Committee
Social Justice and Social Security Committee 21 March 2024
21 Mar 2024 · S6 · Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Item of business
Extra Costs of Disability
Chirsty McFadyen
Watch on SPTV
I will talk a bit more about how we have broken down the data. First, on additional spending for those with more severe disabilities, we see similar results in the living costs and food survey data when we compare people with a severe disability to all other households, including people with less severe disabilities. The only obvious difference in the data for people with more severe disabilities is that they have less additional health spending. We think that that could be due to people with more severe disabilities being more likely to draw on national health service care for their condition instead of relying on over-the-counter options, but we cannot state the exact reason from the data alone. We had to omit income group 5 from table 2 and figure 2, because that high-income group had a sample size of less than 10 observations for severely disabled people—highlighting, I would suggest, the limitations of the data. When we survey around 5,000 households across the UK, around 20 per cent of them are Scottish. We then cut the data by disability and severity, which gets us down to really low numbers of households. Again, it shows the limitations of the current data: it is harder to collect evidence when we want to do so, and it is harder for the data to be reliable when we have smaller sample sizes. We also looked at differences between urban and rural areas. Figure 3 shows that urban households seem to be spending more than rural households on food, energy and transport. That might seem surprising at first glance, as we know that people living in rural areas often face additional costs compared with those living in urban areas. As I have said, sample sizes become even smaller when we split disabled households into urban and rural areas, which means that we are even less sure that we can trust those figures in comparison with the already volatile Scottish averages. It is possible that what we are seeing are the extra costs of living in a rural area overshadowing the additional costs related to having a disability. That is similar to what I said before: it might just be that, if people have a limit on the amount that they can spend on essential categories, disabled households are hitting that limit faster and are simply not able to spend more than that amount, so we are not seeing that evidence in the spending data. However, we see evidence in figure 3 that disabled households in rural areas are spending more on the health category. We are not sure why that would be or why that is different from the food, energy and transport results. A further interesting difference is the large difference in spending on transport between urban and rural areas for disabled households in comparison with non-disabled households. We are not sure whether that is a true effect or a result of poor data, as I have mentioned previously. If it is a true effect, one factor that could contribute to that is the existence of relatively fewer public transport options in rural areas, which could act as a barrier if private transport is not an option for households. We have gone over what the survey data can tell us. As I have said, the findings from the LCFS are variable, and small sample sizes become an issue when we analyse urban and rural areas and those with more severe disabilities. There are not extra costs in every disabled household in Scotland; that creates overlap, which means that we cannot say whether these results are statistically significant. However, they are, as I have said, persistent over time, which makes us more confident in that regard. I have also included UK-wide results for comparison in the appendices, if the committee is interested in looking at them. They show similar trends. It is important to point out that we have included the diaries in our research partly because data on spending cannot quantify financial difficulty. Laura Robertson will talk a bit more about the findings from them.
In the same item of business
The Convener
SNP
Our next agenda item is a presentation on the additional costs of disability in Scotland. The committee commissioned a piece of research on the topic in Marc...
Chirsty McFadyen (University of Strathclyde)
Thank you very much for having us. I will start and then pass over to Laura Robertson to talk about some of our work. For context, I should say that I have ...
Dr Laura Robertson (The Poverty Alliance)
I will give the committee a bit of context about the diaries. As Chirsty McFadyen mentioned, the diaries looked specifically at needs that were not being met...
Chirsty McFadyen
I will talk a bit more about how we have broken down the data. First, on additional spending for those with more severe disabilities, we see similar results ...
Dr Robertson
I will talk the committee through two of the case studies from participants. I will touch on some of the consequences for their day-to-day lives while they s...
Chirsty McFadyen
I will conclude by saying that data on spending from the living costs and food survey shows that disabled households in Scotland spend slightly more in essen...
The Convener
SNP
I apologise, because I introduced you as Christy when your name is actually Chirsty. My humble apologies to you, Chirsty. The research that you have given ...
Chirsty McFadyen
One of the main things that I spoke about is the point that, if we want an evidence-driven policy approach, we need more evidence. Some surveys in Scotland, ...
The Convener
SNP
Dr Robertson, would you like to comment on that?
Dr Robertson
We already referenced other qualitative research from the Glasgow Disability Alliance. Inclusion Scotland also published research last year on the impacts of...
The Convener
SNP
That is helpful. I will open questions up to committee members.
Marie McNair
SNP
Thanks for your time this morning. In your conclusion, you have recommended that careful consideration be given to “how to measure additional costs of disab...
Chirsty McFadyen
Yes, definitely. We have done some work on learning disabilities at the Fraser of Allander Institute, and some of the work that we have done on data has been...
Marie McNair
SNP
That would be great. Thank you.
Jeremy Balfour
Con
It is helpful to read this report in the light of the other report that the Fraser of Allander Institute did recently on disability and employment. The repor...
Chirsty McFadyen
That comes back to the commitment to evidence-based policy making. We have done a short-term study, but more work could be done to understand the issue bette...
Dr Robertson
From the Poverty Alliance’s perspective, outside this research that we have been doing, we would call for an increase in incomes for people with a disability...
Jeremy Balfour
Con
I suppose that that is the issue that I am trying to work out, Dr Robertson. Personally, I probably fall into income group 5, but if you increase adult disab...
Dr Robertson
Yes. The example that was discussed in the previous evidence session was the Scottish child payment and the learning from that. That is a passported benefit ...
John Mason
SNP
I was struck by figure 1 on page 4 of our briefing, which showed that transport costs, in particular, were quite starkly different, which follows on from Jer...
Chirsty McFadyen
I think that it is a combination of things. The first thing that stands out to me is that we have UK-level evidence that disabled people travel less than non...
John Mason
SNP
So, the message is that we need a much more in-depth and bigger survey. I think that we are all agreed on that. Who should do that? Is it best for the Govern...
Jeremy Balfour
Con
The Fraser of Allander Institute. Laughter.
Chirsty McFadyen
It is difficult to say. What I always come back to is that, as long as something is well resourced, that is what is important. If a survey is well designed a...
John Mason
SNP
You said that there is a split between whether people’s activities are affected a lot or a little. Is that too basic? Do we need to go into a lot more detail...
Chirsty McFadyen
Based on the data that we have, we should not be splitting things any further, because it is already very difficult to understand. Jeremy Balfour mentioned s...
John Mason
SNP
Did you want to come in, Dr Robertson? Most of my questions were aimed at Ms McFadyen.
Dr Robertson
No. Chirsty is the expert on the questions that you asked.
The Convener
SNP
Chirsty, I believe that Jeremy Balfour was offering up your services again for further research. I now invite Bob Doris to come in.
Bob Doris
SNP
Thank you, convener, and thank you, Mr Balfour, for the namecheck. In the earlier session, I suggested an imaginary extra £10 million. It has doubled in the ...