Chamber and committees

I welcome the opportunity to assist the committee with its consideration of the draft regulations, which will provide a long-term solution to ensure that individuals who are fleeing crises overseas can access Scottish social security benefits quickly when they arrive.

Until now, we have had to introduce emergency regulations each time a crisis has occurred. In recent years, we have brought forward emergency changes following the evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021; the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022; the escalation of violence in Sudan in 2023; the escalation of violence in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, the Golan Heights and Lebanon in 2023; and, most recently—in September last year—the escalation of violence between Israel and Iran.

The Scottish Commission on Social Security has welcomed our intention to introduce general crises regulations to reduce reliance on emergency legislation. We have aligned our approach with similar changes that the UK Government has introduced for benefits that it administers. That will ensure that there is parity across the UK for people who arrive here after a crisis abroad.

The regulations will remove the habitual residence and past presence requirements for benefits to which those tests apply. That will apply to British nationals and third-country nationals who already hold leave to remain in the UK, do not require such leave or have been granted humanitarian leave. As immigration law remains reserved to the UK Government, the Scottish Government cannot create new immigration routes or protection schemes.

The regulations will apply where the UK Government has provided public information to advise British nationals to leave a country or territory or has arranged the evacuation of British nationals from that country or territory, or where a person has been granted leave for humanitarian reasons. They will provide a clear exemption for people who arrive via schemes such as the Ukraine scheme or the scheme for the recent medical evacuation of children from Gaza.

The regulations will also extend the temporary absence provisions for people who are stranded abroad due to a crisis, which will enable payments to continue for up to 26 weeks.

In addition, amendments to the best start grant will allow families who are escaping crises to receive the higher-rate pregnancy and baby payment for second or subsequent children, even if their first child was born before they arrived in the UK. That reflects the reality that many families may have been forced to leave belongings and essential items behind.

The past presence and habitual residence tests appear across both UK-wide and Scottish social security legislation. Applying them would mean that people who arrived unexpectedly as a result of a crisis would be unable to receive support until they had spent sufficient time in the UK or the common travel area, which they could not reasonably prepare for in advance. The regulations will therefore disapply those tests for individuals in the specified groups and will ensure that, where they meet all other eligibility criteria, they can access the support that they need from day 1.

Overall, the changes will strengthen our ability to respond swiftly and compassionately to international crises, to protect vulnerable people and to avoid the need for repeated emergency legislation. I am grateful to the Scottish Commission on Social Security for its scrutiny and recommendations, which were accepted. Subject to parliamentary approval, the changes will commence on 18 March 2026.

On the first point, we are in the foothills of how we can and should use data sharing in the future. A lot of work is going on in that area, not just in relation to child poverty. I have been doing important work with my officials and the agency to see how we can make the lives of disabled people and carers easier. We can work with clients in the social security system to take away barriers. Many of those barriers do not relate only to Social Security Scotland; we require local authorities to work with us. In the main, they are eager to do so, because they see the real benefits for them.

I am sorry if what I said sounded like a cynical politician’s answer—I usually try not to give them, particularly to you, Mr Balfour—so let me try again. It is important that we consider the impact on people. We should look at whether we have made things easier by taking away a barrier. Does someone need to apply for another benefit, or have we taken away that barrier?

That ties into how we evaluate the system. For example, how can we build in our evaluation on tackling child poverty? Perhaps Julie Humphreys can assist me in that regard.

Social security works closely with relevant stakeholder organisations to ensure that we provide information in a way and in places that will help individuals. It is important that we provide information in different languages and a wide range of formats. It is a key measurement of the social security charter that interpreter and translation services are available in person, in writing and over the phone to ensure that language is not a barrier.

That is why it is deeply disappointing that the Scottish Conservatives chose to say that they would make a saving by taking away translation and interpretation services from people who are at a crisis point in their lives and are seeking help at the most difficult and tragic of times. The fact that the Scottish Conservatives would pick that as a way of making savings points to the barbarity of the proposals that they made last week.

There is no denying that the Scottish Government’s budget choices are impacted by our exposure to UK Government decisions. In my area, that is particularly relevant to benefit expenditure. There is continued uncertainty in many areas of UK benefit expenditure. There is the on-going Timms review of universal credit, which, although fully reserved, has an impact on people in Scotland.

There is a real challenge in terms of the impact on both the budget and our people. In the Scottish Government, we need to deal with that by attempting to work with the UK Government and by asking it to give us as much notice as possible of changes, to allow us to make planning assumptions as best we can. That is challenging, and we have seen examples—I am sure that I do not need to rehearse them to the committee—of where that has not happened.

We must also look at aspects that are within our gift, including the fiscal sustainability delivery plan and the medium-term financial strategy, to ensure that we are challenging ourselves on the funding. We must look at the Scottish Government budget in the round to ensure that we are always content that we have a balanced budget. That is exactly what we are providing to the committee today.

We have robust in-year financial mechanisms and management practices. It is a challenge, though, when we have a system in which the vast majority of benefits are still reserved to Westminster. It would be fair to say that the Scottish Government’s view of social security being a human right does not appear to be shared by the previous or current UK Governments.

I welcome my on-going discussions with Stephen Timms; indeed, I spoke to him just yesterday about the work that the review is undertaking. It would be fair to say that he, as a minister, has endeavoured to keep this Parliament as up to date as possible. However, the challenge, when the review is reaching its completion and decisions are starting to be made, is how much prioritisation and importance will be given to the impact on Scotland.

I welcome the fact that Stephen Timms is accessible to me for discussions. However, if I put his personal work to one side, I am concerned overall that we have not had good working relationships with the UK Government on other benefits and other changes that have had a significant impact on Scottish Government budgets.

I will bring in Stephen Kerr in a minute, because that issue has a direct impact on what has been happening in his directorate, with staff moving to the agency.

This is a process that the committee would expect to happen. The evolution of social security will continue, but the devolution of it under the programme is coming to an end. We would expect the ways of working in the Government to change; some work that was previously in the Government now needs to move to the agency. Stephen Kerr can give examples of that.

I appreciate that people want reassurance that our system can deal with fluctuating conditions. We made alterations to our system to make it more person centred in order to allow fluctuating conditions to be better served through the application process and the work that is undertaken in Social Security Scotland when decisions are made. However, I appreciate that there is concern about that area. We are right to continually challenge ourselves about whether the social security system is delivering for everyone as we intended it to do.

I know that there is concern, particularly around rare conditions or disabilities that a case worker might not come across very often. That is why it is important to continually look at the training and knowledge of case workers and to have the support of others in the agency who can be brought in to assist with decisions in difficult cases.

I will bring in Stephen Kerr on that.

Forgive me, Mr Balfour, but that fund does not sit within my portfolio—it sits within the Deputy First Minister’s portfolio—so I do not have the details to hand, but I know that Richard Lochhead recently answered a question about it in Parliament.

We are very keen to learn lessons. That is why we wanted to work more closely with the UK Government on the development of the strategy, because we thought that there might even be things that we could learn from it—who knows? We did not have that opportunity, but we are keen to look at it.

It is important to recognise that we in Scotland have sometimes taken different approaches to policies and that there are also policies available in Scotland that are not available in the UK. I mentioned the fact that, overall, around £3 billion is spent on helping those on low incomes and the cost of living crisis. We have developed the five family payments, including the Scottish child payment, in which we invest more than £0.5 billion, and there are the free prescriptions and free eye tests. There are therefore a number of things that are not in the UK strategy that are in the Scottish Government’s policy.

As we look at where the UK Government has taken a different policy approach, it is also important that we learn lessons. There is a difference in approach to childcare in England, with that approach being available only to working families. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has made it clear that, despite the investment that has been made, the poorest third of families will see almost no direct benefit from the new entitlements. When I was down in London for my most recent round table, I also heard that there are some implementation challenges when a policy is being launched, but there are also challenges with delivery. That is quite normal when such a large policy is undertaken.

Those are the types of lessons that we would like to be able to learn, so we can learn about what has worked well and about the challenges that different Governments, whether in England or Wales, face when they take different approaches.

The aspect that we warmly welcome is the abolition of the two-child limit. We said all along that it would be much better to do that at source rather than have the Scottish Government mitigating the effects of the limit, so that is to be warmly welcomed.

However, I would use that as an example or demonstration of how, because we did not know where the UK Government was going on that, the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland had to continue our work so that we could be ready to mitigate the two-child limit ourselves. Indeed, the UK Government’s decision is warmly welcomed and will make a difference to children across the UK. The other caveat is that, because the benefit cap remains in place, many children will not fully benefit from the two-child limit being lifted, because they will be hit by the benefit cap. That is not the case in Scotland because the Scottish Government will mitigate the benefit cap, which will be an additional expenditure for us, in order to ensure that everyone will benefit from the two-child limit being scrapped.