Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Recommendation 69
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We recommend that the Joint Ministerial Working Group consider developing new communications materials and guidance in the form of a Scottish welfare service directory to be updated annually. This would allow claimants, organisations (including 159 Policy in Practice (WPS0010) 160 Q208 161 Q208 162 Q208 163 Q208 164 “Government delivers 13,500 Work Coaches to boost Britain’s Jobs Army”, Department for Work and Pensions press release, March 2021, accessed 27 April 2021 165 Q183 166 Q145 167 Q145 Welfare policy in Scotland 31 housing associations and Local Authorities & COSLA), as well as advocacy groups to keep up to date with changes and updates to social security in Scotland and would help implementation of a ‘no wrong door’ policy.
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".