SCOTTISH MPs have criticised Holyrood ministers for the “highly regrettable” delays in the rollout of devolved benefits.
The Scottish Affairs Committee has expressed “disappointment” in the Scottish Government’s decision to delay plans to assume full control of disability benefits, including pushing back the proposed replacement of personal independence from this year to 2024.
The report, published today, calls this “highly regrettable”, adding: “Although this delay can be blamed in part on Covid-19, the largest delays were announced in 2019 – a delay from 2021 to 2024.
“The committee regrets that the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland have been unable to become fully operational within the originally proposed timeline.”
Despite this, the cross-party committee, chaired by the SNP’s Pete Wishart, says the devolution of welfare powers is “working well” on the whole and has called on the UK Government to remove barriers it says are hampering work at Holyrood.
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It is urging the UK Government to find a solution to providing Social Security Scotland with data to enable Scottish Child Payments to be distributed to families for six-to-16-year olds. Without this data, the committee says, the Scottish Government “would be unable to deliver its commitment to extend the child benefit to this age group”.
It also says Westminster should make the temporary £20 Universal Credit uplift permanent after the pandemic, while warning that plans to expand the Scottish Child Payment could be in jeopardy if problems identifying eligible families are not solved. Additionally, many claimants were said to be unaware of what benefits they are entitled to from both the Scottish and UK Governments and a “one-stop shop” of information materials is recommended. The MPs further seek the raising of the amount of money claimants can earn from employment “to allow them to work their way out of poverty”.
Wishart said: “We heard was that the devolution of benefits is working well, and we commend the Scottish and UK governments working together to make this a success.
“However, we also heard that it is incredibly complex to unpick what claimants can access under both systems. Communications must be improved, and staff appropriately trained to offer consistent advice to claimants in their time of greatest need.”
He added: “The support provided by benefits such as Universal Credit is simply not enough for families to feed themselves, and we urge the UK Government to review making the £20 weekly uplift permanent.
“Based on what witnesses told our committee, it is incomprehensible that sanctioning for failure to adhere to a claimant commitment during such a challenging year for people must stop immediately for at least the remainder of 2021.”
John Dickie of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland said MPs are “absolutely right” to highlight the need to continue the £20 Universal Credit uplift. He added: “They are also absolutely right to highlight that, between the Scottish and UK Government, data must be shared and mechanisms identified so that the new Scottish Child Payment is rolled out to all eligible under 16s by the end of 2022 as promised. The payment is already proving a hugely welcome source of support to families with children under six. With a quarter of Scotland children still living in poverty rolling out the new payment is crucial to progress against our legally binding child poverty targets.”
The Scottish Government said: “It is important to note that this is not a ‘lift and shift’ of a service – we are building a brand new public service from scratch including a new agency. In the three years since we had the legislative powers to take forward social security benefits, we have introduced ten new benefits, including seven brand new benefits.
“The work is complex and our delivery timelines are as ambitious as possible while making sure that we do this in a responsible way and protect people who are reliant on payments. We are ambitious for our programme and look forward to now introducing the most complex of the devolved benefits, which are disability benefits.”
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