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As I say, part of the challenge around that figure, which David Wallace mentioned, is that many of those cases will still be in train. We would start off with the initial approaches to recover that money, and if it is not possible to do so, the case can move through the process. David might want to provide some further information on that.

I will always challenge the agency—as the agency will challenge itself—to improve those numbers.

I alluded to some of that work in my earlier response to Craig Hoy. I went through, in some detail, the areas that are being dealt with. The part that we did not get on to is the work that is already going on within the agency to examine the quality of decision making. Rather than repeat what I have already said, can we perhaps talk about the next aspect to that?

The target is to ensure that the policy is working effectively. Rather than that work having an arbitrary target, where we say that it will bring down social security or that we expect it to deliver a particular level of saving, it aims to ensure that the policies are fit for purpose and are working in line with the policy intent that Parliament agreed to.

The importance of such work is that we can use it to go back to first principles. What is a review supposed to do? Is it fulfilling the purpose of a review, which is to ensure that if someone is eligible for the benefit they keep that benefit, and if they are not eligible for the benefit they do not get it?

What could be inferred from the material in the press is that the Government expected to get £36 million that it is no longer getting. To me, the black hole reference implied that, somehow, because the Scottish Government was not taking part in one part of the UK Government bill—although we are taking part in other parts of it—we were setting aside £36 million. I hope that we have demonstrated to the committee that that is far from the case.

What we have disagreed with the UK Government about is the approach to recovering such money. We will recover it through the types of work that David Wallace’s agency already undertakes. That can be extrapolated to the work that will go on with the additional historical debt, which will now be transferred.

I disagree with the suggestion that our benefits are unsustainable. It goes back to the point that eligibility for our benefits has been proposed by the Government and supported by the Parliament. There have been very few exceptions whereby there have been votes against or even abstentions in votes on the current eligibility.

We then get into an important discussion. The headline, which I often hear in the chamber, is that we need to decrease the amount that is spent on social security. The Government’s position is that we do not intend to take benefits away from people and reduce eligibility, so those who wish to see the spend on social security come down need to tell me where changes to eligibility will take place. In essence, eligibility is the biggest, most substantive change that we can make to affect the trajectory of spend.

Aside from that, we need to ensure that the system is as efficient and effective as possible, which we are doing through the mid-term reviews that have been mentioned. We need to consider continuous improvement. Mr Marra may be frustrated with me for not saying whether a certain aspect is a success, but it goes back to our continuous approach. I would never sit with my officials in our internal meetings and say that what we have at the moment is all that it should be. We discuss how to improve—how the system can get better—and how we interpret that going forward.

On the bedroom tax mitigation versus free school meals, I do not look at it in that way. With the bedroom tax, we are carrying out a sense check on what difference the mitigation makes. One key reason why we continue to mitigate the bedroom tax—people just assume that it was abolished; it has not been, and we mitigate its cost—is that it is one of the ways in which we attempt to prevent homelessness and assist people. In essence, the mitigation of the bedroom tax is an important aspect of our housing policy that helps people to stay in housing. The benefit is not just about social security; in essence, it is part of housing policy that we deliver through social security.

Many of the aspects that you mentioned are equally available to people who are in and out of work. Eligibility is to do with whether they are deemed to be in poverty or in receipt of certain reserved benefits, so—

No. We have covered quite a lot, and we will get back to you in writing with some of the details that the committee has asked for.

I say at the outset that our benefit expenditure is essential investment in the people of Scotland and directly results from conscious policy choices made by the Parliament in accordance with the unanimously passed Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018.

Investing in this way in Scotland’s social security safety net and targeting help to those who need it most is necessary to tackle more than a decade of Westminster austerity and continued cruel welfare reforms. The Scottish Government continues to deliver vital assistance for older people to heat their homes, to help disabled people live independent lives and to support low-income families.

Our social security system is proudly based on dignity, fairness and respect. It is fair, but it is robust, with applications assessed thoroughly so that those who are not eligible for support do not get it, but those who are eligible absolutely do. We are committed to ensuring that our finances remain on a sustainable trajectory.

This financial year, we are investing £1.2 billion more than the block grant adjustments that we are forecast to receive from the UK Government for social security, of which £649 million is to mitigate some of the worst impacts of Westminster policies—for example, the bedroom tax and the benefits cap—as well as the inadequate level of universal credit, which we established the Scottish child payment to combat. By 2029-30, our additional investment is projected to be just less than 3.5 per cent of the total Scottish Government resource budget, which is an increase of less than 1 per cent compared with the current financial year.

The importance of value for money for our benefits investment is set out in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, and is further underlined in our social security charter. It means, for example, that we have delivered £1.4 billion, paid to June 2025, to support children and families through the five family payments, including the Scottish child payment. That support is only available in Scotland. It also means more than £5.5 billion this financial year will go to support disabled people to meet the costs associated with everyday tasks such as washing, going to the toilet and getting dressed—tasks that people who are not disabled take for granted. That stands in direct contrast to proposed Westminster welfare reforms.

The UK Government’s chaotic approach to welfare continues to cause substantial and unnecessary difficulties, such as the intention to introduce a two-tier universal credit system, leaving people with disabilities or long-term health conditions with less money compared with existing recipients. I have been clear that the Scottish Government does not support and will not accept those changes, and we encourage and urge the UK Government to drop those remaining plans.

By contrast, it is estimated that our Scottish child payment, which has been described by Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Oxford as having an impact that is “stunning”, will keep 40,000 children out of relative poverty this year. It is no surprise that many leading charities have rightly called on the UK Government to follow our lead on the Scottish child payment, which could, according to the London School of Economics and Political Science, lift 700,000 children in the UK out of poverty overnight, and to follow our lead on abolishing the punitive two-child limit. Our modelling estimates that our action in that respect will result in 20,000 fewer children living in relative poverty in 2026-27.

On fraud and error, the Scottish public finance manual sets out clear expectations for managing fraud risk. It requires public bodies to promote an anti-fraud culture, maintain strong internal controls and actively minimise risk. Social Security Scotland has published a counter-fraud strategy that outlines its approach to preventing, detecting and responding to fraud. That is especially important given the nature of its work, which delivers public benefits with dignity, fairness and respect.

Protecting the integrity of those benefits is essential not only for financial sustainability but to maintain public trust in the system. The organisation’s approach is grounded in zero tolerance to fraud but is also proportionate, ensuring robust controls without creating unnecessary barriers for clients. Balancing sustainability with our overarching ethos and principles is why I could not recommend legislative consent for some of the overpayment recovery measures in the UK Government’s current bill.

As delivery expands to 19 benefits by 2026-27, the risk of fraud naturally increases. Social Security Scotland has made strong progress in building the systems and capabilities to manage that effectively. Continued investment in technology, skilled people and robust systems will be essential and what has worked well to date must now be scaled and strengthened to meet future demands.

Our social security investment is making a real difference in people’s lives. The children I have mentioned are being kept out of relative poverty. The five family payments I have mentioned will be worth around £25,000 by the time a child turns 16. That is another example of why the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and other projects predict that Scotland will be the only part of the UK with falling child poverty levels next year.

With a backdrop of austerity and a continued cost of living crisis, we know how critical support is for households. That is why the Scottish Government is protecting the vital payments that are available today. Labour and the Conservatives, along with Reform, talk about cutting welfare spend with no regard to the financial struggles that many households face. The Scottish Government will continue to deliver our vital payments with our balanced budget each year, delivered by a system that is robust but fair, and administered to provide support to all our constituents.