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That will require regulation here, but it will require legislation at Westminster, as well. In essence, the regulations will be Scotland Act 1998 orders.

Unless James Wallace can help me with that directly, we might need to get back to you in writing.

The UK Government has in place its task force, which is due to respond reasonably soon. I still hope that the UK Government will do the right thing. As I laid out earlier, it has been clear from all the evidence over many years that that is the single biggest intervention that the UK Government could make to lift children out of poverty. If it does so, I would, of course, welcome that.

The UK Government has already made exceptionally minor changes to universal credit. Mr O’Kane referenced one of those changes in his speech during the Tuesday debate. That points to the fact that changes could have been made earlier, but the UK Government has chosen not to make them. In that space, we will continue to work as quickly as possible to mitigate the two-child cap. However, I still call on the UK Government to abolish it, because continuing to mitigate the bedroom tax, benefit cap and two-child cap are key challenges for the Scottish Government.

Separate to the task force—I know that it is looking at social security—there is an on-going review of universal credit. Unfortunately, the devolved Administrations do not have a seat at the table of the overall task force, which is for UK Government ministers. There is a four-nations sub-committee, which precludes Scottish Government ministers or officials from being aware of what is being discussed at UK Government level.

In some ways, that is fair enough—it is the UK Government’s task force—but the challenge for all the devolved Administrations is that changes that could be made in the task force because of the reserved and devolved complications that we have mean that what is decided by the UK task force could have significant implications for what happens up here. There is a real need for that task force to take account of what is happening in Scotland, and I hope that that is happening. Those are the points that I and other devolved Administrations make in the four-nations sub-committee.

In essence, the resource for that is already planned within the budget. I can give some examples to try to bring this to life a bit. For example, a specialist resource is being secured through the head of organisational capability and transition that will support a newly established project team that reports to the social security and programme leadership teams. The programme and the agency leadership teams are working jointly on that. I also mentioned the establishment of the delivery and change function, which is led by the director for delivery and change and social security, and that will drive the transition.

The committee can see that there are lines within the budget as it has been outlined, and expenditure within those lines, to ensure that the change programme is happening and that there is a smooth transition.

Mr Balfour will be well aware that we have been blessed by the fact that we have had quite a stable group of leaders in the programme and the agency throughout the devolution of social security. That is exceptionally helpful, because we have the key skills and we have people who have known one another and worked together for many years. We are determined not to lose that skill set as we transition from programme to agency.

There has been a great deal of discussion with the third sector since the UK Government’s announcement on ENICs. Very soon after the announcement, I had a meeting with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to discuss its views on the implications for the third sector, and its public pronouncements speak for themselves. Unless I am mistaken, SCVO, along with a number of other third sector organisations, was named as supporting the letter from the First Minister and the president of COSLA to the UK Government. We are keeping very close to SCVO and other third sector bodies to talk about the impact of the increased contributions, and we will continue those discussions with them. We will continue to do our best to represent their concerns directly to the UK Government, as they are also doing directly.

As I said, we tried to get out as many early notifications as possible before Christmas. This is the first week back after Christmas, and we did not have capacity to gather all the information before I came to the committee today, but we will provide it in writing. I appreciate that we are on a journey with regard to the length of grants, but the pilot has been welcomed by the third sector as a definitive move that we have made. We have moved from something that we were trying to do to something that we are delivering with the pilot. I will provide the details of that across portfolios to the committee.

The Government frequently produces and publishes information giving a breakdown of social security payments and the reasons behind them.

The convener rightly points to something that I see when I go out on visits. I am mindful of a visit to the Royal National Institute of Blind People last year, when I spoke with an adult but about the same type of process. That individual’s condition had deteriorated, but he had not raised that with the DWP because he was so fearful, given his experience of applying for benefits in the first place, that what he got might be taken away rather than being increased. However, he did share that change in his circumstances with Social Security Scotland and is now receiving support that he has probably been entitled to for quite some time.

That is not the only conversation I have had that shows that discussions in the community encourage other people to come forward. We will see more people coming forward because of others’ positive personal experiences, which takes us back to the idea of encouraging people to come forward to get what they are entitled to. I am pleased that that is an issue. Yes, it presents budgetary challenges, but we cannot try to cut the social security budget by increasing stigma or barriers. We need a social security system that works for people, and you have given some examples of that, although we must take account of the financial implications.

We did not ask to mitigate the two-child cap in the past. The Scottish child payment was established in phases because of the important work that had to be done with the DWP to allow data-sharing arrangements and to ensure that the framework existed to allow that to happen.

The progress of the Scottish child payment from policy inception to delivery was the quickest of any benefit that has ever been delivered within the UK. I am exceptionally proud of that record, but that was the beginning of a delivery that had to happen in phases to get the payment for children up to the age of 16, because of the work that had to be done with the DWP. There were important aspects to the timing of how the Scottish child payment was delivered. The fact that it had been introduced did not mean that the work stopped—work on the various phases had to continue.

Yesterday’s discussions with stakeholders were exactly about how we use the budget to move forward with the councils that are in greatest need. In relation to greatest need, we talked about the families behind the regulator’s discussions about systemic failure. As Mr Griffin and the rest of the committee well know, when we talk about systemic failure, we are talking about families and children in unsuitable temporary accommodation. I am particularly mindful that, when we talk about figures and the use of the budget, we always need to have in mind how we can alleviate issues for those in greatest need. That is exactly what yesterday’s discussion was about.