Official Report 703KB pdf
Carer’s Assistance (Miscellaneous and Consequential Amendments, Revocation, Transitional and Saving Provisions) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 [draft]
Our next item of business is consideration of a Scottish statutory instrument. The instrument is subject to the affirmative procedure, which means that Parliament must approve it before it comes into force.
I welcome to the meeting Shirley-Anne Somerville, who is the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and her officials Dawn Kane, who is senior policy officer for carer benefits, Jane Sterry, who is team leader for the carer support payment policy, and Karolina Bodzak, who is a solicitor in the disability and carer benefits branch. Thank you all for joining us this morning.
Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited in an upcoming agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. I remind everyone that the Scottish Government officials can speak under this agenda item but not in the debate that follows. I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.
Thank you very much and good morning, convener. I am very pleased to be able to come to the committee this morning to speak to these draft regulations, which represent a major milestone for the devolution of social security in Scotland and provide further recognition of the immense contribution of unpaid carers in our society.
I previously attended the committee in September 2023 to discuss the Carer’s Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023, which introduced the carer support payment to replace carers allowance. At that time, we promised that once the carer support payment was rolled out nationally and we had completed the safe and secure transfer of all carers allowance cases, we would begin to make further improvements to the carer support payment.
You know already that the carer support payment was successfully rolled out across Scotland last year and I am pleased to report that we have now completed transferring all carers allowance awards for unpaid carers in Scotland to the carer support payment. Therefore, I am pleased to be speaking to you today about the planned improvements.
The regulations will introduce carer support, which is a single benefit that is made up of three components: the carer support payment, the Scottish carer supplement and the carer additional person payment. We are making further improvements to how the Scottish Government supports carers: we are increasing the amount of time during which a carer can continue to receive support after the death of a cared-for person from eight to 12 weeks, and we are removing the requirement for carers to have cared for someone for a certain period before they can continue to get support when they have a temporary break from caring.
The Scottish carer supplement will replace the carers allowance supplement, which is currently paid twice yearly. Instead, the Scottish carer supplement will be paid alongside the carer support payment, so that carers no longer need to be receiving the carer support payment on specific qualifying dates, and can receive their payments more regularly.
The carer additional person payment is a new extra payment of £10 a week, available to people receiving the carer support payment who care for more than one person for at least 20 hours per week. People who are already receiving the carer support payment do not need to apply for carer support when it is introduced. Their award will be automatically transferred. Only those who wish to receive the carer additional person payment need to get in touch when their award transfers to ensure that we can add that payment to their award.
We are also extending the young carer grant to 19-year-olds in order to ensure that those in full-time, non-advanced education are able to access some form of carers assistance.
The regulations also make further relatively minor amendments to the principal regulations in order to clarify existing provisions—including earnings provisions and those that allow for additional backdated support to be given after an initial award—as well as revoking some provisions that are no longer needed.
The improvements that we are discussing today build on the support that is already available for carers in Scotland, much of which is available only in Scotland. We introduced the carers allowance supplement in 2018 in order to address the fact that carers allowance was the lowest of all the working-age benefits, and the young carer grant in 2019 in order to recognise young carers.
The carer support payment is our most complex benefit to date. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed their views, and to officials from across the United Kingdom for all their hard work on ensuring that these new improvements work as intended with the benefits that remain reserved to the UK Government.
I am also grateful to the hundreds of carers, and the carer benefits advisory group, who help to ensure that devolved carer benefits meet the needs of those who receive them. I also extend my thanks to the Scottish Commission on Social Security for its formal scrutiny of the draft regulations; its recommendations have assisted us in strengthening the detail of the regulations that are before us.
These changes will put more money into the pockets of our unpaid carers and, alongside our work to help carers to access wider carer support, will provide an improved service for them.
As I have said before, today is an important milestone. I welcome the opportunity to assist the committee in its consideration of the regulations.
Thank you. We now move to questions from members. We will, of course, direct those towards you, cabinet secretary, but it is fine if your officials also wish to come in.
Good morning to you, cabinet secretary, and to your officials.
What we are talking about today will be welcomed by our unpaid carers right across the country.
We know that carers are often very time poor and lead very stressful lives. The SCOSS report raised a number of issues where the operation of the regulations could be quite complex. What is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that carers are very clear about how to get the support that they are entitled to? That is particularly important when their circumstances change, so could you talk a little bit about that?
Certainly. As I referred to in my opening remarks, this is the most complex benefit that has been devolved. That is, in many ways, because of the integral links between the devolved system and those benefits that remain reserved to the UK Government. Even more so than in relation to all other benefits, it requires us to ensure that there are no unintended consequences to changes to a carer’s benefits here, in that they are detrimental to a carer by then impacting on their reserved benefits.
We are also very conscious of the fact that we still need to make this as simple as we can for the carers. Any difference between our rules and Department for Work and Pensions rules can add to that complexity. We are therefore developing targeted communications to ensure that the right information is there for carers, at the right time.
Carers who are currently in receipt of the carer support payment will receive a notice of determination to let them know that their benefits will be transferring to carer support, with details of their award. That will outline the components of the carer support, and invite them to inform Social Security Scotland of any additional people they care for, should they wish to receive the carer additional person payment. It is important that the agency makes that proactive effort in order to ensure that carers are aware of the additional support that they might be entitled to.
Moving from the carers allowance supplement to the Scottish carer supplement is a change for carers, who have been used to receiving that twice-yearly payment. However, as I said in my original remarks, it is important to recognise that the change means that carers can receive that benefit more regularly, and that it will be more accurate, because there will not be those two weeks in which they have to be eligible. Sometimes, carers missed out because of a change in income, which we know is a key challenge.
The changes that we are making are, therefore, very much an attempt to make things as simple as possible. However, we recognise that we are doing so in a complex system. We are particularly concerned to support people when circumstances change, and particularly when those circumstances are the death of a cared-for person. We are ensuring that there is a way in which carers can be provided with additional support from the agency if, for example, they receive the carer additional person payment, but one caring role ends, perhaps through bereavement. There is work within the agency to ensure that carers are supported.
Those are just some examples of what we are trying to put in place within the agency in order to recognise that complexity. We are working with carers and, of course, with carers organisations directly to ensure that we design the system with them and provide that support, where at all possible.
That is very helpful and reassuring.
Good morning. The young carer grant is being extended to include 19-year-olds. The SCOSS report said that an alternative policy choice could have been to give full access to the carer support payment to 16-year-olds. Some stakeholders said that that was their preferred choice. Does the cabinet secretary have a response to that?
I know that some stakeholders have asked for that in the past.
I note at the outset that the fact that we are extending the young carer grant to 19-year-olds follows feedback from stakeholders, who quite rightly pointed out that some carers who are aged 19 and are in full-time, non-advanced education were falling through a potential gap between the young carer grant and the carer support payment. The change has therefore come in because we are listening to stakeholders and moving forward with improvements. We estimate that the change will provide support to an extra 1,200 carers in the first full year of the grant, in 2026-27. We are therefore listening to stakeholders and adapting.
Ensuring that we provide young carers with support is an area that we have considered carefully over the years. It is about ensuring that we do not make a change in the system whereby a young carer might feel that they should be taking on more caring responsibilities, which might impact on their life choices. We are very conscious of the fact that we need to not only support young carers, but ensure that we are doing that in the correct manner.
Having said all that, and as I hope that we have demonstrated in the changes that we are bringing in today, I am keen to ensure that we continue to review and discuss, with young carers in particular, the impact of these changes and any concerns that they might have in the future. I have said to the committee on a number of occasions that I am exceptionally proud of the devolved social security system. However, it is still very young, so we may need to make changes in relation to feedback, and there may be iterations of the benefits.
As we do with all benefits, and as we have discussed at committee in the past, we will carry out evaluation work around the carer support payment and the young carer grant to ensure that we consider the impact of benefits on a young person’s engagement with training, employment opportunities and so on.
I hope that that gives the committee reassurance that we are continuing to improve and to listen, and that we will continue to be willing to listen in the future and to adapt if we need to do so.
Cabinet secretary, recommendation 3 in the SCOSS report is in relation to older carers. As you know, many older carers cannot get carer support because they receive the state pension. The Scottish Government announced in 2022 that it would consider a recognition payment for older carers as a longer-term change. Has any preparatory work been done on that? Is the Scottish Government working to any timescales to develop policy on that issue?
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One area that we have been asked to look at, and which we have looked at in the past through our consultation, is carers who currently only have an underlying entitlement to the carer support payment. That is usually because they receive another income replacement benefit instead, which in this example is the state pension.
We recognise that there have been calls to allow people on the state pension to receive the carer support payment but, in essence, that would change what the benefit is for, because it is an income-replacing benefit. However, it is important that we encourage carers to apply for carer support because they can have an underlying entitlement to other reserved and devolved benefits.
The recognition payment to recognise the contribution of long-term carers came up in our past consultation. It would be done in an alternative way, by paying that carer support payment to all carers with underlying entitlement. That option ranked relatively low when we looked at the multicriteria analysis of the options.
The idea of a recognition payment received positive feedback. I refer back to my original remarks—we have said that we were processing the new payments and completing the case transfer, and that we would deliver the changes, which we are doing today. In essence, we have carried out some initial internal work on a recognition payment, but we have not taken it forward because what we said in our consultation response is that we would deliver on the improvements that we are laying in front of the committee today.
Thank you, cabinet secretary—that is pretty clear.
The SCOSS report highlighted that not all carers will be able to benefit from the full four-week extension to the run-on, because of the way that carer support interacts with universal credit. Can you update the committee on discussions that have taken place with the DWP to try to resolve that issue?
That is an example of the complexity of the devolved changes and the need to ensure that we understand their consequences for reserved benefits. The extension to the bereavement run-on for carer support will provide additional support. We understand the importance of ensuring that any extra support that we provide for carers through improvements such as the run-on extension does not put at risk support that they receive from elsewhere or mean that they lose support through reductions in the reserved system. That is one example of the complexity of the situation.
The universal credit rules will apply to the new 12-week run-on in the same way that they apply to the current eight-week run-on, while carers will get all the additional carer support payments, including the carer supplement and any additional person payments, that they are entitled to. As a result of the extension, some may not get a universal credit carer element for that full period. That will depend on where they are in their universal credit assessment cycle when the bereavement occurs.
The Scottish Government has raised concerns about that issue with the DWP, which told us that it considers the current approach to be acceptable. Its view is that there are limited circumstances in which the carer support payment run-on would continue for longer than the carer element run-on, so in most cases, carers will get the full benefit of the change.
Nevertheless, there is a possibility that some carers will not. I have asked the minister responsible and the DWP to consider that as part of the DWP’s on-going review of universal credit—I referred to that in a letter that I sent earlier this year. That has been noted, and we will continue to work with the DWP to see whether a solution can be found. However, it lies solely with the DWP to assist us with that, given that the issue is in the universal credit system.
As there are no more questions, we will move to agenda item 3, which is formal consideration of motion S6M-18774. I invite the cabinet secretary to move the motion.
Motion moved,
That the Social Justice and Social Security Committee recommends that the Carer’s Assistance (Miscellaneous and Consequential Amendments, Revocation, Transitional and Saving Provisions) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 [draft] be approved.—[Shirley-Anne Somerville]
Motion agreed to.
I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for coming. We will suspend briefly before we move to the next agenda—[Interruption.]
My apologies. We are tight for time, so I cut bits out of my brief, but I had better just put this on the record.
The committee will report on the outcome on the instrument in due course. Are members content to delegate responsibility to me to publish a short factual report to the Parliament on the affirmative instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
I will now suspend briefly before the next agenda item.
10:06 Meeting suspended.