Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Recommendation 142
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)
Polly Jones from The Trussell Trust told us that: There are quite complicated discussions and arrangements between DWP and Scottish Government on how this is managed and how many minutes a work coach can spend talking about Scottish Choices in the second assessment interview.348 They recommend that instead: ‘It would be much more straightforward to be able to present the system [Scottish Choices] in the first place [interview]’349 and for the claimant to be able to review their position at a later point to ensure that the Scottish Choices were supporting their circumstances as best as possible.350 The Scottish Government was also concerned that uptake of Scottish Choices may be lower than expected because the DWP was reluctant for ‘Scottish Choices to be discussed right at the start of a Universal Credit journey.’351
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".