Thank you, convener. I am happy to be here to assist the committee in its consideration of the regulations. This is the first set of regulations under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. They set out the rules for a new Scottish benefit and will allow Social Security Scotland to take applications and to process the best start pregnancy and baby grant. Assuming that the regulations are passed, alongside the tribunal regulations, we will be able to begin making payments by Christmas, which is well ahead of schedule. Given the failure of the Department for Work and Pensions to keep to schedule on its implementation plans, officials are now working through options to deal with the consequences and to ensure that our work remains on track.
The best start grants will be a form of early years assistance, which is provided for under section 32 and schedule 6 of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. The grants will support lower income families with children by offering financial support at key transition points in the early years. The grants are intended to improve children’s wellbeing and, alongside other interventions in the early years, to provide the best start in life. When fully implemented, there will be three best start grants available and, in keeping with good practice, they will be implemented in stages, to ensure that we have a firm foundation before we move on to the next step.
The three payments are a pregnancy and baby payment of £600 for a first child and £300 for any subsequent child, which will help with expenses in pregnancy or of having a new child; an early learning payment of £250, which will help with costs of early learning at around the time a child may take up a nursery place, which will support child development; and a school-age payment of £250, which will help with the costs of preparing for primary school. The first pregnancy and baby payments will be made before Christmas 2018. The next stages—the early learning and school-age payments—will be introduced by summer 2019. Therefore, in due course there will be two additional schedules of regulations to provide for the early learning and school age grants. The current draft instrument will be amended to include schedules for all three grants.
The regulations that are being considered today provide detailed rules relating to the pregnancy and baby payment. They include provision for eligibility, including residence, the assistance that will be available, the value of the payments and when to apply. The regulations also include provision for timescales for the processing of redeterminations and certain issues of process relating to application dates.
The regulations have been developed with extensive consultation and user engagement. We provided illustrative regulations to the committee in September 2017, which was followed by a formal consultation running from 23 March to 15 June this year. As you know, the committee took evidence on draft regulations during the consultation period. I took that evidence and the consultation responses into account when making final decisions on best start grants, and I am pleased to be able to confirm two changes to the original policy.
To ensure that more kinship carers will be eligible, the tests for responsibility for a child include receipt of child tax credits, the child element of universal credit or child benefit for that child. Certain legal orders will also be taken as evidence. That means that the test now captures formal and informal kinship carers who have secured a DWP benefit for the child they care for or where there is a legal arrangement in place. If responsibility for a child changes during one of the application windows—for example, where a child moves from living with a parent to a kinship carer—a second payment can be made to the new carer.
For parents under 20, concerns were raised about the grandparent qualifying. In particular, those concerns were about the rights of the child, empowering young parents and the possibility that the young parent might not benefit from the money. In response to those concerns, and in keeping with the social security principles of dignity and respect, we are offering a choice for young parents. A young parent who is under 18 or who is 18 or 19 and still in full-time education or training can be the qualifying person, or the grandparent can be the responsible person and can qualify for the payment on that basis.
I hope that that is useful to the committee in their consideration and I am happy to take any questions.