Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 101
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)
Many of the witnesses we heard from recommended to the UK Government that the £20 a week uplift be made permanent for Universal Credit claimants. Many stakeholders wanted to take this further as well and said the increase should also be extended to legacy benefit claimants (people who claim benefits such as Job Seekers Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance and Housing Benefit). Organisations such as The Joseph Rowntree 240 Q31 241 Q31 242 Scottish Affairs Committee, Welfare Policy in Scotland survey, March 2021 243 Joseph Rowntree Foundation (WPS0019) 244 HM Treasury, The Chancellor Rishi Sunak provides an updated statement on coronavirus, 20 March 2020 245 Q64 246 Q83 247 Citizens Advice Scotland (WPS0014) 248 Q109 249 The benefit freeze here refers to the period between April 2016 and April 2020 when most working age benefits and tax credit elements were kept at the same cash amount as in 2015/16 via the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016.For more information on this see: Benefits uprating 2019, House of Commons Library, March 2019 250 Q24 40 Welfare policy in Scotland Foundation,251 One Parent Families Scotland,252 Southside Housing Association253 and the Trussell Trust254 explicitly told us in their oral evidence that they wanted to see the £20 uplift extended to legacy benefit recipients.
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".