Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 29 September 2020
Building a social security system that is fit for purpose clearly takes many years and a lot of hard work. I imagine that it must have been a very stressful day for officials and the cabinet secretary when they discovered that there were some omissions from the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. I put on record Scottish Labour’s thanks to the cabinet secretary, her officials and the organisations that have come together with the committee to come up with the changes that are needed.
We welcome and support all those changes. They will ensure a robust appointee system by putting into statute guidance for that system, including for adults with capacity who wish to be represented by an appointee. Nurses and other allied health professionals will now be able to sign off benefit forms, which will make it considerably easier for people to access benefits quickly. The bill will also ensure that fraud offences can apply to the proposed Scottish child payment and any other Scottish benefits that top up United Kingdom social security.
We know that the Scottish Association for Mental Health welcomed the cabinet secretary’s commitment to report annually on how often the powers to withhold harmful information from claimants is used in relation to applications for standard disability assistance and assistance on the ground of terminal illness, which will ensure a good measure of transparency.
I want to say something about the Scottish child payment, which the cabinet secretary spoke to the committee about last week. We know that applications will open in November, but someone need not apply if their child turns six before the February eligibility date. The cabinet secretary has put on record that that is because a “flood of applications” is expected, and that
“backdating provision would add a great deal of complexity”
and
“increase the risk of error”,—[Official Report, Social Security Committee, 24 September 2020; c 12.]
which would put pressure on the agency. She said that checking eligibility for each of the 14 weeks from November to February would introduce a huge burden for the agency.
I acknowledge the complexity of the matter and I know that the cabinet secretary has said that she will work on the question of backdated payments, but I believe that there will be a loss to many families whose child is not yet six when applications open but who will not get the benefit. They will see that as unfair, and that is disappointing.
I want to make some remarks about automation. Mark Griffin—who has served on the Social Security Committee since its beginning—and I raised that issue and we continue to raise it. I acknowledge the cabinet secretary’s support for that idea. Given that the Scottish child payment is a passported benefit and that the Scottish Government has the data on exactly who is entitled to it, it seems ripe for automation. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary is concerned about the time that it would take to build that into the system, and we do not want to delay payments, but I put on record that Scottish Labour wants to see a commitment to automation of the Scottish child payment at a future date. We would like to discuss with the Scottish Government whether a timetable for that can be set. It may well be that, as we move into the next parliamentary session, that is a matter for a future Administration, but I hope that someone can pick up the issue.
I remain concerned that those in the most extreme poverty might not apply for the benefit—I think that probably everyone involved has that concern. We should continue to look at the most effective ways of advertising the benefit. People who are entitled to other benefits need the opportunity to see that they might be entitled to the Scottish child payment.
We need to remember that one in four children in Scotland still lives in poverty. The chief executive officer of One Parent Families Scotland, Satwat Rehman, said:
“39% of children in single parent families were living in poverty before COVID-19, and the effect of the virus and resulting lockdown has only added to the pressure for single parents who are balancing the responsibility of caring for their children and bringing in an income alone.”
In conclusion, Scottish Labour welcomes the uprating of benefits. When the Scottish Government introduced the Scottish child payment in June 2019, it made the commitment to uprate it annually in line with inflation. My colleague Mark Griffin repeated the call for that, and we are delighted that that is now in legislation. As the first payments of the Scottish child payment will start from the end of February, the duty to uprate will be effective from April 2022. I think that we all wish and hope that the work that has gone into the issue will ensure that there will be an extremely high uptake of the Scottish child payment.
Scottish Labour supports all the amendments, and I am pleased to support the bill at stage 3.
16:15