Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

You have touched on the difficulties with social care provision and integration joint boards. Of late, we have seen a large number of agency staff being brought in. Last week, a report came out showing that, over the past five years, about £300 million has been spent on that. In my area of Clackmannanshire, a huge sum of money has been required for agency staff. We are not able to provide the staff from our area and agency staff have to be brought in at an extra cost, which erodes things further. The financial pressures then become even more intense for your members and for the day-to-day workforce. They are pushed into that situation because there is not the staff, but demand still needs to be met, which means spending on substitute staff. That must have a knock-on effect; that impacts the process and your members.

We all understand that there is a need for workforce reduction and workforce planning to ensure that local government is effective and efficient. When it comes to the management of the council, elected representatives face budget pressures when the officials within the organisation say that, for example, there needs to be a 3 per cent, 4 per cent or 8 per cent reduction across the board. No department—leisure and culture, housing, health and so on—has had a budget increase in recent years, which makes it harder for the management of the organisation to manage what needs to be done, and elected representatives then have to deal with the processes.

I spent nearly two decades in a local council before I entered Parliament, and I have been here for a decade. In that time, I have seen even more erosion of individuals and processes, and you are confirming that today. When it comes to workforce reduction and workforce planning, what do you see as required in order to ensure that you are able to maintain and sustain service provision? You have already told me that departments, functions and roles have vanished because you do not have that workforce capacity or that planning.

Good morning. You have already highlighted some of the areas that I will touch on but there is no doubt that you have an ageing workforce and that you have to manage retention and recruitment issues. That has a knock-on effect on the ability of departments such as social care or social work, as well as those involved in community work, which are important within the context of local government and your own local area, to deliver services.

You have already touched on the problems with an increase in sickness absence because people are being asked to do more in a shorter timescale, and the fact that the effort that is involved in managing that workload has had a detrimental effect on many of your members. We are aware of that. It would be good to get a flavour of whether you think that the sickness absence and retention issues are growing. If they are—you will probably say that they are—could you tell us how you are going to tackle that? If you cannot provide the services because you do not have the front-line service personnel, there will be problems further down the road.

Can I ask a supplementary question, convener?

Good morning, cabinet secretary. In your opening statement, you talked about the negotiations that are taking place between you and the UK Government. Will you update the committee on the progress of the negotiations with the UK Government to recoup funds through the tax system? How will that work in practice for Social Security Scotland, and how will it be accounted for in the Scottish budget?

We have heard from you in your submissions, and from previous witnesses, that organisations would like to see eligibility criteria extended to cover more people, and potentially an increase in some benefits, which would help individuals in your sectors or the areas that you deal with.

Those matters are relevant, and there is no question but that they need to be looked at. However, if you think that the eligibility criteria should be broadened and there should be further spend across the sector, how would you suggest that we could afford that additional spending on Scottish social security payments beyond what we already have in place?

This week, we have seen documentation on how the whole thing is blossoming and we are continuing to potentially move into overspend, if we have not already. If much more is required in the specific areas that your organisations are considering, how would it be possible to afford additional spend on current policies?

I am content with that.

Following on from that, which areas of policy would the witnesses like to be prioritised for additional spending? Should those areas be higher priorities for public spending than areas such as health and social care, which Adam Stachura mentioned?

Do the witnesses have any low-cost, high-impact suggestions for how we can improve Scottish social security?