Hansard

I am grateful to Graham Simpson for recognising the hard work of Social Security Scotland staff, including the new recruits who have been working remotely. I commit to working with him and members from across the chamber over the short summer recess.

That brings me nicely to the letter that Mark Griffin mentioned. He will forgive me—it came in not long before I came down to the chamber for the debate, but I have had a chance to look at it. We share the wish to improve the take-up of devolved benefits. The question is, “How?”. Social Security Scotland will ensure that everyone, including people who are new to universal credit, will be invited to apply for devolved benefits. I suggest that that is a direct way of encouraging people to sign up to the benefits for which Social Security Scotland is responsible.

Pauline McNeill mentioned automated payments. She will know that I am very keen to develop work on that. It is not possible for the first Scottish child payments to be automated, because of the speed with which we are introducing the payments, but I have already said that we will consider what we can do in that area. I am personally committed to doing that.

Several members, including Pauline McNeill, talked about training of judges. I stress that that is not a matter for the Scottish Government, because the independence of the judiciary is exceptionally important. The matter is for the judicial institutes, but committee members might want to take up the issue through the committee’s work. The Government will definitely not give instructions to the judiciary, although I acknowledge Pauline McNeill’s long-standing concerns on the issue and the importance of the ethos of Social Security Scotland.

Bob Doris and others spoke about disclosure of harmful information, which is a very difficult issue. I am clear that it is justifiable to withhold information that a medical professional has already determined should be withheld because that is deemed to be necessary to prevent serious harm to an individual. In doing that we must ensure that clients are not disadvantaged in respect of accessing disability assistance. However, it is for medical professionals, not the agency, to decide on that. I would never want us to get to a place where the agency second guesses what is happening and the decisions of medical professionals.

Other members spoke about the importance of diagnosing terminal illnesses correctly for disability assistance purposes. As he suggested, Graham Simpson is not yet entirely convinced by my argument that we have the balance right on that. I have already noted that that will be a discussion for during the summer. He shall certainly hear from me on that.

It is a technical bill, but it is, as I said, an important bill. We have actively engaged with stakeholders and will continue to do so during the summer, because I accept that we have improvements to make.

I thank the Social Security Committee for its support of the general principles of the bill, and I hope that Parliament can unite in passing it at stage 1.