Scottish Social Security Consortium

Minutes of meeting: 22 February 2006

Present:

David McNeish, CAS
Lindsay Isaacs, CAS
Judith Paterson, Child Poverty Action Group Scotland
Peter Kelly, Poverty Alliance
Kate Higgins, Capability Scotland
Craig Dunlop, Shelter
Angus McDonald, City Council
Linda Davis, Carers Condre - VSA Aberdeen
Wyn Messells, SDEF
Liz Rowlett, SDEF
Ann Timoney, Maryhill HA
Marie Slaven, Maryhill HA
Moira McGrory, Hillhead Housing Ass 2000
Lorna Bernard, Hain, Inverness
Chris Campbell, Oxfam UKPP
John Dickie, Child Poverty Action Group Scotland
John Wilson, Scottish Law Pay Unit
Carol Young, Scottish Law Pay Unit
Estelle Biteau, The Action Group
Angela Toal, Child Poverty Action Group Scotland
Calum Mackinnon, North Lanarkshire Council
Richard Gass, Rights Advice Scotland & Glasgow City Council
Colette Cummings, RNIB
Jo Whitfield, The Action Group
Maureen Closs, One Parent Families Scotland
Alice MacAlister, One Parent Families Scotland
Chris White, SAMH
Linzie Haggerty, Ayrshire Independent Living Network
Alison Gillies, Partick HA

Welcome and introductions

Judith Paterson - from Child Poverty Action Group - welcomed everyone to this meeting of the Scottish Social Security Consortium (SSSC). She explained that its purpose was to develop a co-ordinated response to the Welfare Reform Green Paper, and that invitations to the meeting had therefore been extended beyond the usual membership of the group. Attendees took it in turns to introduce themselves and the organisation they were representing.

Brief overview of the Green Paper

Kate Higgins - from Capability Scotland - had produced a paper summarising the key proposals in the Green Paper, and gave a brief presentation on this subject. The main aims of the reforms are to reduce the numbers on incapacity benefits and to increase the numbers of lone parents and older people in work. Kate outlined the proposed mechanisms for achieving these goals and highlighted the following areas of concern with the proposals:

• The paper is very scant on details making it hard to envisage how many of the proposals will actually translate into practice, as the devil is in the detail
• The Government is adopting an approach which, in relation to claimants, is far more 'stick' than 'carrot' based
• Little attention is paid to how to overcome the lack of jobs and discriminatory employment practices that will prevent people moving off incapacity benefits into work
• There is nothing in the paper about specifically tackling poverty
• The issue of resourcing the proposed changes is not explained in detail, which is a particular concern given the current programme of DWP efficiency savings
• It is unclear how the proposed changes will be expected to operate in Scotland in relation to devolved policy areas such as health, skills and childcare, and from where the necessary financial support will come.

Developing a coordinated response to the Green Paper

Background
David McNeish - from Citizens Advice Scotland - explained that a number of organisations in Scotland, such as the Poverty Alliance and DAS, had already been working on ways to co-ordinate a response to the Paper. This meeting is therefore an attempt to draw all these different strands together and develop one overall coordinated response. This will create a more powerful and robust campaign, and also ensure that work is not being unnecessarily duplicated.

The purpose of today's meeting is therefore to agree on the areas of consensus which should form the crux of the joint campaign, as well as establishing methodology, timelines and desired outcomes.

In terms of the political context, it is important to note that Glasgow has been selected for the proposed City Pilot, meaning that a significant amount of resources will be allocated to the city to try and establish a coordinated method for getting a large number of people back to work. Consequently, a number of Glasgow MPs who might have been expected to challenge the paper are coming out in its support.

Common areas of concern
David noted that a number of common areas of concern seem to have emerged from the various meetings that have taken place thus far, and that it therefore seems to make sense for these to be the focus of the coordinated response. The common areas are:

• Issues relating to compulsion
• Adequacy of benefit levels
• Resource availability for delivery of proposed reforms, e.g. additional frontline staff, physiotherapists and OTs in the workplace, financial support for employers.

Attendees agreed that these three issues were of concern to their organisations, and should form the focus of the coordinated response. It is likely that many organisations involved in the coordinated response will have additional concerns relating to their specific client groups and it was agreed that these should be raised in individual responses to the paper.

After some discussion, it was agreed that the coordinated response will not focus solely on incapacity benefit claimants, but will also look at the other groups affected by the proposals i.e. lone parents and older workers.

David noted that more detailed consideration about what specific points should come under each of the three broad headings would be discussed later in the meeting in relation to the campaign materials.

Methods and timeliness
It was agreed that the coordinated work will comprise:

• a joint letter, signed by all the organisations involved and sent to all Scottish MPs, asking them to raise the coalition's common concerns with John Hutton
• a postcard campaign, using postcards printed with a simple overarching message of concern about the reforms, signed by members of the public and sent directly to John Hutton

These campaign tools should reinforce the message with MPs that there is a significant level of concern amongst their constituents in relation to the Green Paper's proposals.

After some discussion, it was agreed that the campaign should focus exclusively on work with MPs until the actual Bill is published. Once this has happened, and more detail is available regarding the proposals, there will be more scope for working with MSPs and local authorities on the issues that affect them e.g. health, employment, the City Pilot etc.

There was significant group discussion about the content of the letter. Key concerns focused on:

Compulsion:

• This seems unfairly weighted towards benefit claimants, with no equivalent level of compulsion for the DWP (e.g. to complete examinations within specified time frames) or employers (to reduce discrimination and barriers to work)
• Claimants being forced or bullied into inappropriate and unsustainable jobs
• Compulsion is not necessary, as indicated by the success of Pathways into Work, and there is no evidence of its efficacy
• The elements of compulsion are resource intensive and will divert funds and staff away from processes that actually support people into work

Adequacy of benefit levels:

• Broaden the focus to include concerns about a number of client groups, e.g. lone parents and older people
• Concerns about the use of sanctions to reduce benefit levels
  

Resources:

• How can the DWP efficiency savings be reconciled with the resources required to implement these changes?
• Safeguards should be included, so that claimants are protected if resource constraints mean the system is not implemented as intended
• Where is the extra support for - for example - employers going to come from?

It was agreed that David McNeish would re-draft the letter incorporating as many comments as possible - however, it is important to keep it focused, so not everything discussed at the meeting can be included. David agreed to issue the letter by email to everyone involved by 3rd March. Final comments should be sent to David by 9th March. He will then produce a final version of the letter, and email this to all on 10th March. Organisations can at this stage decide if the completed letter is something they are able to sign up to. If so, electronic signatures should be sent to David McNeish by 1st April [Post meeting note: Poe McHugh at the Poverty Alliance has taken on responsibility for co-ordinating signatures to the letter]. The joint letter will be issued, with an accompanying press release, to all MPs on 17th April, so any media work on the joint campaign is embargoed until this date. The letter will also be submitted as an official response to the Green Paper, so that it will be seen by the team working on the Bill.

The group then discussed the idea of a postcard campaign in more detail, and agreed that it would be useful to complement the letter with something less organisationally based, i.e. something that involves the people affected by the reforms more directly. There were lengthy discussions about the content of the postcard and it was agreed that the postcard headline should be changed from 'Help not Hassle' to 'Help not harm'. Final content could not be decided due to time constraints, but it was agreed that Kate Higgins would use the discussions from the meeting as a basis for the final content.

The overall timescale for the postcard campaign is the same as for the letter, i.e. ready to be sent on 17th April.

Any other business

There was no other business.

Date of next meeting

The next meeting of the SSSC is scheduled to take place at Citizens Advice Scotland, Edinburgh, on Tuesday 9th May. Note that this will be a SCCC meeting, not a meeting of the coalition campaigning on welfare reform.

Back to the Scottish Social Security Consortium main page

For more information contact:
Judith Paterson
Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland,
Unit 9, Ladywell
94 Duke Street,
Glasgow G4 0UW
0141 552 3303
email jpaterson@cpagscotland.org.uk

Abigail Bremner
Citizens Advice Scotland
Spectrum House
2 Powderhall Road
Edinburgh EH7 4GB
0131 550 1000
email bremnera@cas.org.uk