Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Recommendation 108
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)
Neil Cowan from The Poverty Alliance told us that with current work allowance arrangements have led to employment ‘becoming less, rather than more, reliable as a route out of poverty.’279 Nina Ballantyne of Citizens Advice Scotland called for the work allowance to be increased so that people can take on work ‘without being terrified it is going to affect their allowance straightaway’.280 They went on to highlight that this would allow for Universal Credit to ‘be part of the economic recovery’.281 Extending the work allowance to all workers was also noted by Citizen’s Advice Scotland in their written evidence as an important way for all households to recover from the covid-19 income crisis: Particularly in the current uncertain economic climate, the ability to take on what could be precarious work, safe in the knowledge that a person’s UC entitlement will be unaffected until they earn over the Work Allowance threshold would help bring more financial certainty to many people.282
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".