Hansard

We welcome all the recommendations in the Audit Scotland report and will work to implement them, and we will work with the auditors, as we have throughout the process.

With regard to progress during the pandemic, our delivery partners at the Department for Work and Pensions also had to reprioritise their programme of work. We are now working with them to plan our timetable for delivery of the remaining devolved benefits and the transfer of around 700,000 cases from the DWP to Social Security Scotland.

I take this opportunity to thank all those who are involved in the delivery of our devolved social security benefits, including all my officials in the Scottish Government; the UK ministers and civil servants who have been involved; everyone at Social Security Scotland; our experience panels; the Scottish Commission on Social Security; the disability and carer benefits expert advisory group; and every stakeholder and individual who has contributed to the development of our 12 benefits and those that we are currently preparing to introduce.

On that note, I move on to a new benefit that will directly support around 400,000 low-income households with their energy costs. Beginning in winter 2022-23, we will introduce our low-income winter heating assistance. The new benefit will replace the DWP’s cold weather payments and will guarantee an annual £50 payment to around 400,000 low-income households each winter, which is an investment of around £20 million a year.

The current £25 cold weather payment is paid only if the weather gets cold enough and for a sustained period of time. In contrast, our replacement winter heating benefit will provide a guaranteed £50 payment, which ensures that it provides targeted, stable, reliable financial support to those who need it most. It will deliver certainty and will no longer be tied to temperatures recorded at weather stations that are often miles from people’s homes. It represents an investment of around £20 million each year.

Since 2014-15, there have been only two years in which spend on cold weather payments in Scotland has been above £20 million—only £325,000 was paid to just 11,000 households in the winter that we just had. There is no doubt that the new Scottish benefit will be of huge help to people in the coming winter. It is another way in which the Government is supporting people and mitigating the cost of living crisis.

The next benefit that we will introduce is Scottish carers assistance, which is our replacement for carers allowance. I am pleased to announce that we will begin to roll out Scottish carers assistance by the end of 2023, with full national introduction in spring 2024. The final dates will be agreed following our on-going work with the UK Government, but this is a key milestone for our new benefit.

Our consultation on Scottish carers assistance and our plans for future improvements to increase the support available to carers has just ended. Those plans include an additional payment for those caring for more than one disabled person, and proposals to remove full-time education restrictions and increase the earnings limit, so that carers can earn more and still get financial support. We will consider the responses to the consultation and, later this year, we will confirm the improvements that we will make and when we will be able to make them.

In the meantime, we will continue to pay the carers allowance supplement, which provides real, tangible support to around 90,000 carers. We have now delivered £188 million-worth of carers allowance supplement support since the benefit was introduced, in 2018—including two additional payments that were paid in 2020 and 2021 in response to the pandemic.

We are also delivering significant changes this year with our new disability benefits. After we successfully rolled it out last winter, child disability payment has already helped more than an estimated 3,000 children.

I am proud that, just a few months ago, we successfully introduced the adult disability payment, which is our replacement for the UK personal independence payment. On 21 March, we launched it in three council areas and it will be phased in across 10 more areas in the coming months, ahead of full national introduction at the end of August.

The adult disability payment is delivering significant improvements, which range from never using the private sector to carry out health assessments to providing an independent advocacy service and short-term assistance if people challenge a review decision.

Further evidence of our human rights-based approach in action is our introduction of indefinite awards for people on the highest level of adult disability payment whose needs are highly unlikely to change, which will provide the most severely disabled people with long-term financial security. In addition, we have moved away from the DWP’s definition of terminal illness to one that is based on clinical judgment instead of life expectancy. Importantly, benefit applications from people with a terminal illness will be fast-tracked and paid at the maximum rate.

The adult disability payment is, without doubt, the most complex benefit that we have introduced, and the seamless, safe and secure transfer of hundreds of thousands of people’s payments from the DWP is not a simple administrative process. From the middle of next month, we will start to move personal independence payment awards and, from the end of August, we will start to move working-age disability living allowance awards for individuals who would otherwise need to undergo an assessment or reassessment with the DWP. People in Scotland whose cases will be transferred do not need to do anything; we will do it, and we will do it seamlessly. We will keep them informed throughout the process.

There is a lot more that I could say about the remarkable progress that we have made since the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 was passed just four years ago. In that time, we have created a new public service for Scotland, delivered new and replacement benefits and positively impacted thousands of lives. This afternoon, I look forward to hearing from colleagues about how, together, we can make an even bigger difference.

We have ambitions to help more people as we use our powers to create a modern, future-proof social security system—a system that can serve the people of Scotland well and effectively for decades to come, and one that embodies one of the four key words that is written on the mace that lies before us: compassion.

To do that, we will have to be ambitious but appropriately realistic. We will have to move forward purposefully but be responsible. We will have to put people first, not party politics. We will need to work together to encourage benefit take-up and remove the stigma around social security that, unfortunately, has built up in previous years.

The months and years ahead are, arguably, the most significant for the new system that we have created and for those of us who serve in communities across Scotland. In these serious times, I encourage my fellow MSPs to play their part in supporting our constituents to access any available support to which they are entitled, and I encourage colleagues to be constructive in the next, really important phase of delivering social security benefits in Scotland.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that social security is a human right and an investment in people; welcomes the introduction and delivery of 12 Scottish social security benefits in total, seven of which are new forms of support only available in Scotland, including most recently the Scottish Child Payment, Child Disability Payment and Adult Disability Payment; notes the more humane and compassionate process for applying for the Adult Disability Payment, which contrasts with the intrusive assessments often required to receive Personal Independence Payment from the UK Government; further notes the implementation of a clinically determined definition of “terminal illness” and fast-tracking of these applications for support; welcomes the introduction of indefinite awards within Scottish disability assistance, which provides the most severely disabled people with long-term financial security; looks forward to the introduction of new benefits, including Low Income Winter Heating Assistance and Scottish Carer’s Assistance; notes that social security is one of the three key pillars in the national mission to tackle child poverty, and commends the extension of the Scottish Child Payment to under-16s and plans to increase it to £25 per week per child by the end of the year; welcomes the substantial financial support that these benefits provide to people, which is important at all times and particularly so now as people are impacted by the cost of living crisis in the UK, and acknowledges the Scottish Government’s record investment of £3.9 billon in benefit expenditure in 2022-23, which is £360 million above that received by the UK Government, all of which will provide meaningful social security support to over one million people, including low-income families and households, disabled people and carers.