Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 June 2020
I, too, thank all those who gave evidence to the committee and helped us in our deliberations. It does not seem so long ago that we passed the historic legislation to set up our new Scottish social security system, which—in stark contrast to the system that it has partly replaced—explicitly recognises the role that it can play in fostering the dignity and respect of everyone who needs help with their income.
I welcome the fact that, in the past two years, we have paid the best start grant and provided the best start foods card to almost 100,000 Scots families, and that we have done so without capping the number of children that those schemes can support. Having stood on a manifesto pledge to introduce better financial support for young carers, I am particularly proud that almost 1,200 of them are now receiving the young carer grant.
I note that one of the founding principles of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 was that the Scottish Government should
“continuously improve the Scottish social security system”,
and the bill before us today seeks to do that.
During the passage of the 2018 act, we dealt with the particularly difficult issue of terminal illness. Some of the devolved benefits will often be paid to those who are terminally ill. For such people, every day is even more precious, so we should do everything possible to ensure that they get access to the social security help that they need as soon as possible. That being so, I very much welcome the proposal to allow a greater array of health professionals, including nurses, at least, to certify terminal illness for the purposes of applying for devolved social security payments. As Hospice UK noted in its response to the committee’s consultation on the bill, nurses
“are often the ones who know their patients best”,
so allowing them to confirm that someone has a terminal illness will allow that person to access the special rules more easily.
As we have heard, the bill extends the system of appointees from people without capacity to people with capacity and to children. In some cases, it will clearly be appropriate for someone to apply for a social security payment and have it paid to them on someone else’s behalf. However, I note the concerns that were expressed to the committee about safeguarding in respect of the process. In the past, the system of appointees that operates at the UK level has proven to be flawed. In 2018, a first-tier tribunal judge criticised the DWP for making Birmingham City Council an appointee of an attendance allowance recipient because the application had several very serious errors and omissions that had not been detected.
Citizens Advice Scotland brought to the committee’s attention the case of a recipient of the personal independence payment with mental health conditions who was living in the south of Scotland. They were asked to leave the family home by their mother, who was also their appointee, and the DWP refused to stop paying PIP to the person’s mother. A number of organisations have drawn attention to the need for a mechanism to allow the recipient to challenge the Scottish ministers’ decision to create an appointee for them; the need for periodic reviews; and the need for a system of adjudicating between competing appointee claims. I encourage the cabinet secretary to consider those suggestions carefully.
The bill empowers ministers to create offences in respect of fraudulently claimed Scottish benefit top-ups. In the absence of such provision, it would not be possible to recover payments that are made as a result of fraud, so in that respect it is welcome. However, as I have said previously in the chamber, I hope that the Scottish Government will tread carefully in its approach to tackling benefit fraud. Although social security fraud is a very serious offence and should be dealt with accordingly, it is clear that there is scope for genuine error. The benefits system can be incredibly complicated, and issues that arise from that complexity should never be confused with fraud. As Scottish top-ups are a new area of the benefit system, with two levels of Government involved, there is perhaps even more scope for honest mistakes by applicants and recipients.
The Greens support calls to use the legislation to provide a way of temporarily suspending someone’s benefit payments while maintaining their eligibility. That would, for example, allow payments to be stopped temporarily if someone who was claiming disability benefit with a care component was being looked after in a care home, and the payments could be restarted when the person returned to their own home. That would preserve their eligibility and ensure that passported benefits were not lost, and it would prevent any unwelcome delay.
The bill is a genuine and well-meaning attempt to improve our new social security system, and it is therefore welcome. However, for any such system to work properly, as well as being efficient, it must deliver an adequate income to recipients. As colleagues have agreed, there is still scope to amend the bill to address some of the concerns that stakeholders have raised.
The Greens will support the general principles of the bill at decision time, and we look forward to making improvements at stages 2 and 3.