Minimum Income Guarantee Steering Group: June 2022 minutes and meeting papers

Minimum Income Guarantee Expert Group: workstream schedule planning for Summer 2022 through to the end of the interim report

Current position

The first five workstreams have been working together since February. In that time progress has been made across many areas, including commissioning research, planning equalities workshops and making some initial high level decisions on the social security aspects of MIG design.

Each workstream held an introductory meeting in February, and have each held three meetings between February and May to progress their work.

A new workstream on piloting and evaluation will be introduced over the summer of 2022. In addition, the drafting group will begin work over this period.

Purpose of next workstream meetings

Now that research is underway, as findings become available, the next rounds of workstream meetings will be focused on how these findings are interpreted, how they shape workstreams’ recommendations and how they feed into the interim report. The initial round of research findings may enable workstreams to identify evidence gaps and the need for further commissioning.

Timetabling of next workstream meetings - general

The next round of workstreams will take place over an extended period due to the holiday period and to ensure that the secretariat and Scottish Government analysts can progress any requests.

A proposal for the timing of workstream meetings for the remainder of 2022 is on the following page. We recognise that this is an ambitious programme, and the feasibility of the timetable is open to discussion. We are happy to take into account the views, availability and capacity of all workstream co-leads and adjust accordingly.

The secretariat proposes the following timetable for the next workstream meetings:

• first round of workstream meetings: 21 June to 1 August
• second round of workstream meetings: 16 August to 26 September
• third round of workstream meetings: 11 October to 21 October

Some Expert Group members will be involved in the drafting group and new piloting and evaluation workstream which we recognise may impact on their capacity to commit time to current workstreams.

Workstreams have no quota of numbers of meetings to fulfil, and co-leads may wish to consider whether their evidence gathering and contributions to the interim report can be met in other ways, such as by correspondence or collaborative working.

Under the current proposal, a further round of workstream meetings is scheduled to start in the middle of August. This round would be the last meetings before the first draft of the interim report is due. There may be some outstanding research or commissioning at this stage and this round could be used to plan and identify how the remaining outstanding items can be progressed to ensure inclusion in the interim report.

The final round of workstream meetings for 2022 is scheduled to take place between 11 October and 21 November. This would be the final opportunity for workstream contributions and refinement of the interim report, and by this stage no major, unexpected changes are anticipated.

Timetabling of next workstream meetings – considerations for specific workstreams

The equalities workstream has a commission outstanding and will also be running workshops for the wider Expert Group. The equalities workstream will need to meet to discuss the outcome of their research. They will not need follow up meetings for each of the workshops. The secretariat proposes that the next meeting of this workstream take place in mid to late July, subject to co-leads’ availability.

The work, social security and level workstreams have several outstanding commissions. The secretariat propose that the next meeting of these workstreams takes place when the research is returned but no later than the end of July.

The public opinion workstream has asked to meet again before the end of June. Given their key input into the interim report this is a sensible approach. The secretariat will aim to facilitate this meeting within the given timescales.

The piloting and evaluation workstream will commence later in June. As this is the first meeting of this workstream the Expert Group chair will attend. The IPPO event of 1 June is relevant to this workstream, so holding the introductory meeting within a few weeks of this event would be desirable.

The drafting group will also commence within the next few weeks. Given the tight timescales to the interim report and the involvement of the Expert Group chair, we propose to hold this meeting by mid-July at the latest.