Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 48
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)
We heard that some existing processes were in place for sharing data such as in the instance of suspected cases of domestic or financial abuse. Margarita Morrison, Area Director, Work and Health Services Scotland at the DWP stated that the Department ‘use data mining to make sure we pick up any key words of concern’.122 The DWP then use this information to ‘work with all our partners across Scotland, including local authorities, police and social work departments’123 to ensure that the DWP are offering as much tailored support to individuals as possible. This suggests that in particular instances, it is possible to develop collaborative process to successfully identify and share client data to improve services.
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".