulations will therefore disapply those tests for individuals in the specified groups and will ensure that, where they meet all other eligibility criteria, they can access the support that they need from day 1.

Overall, the changes will strengthen our ability to respond swiftly and compassionately to international crises, to protect vulnerable people and to avoid the need for repeated emergency legislation. I am grateful to the Scottish Commission on Social Security for its scrutiny and recommendations, which were accepted. Subject to parliamentary approval, the changes will commence on 18 March 2026.

On the first point, we are in the foothills of how we can and should use data sharing in the future. A lot of work is going on in that area, not just in relation to child poverty. I have been doing important work with my officials and the agency to see how we can make the lives of disabled people and carers easier. We can work with clients in the social security system to take away barriers. Many of those barriers do not relate only to Social Security Scotland; we require local authorities to work with us. In the main, they are eager to do so, because they see the real benefits for them.

I am sorry if what I said sounded like a cynical politician’s answer—I usually try not to give them, particularly to you, Mr Balfour—so let me try again. It is important that we consider the impact on people. We should look at whether we have made things easier by taking away a barrier. Does someone need to apply for another benefit, or have we taken away that barrier?

That ties into how we evaluate the system. For example, how can we build in our evaluation on tackling child poverty? Perhaps Julie Humphreys can assist me in that regard.

Social security works closely with relevant stakeholder organisations to ensure that we provide information in a way and in places that will help individuals. It is important that we provide information in different languages and a wide range of formats. It is a key measurement of the social security charter that interpreter and translation services are available in person, in writing and over the phone to ensure that language is not a barrier.

That is why it is deeply disappointing that the Scottish Conservatives chose to say that they would make a saving by taking away translation and interpretation services from people who are at a crisis point in their lives and are seeking help at the most difficult and tragic of times. The fact that the Scottish Conservatives would pick that as a way of making savings points to the barbarity of the proposals that they made last week.

There is no denying that the Scottish Government’s budget choices are impacted by our exposure to UK Government decisions. In my area, that is particularly relevant to benefit expenditure. There is continued uncertainty in many areas of UK benefit expenditure. There is the on-going Timms review of universal credit, which, although fully reserved, has an impact on people in Scotland.

There is a real challenge in terms of the impact on both the budget and our people. In the Scottish Government, we need to deal with that by attempting to work with the UK Government and by asking it to give us as much notice as possible of changes, to allow us to make planning assumptions as best we can. That is challenging, and we have seen examples—I am sure that I do not need to rehearse them to the committee—of where that has not happened.

We must also look at aspects that are within our gift, including the fiscal sustainability delivery plan and the medium-term financial strategy, to ensure that we are challenging ourselves on the funding. We must look at the Scottish Government budget in the round to ensure that we are always content that we have a balanced budget. That is exactly what we are providing to the committee today.

We have robust in-year financial mechanisms and management practices. It is a challenge, though, when we have a system in which the vast majority of benefits are still reserved to Westminster. It would be fair to say that the Scottish Government’s view of social security being a human right does not appear to be shared by the previous or current UK Governments.

I welcome my on-going discussions with Stephen Timms; indeed, I spoke to him just yesterday about the work that the review is undertaking. It would be fair to say that he, as a minister, has endeavoured to keep this Parliament as up to date as possible. However, the challenge, when the review is reaching its completion and decisions are starting to be made, is how much prioritisation and importance will be given to the impact on Scotland.

I welcome the fact that Stephen Timms is accessible to me for discussions. However, if I put his personal work to one side, I am concerned overall that we have not had good working relationships with the UK Government on other benefits and other changes that have had a significant impact on Scottish Government budgets.

I will bring in Stephen Kerr in a minute, because that issue has a direct impact on what has been happening in his directorate, with staff moving to the agency.

This is a process that the committee would expect to happen. The evolution of social security will continue, but the devolution of it under the programme is coming to an end. We would expect the ways of working in the Government to change; some work that was previously in the Government now needs to move to the agency. Stephen Kerr can give examples of that.

I appreciate that people want reassurance that our system can deal with fluctuating conditions. We made alterations to our system to make it more person centred in order to allow fluctuating conditions to be better served through the application process and the work that is undertaken in Social Security Scotland when decisions are made. However, I appreciate that there is concern about that area. We are right to continually challenge ourselves about whether the social security system is delivering for everyone as we intended it to do.

I know that there is concern, particularly around rare conditions or disabilities that a case worker might not come across very often. That is why it is important to continually look at the training and knowledge of case workers and to have the support of others in the agency who can be brought in to assist with decisions in difficult cases.

I will bring in Stephen Kerr on that.

Forgive me, Mr Balfour, but that fund does not sit within my portfolio—it sits within the Deputy First Minister’s portfolio—so I do not have the details to hand, but I know that Richard Lochhead recently answered a question about it in Parliament.

For me, whether it is a four-nation or bilateral approach, it is about how we get past me saying what I would like, the UK Government giving its position and there being no genuine discussion. We need to find a way through that.

I am conscious of the fact that, on the day that the strategy was launched, Scotland Office ministers suggested that they were disappointed that the Scottish Government was obsessed with process issues, saying that we should get down to the details. However, it is exactly because we wanted to get down to the details that we needed a process—to allow us to do that.

The type of thing that I would like to see next year is a genuine discussion, whether it is about difference in policies, lessons learned, monitoring and evaluation, or whether it is about looking in more detail at the strategy that the UK Government has developed and how it impacts on Scotland. For that to be meaningful, we need to get past the transactional nature of the discussions that we were in at the start of last year and get down to a genuine discussion.

I would very much welcome that, and we are in the middle of drafting our child poverty delivery plan, so there is absolutely the space to do it. I hope that the UK Government can find a way to think that that might also be useful as it looks to implement its policy.

We are still assessing that at the moment. It is clear that some aspects of the UK strategy will have an impact across the UK and other aspects are England only, for example.

For example, some aspects concern parents on low incomes who are accessing childcare and need to return to work after parental leave to increase their earned income—and that is welcome. We know that the uptake of the universal credit childcare element remains low, and it appears that much of that is to do with a lack of awareness of support and of the availability of eligible services, as well as the genuine complexity of the system.

There is a lack of clarity as to how support with up-front childcare costs for those returning from parental leave will be delivered in practice, with stakeholders advising that awareness of the Jobcentre Plus-led flexible support fund is very poor. There is therefore work to be done on the implementation of the policy to ensure that the UK Government is working to develop the take-up of some of the schemes that it is providing.

Although any proposed increases in the statutory minimum wage rates are of course welcome, the UK national living wage is still not the real living wage, and that difference needs to be recognised. As I think I said earlier to Claire Baker, we are still modelling the impact that those changes will have on Scotland through the work that is being done in drafting the child poverty delivery plan.