Meeting of the Parliament 07 February 2024
I am grateful. Up to this point, Social Security Scotland has moved across fewer than 5,000 people per month on average. To meet the new target, the Government will need to move just over 10,000 people a month on average. I ask the cabinet secretary to clarify in closing whether she is confident that the deadline will be met.
None of that is acceptable in any way. It is a total failure to deliver for the people of Scotland. We have got nothing that was promised from devolving social security. There is no radical Scottish way of doing things, and there is no appetite from the Government to really put in the work to do what it claims that it wants to do.
The Government likes to pretend that it is kinder and more cuddly than the big, bad DWP, but the figures do not bear that out. One third of Scottish child payment applications are denied; two thirds of job start payment applications are denied; one in five funeral payment applications is denied; and more than a third of ADP applications are denied.
The Government claims to be kind and friendly, but it is no such thing. It parrots the mantra of dignity, fairness and respect without doing anything meaningful to pursue those ideals. For example, the Scottish Government could change the 20m rule to 50m in the budget—that would be a radical departure from the UK-wide policy—but it will not. All that it has done is commission a review of ADP that will not report until August 2025. Again—