Last year was a momentous one for Scottish social security, as we started to build a new public service for Scotland. The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 passed into law last June. Three months later, our country’s new agency, Social Security Scotland, opened its doors. Since then, we have put more than £35 million of additional funding into the pockets of people in Scotland by delivering the first two payments of the carers allowance supplement and the best start grant pregnancy and baby payment.
This year, we will introduce four new benefits to help young carers and low-income families. We are also consulting on our new job grant for young people who are moving into employment. We have made a strong start and, today, I will set out our plans for beyond 2019.
We have already taken responsibility for carers benefits. Our carers allowance and carers allowance supplement are, together, an investment of £320 million in 2019-20 alone. On 1 April next year, we will take full responsibility for the remaining devolved benefits, which means that benefits will start to be fully funded by the Scottish Government. From that point, Social Security Scotland will progressively take over the administration of those benefits from the Department for Work and Pensions. For the first time, the Scottish Government will make regular social security payments, week in, week out, directly to people’s bank accounts—payments that Scottish families will budget into their weekly shop or monthly heating bill.
The complicated nature and interdependencies of social security and devolution mean that this is no mean feat. Two Governments and two agencies will share clients. The payments that people will get from the DWP and Social Security Scotland will affect and, in some cases, need to interact with one another. This is not a lift-and-shift approach whereby we take over the whole of social security and start making changes from the inside out. That would have been my preference, and it would arguably have been a simpler process. However, we are starting from scratch in that we need to untie one set of benefits from a labyrinthine DWP system, build our own system to allow for the transfer and then ensure that the systems work together seamlessly. It is imperative that we get that right, so that people not only get the right money at the right time but remain eligible for other assistance to which they can be passported. That is a formidable responsibility, which I do not underestimate, but it is also a great opportunity to forge a social security system that is infused with dignity, fairness and respect.
It is clear to me—as we have heard repeatedly from people who have direct personal experience of the current system—that we must ensure that people who are entitled to those benefits are protected during the transition. They must be protected from aspects of the current DWP regime, yes, but protected, too, from the errors that inevitably follow when politicians rush through big changes in social security. We do not have to look far. There was the debacle of the DWP’s migration of people from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance, and the migration of the disability living allowance to personal independence payment was due to finish first in 2015, then in 2019, and it is now delayed until 2021. Above all, there is the universal credit programme, for which the original date of completion was 2017—it is now 2023. Six years later than planned, it is still fundamentally flawed. We all need to learn the lessons of those failures. It is clear to me that changes to social security need to be implemented with painstaking care, always at pace but never rushed, or we run the risk of people falling through the gaps.
The message that I am hearing is that we should take the time to get this right. Last month, we conducted an experience panel survey about people’s priorities as our agency takes over cases from the DWP. Fifty-seven per cent of the more than 400 respondents said that they want the Scottish Government to strike a balance between transferring cases quickly and ensuring that there are no mistakes. A further 29 per cent would rather that we took still more time in order to avoid errors.
Since my appointment, I have been listening. I am well aware of how high the stakes are, and I will not take risks that endanger people’s payments. We have seen that it is the people who rely on payments the most who pay the price. Over the past eight months, I have been talking to people with lived experience and challenging my officials on what can be achieved while balancing pace and risk and with clear principles in mind. Those principles are: protecting people and their entitlements, acting quickly to reform the aspects of the current system that cause the most stress and ensuring that we put in place a dignified and respectful system that works for Scotland. After careful consideration, I have determined a timetable for taking over the remaining benefits. On the basis of the current plans, I believe that that timetable, although challenging, is realistic.
As I said, from April 2020, we will become responsible for the remaining devolved benefits. I am delighted to say that, starting next summer, the first disability benefit that will be open to new claims will be disability assistance for children and young people. We will also deliver on our manifesto commitment to extend eligibility for that benefit from age 16 to age 18, which will allow continuity for families during those crucial transition years when a child becomes an adult. Also from next year, children who receive the highest care component of disability assistance will also be entitled to winter heating assistance, which will mean that 16,000 children and their families will get a £200 lump sum to help with their heating costs.
I am pleased to say that, in early 2021—keeping up the pace—we will introduce an additional payment for the estimated 1,800 Scottish carers who look after more than one disabled child, recognising the higher costs that they face. By the end of 2021, we will also start paying winter heating assistance in its current form to eligible older people in Scotland who receive another type of payment from our agency, and we will make the first cold spell heating assistance payments.
New claims for disability assistance for older people who are over the state pension age and need someone to help them because of a disability will be introduced by the end of next year. Building on that progress, in early 2021, we will introduce the largest and most complex form of disability assistance: the new claims service for working-age people, which will replace the DWP’s PIP.
I remain committed to co-designing the benefits with the people of Scotland, and a person-centred approach will be at the heart of Scotland’s three forms of disability assistance. Through major reform of the assessment process, we will significantly reduce the number of face-to-face assessments, and, when assessments are needed, we will deliver them through our agency and not through the private sector. People will be invited to attend assessments at a time and place that suits them, with the assessor coming to them, if required.
By the end of 2021, we will deliver new claims for the Scottish carers allowance and will fold it together with the carers allowance supplement and additional money for carers of more than one disabled child in a way that meets carers’ needs.
I have carefully considered whether the Scottish carers allowance could be delivered more quickly. I know that carers are, rightly, keen for us to take it over as soon as possible. However, I have concluded that, above all, we have to take the time to get the carers allowance right, as it interacts in a particularly intricate way with functions that remain reserved. It affects income tax, for example, meaning that we will need new data-sharing arrangements with HM Revenue and Customs to administer it effectively.
The carers allowance is also a gateway to other benefits that are in the gift of the United Kingdom Government, such as the carer premium, which is worth around £36 a week on top of someone’s means-tested benefit. The last thing that I want to do is jeopardise such additional payments by rushing the delivery of the Scottish carers allowance before the necessary agreements with the UK Government are in place.
I also do not want to encourage the growth of a two-tier system of new and existing claims. By introducing new claims in 2021, we can ensure that we protect payments for carers who rely on them. That will also allow us to focus on getting all three forms of disability assistance right to support the people who are cared for by our carers. That is particularly important given the scale of change that we are proposing in the application process, the desk-based decision making and the face-to-face assessments. I am therefore pleased to say that, by the end of 2021, we will deliver new claims for all disability and carers assistance, and we will support families with their winter fuel bills.
I turn now to the task of moving people’s existing claims from the DWP to Social Security Scotland. I have mentioned the importance of protecting people’s benefits as they transfer, and that is as true for existing claims as it is for new claims. We must move people to our agency in a way that causes them minimal anxiety while safeguarding the payments that they currently get.
Feedback from our experience panels shows how we can achieve both of those aims. I mentioned a survey that we conducted last month among people who are experienced in the current system. We asked what is most important to them as we take on their cases. Their top two priorities were that people should continue to receive the correct payments at the correct time and that no one should be subject to a DWP face-to-face reassessment for disability benefits. We will use that research as the basis for a set of client-centred transfer principles that are agreed with user and stakeholder input.
Let me be clear: we will protect people’s payments during the transfer. In addition, I guarantee that, from early 2021, when we launch new claims for our PIP replacement, no one in Scotland will undergo a DWP face-to-face reassessment for disability benefits. Before someone reaches the end of their DWP award period, we will take over their case so that that cannot happen. I also guarantee that, unlike for universal credit, we will not require people to make a new claim to move on to the Scottish benefits. Instead, we will work with the DWP to arrange for the transfer to happen automatically, and we will keep people informed—before and during the process—about what will happen and when.
We will start the work of transferring people from the DWP to our agency next year. That will involve moving more than 500,000 cases—10 per cent of people in Scotland. In the past, when the DWP has migrated people within its own benefits system, such transfers have caused huge problems. Transferring people from one Government’s agency to another’s has not been done before, and we must do it effectively, securely and in conjunction with the DWP. With its co-operation, I expect the majority of people to be transferred by 2023, with all cases fully transferred by 2024.
I had not anticipated that, during that work, there would be further delay to the DWP’s DLA to PIP migration, which means that people of working age will still be on two different benefits when we would have expected to transfer them to a single form of Scottish assistance. My officials are in close contact with DWP officials on the matter, and I have requested a meeting with DWP ministers to discuss its implications. I will, of course, report back to Parliament once those discussions are more advanced.
We will work with the DWP to develop agency agreements to partially administer the devolving benefits until Social Security Scotland delivers them in full. Such agreements will ensure that people receive the regular payments that they have already been awarded with minimal disruption and distress. That is an administrative function only; it will not affect when we commence powers or start funding benefits. As I have said, from April 2020, benefits will be fully funded by the Scottish Government.
Delivering the devolved benefits is very much a joint enterprise with the DWP, and we rely on it to match our ambition and pace. The timescales that I have set out remain very challenging, and there are many unknowns within our work on social security devolution and beyond. We will therefore keep our plans under careful review, and I will keep Parliament updated on our progress.
We should not forget that we are the first Government to begin the partial separation of a highly integrated welfare system between two countries. That cannot be done without taking difficult decisions on timing. However, as we break new ground every day, we gain more experience of how to accomplish the most complicated feat of devolution that has been attempted since the Parliament was reconvened.
A great deal of activity is already well under way to make our current plans a reality. Today, I will publish 11 policy papers that set out the extensive work that has gone into designing how the benefits will operate. Next week, I will publish a consultation on disability assistance. We will seek the views of the public on our proposed reforms, including the introduction of rolling awards, with up to 10 years between reviews for people whose condition is unlikely to change, and on how we can ensure that the people who undertake our assessments for disability assistance are suitably qualified. In parallel, we will pursue our ambitious timetable for 2019. By the end of this year—just 18 months from the passing of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018—we will have delivered three of the 11 devolved benefits and four brand new payments.
Two years hence, Social Security Scotland will have delivered more than £210 million in benefit payments, agency staff will have supported 200,000 people and we will have brought a new culture of dignity, fairness and respect to Scottish social security. We certainly have our work cut out as we deliver devolved benefits to the people of Scotland, but the prize is great.