Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 88
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)
Furthermore, once a claimant does manage to access a device suitable for navigating the Universal Credit system Scotland’s geography and rurality present further digital access issues. Nina Ballantyne of Citizens Advice Scotland highlighted that rural areas in Scotland make up ‘about 48% of the entire land mass. Only 40% has good 4G coverage, and something like one in 25 premises in Scotland cannot access a decent fixed broadband connection’.218 Polly Jones from The Trussell Trust agreed commenting that people who visit their food banks raise this as an issue and are ‘seeking more support’219 with it.
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".