Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 41
Second Report - Welfare policy in Scotland
Published 23 Jun 2021
Addressed to Scotland Office
Scottish Affairs Committee Welfare policy in Scotland All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Andrew Latto, Deputy Director, Devolution, Pensioner Benefits and Carer’s Allowance Policy Group at the DWP told us told us that there are existing processes in place through which the DWP process data requests based on whether it exists, whether they are legally entitled to share it, and if it exists, whether they can operationally share it. 107 He told us that: the basic principle that our chief data officer operates under is that we are prepared to share the minimum viable dataset we hold on citizens who make claims. In the case of the Scottish Government, once the Scottish Government have verified the identity of the person that they are dealing with, then we are content to share the data, providing it is clearly relevant to the new benefit that is being delivered to them.108 100 Q157 101 Q156 102 Q156 103 Q149 104 Q156 105 Scottish Government, Carer’s Allowance Supplement, Accessed 7 May 2021 106 Department for Work and Pensions (WPS0021) 107 Q186 108 Q187 Welfare policy in Scotland 23
From: Scottish Affairs Committee, Second Report - Welfare policy in Scotland (HC 55), 23 June 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 19 November 2021 (deadline 23 August 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The UK Government "notes the Committee's recommendations" and responds to each in turn, accepting little of the report's welfare-policy proposals and referring several to the Scottish Government.
- On the £20 uplift and legacy benefits, it states "There was never any plan to extend the uplift to legacy benefits."
- On work allowances, it states it "has no plans to extend the work allowance to single adults".
- On Help to Claim funding, it "considers the existing resource to be sufficient", and says DWP agreed to fund Citizens Advice Scotland for another year, "up to 31 March 2022".
- On data sharing and Recommendations 2, 7 and 8, it says each data request "must be examined" by DWP as Data Controller, and treats several recommendations as "for the Scottish Government".