Annual Review Debate — Social Development and Employment

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m pleased to stand and lead off this debate on the annual review for the Ministry of Social Development and Employment as the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee.

I’d like to thank, firstly, the clerks and officials and the select committee members for their professional and comprehensive efforts during the annual review period. I also want to thank the Minister for making herself available. The Parliament website contains our theme-based select committee reports and covers the annual reviews for all the ministries that are included, and I recommend that people go and have a look there.

I begin with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and employment. The Minister, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, appeared in select committee for a theme-based review. Minister Sepuloni spoke about the childcare assistance review, the ministry’s performance targets, seasonal work opportunities, and Mana in Mahi targets. The Minister noted the number of policies and financial assistance that can help families. She noted that payments had increased each year since 2017, with the next increase due on 1 April 2023. We also discussed the ministry’s performance targets. The Minister noted that the Government had made investments in upskilling and in trades training. These included the reintroduction of the Training Incentive Allowance for higher education.

Seasonal work opportunities were discussed. The ministry is looking to create better transitional systems to ensure that a person does not need to go back on a benefit between changing industries. The Minister reported to our committee that Mana in Mahi had exceeded its performance targets for the programme in August last year: 6,000 people have been placed in work, and 90 percent of those have not returned to benefit. The Auditor-General issued a standard audit report for the 2021-22 year and rated most of MSD’s systems and controls as good. The ministry spoke to the committee about its non-financial performance as well, and reported that they had achieved 83 percent of performance measures. We discussed the wage subsidy payments made between 2020 and 2022, and the ministry noted that only 1 percent of payments needed investigation—and of that 1 percent, 93 percent, or $810 million, had been paid back.

MSD spoke in detail about their strategic direction plan and, in particular, Te Pae Tawhiti – Our Future, which is changing the systems and procedures so that they become less complex—and, in turn, make it easier to help clients get correct support. In Budget 2020, there was an increase from $300 to $1,000 for dental treatment, as well as the range of treatments eligible for grants. MSD reported that this has made a substantial difference to their clients, and positive feedback has been consistent. For the 2021 year, we noted that MSD has exceeded its target for Flexi-wage and has spent less than half of the funds appropriated. MSD advised that as the New Zealand economy recovered faster than expected, fewer people needed benefits and more people entered the market; young people in particular entered the workforce in high numbers. MSD also mentioned that in the last two years, 113,000 people had left a benefit scheme and begun working.

The committee questioned the ministry about children with parents on benefit. The ministry noted that numbers in this area had decreased slightly. The Auditor-General downgraded MSD’s management control environment to “needs improvement”. This was due to MSD’s calculation regarding accommodation supplement for couples where one person lived in a residential care facility; this has now been rectified by legislation in November 2022. We also reviewed the newly formed Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the Ministry of Pacific Peoples, the Ministry for Women, and the Social Wellbeing Agency, and our theme-based review contained in this report. There is much to discuss, but time is short—therefore, I recommend that the annual review for 2021 be accepted.

Thank you, Mr Chair. For those listening, this is the debate on the annual review for the year 2021-22, and I want to bring two matters to the attention of the committee in questioning the Minister about the performance of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).

The first was about unappropriated expenditure, and the member before me touched on this very briefly. But this is unlawful expenditure that occurred in 2019. It was not brought to the attention of Treasury, the Minister, the Minister of Finance, or the department’s own auditor until August 2021. I just want to put that on record and I want to ask the Minister why it is that she is confident that the performance measures in the financial accountability for MSD is robust when not only was there illegal expenditure but it was known about by MSD in 2019 and not brought to the attention of the appropriate person—herself, as Minister—let alone others until August 2022, and the Auditor-General was deeply concerned about the fact that this had not been raised to attention. So my first question is about unappropriated expenditure, unlawful expenditure, and whether the Minister is confident that this behaviour will never happen again.

I believe that the select committee has traversed this issue quite thoroughly, but I’m more than happy to speak to it. The ministry became aware of the issue that some payments of the accommodation supplement to some clients had been outside the provisions of the Social Security Act in 2019. They then set about trying to resolve the issue, looking at aligning legislation to current practice via a suitable legislative vehicle.

The issue was that then we got hit with COVID, and I think that everyone in this House—and I also—thinks the general public would appreciate that at that time much of MSD’s resource was then re-diverted to the COVID response, including the wage subsidy. And so there were, I think, reasonable causes for a delay with regards to addressing this particular issue. I was informed about the potential appropriation issue in April 2022 and received further advice in August 2022 on a proposed approach to resolve the issue, which led to the introduction and passing of the Social Security (Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill in November 2022.

I do have confidence in the Ministry of Social Development. If it wasn’t for the pandemic and what they were required to do during what was a quite a difficult time for New Zealand and a time when the expectations on MSD were high, I am confident they would have got on to it earlier. But it was something that was parked whilst they responded to the immediate needs. They have got on to it and it has now been resolved.

I don’t think that that answer was actually addressed satisfactorily. When we talk about illegal expenditure and whether or not the department told the Minister in a timely manner, and, of course—so if the Minister doesn’t think that’s a significant issue, we’ll leave it there.

The other area is the five of the eight outcome indicators, as agreed by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), that are trending downwards, and so I’m interested in the Minister’s response in terms of the performance for MSD, particularly with a blowout in benefit dependency. One is the average time beneficiaries spend on welfare, and that has gone out from 10.7 years to 12.8. Again, in the hearings, the Minister didn’t seem to be concerned about that. I’d like the Minister to explain to the committee what actions have been taken to reduce New Zealanders’ time on benefit, and what is being done that actually starts turning around the benefit dependency crisis, or does she not think it’s an issue?

We currently have about 11 percent of our working-age population that are on benefit. We had Treasury forecasting that, due to the pandemic, we would reach almost 490,000 people on benefit. We never reached that number, because of the investment that we put into employment programmes for New Zealanders, particularly over the course of the pandemic period. That included the $18 billion invested into wage subsidy to make sure that we saved jobs.

The main area that we need to look at with regards to addressing long-term welfare dependency is how much we support people so that they don’t need to come on benefit and they get the employment support that they need right at the beginning of benefit. We know that the evidence shows us that it is easier to support someone into employment when they’ve just come on benefit. We moved quickly with our rapid response programme, when COVID hit, to be able to support those who came on benefit to take up work straight away. We’ve also invested heavily into upskilling and training programmes, and we’ve seen huge success there: over 5,000 people in Mana in Mahi; over 50,000, I believe, in Apprenticeship Boost; we’ve seen around 25,000 in Flexi-wage; and the list goes on with regards to the employment programmes that are in place.

We’ve also reinstated the Training Incentive Allowance, and we’ve seen just under 5,000 mostly sole parents take up that opportunity. That means for that particular group, they are still on benefit, but they are being supported to get into meaningful study that will support their future employment prospects.

It is about working with those that are on benefit to be able to equip them, support them to get the pre-employment support they need and the upskilling and training that they need to be able to go on the jobs that are available. I actually think it’s very clear that this Government has been focused on that and made the investments that are necessary in this space. So I’m very confident that we have made investments in upskilling and training and employment.

Alongside the things that I’ve mentioned, I also do want to note that, when we took office, there wasn’t actually ring-fenced money or support for employment for people that were on benefit. Year on year, we have increased the number of front-line staff who are providing work-focused case management to clients. I’m really proud of that. It was needed, and so, clearly we are focused on upskilling, training, and employment.

Thank you, Mr Chair. So just to traverse through a few issues that affect our communities, within the annual review, I wanted to point to the paper released by Project Gender and Ngāti Kahungunu around Mako Mama - Mangopare, take time to swim, which details some of the challenges that our single parents experience. For the purposes of the period we’re reviewing, I think one of the things that they raised that is salient to what I’m about to ask is the challenges that sole parents face within the benefit system, particularly how our relationship rules impact sole parents. One of the key recommendations in this paper was to overhaul those rules. So I wanted to get an understanding of whether the Minister is aware of the number of sole parents who may have lost their benefit entitlements because they were deemed to be in a relationship in the nature of marriage—whether the Minister is comfortable with the current relationships settings, and, if not, what work is under way to change those or review those in the processes that we review.

I also wanted to touch on issues around benefit sanctions. I know that we have traversed this topic many, many times. I know that she’s been on the record as not supporting things like the warrant or a sanction, but I guess I wanted to get a sense about whether she agrees with advice that she has previously received around the benefits of the removal of the sanction, which included freeing up administrative resources for the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), the fact that clients can continue to receive assistance from MSD, despite having a warrant to arrest and therefore—a key point—meet their basic needs, and some reflections on some of the issues that were raised regarding the removal of the sanction; for example, public perception risk. If the obligation and sanction were removed completely, MSD would continue paying benefits to those with unresolved warrants to arrest—whether she thinks that the fact that public perception is one of the key risks identified is good enough to continue having that policy and whether, during the period that we reviewed, people could have been left without the ability to meet their basic needs as a result of that.

I guess why I’m asking this is that we know that when people are left without enough kai on the table to feed their families, that actually pushes them into criminalisation. We’ve seen figures of how, actually, the number of people who are a risk to public safety is actually tiny—like, ridiculously tiny. And so the argument that this is actually protecting members of the public or serving actually some greater purpose when it comes to public safety doesn’t seem to stand. So I wanted to get her reflections on the sanctions that were applied to people having a warrant to arrest during the period that we are overseeing.

Finally, I wanted to get the Minister’s comments on the fitness for purpose of the amounts that are provided by hardship grants and, therefore, the civil defence payments. We’ve obviously seen recent severe weather events—and, actually, we may be seeing some in the coming days—and I wanted to get an understanding of the Minister’s view of whether those have kept up with actually the cost of living and whether, if they haven’t, that’s contributing to people ending up going to loan companies to seek support and getting into more debt, or the impact that it is having, therefore, on, for example, the Government’s goals of reducing child poverty.

The member covered a lot of different areas in that particular ask of me, so I am going to try and address all of them; apologies if I miss something. Firstly, the member asked about sole parents in relationships and whether or not I have the figures on who has lost their benefit because they are in a relationship. I do not have those figures.

The member asked whether or not I was looking at or considering any changes to eligibility based on relationship status for those accessing benefits. Not at this time. However, I was very clear in the welfare overhaul paper that went to Cabinet that we will be looking at that in the one- to three-year work programme and exploring that particular issue.

The member asked about sanctions. I do want to note that there has been a 78 percent drop in the number of sanctions applied to a household with dependent children since March 2018 and that we prioritised the removal of two sanctions that really did have the most detrimental impact on children. That was the repeal of section 192 and also the subsequent child policy. There is more work to come in the sanctions space.

I think we need to continue to look at sanctions. As Minister, I’ve never said that we would get rid of all work obligations or potential sanctions that are in place, but I’m certainly keen to keep looking at these and looking at where we could make changes. I have said to the member and to the House in the past that we do need to prioritise our work programme, because our public sector agencies only have so much capacity. And so it is one of those things that has been pushed out in favour of other work streams, but it is something that is still on the cards to look at in the future.

Then, also, the member asked about support to those that were impacted by the weather events. With specific reference to the civil defence payment, I think the numbers are about $100 million went to about 64,000 people, from memory. And if I’ve got that wrong, then I will correct that. It’s $64 million—sorry, I got the numbers around the wrong way—I think, to 100,000 people; thank you very much. There were some people that needed to apply for a civil defence payment to support them more than once. That was possible depending on their circumstances. So, obviously, it’s been another area that MSD has been very much focused on. They’ve been working effectively alongside our NGOs and our social service sector. We’ve been providing support to the social service sector as well, because they are on the ground, often supporting whānau, and so there has been the investment that we put into supporting them. I think it was around $14 million that was committed in that space. Much, if not all, of that has been spent to support them with their efforts for whānau and communities during this difficult time.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to come back to these impact indicators and look at some of the other data in the year in review. And while I accept the Minister’s comment that the number of beneficiaries or those unemployed after COVID weren’t as great as predicted, they’re still incredibly high: 50,000 more on the job seeker benefit than when they took office, 14,000 more sole parents. The average future year on benefit has gone up to 12.8 years. Under her watch, one child in every five is being raised in a benefit-dependant home. And we know the life outcomes for children in benefit-dependant homes are worse.

So my question to the Minister is specifically this: with the Flexi-wage programmes—which was Labour’s answer to unemployment in the 2020 election—why is it that only 25,000 places have been secured instead of the 40,000 promised, when there are 170,000 on the job seeker benefit and businesses everywhere are closing and working restricted hours because they can’t find enough staff to work?

When we first set out with the expansion of Flexi-wage, we set the numbers according to what the forecasts were. And so the anticipated take-up was based on the number of people we were expecting or had been forecast to come on to benefits. We never reached those heights, thank goodness, but, still, 25,000 is significant, given the numbers that were accessing Flexi-wage before we had put a deliberate investment into Flexi-wage. The member also has to keep in mind that, ultimately, employers choose who they employ. And there are a number of people that come on benefit that don’t necessarily have the skills or experience to take up every available job that is there, nor are they chosen by the employer to take up the jobs that may be there. So there’s certainly the desire, I think, overwhelmingly, for New Zealanders who are on jobseeker support to be work-ready, to be able to step into employment, but they’re not always chosen for the jobs. And not every employer has reached out to take up the Flexi-wage as an opportunity to actually employ someone. The Ministry of Social Development has worked hard to promote the employment products that are available so that we can connect up the New Zealanders who are available to work with the employment opportunities that are there. I think our industry partners and the people that we are working with across the motu would say that that relationship is really strong, actually, but they don’t always have the right skills or experience to be able to take up the jobs. And at the end of the day, the employer chooses the people they want to work for them.

My question is also around improving employment outcomes. And just looking at the expenditure that’s gone on in that area, it’s actually risen around 108 percent since 2018, from the $273 million we were spending, to $569 million on improving employment outcomes. We seem to have more people who are on job seeker now than when the Government took office. I’m just wondering: what programmes are you confident have made a real difference, and are there programmes that haven’t that you’re looking to relook at? And where are the benefits from this huge amount of expenditure?

I think, just going back to something like I said earlier, part of the reason why we never experienced the level of unemployment or the numbers of people on benefit that had been forecast by Treasury was because of the immense effort that we have been putting in at the front line and the investment that our Government has made into upskilling and training and employment. So I think it was money well spent and I’m certainly not going to apologise for making that investment. It was important.

If we look at things like Mana in Mahi and, I believe, Flexi-wage as well, really what we’ve seen is something like 89 to 90 percent of those that participate in those programmes complete, or, even if they do leave the opportunity that’s in front of them, don’t come back to benefit. So they are having success and they are being effective. The Ministry of Social Development has also moved to be much more transparent around the outcomes and effectiveness of employment programmes. I think we’ve shared it with the committee; I do believe we also put that online to make that publicly available. So there is a level of transparency there around our employment upskilling and training investment that was never there before, too. I’m constantly monitoring to make sure that the investment that we’re making and the effort that we’re undertaking is constructive and effective for the New Zealanders that need it. And it’s important that we do keep our eye on that and continue to remain focused.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to run past some of the answers that the Minister gave me with further questions. Look, I appreciate that she gave me a rundown of how much was spent on civil defence payments, but my question was about whether the current amounts were fit for purpose, considering they hadn’t been reviewed or updated for basically 20 years. And so while, you know, I get that people are accessing it anyway and in large amounts, because of course after a natural disaster people need support, I’m interested in knowing whether she thinks that the amount that people can access for hardship assistance and therefore civil defence payment continues being fit for purpose.

Secondly, on warrants to arrest, I hear the Minister’s comments that there are priorities and competing priorities, but one of the key advantages of removing the sanction that was identified by MSD was to free up administrative resources for MSD. Which means that by getting rid of the sanction that the Minister doesn’t agree with, the sector doesn’t agree with—and MSD has identified one of the advantages, whether that could actually create resources to focus on other things like providing hardship assistance and supporting people into meaningful employment. And I’m interested in the Minister’s views of whether it’s worth keeping a benefit sanction that all it seems to do is not meet the goals that it’s intended to do, and so that takes staff time.

Finally, I guess I’m interested in whether MSD has done any work in terms of tracking the kind of wages that people earn after they go into employment from a benefit, and whether it is the Minister’s aspiration that people are able to access jobs that pay, for example, a living wage if they’re transitioning from a benefit into employment.

OK, and, again, I’ll try and respond to all of the questions in that particular comment and that bit of feedback that was given.

With the civil defence payment, I have to remind the committee that many were able to access it more than once. Although there was a ceiling that they could access at one time, if they still needed more, they could go back and get that. Civil defence payments are aligned in some way to our special needs grants. The member knows that we’ll be looking to review those. So if those do shift, then so would civil defence payments, but you wouldn’t look to just shift civil defence payments without looking at the special needs grants and hardship assistance as well. So that has to be part of that work programme. In saying that, if you shifted the others, then that would shift because of the alignment that exists between them.

The member asked again about the warrant to arrest sanction. As I said in the House, and I know it may not be the answer that the member wants to hear, we do have to prioritise our work programme. So it is one those issues—other sanctions and reviewing them—that has been parked for now; that doesn’t mean that later on down the track it couldn’t or wouldn’t be picked up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to come back to two figures that I talked about earlier and just simply ask the Minister—and I’d like a straight question—is the Minister concerned that there are still 50,000 more on the job seeker benefit than five years ago when there are employers everywhere desperate for staff?

The second is: knowing that the life outcomes for children raised in benefit-dependent homes are worse than for other children in health, education, incomes, and their contact with the justice system, is she concerned that there is one in five children being raised in a benefit-dependent home, and how much will that number increase, given that the number of sole parents is also blowing out?

I’m very much focused on the support and trajectory in life of the children that have parents that are on low incomes or are in the benefit system. It’s one of the reasons why, as a Government, we’ve reinstated the Training Incentive Allowance, which had been badly slashed by the previous Government. We know that a mother’s level of education will be a huge dictator with respect to what the child will be able go on and achieve, and so we’re supportive of sole parents who may be on benefit getting access to upskilling and training—including university degrees—and we have reinstated the funding for that purpose. What we need to be mindful of is two things: those that are in the welfare system need adequate income, and we’ve shifted to make sure that we lifted benefits. We’ve got rid of some of the most unfair sanctions that actually were harmful to children that had been allowed to ride for years, and we’ve also done things like we’re now moving to ensure child support is passed on for sole parents. I think that that demonstrates this Government’s commitment to supporting sole parents and their children, and to supporting those sole parents to realise their potential to the benefit of their children.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to go back to the issue of case management. Why is it that with an increase of 1,500 case managers, fewer people are getting case management support?

We have very busy work programmes at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). Actually, under the previous Government, they didn’t ring-fence any of the work-focused case management, and what we saw—and I think the member has seen the graph—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Point of order, Madam Chairperson. I’ve asked a very specific question about the annual review in the year in question, and I would ask that the Minister address it.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Perhaps if the member would be patient, the Minister is going to answer it. She still has a bit of time.

So, yes, what I was most shocked by was a graph that I saw. I think that the Welfare Expert Advisory Group had focused on and had included in their report where there had been a steady decline of work-focused support for MSD clients under the previous Government because of increasing income support needs, but a lack of investment in work focus.

When we came into Government, we committed to putting more of a focus on work-focused case management. We can now measure it more effectively. It is ring-fenced. Year on year since we’ve been in, it’s gone up, and when we compare it to 2017, actually, it says that the information for work-focused case managers is not available because of the fact that they didn’t have the ring-fenced support in place.

Also, where the previous Government were providing what they recorded as work focus, often it was group seminars where someone was just showing up and ticking the box, and, therefore, it wasn’t effective in supporting them into employment anyway. So I think we need to actually have some context to the question and assertions that that member is making.

We’ve talked also about sole parents. I’d like to know, of the case managers, how many are focused on sole parents and supporting them into work?

I might need to go through my notes a little bit for that exact number. So I’ll take another question, if that’s OK, Madam Chair.

My question is around social services that are provided by NGOs and the private sector. Between 2021 and 2020, we’ve spent around $461 million on community support services, and I’m just wondering if there’s any services in particular that are finding that it’s no longer sustainable to provide those services, because they’re struggling after COVID and with the cost of living. A lot of these services are actually providing quite important products to our communities, whether it be to our elderly or whether it be community pantries and things like that. Is the Minister aware of any particular concerns within the NGO and private sector where it’s no longer sustainable, and are any conversations being had there to help in that area?

When we did take over, many of the NGOs in the social sector that are funded by the Ministry of Social Development had not experienced any increases in funding over that nine-year period. So when we came in, we moved quickly, particularly to make investments into the family violence, sexual violence space; also services like our budgeting services and some of our disability services and a range of other services as well. What we also saw is that there are inconsistencies across the way in which we commission social services for the actual contracts and services. And so we undertook a piece of work, which is the social sector commissioning work; so that started in 2018. There were some things that we could move to do quickly, like provide certainty of contracts so they could get on and do the work. Where some of them were getting one-year contracts and then having that renewed every year and not having the certainty, we moved where we could. And so now there are more social services who have three years or longer with regards to the services that they provide.

As I said, we have also lifted the amount of funding that many of our social services are getting, but it is about that relational approach between the Ministry of Social Development and all other social sector agencies—Government agencies—that are working with our NGO sector. And so we continue to work on that through our social sector commissioning action plan. I know that it was welcomed by our social sector and there’s lots to do through that action plan that we are committed to doing.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. My question to the Minister relates to how New Zealanders in the disability sector can have faith in the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). And the reason I ask that is because, if you look at the Enabling Good Lives website, it contains links to the MSD website. And an example of that is the link to “next steps in disability system transformation and accessibility”. So, Minister, even though Enabling Good Lives is a commitment that has been made in terms of supporting the content of that—and the Disability Action Plan 2019-2023 has a specific commitment in there that MSD will make their website and the information available and accessible for people in the disability community. So when you go into that website, Minister, you open it up and it’s a MSD website and it’s completely normal to every other website that you see. The font is really small and the only support that is given to disability users is that it has a table of keys that shows you how to operate a keyboard to change the display. So that’s truly not accessible to disabilities. And because it relies on small font and a small font in a table, that means that the blind and low-vision community is literally in the dark when it comes to accessing that website and the information behind it.

Now, the Disability Action Plan 2019-2023 was clear that MSD would accelerate accessibility, including the role of legislation, and it would make public information accessible. I challenge the Minister to defend the work that has been done so far. This is 2023—the end of that four-year period—and it’s still not completely accessible. There is no text-to-voice mechanism on there. So some Government websites do have accessible documents, but the barrier is that those documents are within a website that is not accessible, so, in effect, they are not accessible to many in the disability sector. So, Minister, my question to you is: what are the outcomes and the actions that MSD plans to initiate to meet its obligations under the Disability Action Plan 2019-2023?

Thank you for that. I haven’t looked at the website for quite some time, so I’ll be going away and asking some questions about the work that has been done on the accessibility of the website, but I can’t respond to that right now given that I haven’t actually got any information in front of me on that, but I can ask those questions.

We have put a higher amount of investment into supporting disabled people to be able to take up employment. One thing that is overlooked is that often when we talk about the employment statistics, the focus is on ethnicity. It is also on the age of those that might be unemployed, and what is overlooked is actually the people who have the highest rate of unemployment and are more likely to come on to benefit are people with health conditions and disabilities. So there is a level of focus now on employment for disabled people that was never there before. We also have the action plan for work around disabled people, so there are a number of actions there.

The Minister for Disability Issues is taking the lead on the action plan and also takes the lead on the accessibility work and Whaikaha and also the work around Enabling Good Lives. All of that is under way, but those are not small programmes of work and they need to be done in conjunction with, alongside, and in consultation with disabled people. So they are things that you can’t necessarily rush, and it’s important that we are in tune and working with disabled people to get it right. And where particular ministries, like mine, are not, then I welcome the feedback because there will always be room for improvement with regards to responding to the needs of disabled people, because for too long it has been overlooked.

I am proud of the fact that we now have a Ministry of Disabled People—Whaikaha. That, again, was long overdue and much needed. New Zealand is seen as world-leading in this space, and we need to continue to support that ministry to be able to undertake the very important work that they are leading, but they are not alone in leading it, because it is important they are working in conjunction with every other Government ministry, because every disabled person is impacted by the work that every other Government ministry undertakes.

Supplementary to that, Minister. The Disability Action Plan that specifically related to MSD over the last four years specifically said it would make public information accessible. After four years, do you think that there should have been more progress made to date? And will the Minister give a commitment that it will meet its obligations under the Disability Action Plan 2019-2023?

We’re certainly committed to doing that. And I’ll go away and look at where we are at with that particular work stream.

Just going back to the question earlier from the Hon Louise Upston about sole parents and access to case management: they are a priority cohort, and so of the sole parents getting employment case management, there’s just under 14,500. We do need to keep in mind that some sole parents are not in a position to be able to work, because of their care duties and the obligations that they have to their children. We also do need to keep in mind that there is a number of sole parents who are on main benefit, working part time but still able to get their benefit, and working part time because it is practical and it is what they are able to do while still undertaking the care duties that they have for their children.

Before I call Hon Louise Upston, we have half a minute left for this part of the debate.

So just on that, the report that was out today indicated significant numbers of sole parents who do want to be in work. So I’m interested in what practical programmes has the Minister seen greater success in in terms of supporting sole parents into work.

Certainly the Training Incentive Allowance—which, unfortunatel,y was cut by the previous Government—which we have reinstated. Great success—it means that they actually have the ability to be able to get degree-level training, which will mean that their longer-term prospects in terms of earning and getting into meaningful and sustainable employment are increased, and the opportunities for their children subsequently are too.

Members, our time with the Minister for Social Development and Employment has now ended.

I move, That the committee report progress on the bill.

Motion agreed to.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Appropriation (2021/22 Confirmation and Validation) Bill and reports progress. I move, That the report be adopted.

The question is that that report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.