Meeting of the Parliament 01 March 2016
No, thank you.
As a result, I have no qualms about suggesting that social security should be tied, wherever necessary, to encouraging and supporting people back into work.
I also believe there to be no issue with conditionality being attached to the payments that we make. It is often said in debate here that, somehow, conditionality is inappropriate. Those who pay their hard-earned contributions to the schemes that we are going to develop will expect some form of conditionality in the system.
Turning to the minister’s remarks, I could not agree more with his first point. It is essential that we get a smooth and safe transition; there should be no gaps between one provision and the next, because we cannot allow that to happen to those who are dependent on the support.
The minister perhaps failed to raise another issue that I would put in the same area: the cost of providing services. Those of us who looked closely at the evolution of the Scottish welfare fund realised at its outset that the cost was too high a proportion of the total amount of money that was to be made available. That was perhaps due to it being the first scheme of its kind and the fact that a lot of the administration had to be set up from the bottom up by local authorities. Nevertheless, if the minister goes forward, as he said he would do, with his new social security agency for Scotland, we should all be concerned to ensure that the cost of running it does not take money out of the hands of those who need it.
There has been criticism of the work capability assessment. I understand why people are critical, but I worry that the alternative to such an assessment is some form of self-referral, which would be unacceptable. The challenge for all members of this Parliament is to find an alternative approach that does what is necessary without making the mistake of leaving a gap.
On a number of occasions the minister has given the impression, as members of his party often do, that a huge amount of extra funding will be available for new schemes. The truth is that extra funding is not the subject of any commitment that this Government has yet made.
The minister is right to say that dignity, respect and fairness must be the basis of the system that we create. We must also assure Scotland’s taxpayers that when their money is taken for that purpose it will be used efficiently and effectively, and that we will work as least as hard on the creation of wealth as we do on its distribution.
16:41