Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Conclusion 135
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)
Throughout the inquiry we heard evidence that there were a number of barriers that were preventing claimants from accessing the options provided by Scottish Choices: • Lack of awareness of the Choices. • The wait for Scottish Choices to be available. • Hampering of uptake due to initial administrative errors. 325 Scottish Government, Universal Credit: Scottish Choices, 2019 326 Citizens Advice Scotland (WPS0014) 327 Q56 328 Q85 329 Engender (WPS0016) 330 Data from Stat-Xplore on Department for Work and Pensions, Statistics at DWP Welfare policy in Scotland 49 • Issues related to when and how the Choices are discussed with claimants. We discuss the evidence we received on each in turn. Lack of awareness of Choices
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".