The following four case studies give a fuller account of how the Panel (2021 – 2023) contributed to some areas
of the Commission’s work. This includes:
• Child Poverty Advice to Scottish Government 2022.
• Cost of Living Crisis Advice to Scottish Government (June, August 2022).
• Developing the Commission’s Child Poverty Scrutiny 2022 – 23.
• Participation in the Commission’s Tax Working Group (2023).
CASE STUDY 1: Developing the Commission’s Child Poverty Advice 2022
The first major piece of work that the Panel worked on with the Commission was the Commission’s Child Poverty Advice to the Scottish Government. This advice is a statutory requirement for the Commission and is required once every four-year period. To produce this advice the Panel and the Commission worked together in a way that was intended to move beyond sharing lived experience of poverty, towards producing ideas and solutions based on collective understanding of policy problems.
Between September and December 2021, the Panel met more frequently (every two weeks) to work on the Advice. During this time, they:
• participated in five online Panel meetings with pre-meeting reading and tasks.
• participated in one joint meeting between the Panel and Commissioners.
• completed two digital surveys.
• co-presented the recommendations to the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local
Government with Commissioners.
Each of the meeting included a section where new information on policy topics relevant to child poverty were introduced, with Panel members competing tasks relevant to these topics prior to the meetings. During the meetings Panel members then shared their ideas and solutions based on their lived experience. This process was designed to allow an opportunity for Panel members to share their experiences and learn from others; to reflect on the experiences of families in
Scotland using composite case studies; and to meet with Commissioners to discuss these ideas. This approach to joint working resulted in recommendations in the Commission’s advice that were jointly developed between the Panel and Commissioners. These were substantively different to the recommendations than those that the Commission would have developed alone, and included recommendations on:
• Social security entitlement that came from insights from our Panel members around the complexity of the system, and the need to shift the burden from individuals being expected to navigate multiple, complex public sector processes to the government making the system simpler for the individual.
• Developing employers’ knowledge and skills to recruit and support disabled employees – as Panel members recognised that the main barrier for employment for disabled people was employer knowledge and attitudes, which could not be overcome by the traditional employability support of increasing individual prospective employee confidence, skills and experience.
• The importance of making transport more available, affordable and accessible for low-income families – both the Panel and Commissioners recognised transport as an enabler, but also too frequently a barrier, to low income households. Panel members emphasised the importance of transport in addressing child poverty in terms of affordability, but particularly accessibility and service improvements in rural areas, reflected in the final recommendation.
CASE STUDY 2: Responding to the Scottish Government’s request for advice on the cost of living crisis (June, August 2022)
In May 2022 the Commission received a request for advice from SG on actions it should take in the short, medium and longer term to respond to the cost of living crisis. Building on the ways of working developed for the Child Poverty Advice mentioned above, the Panel and the Commission worked on recommendations, providing Initial Advice in June, and Final Advice in August 2022.
The Panel met in June, July and August 2022 to look at how it could contribute to the request for advice. Because of the tight timings for the initial advice (requested on 20 May 2022 and to be submitted by 14 June), it was not possible to bring the Panel and the Commission together for joint meetings in the way that had previously been done for the Child Poverty Advice. Instead, members of the Commission secretariat – who lead on the drafting of the advice under the
instruction of the Commission – used their close relationship with the Panel and proximity to the drafting of the advice to incorporate and align the recommendations with emerging views from the Panel.
In June, the Panel received information provided by the secretariat on the current scope of UK Government cost of living support, and had discussions on identifying gaps in support, commented on initial ideas that the Commissioners had suggested, and were invited to highlight any gaps in the Commission’s early thinking. Panel members were encouraged to think about how the tool of intersectional thinking (the focus of the previous two Panel meetings) could
be used to better understand and develop solutions to the crisis. These highlighted areas of consensus to feed into the advice, but also areas where Panel members constructively disagreed, such as on the writing off of public debt.
In its July meeting, the Panel were updated on the current status of the advice and the rapidly changing context of the cost of living crisis. The July meeting focussed on longer-term options that the SG should pursue to mitigate the effects of the crisis. Panel members discussed their experiences on longer term energy efficiency measures, support for off-grid households, council tax and tax reform, and other options. Panel members highlighted how they felt they had limited benefit from accessing energy efficiency schemes and support, particularly for those that had experience of the private rented sector. The August meeting of the Panel was close to the deadline for the submission of the final advice, so recognising the rapidly changing and worsening outlook of the crisis, this Panel session focussed on how the evolving crisis had been impacting Panel members and how they live.
Throughout the process of preparing the advice, Panel member ideas, policy analysis and critique, and voice, were fed into the emerging recommendations of the Commission. This resulted in recommendations in both the initial and final advice that reflected Panel contributions, including:
• The need to support those using off-grid fuel in the right way, and avoiding giving out support to off-grid fuel users in a way they may only get limited benefit from and supporting fuel buying clubs.
• Making sure the SG works effectively with landlords and tenants to improve energy efficiency in practice in the private rented sector.
• Reform of the way that public sector debt is managed and recovered.
CASE STUDY 3: Developing the Commission’s Child Poverty Scrutiny 2022 – 23
The Poverty and Inequality Commission reports each year on whether it thinks enough progress is being made towards meeting the child poverty targets. In scrutinising progress over 2022-2023, the Commission wanted to look at what progress had been made in implementing some of the major commitments in Best Start, Bright Futures. It identified the following commitments to focus on:
• Parental Employability
• Parental Transition Fund
• Affordable Housing Supply Programme
• Early Learning and Childcare
• School Age Childcare
• Pathfinders
• Social Innovation Partnership
• Data, monitoring and evaluation
To do this the Commission wanted to meet with Government officials working in these areas to discuss progress. It wanted to involve members of the Panel in these discussions and proposed that two members of the Commission, two members of the Panel and a member of the Secretariat met with the policy leads for each of these areas. The proposal was discussed by the Panel who supported the approach, and the majority of members said they would like to be involved in the discussions. There was some discussion about which policies to look at but there was limited opportunities for the Panel to influence this at this stage. Commissioners and Panel members volunteered for the meetings that they were most interested in and five Panel members took part in the meetings, with some taking part in more than one meeting.
The secretariat provided a briefing to Commissioners and Panel members in advance of each of the meetings. This set out the purpose of the meeting, who would be attending, information about the relevant commitments in the Delivery plan, any available information about funding and progress, and possible questions they might want to ask. Everyone was also provided with a ‘Terms of Engagement’ document that had been agreed with SG, setting out the approach that
would be taken in the meetings. Panel members and Commissioners had a pre-meeting ahead of each meeting to discuss what they wanted to focus on in the meeting and what questions they wanted to ask. Commissioners and Panel members both had the same opportunities to ask questions. The secretariat took notes
of the meetings.
After most of the meetings with policy officials there was a short debrief where Panel members and Commissioners had an opportunity to share their reflections on the discussion and, again, the secretariat took notes. Based on the discussions and reflections the secretariat prepared some key points that the
Commission might want to include in its scrutiny report for each of the policy commitments, and circulated these to the Commissioners and Panel members involved for comment before incorporating them into a paper to go to the Commission. The Commission agreed key messages and areas to be included in the report. The Secretariat then met with the Panel members who had participated to talk through the key messages and check whether anything was missing. The Secretariat drafted the report and Executive Summary and shared them with the Commission for comment. The Executive Summary was shared with Panel members for comment, with an offer for them to review the full report if they wanted to. Both the Executive Summary and final report can be found here.
The Panel members who had participated in the scrutiny were invited to join Commissioners at a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and had the opportunity to directly share their reflections on the scrutiny work with the Cabinet Secretary.
CASE STUDY 4: Participation in the Commission’s Tax Working Group (2023)
As part of its work programme in 2022-23 the Commission agreed to establish a working group to look at how devolved taxation can better address poverty and inequality in Scotland. This working group focused on gathering evidence around a set of “framing questions” set by the Commission (below), and making considered recommendations on tax policy in Scotland, for the endorsement of and publication by the Commission. The working group was composed of
Commissioners, two Panel members, and two external members.
Framing questions the Tax Working Group considered were:
• To what extent are current arrangements for taxation in Scotland progressive?
• How could existing taxes be made more progressive in order to reduce poverty and inequality?
• What opportunities are there to raise additional revenue through existing or new taxation in order to
reduce poverty and inequality?
• How can the representation aspect of taxation be promoted and understood, as a way of reducing
inequality?
The working group had discretion in how to carry out its task, and Panel members participated as full members of the group, alongside Commissioners and external members. The group met monthly throughout most of 2023 until the final report was published in October 2023. Panel members participated in all aspects of the group’s work during its life, including:
• Discussing and agreeing collectively the working group’s response on the framing questions.
• Identifying experts for the group to speak to and questioning them on current and future tax policy in Scotland.
• Providing suggestions for policy proposals to address the framing questions and assessing them against the criteria agreed by the group.
• Providing comments on written drafts of the recommendations and report, and giving their views on communications issues and how the report might be most impactful.
In addition, the two Panel members on the tax working group also led discussion groups with the wider Panel in June 2023, where they sought Panel feedback on the working group’s current thinking on recommendations.
The Commission published its report on how better tax policy can reduce poverty and inequality in October 2023, and working group members were credited for their work in its preparation. While all working group members contributed to all aspects of the process behind the production of the report, Panel members of the group provided particularly valuable insights on:
• How some of the policy recommendations around tax should be presented in order to recognise the difficulties faced by people on low incomes as a result of the cost-of-living crisis and the challenges of asking people to “pay more” at such a time.
• The importance of fairness and equal treatment in the tax system, and the perceptions of different, preferential, treatment of people on high incomes (when it comes to tax) when compared with people on low incomes (when it comes to social security).
• How to design questions intended to gather data on tax in a way that does not inadvertently reinforce stereotypes around people on benefits when making comparison between benefits fraud and tax avoidance.