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Good morning, minister, and good morning to your team. Your officials helpfully provide the committee and subject committees with weekly updates of the instruments that are expected to be laid in the following two weeks. I wonder whether you can provide an indication of the anticipated volume of any SSIs that are likely to be laid between now and Christmas, and the lead committees that they are expected to go to.

Given that some SSIs are much longer and more complex than others, it is particularly useful for this committee, as well as the subject committees, to be given as much advance notice as possible when there will be instruments that are large and complex. Do you know whether any such instruments or sets of instruments are in the pipeline? If not, will you commit to keeping the subject committees and our committee up to date on the progress of any such instruments?

Following on from that, minister, what updates can you provide on the discussions that your Government has had with the UK Government on proposals to grant UK ministers delegated powers in devolved areas and the use of consent requirements for such powers? Have those discussions taken into account our position in relation to the scrutiny of powers within devolved competence?

How are discussions regarding that going with the UK Government? I know that we try to rise above party politics when dealing with those issues, but I am wondering what discussions you have had with the new UK Government and how those are going.

In the light of the cabinet secretary’s contribution, I will reflect further and will not move amendment 11.

Amendment 11 not moved.

Sections 19 and 20 agreed to.

Section 21—Duty on Commission to publish annual report

Amendment 97 moved—[Shirley-Anne Somerville]—and agreed to.

Section 21, as amended, agreed to.

After section 21

I say, with due respect to the cabinet secretary, that we do not know because we are not having any in-person tribunal hearings here in Scotland. We debated this point previously—when, as happened under the DWP, a person goes to a tribunal and their case is looked at afresh, the tribunal can often come to a different view.

My policy intent is that there should be a face-to-face hearing unless the claimant does not want that to happen. That puts choice—what the claimant wants—right at the heart of things. That is why I lodged amendment 14. The evidence on paper and in practice shows that the tribunals service is not doing that. That is why we need the amendment. I do not think that it would have any unforeseen consequences. It would bring back dignity, fairness and respect, which, this morning, the committee seems to have decided that it no longer believes in.

Are you comfortable with someone who has been awarded a benefit and whose circumstances have not changed being sanctioned simply because they have not returned a piece of paper to Social Security Scotland? Do you think that that is treating people with fairness, dignity and respect?

I welcome the Government amendments. When the minister closes on amendment 97, I wonder whether she will confirm that no body similar to SCOSS has to provide public accounts that have been audited, and that such a duty would take SCOSS beyond other bodies.

I will be honest. When we were putting through the original 2018 act, I was a bit of a sceptic about SCOSS. It felt to me as though it was going to be just another talking shop or another body that was not going to play a particularly positive role in the Scottish landscape. However, I am a sinner who has confessed and now have turned 180 degrees on that. I welcome the work of SCOSS. It is an important tool in the landscape. It picks up some of the gaps that we as a committee do not have time for, and it brings expertise to the process that we as a committee sometimes do not have. I would seek to give it greater power in regard to the work that it does. That would be for it to decide, however, not for us or the Scottish Government to instruct.

I was struck by what the cabinet secretary said about SCOSS being able to report to ministers and Parliament when it is requested to do so, either by the Scottish Government or possibly by the committee. I would like SCOSS to decide what it should look at.

Amendment 11 would also give SCOSS greater power to look at acts that have been passed and to do post-legislative scrutiny. There is a general view across the Parliament that we are not very good at doing that. I accept that that might come with extra resources required, but we need to make sure that the primary and secondary legislation that we are passing is the best that it can be and I believe that SCOSS plays an important role in that. To give it greater powers by future proofing the bill for future years and generations is an opportunity that we should not pass by, so I ask the committee to look favourably on amendment 11 and support it.

You took the words right out of my mouth, cabinet secretary—here is my persuasive argument. Can you imagine the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland or any of the other big banks being audited in such a way? The banks are audited on an annual basis, and rightly so, but can you imagine them coming to account holders and saying, “We want to audit how you are managing your account as an individual. If you don’t give us that information, we will close down your bank account”? That is what we are doing here. We are saying that we will go beyond auditing the organisation and look at the people who benefit from social security. That does not seem to me to be what auditing is.

There should be a power for Social Security Scotland to go to a claimant and say, “Will you share that information with us?” However, if the claimant, for whatever reason, does not want to do that, I do not think that they should be penalised.

I will develop that further. Section 52 of the 2018 act allows for unscheduled review of entitlement. Therefore, Social Security Scotland can already review anybody—it has that power. What it does not have is the power to take away an award without doing a review. That is a very significant difference.

In its submission to the committee, the Law Society of Scotland says that the provisions “conflate audit and fraud”. It also says:

“It is not clear why individuals should need to be involved in auditing the system in this way, or indeed, why Ministers could not obtain the information they need through other channels.”

For once, I agree with the Law Society of Scotland—it is absolutely right. We are trying to use audit as a way of bringing about fraud claims. With due respect to the Government, I think that we have stepped over the line of treating a claimant with dignity, fairness and respect.

Beyond that—and it does not matter what terminology you use—we are now introducing sanctions to deal with people. We have been having debates about sanctions for a long time now. Marie McNair has said that benefit sanctions are

“a vehicle for penalising those who are in need of benefits”,

while Ben Macpherson, the previous social security minister, said:

“we have shown ... that people respond much better to support and encouragement than they do to threat and fear.”—[Official Report, 31 March 2022; c 32, 46.]

However, if we support the bill as it stands, we as a committee will be voting for sanctions. We will be voting to say to somebody, “If you do not give Social Security Scotland some kind of response, we will take away or hold back your benefit.” They might get it back later, but that does not help them in the immediate period.

It does not seem to me that we would be treating those people with dignity, fairness and respect, because those individuals have done nothing wrong. Their circumstances have not changed; the claim that they were entitled to is still the same; all that they are saying is, “We do not want to be involved in this audit process.” Therefore, what is proposed seems unfair to me.

I was interested to see that, in the Scottish Government’s response to our stage 1 report, we seem to move from talking about audit to talking about “fraudulent”. As the cabinet secretary said in that response,

“If there is no such power to suspend,”—

in other words, no power to sanction—

“there is no incentive for anyone who is claiming assistance fraudulently ... to participate in the process.”

That is true, but my point is that the Scottish Government already has the power to do that under section 52 of the 2018 act. However, what it wants is the power to sanction someone without reviewing their claim, and I believe that that goes too far. I am not arguing against an audit of Social Security Scotland—that is where I probably disagree with Maggie Chapman—but I am totally against auditing vulnerable individuals with regard to decisions that they have no power over.

On the presumption that I might not be successful in the next few minutes, I will support the Scottish Government’s amendment 57, which I think at least gives organisations and individuals a further bite at the cherry. However, I genuinely urge members to think about what they are voting for and whether they are going too far with regard to getting information from vulnerable individuals who have—I repeat—done nothing wrong. Their circumstances have not changed; all they have been unwilling to do is to respond to what is, in fact, an audit of an organisation, not an individual.