Recommendation 45

They went on to explain that the UK Government ‘do not offer maternity grant in the case of older children’113 and so the data required ‘does not necessarily exist’114 for a direct data transfer to the Scottish Government in the same process as was done for Scottish Child Payment for younger children. A reason offered by the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work for this situation arising was that he would ‘question whether officials, who probably know that this [rolling out the Scottish Child Payment to older children] is more challenging than perhaps the political people would want to hear, are empowered enough’115 to push back on timelines for policy delivery if the technical aspects are not yet in place.