Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, December 2, 2021

Official Report 561KB pdf

---

Subordinate Legislation

---

Best Start Grants and Scottish Child Payment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2021 [Draft]

The committee will now take evidence on the draft Best Start Grants and Scottish Child Payment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2021. I welcome to the committee Ben Macpherson, the Minister for Social Security and Local Government. Online, the minister is joined by, from the Scottish Government, Pauline Torley, Scottish child payment policy manager, and Karen Clyde, solicitor. I invite the minister to make an opening statement.

10:45  

Good morning. The regulations will make sure that the Scottish child payment and best start grant regulations align with our original policy intent of getting payments to the person who is responsible for the child.

The best start grant is aimed at giving children the best start in life by offering financial support to eligible families at key points in a child’s early years.

The Scottish child payment is the most ambitious child poverty reduction measure in the United Kingdom. It supports families on qualifying benefits who have children under six, and it will be extended to cover children under 16 by the end of 2022, if all goes to plan in getting the data that is required from the DWP. The Scottish child payment is already supporting 106,000 children through payments worth £40 every four weeks. As the First Minister announced earlier this week, those payments will increase to £80 in April next year.

The First-tier Tribunal for Scotland highlighted that, in a very small number of cases, the process for resolving competing cases under the Scottish child payment regulations did not award the person with responsibility for the child. A related issue arose with the best start grant where an award was made to someone who received the child element of universal credit, but someone else was caring for the child. Without the amendments in the regulations before the committee today, we would not always be able to pay the person who is responsible for the child.

Ordinarily, one person would receive the child responsibility benefit and the use of top-up powers would work to meet the policy intent, but it has recently become clear that that does not always happen in practice, so we are seeking to rectify the situation. Although the number of people who are affected is likely to be very low, we are seeking to make the changes in the regulations before us because it is the right thing to do.

Draft regulations were referred to the Scottish Commission on Social Security in September. Considering its workload, I was very grateful to receive its scrutiny report in October. We have accepted all the recommendations, and our response was laid in the Parliament on 12 November.

David Wallace, chief executive of Social Security Scotland, provided an update to SCOSS, in which he outlined how the agency responded to the problem of competing claims, in advance of the regulations being laid. He clarified how the agency would support the regulations through guidance. The agency will publish updated guidance to coincide with the regulations coming into force.

I remain extremely grateful to the Scottish Commission on Social Security for its scrutiny and recommendations, and I welcome the opportunity to assist the committee with its consideration of the regulations before us. I look forward to any questions that members may have.

Thank you. That was very helpful. If any colleagues wish to come in at this stage, I ask them to please indicate, as others have already done so.

My question is on theme 2. Are you concerned that the approach that you want to take might undermine the shared care of children?

We encourage parents with shared care to decide who should make a claim. The number of people who will be affected by the changes to the rules is likely to be minimal, as I said in my opening statement. We do not anticipate that the proposed change will deter parents from undertaking shared care. We shared the draft regulations with our stakeholder group and no feedback was received about such an outcome, so I do not believe that our approach will disincentivise shared care.

Thank you for that reassurance.

Thank you for joining us. You raised the issue of the data. Could you give the committee an update—either now or in writing—on the data from the DWP that is required for the wider roll-out? It would be good to hear about that. I am also keen to know a bit about why, in the first place, it was decided to go for a first-come, first-served basis for the payments.

I will take the second question first, which was about why a first-come, first-served approach was considered an acceptable backstop provision. It was not considered an acceptable backstop provision.

To give the wider context, the original Scottish child payment rules stated that a second applicant for a Scottish child payment who was not higher up the hierarchy of entitlement than a previous applicant would have their application rejected. In effect, that created a first-come, first-served rule for two applicants with the same qualifying criteria. However, it was not anticipated that two different people could both satisfy the top-tier qualifying criteria, which is why we needed to amend the regulations and why we have brought the amended regulations before the committee.

I should say that the reason why we did not anticipate that the situation could arise through the process of the original regulations is that it should not be possible for more than one individual to be in receipt of the qualifying benefit, with the associated child element, for the same child. Where universal credit is top of the hierarchy, only one person should get the child element and one person would get child benefit. We expected that, with any change in circumstances in which responsibility for the child moved, any associated benefits would move with the child, but it has now become clear that that is not always happening. That is in the DWP reserved system. Therefore, we have put forward the proposed amendments in response to considerations in the reserved system in relation to the reserved benefits that create the entitlement to the devolved benefits in question. That is the context.

On your other question, I have had a recent bilateral with Chloe Smith on the issue of the data for the second phase of the roll-out of the Scottish child payment. Officials from the Scottish Government and the DWP continue to be engaged in conversations around securing that data for the November 2022 timescale that we are working towards and to make sure that we progress in the fashion that is required to deliver in that timescale.

The issue with data sharing brought about the delay in the initial roll-out of the Scottish child payment. Are you confident that there will not be a further delay, and that the data from the UK Government and the DWP will come in time this time around?

I can emphasise that, from a Scottish Government position, we are making it very clear to the DWP when we require to receive the data and how we require to receive it to meet that deadline. I do not want to say anything more at this stage, as officials are engaged in good faith on the matter. However, I will certainly update the committee in due course as appropriate.

That is very helpful.

I want to ask a few questions about shared care. The regulations seem very clunky and do not take into account separated parents, for example, who might equally share care for their child or children. Have ministers looked at some solutions to that, such as a 50:50 split in the provision of that benefit?

I thank Miles Briggs for that important question. A situation where two parents are in receipt of a qualifying benefit for the same child should not be possible. If a situation arises where both parents have an exact 50:50 split of care and both are in receipt of a qualifying benefit, we would trust that the process of applying for the qualifying benefit would provide clarity by awarding the child element to the parent responsible for the child. Where that fails for any reason and triggers a competing claim for the Scottish child payment, the rules that allow the Scottish ministers to consider the circumstances of the child will apply. The evidence that will be considered by the Scottish ministers in determining awards in these cases will be set out in the published guidance. The guidance will be important in relation to those questions.

That is helpful. Reading into that, has any work been done on how that could disincentivise people—separated parents specifically—from taking a shared-care approach?

As I set out to Pam Duncan-Glancy, we continue to encourage parents with shared care to make the decision about who makes a claim. We shared the draft regulations with our stakeholder group and no feedback was received suggesting that people would be disincentivised.

Beyond that group, is any other assessment or review taking place? The issue has opened up an area where it is important that more work takes place to see whether the regulations might be changed to fit the real world that we live in. What additional work does the Government intend to do on the issue?

The Scottish Government continues to evaluate and consider how all our benefits are performing and what revisions we may need to make to regulations to make sure that they take into account the different situations of different families in different circumstances. The fact that we have brought the regulations to the committee today is evidence of that continued work to improve the benefits that we provide.

Pauline Torley might want to say a bit more about engagement or any other points that Mr Briggs has raised.

The Scottish Government is committed to learning about how our benefits work in order to learn lessons for the future. We utilise a programme of on-going evaluation delivered by analysts and researchers in conjunction with external expertise. We are currently conducting an interim evaluation of the Scottish child payment, focusing on the impact on the priority groups outlined in the tackling child poverty delivery plan. We should have access to emerging findings by the end of this year, with the final report early in 2022.

As we move on to regulations for phase 2 in rolling out the Scottish child payment to under-16s, we are engaging with our stakeholders and the third sector to have a look at how the current regulations are working, what we intend to do in terms of amendment regulations and taking on board any feedback on how the Scottish child payment is working in practice.

Following that answer, is it fair to say that we are likely to see a change in the regulations being brought to committee quite soon?

That is certainly not the position that we envisage as things stand. As I set out in my opening statement and my previous answers, we are making these changes because of issues that have arisen as a result of the entitlement to reserved benefits and the effect that that has on our devolved benefits. We are making changes to make sure that the person with responsibility for the child receives the devolved benefit. We will continue to keep the regulations, as we do all our regulations and our benefits, under continuous review and seek to make improvements where appropriate and where possible.

I have two questions, the first of which is procedural. We have touched previously on the time that SCOSS gets to respond. It pointed out in its report that it had a restricted time to get the response done. Are you looking at giving it a longer period of time to consider the recommendations, so that the committee and the Parliament can take that into account?

That is an important point. The chair of SCOSS and I have discussed these issues and the amount of consideration that SCOSS has had to give to different sets of regulations over the recent period. We are very mindful of that. I have spoken previously at committee about the extra resourcing that we are providing to SCOSS in the period ahead. The ambition is to give SCOSS adequate time to evaluate as appropriate and as required.

We have faced a number of developments in recent months that have required evaluation and engagement from SCOSS that were not anticipated—for example, the regulations around those coming to the UK from Afghanistan required consideration quickly, and that was unexpected.

Is the ambition to reduce the demand on SCOSS in the period ahead? Yes. Are we grateful for SCOSS’s engagement and work over the last months? Absolutely. Will we continue to work constructively with SCOSS to make sure that it has the resources that it requires? Yes, we will.

11:00  

That is good to hear. You might want to answer my second question in writing rather than answer it today. It concerns something that occurred to me while I was listening to you.

One of the issues that was put to us when we were examining the carers allowance was that there may well be two people caring for a parent or for a child but that the benefit is delivered on a first-come, first-served basis, which is the same in relation to the Scottish child payment. Have you considered that you might end up with two people offering the same care but only one getting the benefit, because they applied before the other one? Has there been any evidence taken on that, has it been an issue and is it something that you and your officials have been looking at in any context at all? I appreciate that that is coming out of left field, so I am happy if you would rather take it away and respond in writing.

There are wider considerations in Mr Balfour’s question around the qualifying benefit, which also relate to the regulations that are before us today. Of course, under the agency agreement, the DWP continues to deliver the carers allowance and the supplement and, this year, the additional payment, so the considerations are around the qualifying benefit.

The points that Mr Balfour raises are pertinent and important with regard to the development of the Scottish carers assistance in the period ahead, and we will publish our consultation on that shortly. These are points of consideration. I am happy to respond with any further points of information or interest above what I have said, but I can say right now that those issues will be considerations in the period ahead as we look at the development of Scottish carers assistance.

My colleague Pauline McNeill said in a meeting of the Social Security Committee in the previous parliamentary session that there needs to be quite a bit of scrutiny of the proposals and understanding of shared care and that there therefore needs to be comprehensive guidance. SCOSS has highlighted that there could be potential human rights issues if the level of discretion is increased. Can you set out why you have left the detail on the types of circumstances to be taken into account to Social Security Scotland and have you given it any direction about what the guidance would include?

We will closely monitor the use of discretion in competing claims, as you would expect. There are currently processes and a number of meetings in place between agency and policy officials to discuss cases that are live at the moment. The existing provisions between the agency and policy officials will continue. The guidance will be published to coincide with the amending regulations coming into force on 23 December. We can consider that guidance thereafter if that is appropriate or helpful. The points around discretion need to be considered very carefully with regard to the development of that guidance and officials will be actively involved in engagement with the agency to make sure that that guidance is appropriate for the needs required.

Pauline Torley might want to say some more about that.

Including in the guidance the issue of discretion and the circumstances in which ministers should consider who would be entitled to the payment enables us to not be restrictive with the regulations, which means that—[Inaudible.]

—does not quite fit to a prescribed set of rules, we will be able to consider that in the guidance and update the guidance accordingly. The approach makes it easier for the different set of circumstances to be considered.

Pauline Torley’s sound dipped off during that answer. Did you catch enough of that, Pam?

Yes, thank you.

We have a final question from Marie McNair.

Going back to the guidance, is there any consultation on the content of the guidance? Did you say that it would be published on 23 December?

Yes, the guidance will be published to coincide with the amending regulations coming into force on 23 December. Organisations are being consulted. We intend to consult with the five family payments reference group, which includes the third sector, NHS and local government representation and the Child Poverty Action Group.

We now come to the formal debate on the motion, in which only members and the minister may take part. I invite the minister to move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Social Justice and Social Security Committee recommends that the Best Start Grants and Scottish Child Payment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2021 [draft] be approved.—[Ben Macpherson]

As no member wishes to debate the motion, I will put the question, which is, that motion S6M-02177, in the name of Ben Macpherson, be agreed to.

Motion agreed to,

That the Social Justice and Social Security Committee recommends that the Best Start Grants and Scottish Child Payment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2021 [draft] be approved.

Do members agree to delegate responsibility to the clerks and I to produce a short factual report of the committee’s decision and arrange to have it published?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank the minister and his colleagues, Karen Clyde and Pauline Torley, who joined us online, for their time this morning. It is greatly appreciated.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. Our next meeting is on 9 December, when we will take evidence on the third sector’s recovery.

11:08 Meeting continued in private until 11:22.