Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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.

If we want to move past the back-and-forth critique that the Scottish Government’s social security expenditure is unaffordable or unsustainable, the answers must come back about what policies people want to be changed—even if I fundamentally disagree with the proposals that are made—so that the trajectory changes.

The approach is based on eligibility. I might fundamentally disagree with suggestions that are made, but suggestions would at least move us past the discussion that we are having at the moment, which does not take us far. That is exactly why we have set out in the MTFS and the fiscal sustainability delivery plan how we propose to look at the financial sustainability work. It is for others to come up with other suggestions; my door is always open.

It is important that we look at the figures in the round. Of the clients who responded, 69 per cent said that the SCP had had no impact on their decisions about employment or that it was not applicable. For the 29 per cent who reported an impact, the most common impact was that the payment was helping them with work costs such as travelling or clothing, followed by enabling them to stay in work or work more hours. It is important to look at how the payment has helped people to get into employment, stay in employment or increase their hours, but the analysis that the Scottish Government published in 2024 concluded that, at the current levels, the payment is not negatively affecting labour market outcomes at scale.

I know that people ask us to increase the Scottish child payment. As well as considering the budgetary impact of that on the Scottish Government, we would look at any impact that that might or might not have on the labour market. That is an important aspect but, at this point, it looks as if the payment is, in the main, having no impact or having a very positive impact on families by allowing them to make choices about staying in employment.

The analysis that I just referred to pointed to evidence on the labour market impact of a cliff edge, and it does not appear to support a compelling policy rationale for implementing a trigger. That is an important aspect of that evaluation. Even if people wished to see a taper, they would need to think about how that would be done. That could not be done with the processes that we have, so it would require new systems in social security.

Some people say that we should look at people’s incomes, that we should have more means testing and that we should taper or look at further targeting—I am not saying that Marie McNair is suggesting that for all benefits or one benefit, but it ties into the question that she asked. That approach would require information that we do not have, because we do not need to collect people’s income data at this point. If we needed that, it would have to be collected and analysed. That would have an impact on how complex the process was and therefore on its cost. For all such aspects, as well as the impact on individuals, we would need to think about the impact on cost of delivering a system that included tapers or an analysis of anybody’s income.

It is fair to say that there has been a fair level of scrutiny of and discussion about winter heating payments. I do not think that it is going too far to say that there is a consensus that there should be winter heating payments for pensioners. I think that we are all agreed on that—I hope we are, but you never know these days. If we agree with that premise, it is then about which pensioners should receive that benefit. The Government has proposed targeting the spend at those on the lowest incomes.

The carer additional person payment is a long-standing Government commitment. We have discussed this at various points, so the committee is well versed in the fact that a number of carers are living in poverty and carers organisations have grave concerns that the current system does not reflect the additional burden that people face if they care for more than one person.

On the two-child limit payment, it is about the impact that the payment will make on child poverty. Just last October, the IFS said:

“the single most cost-effective policy for reducing the number of children living below the poverty line is removing the two-child limit.”

It is far from the only organisation, charity or think tank that would point to that impact.

That is why those decisions have been taken.

In that exceptionally hypothetical situation, the discussion that we would be having would be about how to spend the finances that the Scottish Government has to make the most impact and whether we thought that such spending should be on social security or on other areas. Given that I am also responsible for the “Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26” and that I have responsibility for equalities as well as social security, I am sure that the finance secretary and I would get into a discussion about where the maximum impact would be and whether it would be in social security or elsewhere.

I am not here to speak on behalf of Liz Smith, but she continually probes on that issue, too. She is particularly astute in the challenges that she has put to Government on that, as you have been for some time, Mr Balfour. As I have said in the past, the Government has a range of different policies, some of which are universal and some of which are targeted.

I would say at the outset that all social security expenditure is targeted. People might wish it to be targeted at different people or in a different way, but it is targeted. The universal services that we have are a very important part of the Government’s commitment to our social contract with the people. We have a more progressive tax system in Scotland, and aspects such as the concessionary travel scheme, free prescriptions and free tuition are an important part of the social contract. Others might have different views on that, but that is certainly the Government’s position.

We have also been very clear that we do not plan to take away entitlement from people. That is an important reassurance, because, although we talk often and quite rightly about people who are in poverty or whom we are trying to keep out of poverty, I am conscious that many of our constituents, while not in poverty, are still being impacted by the cost of living crisis, and we have a responsibility to those people, too.

When we look at how we target social security expenditure, we look at the impact that it has on particular groups. If people wish to see different proposals coming forward, I say again that my door is open to that, but I have laid out the principle of where the Government stands on universalism and the importance of targeting in certain areas.

An important point is that the devolved disability assessment is not linked to employment. We have many people in receipt of ADP who are in employment and feel that ADP is what allows them to stay in employment because of the additional support provided. I will bring in Julie Humphreys on this aspect.