State of the nation

As convener of the committee tasked with keeping the passage of the UK Welfare Reform Act 2012 under review and monitoring its implementation as it affects welfare provision in Scotland, Michael McMahon has had a busy two years. The Labour MSP tells Holyrood the committee has spent that time looking closely at what has been taking place on the ground, to individuals, as well as at the wider welfare landscape. However, as the Smith Commission’s findings continue to be scrutinised, McMahon can see the potential role of the committee start to change.

He said: “Discussions have started to look forward to what we can do with the Smith recommendations. We’ve already taken some evidence from prominent academics and experts to give us an idea of which areas we will have to start looking at in terms of how we can deliver welfare change. There’s an argument for changing the name of the committee to the Welfare Committee because we’re going to be responsible for up to £3 billion of welfare spending in Scotland. It is going to take a government department to do that. 

“We’re no longer just looking at what Westminster is doing, we’re now looking at what’s going to be coming to Scotland. We’re going to be looking at how we ensure whatever welfare powers come to Scotland are used to the best effect and not just at mitigating what’s happening down south. It’s about moving away from assessing to predicting and shaping. It’s a challenge and will certainly test the committee and get us looking in different directions but that’s a very positive thing as far as I’m concerned.”

McMahon said while the committee has been guided by legislation, a lot of its work has been responding to what members of the public have asked them to look at. A large number of witnesses who have come in front of the committee have been those directly affected by welfare changes.

He added: “We have had real people talking about real issues and as a result, real change has come about because we’ve been listening to what was said. There’s no getting away from it, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers at a UK level have been a disgrace in the way they’ve treated the committee. I also sit on the Finance Committee and we’ve had Danny Alexander and other Treasury ministers in front of us, who could easily have said ‘we’re not responsible to you, you’ve got your own finance secretary’ but they don’t, they come and engage with us. 

“The three ministers at Westminster who we have pursued relentlessly over the past two years are still running away from us. I hope we catch them at some point because they have serious questions to answer. They can bury their heads in the sand and deny all they want but we have gathered a huge body of work through our research, things we’ve commissioned ourselves, other sources. Those three government ministers can deny those facts all they want but they’re not going to go away and they’re going to have to face up to them at some point.

“What we’ve been doing throughout the year is listen very hard to those who have been affected by the welfare reform changes while also looking very closely at how the Scottish Government has responded to that.”

McMahon believes the Scottish Government has responded well to many of the welfare challenges this year, including creating the Scottish Welfare Fund, though “some of the changes they have made could have been made earlier if they’d shown more determination”.

“We can’t complain too much,” he added. “We’re there now and people are being helped.”

Regarding the Scottish Welfare Fund, McMahon said while some of the funds were devolved to the Scottish Government, it wasn’t under any obligation to continue them.

He said: “They decided to top the money up and I think that’s to their credit. The Welfare Funds (Scotland) Bill is currently moving through the Parliament. Where there might have been some issues was around taking the final appeals decisions out of the hands of local government and giving it to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. This proved to be the right decision, it certainly got the majority of support from people but questions remain about whether the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman is resourced well enough to take on that level of responsibility. 

“The other area of contention has been around the potential for outsourcing of delivery of the fund. I don’t doubt the Scottish Government did not intend this to go to the private sector but under European legislation if they open it up to any form of outsourcing they can’t restrict it. By allowing third sector expertise to be brought in to the delivery, they are actually opening it up to the private sector inadvertently. That has given some members of the committee real concern, regardless of how well intended it is. 

“Overall the Bill is very worthy and it will do a good job. The Scottish Welfare Fund was the right thing to do, there are issues around delivery which still have to be worked out but it’s better to be working those problems out than not have the fund at all.”

McMahon said the committee has learned from speaking to people who have been directly affected by welfare reforms such as the bedroom tax and changes to disability benefit. 

He said: “We’ve benefitted from that and we’ve innovated. We were starting from a position where we knew in governmental terms what was happening but what we wanted to do was understand what was happening to individual people, not just numbers. Having started looking at it purely in terms of people who contacted us about the initial assessment process, we started to realise within that it wasn’t just about the people who were applying for benefits, it could also impact their carers and others. When we looked at people who had previously been in work and were trying to get back into work, that there were different implications for them too. We then started to discover within groups of people with certain conditions, there were differences which needed to be addressed in that process too.

“So while the initial focus was on cancer sufferers and changes were made to the assessment process to take into account those who were undergoing chemotherapy, there were people who had life-altering conditions who were being assessed as capable of work. We had to look at how we addressed the circumstances around the individual illnesses. That was a challenge and an eye-opener in terms of the devastating impact these assessments were having on some people.”