Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 58
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)
Witnesses consistently highlighted the need to reduce complexity, increase awareness, and improve access to the available benefits and support systems. Nina Ballantyne of Citizens Advice Scotland highlighted that whilst the social security landscape in Scotland may be complicated by the number of agencies that support is available from, this does not mean that it must be a complicated process for a claimant. She argued that a system can be ‘complicated and complex without the user necessarily having to be cognisant and fully up [to date] on all that.’127 To explain the point they drew comparisons with how ‘you can 124 Q146 125 The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (WPS0019) 126 Q102 127 Q102 Welfare policy in Scotland 27 switch your light on or switch your heating on, and you do not need to know that there is a retail energy supplier, a DNO [Distribution Network Operator], a TSO [Transmission System Operator] in the system and everything else coming through the wires.’128
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".