Chamber and committees

To get to the heart of why the decisions to go above that have been made, it is because the Scottish Government wants to use its powers over social security and its budgets to help people as much as possible. It is a policy commitment that is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s determination to make Scotland a better and fairer place. We see the mission to tackle poverty as a collective one for everyone in Scotland: the Government, business, Parliament, the third sector, wider civil society and the public sector. It is the collective responsibility of us all and, as part of that, the Government should utilise resource and power where it has it to make an impact.

The instruments that are before us today to uprate not just the benefits where there is a statutory obligation to uprate by CPI in the 2018 act but those where we have discretion are demonstrative of that commitment to provide additional support. Ministers across Government, and particularly in the social justice and finance portfolios, have had discussions in order to make sure that we can utilise our resources and allocate the £428 million to provide that additional support.

I referred to the fact that, last year, we also uprated several of our discretionary benefits by an amount higher than CPI to help people with the rising cost of living at that time. Then, of course, there is the Scottish child payment, which is not just an additional benefit but one that we have increased by 150 per cent in year as well as extending it hugely, with more than 300,000 children now eligible for it.

The eligibility criteria for carer support payment, when it launches, will broadly mirror those for carers allowance until we have transferred everyone’s awards. That is the reality, because we cannot have a two-tier system, just as we cannot have a two-tier system for adult disability payment and personal independence payment until case transfer is completed.

There are important considerations around the Barnett formula and the fiscal framework, but it is also a fact that, in years past, Scotland has paid a surplus of resource into the UK Treasury. We need to bear in mind the wider considerations when thinking about these points. I emphasise that Scotland is making political choices within the devolved settlement to provide additional support. We have also had to make decisions to mitigate UK Government policy that is costly for Scotland, particularly aspects such as the bedroom tax, which costs tens of millions of pounds every year, which we would rather not have to spend. It would be much better if we could get rid of that policy, for example. That is also a reality of the situation.

I acknowledge the international situation and would never pretend that the war in Ukraine—the illegal invasion that we all wish was not happening—is not having an effect but, in the same way that that is a reality, it is also a reality that Brexit is having an effect on inflation and the strength of the UK economy, as are the repercussions of the decisions of the Truss Government in that brief period.

I am—yes.

I will bring in Camilo Arredondo in a moment. I would not want to change the obligations under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. I think that it is right, as Parliament agreed, that there is an obligation to uprate the benefits by the consumer prices index, although of course we have increased the Scottish child payment by more than 10.1 per cent in this period.

I do not know whether Camilo Arredondo wants to say more about the obligations under the 2018 act.

Can I just say clearly that I want that to continue.

As I have referenced before, we first need to deliver adult disability payment, which of course was nationally rolled out on 29 August 2022, and complete the case transfer process for individuals on personal independence payment and disability living allowance for working adults in Scotland to adult disability payment, which is under way. We need to undertake that process. Once everyone is in the Scottish system, we will consider matters for the future, which also relates to why we are consulting on adult disability payment. That consultation is live.

Thank you for your important questions on the regulations. I hope that you will support them.

Motion agreed to,

That the Social Justice and Social Security Committee recommends that the Social Security Up-rating (Scotland) Order 2023 be approved.

Of course, considerations around those on low incomes are at the heart of everything that we are doing with our social security system. The additional benefits that we provide and that are not available elsewhere in the UK are absolutely targeted at low-income households. The Scottish child payment impacts over 300,000 children, all of whom are in low-income households receiving reserved benefits that allow them to access the Scottish child payment, which is an additional £442 million of support.

In relation to what measures we consider when we are thinking about how to ensure that we are being responsive to low-income households when deciding the uprating policy, Scottish Government analysts—I will perhaps bring in Dominic Mellan to say more on this if he wishes to—undertake an annual review of the potential inflation metrics that could be used to uprate benefits. The CPI has been used consistently to uprate benefits by the Scottish Government and the UK Government—the DWP—as it is a leading measure of inflation used by the Office for National Statistics, it holds national statistic status, and CPI forecasts are published regularly by the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England.

We are aware of recent developments by the ONS and other stakeholders to develop supplementary price metrics to reflect that price rises in the economy do not affect all households equally, which is at the heart of Pam Duncan-Glancy’s question. For example, the ONS now publishes CPI rates by income decile. Scottish Government analysts use these additional price indices extensively for internal analysis and briefing of ministers. However, the ONS advises that those price indices are experimental and cautions against their use for anything other than research purposes at this juncture.

We are very focused on providing additional support to low-income households, which is why we provide the additional benefits that we do—the seven benefits are not available in the UK—and we keep in mind how we measure the uprating policy and how best to do that. Dominic Mellan, do you want to say any more on that?

That would require a piece of primary legislation to have been passed by this Parliament. It would have required additional financial resource to be found within a restricted budget. Of course, where we have been able to allocate additional resource using already established mechanisms, we have done so. We have provided additional support where we can and we also passed a bill in order to be able to pay carers allowance supplement in 2021. We also introduced the Scottish child payment from 2019 to 2021 initially for under-sixes and then rolled it out fully to under-16s. We have used existing mechanisms and created new ones to provide additional support, but primary legislation would be required for what Pam Duncan-Glancy refers to.

Susan Soutar, do you want to come in on anything further on that point?