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It is important in answering Mr Rennie’s question to reflect the fact, inherent in his question, that there are a number of elements to this matter—it is not just about a financial redress decision.

I had a conversation, which will never leave me, with the advisers who work with Future Pathways. That organisation predates the redress scheme and the advisers are allocated to support survivors of historical childhood sexual abuse. I asked them how they go about it. One of them said to me, “We walk alongside the individual.” What more do we need to know? Those people are probably the first reliable, trusted ally that the individual has had in their life.

I will never forget that conversation and it has gone into the thinking behind the scheme. This area of policy is quite unfamiliar to me. When it all kicked off, when Marilyn Livingstone raised the issues in the cross-party group 23 or 24 years ago, when the Parliament was founded, I thought, “Historical childhood sexual abuse? What?” but, of course, although it was not part of my experience as a child, we now know so much more as a society. I have learned a lot. That concept of walking alongside people has never left me, so the scheme has been designed so that, when we work with people, we walk alongside them to try to help them to a conclusion.

That is the thinking. It is one big thing that I have learned from the process, but I will talk about another thing that struck me. I mentioned that there had been a number of requests for a written apology, which is part of the scheme. That is not about money. One survivor who asked for that and got it, then phoned up their caseworker and asked whether they would mind reading it over the phone to them because they wanted to have it read to them by the state. The caseworker told me that it was a profoundly moving encounter, because they felt that, in a sense, they were conveying to that individual the state’s apology.

I have stood up in the chamber and given an apology on behalf of the Government, which I know survivors value, but there was an applicant asking for a couple of minutes of someone’s time for them to read over the phone the apology from the state. I do not know the individual involved, but I hazard a guess that that is more important than the cheque. At least one survivor has asked the First Minister to write to them, and we have arranged for that to be done. A letter has been sent from the First Minister, signed by her own hand.

Mr Rennie is right to highlight that the scheme is a broader consideration. A wee bit of me is in my usual mode of evidence-based transactional data, but there is an awful lot more to the scheme than that.

It is a developing picture. I have put on the record the fact that we have made redress payments of just short of £11.4 million. We will just need to see how that develops. The data is there to be monitored against our original expectations, but, for this scheme, as I think that I acknowledged when we were looking at the bill’s financial memorandum, it was not possible to be absolutely certain about the cost. We made our best attempt to provide an evidence base, based on international experience. However, we live in Scotland, and it will be what it will be in relation to the applicants who come forward.

Obviously, it is appropriate and important that I continue to inform the committee about the development of payments as a matter of public record. If the committee wishes to reflect to me what information it wants to see regularly, I will happily supply that in letters to the convener to give the committee an update on that or any other information that is relevant to the committee’s deliberations.

I invite Gillian Nixon to explain.

I am not sure that I would know what—

I am grateful for the opportunity to update the committee on the progress of Scotland’s redress scheme, now it has completed its first full year of operation.? The scheme is delivering tangible redress in the form of acknowledgement, payment, apology and support to people who suffered abuse as children in the care of the state.

Scotland’s redress scheme opened in December 2021.?As of 31 December 2022, 1,960 applications of various levels of completion have been received;? 345 initial applications have been completed, verified and passed to Redress Scotland for independent decision making; and 277 initial determinations have been made. Payments totalling £11,368,373 have been issued directly to applicants.? Although those figures are heartening and demonstrate good progress, there is more work to be done, and feedback from survivors and their representatives is continuing to shape the scheme.?

Redress payments are not dependent on contributions from any organisation, and organisations are not compelled to contribute.? When the scheme launched, 10 organisations were contributing to the scheme. That figure is now 16, with potential contributions totalling £122 million. In December, I wrote to each applicant to reassure them of my on-going personal commitment to the scheme and to reiterate its three principles, which are compassion, dignity and respect.? I understand that some applicants are experiencing challenges in accessing records to support their applications and that some are finding that the process is taking longer than they had anticipated.? Those concerns have been heard and are being responded to.

The number of case workers who are supporting survivors or their next of kin to complete applications has increased from 12 to 23 since the scheme launched, in December 2021. That will mean that there is swifter allocation of a named case worker to people who have completed applications that are ready for verification checks. I recognise the need for on-going communication and have assured all applicants, no matter what stage their application is at, that they will receive an update by the end of February and that there will be more regular communication going forward.?

The survivor forum, which was established in March 2022, will increase its activity and provide opportunities for survivors to give their feedback and further shape the scheme. A new group including representatives from the Scottish Government and local authority bodies has been established and will work collaboratively to provide support to applicants to the scheme.? A standing agenda item for the group is access to records and supporting information, and the group will be holding its second meeting in the coming weeks.?

Survivors have told us that the provision of personal acknowledgement and apology is often the most meaningful and important aspect of redress.? So far, the scheme has supported 12 survivors who have requested a personal apology, and that has already been secured for 10 of them. ?Feedback from some survivors who have received an apology has been positive and moving.?

I welcome the on-going interest from the committee, and, more widely, from members of Parliament across the chamber, in the scheme.? I am confident that Scotland’s redress scheme will continue to build upon its successful first year of operation, delivering a robust and credible route to redress in a swifter, less adversarial way than court action. I am committed to ensuring that all the necessary steps for the scheme to be effective are taken and that any improvements that are required are delivered. I am happy to answer members’ questions.

Any new scheme inevitably takes time to find its feet and its effectiveness, efficiency and pace of work. There will be a range of applications to a scheme of this type, and a new issue will be uncovered in probably every application. That issue will have to be considered and related to the legislation. Colleagues will recall that the legislation for the scheme inevitably has to be very complex. A variety of considerations must be made on literally every application, so it is fair to say that the scheme will be slow to begin.

The pace will be maintained. One way to illustrate that, which might help to address Mr Dey’s question, is to look at March 2022, which is a couple of months after the scheme began operating. In that month, 26 applications were passed from the Scottish Government to Redress Scotland for determination. Those were applications that had been completed and were to be judged for a redress payment. In November 2022, that number was 66. I hope that that gives the committee some reassurance that the pace is increasing. The November figure also predates the recruitment of essentially double the number of caseworkers.

I unreservedly accept that any scheme of this type takes time to find momentum. More applications came in more quickly than we had anticipated. The total number of applications is not adrift from our expectations, but the rate at which they have come in is most definitely different. The state of development of those applications is variable: some are very advanced, some are not. It has taken a lot of time to support applicants to get to a conclusion. There is now a growing sense of momentum within the scheme, which I am keen to build upon.

When we started, our original plan was to recruit 12 caseworkers, which we did, and the team was constructed on that basis. It quickly became clear to us, however, that that was not going to be sufficient, given the shape of applications that had come in, so we took the decision to expand the number of caseworkers.

It is no secret that it is quite difficult to expand civil service employment just now—that is not really flavour of the month. The decision to double the number of caseworkers should therefore be considered in the context of the recruitment constraints under which we are currently operating as an indication of the fact that we recognise that the scheme had to be more substantively resourced than it was to begin with.

In the first months of this year, we will begin to see the effect of the new caseworkers coming in. I expect the numbers that I shared with Mr Dey to grow—the number of applications being passed to Redress Scotland went from 26 per month back in February to 66 a month—and I will be monitoring that progress, because it will be an indication of the effect of those caseworkers in processing more cases.

I am anxious, however, that people should not be waiting longer than is necessary for a determination. They have suffered enough, and that is the last thing that they should have to do. If we need to expand the number of caseworkers further, therefore, we will do so.

I make one point, however: recruiting caseworkers for this particular task is not a straightforward exercise, because not everybody is suited to such work. It is very taxing, emotionally and psychologically, on individuals, and staff have to come to the job with a deep sense of commitment to the task. It is a difficult task, and they have to be trained to have the necessary resilience to deal with it. We have to be satisfied that they are trauma trained and can deal with trauma appropriately, and that process is not straightforward.

The recruitment process in itself takes some time, and we have to be satisfied that we have people who can deploy the right approach in handling the applications. Although I am leaving the door very much open to continued expansion, I add the caveat that we have to be satisfied that the necessary recruitment and training approaches are in place. Without being in any way disrespectful, I note that we cannot just go to a temping agency and say, “Send us another 10 people”—that would be totally counterproductive.

I put that on the record in order to seek some understanding from the committee that we have to take a lot of care in the recruitment of those individuals.

Yes. The recruitment process was completed in November.

Yes, I am, but I acknowledge that people will be frustrated by the time that it will take, because we have a backlog to work our way through. To go back to the deputy convener’s point that I responded to, we can throw temporary resources at a routine application process for administrative information, but that cannot be done in this situation. It is too sensitive and too complex. Frankly, it would be disrespectful to do that.

I feel that we have a robust and well-resourced scheme, but I acknowledge that there is frustration at the length of time that it is taking. I again go back to the deputy convener’s point—this was contained in one of the points that Mr Kerr put to me from the correspondent who has responded to my letter. We are prioritising people with a terminal illness and older applicants. We are working through the applications as systematically as we can.

Yes, we did.