Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 81
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 realise the huge amount of work done by DWP employees during the difficult time since the covid-19 pandemic started and pay tribute to their hard work. We understand that many DWP employees were ‘redeployed at very short notice’200 to the Universal Credit processing teams to help with the number of new claims that were being made through the on-line application process for Universal Credit. 76,000 claims were made for Universal Credit in Scotland in April 2020 alone.201 In Scotland the number of people claiming Universal Credit has doubled with 490,000 people now receiving Universal Credit (as of March 2021) as compared to 260,000 people receiving the benefit back in February 2020.202 The Minister for Welfare Delivery, Will Quince MP, highlighted in his evidence how employees at DWP had ‘strained every sinew’203 over the past year to help with claims processing and that this effort by the Department had been ‘unprecedented’.204
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".