Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 26 May 2022
If the cabinet secretary looks at the Official Report of the committee meeting in question, she will see that the DWP representatives specifically said that they had not been given enough notice ahead of policy changes. If any policy change is intended in relation to the adult disability payment review, it will be key that that information is available as soon as possible, because people need to know that the systems are in place to deliver the changes that they so desperately need and want.
Meanwhile, poverty is rife, debt is racking up and people are struggling to make ends meet. The key workers in the pandemic—those who put their lives on the line to protect ours by performing roles with high exposure to Covid in social care and education—were predominantly women. With the powers that we have here, more support could have been made available to them, in recognition of the roles that they played, including as unpaid carers, stepping in when the state pulled out. Instead, the uplift to the carers supplement was cut.
Many disabled people in Scotland are living in poverty. The Scottish Government is finally in the process of rolling out the adult disability payment, but all that it has done is tinker at the edges. I welcome the improvements to the application process, but that was not a high bar. The SNP could have made real changes by removing the 20m rule and the 50 per cent rule, in recognition of the fact that those arbitrary numbers allow for no recognition of fluctuating conditions, including long Covid and MS, but it has not done so. It has said that, first, it must prioritise safe and secure transfer.