Chamber and committees

I appreciate Pam Duncan-Glancy’s stated view that she does not believe that £50 is a high enough figure, but does she appreciate that the winter heating payment will deliver more support for her constituents than the cold weather payment did?

Of course.

It is guaranteed that the winter heating payment will be paid to people every year and will not depend on weather conditions. We have gone through the points about delivery in February, and I have made a strong commitment that we will seek to do what we can to get payments to people within that month. That is our strong ambition through the determination and commitment of Angela Keane and her team at Social Security Scotland. We will do what we can to get that payment to people as quickly as possible, but we are delivering to 400,000 people. That is a significant number of people, and we want to ensure that we get the support to them.

The financial commitment of the Scottish Government, at £20 million, is, of course, higher than the average of £8.3 million that is spent on cold weather payments. Again, we are spending more on this benefit than would have been the case under the UK system.

I thank members for their constructive engagement today. I urge the committee to pass the regulations so that we can deliver the winter heating payment for around 400,000 people in Scotland.

I refer members to my opening statement and to the discussion that we have had. I urge colleagues to pass the motion.

I move,

That the Social Justice and Social Security Committee recommends that the Winter Heating Assistance (Low Income) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 [draft] be approved.

As I said, it is important that we also consider the wider context. There are individuals who are still to apply for the Scottish child payment, and we want to encourage them to apply. Our decision-making process has been based on our user research, which showed that, if we were to automatically engage that cohort in an application process to continue the payment, other people who might be eligible might think that they would be automatically registered for the Scottish child payment. That could mean that those who wrongly thought that they would be automatically enrolled would not apply.

We have to balance the situation between the needs of the people with children who are ageing out and those of the wider cohort, in the context of our wanting people to apply for the benefit. Therefore, the decision was made that, although we would not undertake a process of restarting automatically the Scottish child payment for children who have recently turned six, we will proactively contact their families and emphasise that they need to apply.

Thank you, convener. I am sorry that I cannot, due to coronavirus, be with you all in person this morning. Thank you for your understanding, and for the opportunity to discuss the draft regulations with you.

The draft regulations will make changes to the best start foods regulations, the best start grant regulations and the Scottish child payment regulations. They will also correct an administrative oversight that has been identified in the Ukraine regulations that is required to ensure, on arrival in Scotland or in the rest of the United Kingdom, parity of access to benefits, specifically for people who hold Irish citizenship.

As colleagues will know, the Scottish child payment, best start foods and the three best start grant payments—the pregnancy and baby payment, the early learning payment and the school-age payment—are known collectively as the five family payments. They are delivered by Social Security Scotland and are five different payments that aim to provide support to low-income families with the costs of raising a child. All five payments are intended to help to tackle inequality, to improve outcomes and to make a positive impact on all the priority groups that are identified in “Best Start, Bright Futures—Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026”.

The regulations that are before us support the focus that the Scottish Government and the Parliament more widely have placed on tackling and reducing child poverty. The first main change that we are making is to extend eligibility for the Scottish child payment to low-income families with children aged six to 15.

Secondly, the regulations will increase the value of the Scottish child payment to £25 per child per week and will allow Social Security Scotland to automatically pay the best start grant early years payment and the best start grant school-age payment to eligible people who are in receipt of the Scottish child payment.

The regulations will also widen the definition of kinship care across the best start grant, best start foods and the Scottish child payment to ensure that the regulations include all kinship carers with a relevant legal order or agreement with the local authority. That will ensure that kinship carers are included who are not related to the child but are known to them and have a pre-existing relationship with them.

That change will also help to ensure better consistency across the payments, which I know the Scottish Commission on Social Security welcomes. Draft regulations were referred to the commission in March. We received its scrutiny report in June, and the Scottish Government’s response to its recommendations was laid in Parliament on 20 September. As always, I am extremely grateful to the Scottish Commission on Social Security for its scrutiny and recommendations.

I remind members that, yesterday, we laid regulations to introduce further ancillary provisions to ensure that the regulations that we are discussing today will deliver the policy intentions effectively.

I welcome the opportunity to speak to you all, as colleagues and as a committee, as part of your consideration of the regulations. I look forward to any questions that you might have.

Again, I will shortly bring in Janet Richardson from the agency for a response about what is happening on the ground, but I can tell you that there will be a processing period after application. However, I want to emphasise that the straight-through processing and the increased workforce that Janet has just highlighted will mean that applications will be processed as quickly as possible. Indeed, many applications will go through the automatic processes, which will have a very positive impact on the client experience and waiting times.

The level of demand is still somewhat unknown, because we are not clear about how many people will apply in the first week from 14 November. Of course, we have projections on what we think the position will be. We want as many people as possible to apply—indeed, that is the overarching message from the Government, the Parliament and more widely—so we are prepared to process applications as quickly as possible.

I will pass over to Janet Richardson, who can give you a further indication of the timescales involved.

That is an important question. As I said, the Scottish child payment is part of a number of payments from Social Security Scotland that are providing a significant additional quantum of support for families. Taken together, the Scottish child payment; the best start grant pregnancy and baby payment, early learning payment and school-age payment; and best start foods could be worth over £10,000 by the time a family’s first child reaches six and £9,700 for subsequent children by the end of 2022. That is a significant additional quantum of support.

That compares with less than £1,800 for an eligible family’s first child and under £1,300 for subsequent children in England and Wales. That difference of more than £8,200 between what people in Scotland and people elsewhere in the UK receive highlights the Scottish Government’s major support for early years with regard to low-income families and our determination to provide assistance.

I am not sure how relevant that is to the regulations, but, in a moment, I will bring in Janet Richardson. I will elaborate as much as I can at this juncture, and I am happy to follow up on the point, if that would be helpful.

I maintain that the level of collaboration between Social Security Scotland and partner agencies—whether the NHS, local authorities or more widely—is strong. There are a number of aspects to consider with regard to the sharing of information and data protection, which members appreciate, I am sure, we need to be extremely careful about and mindful of. However, there are also safeguarding issues that the agency is engaging with and considerate of and that form an important aspect of our support for clients during the application process and more widely, where appropriate.

Janet, do you have anything to add? I am certainly happy to undertake to follow up these points with the committee through the committee convener, if that would be of interest.

Thank you. With regard to the implementation of the extension of the Scottish child payment, I clarify that the Scottish Government would like to have delivered that from day 1 of the Scottish child payment. It was actually our engagement with the DWP, the need to get the required data from it, the pressures on its side and the need to work with it collaboratively that delayed the process.

It is inaccurate and unfair for Scottish Labour to state that there has not been a determination from the Scottish Government to pay the Scottish child payment to under-16s as soon as possible. There absolutely has been that determination from the Scottish Government. That is why we implemented it for under-sixes as soon as possible. Otherwise, the whole Scottish child payment would have taken longer.

The delivery of the policy to under-sixes first, and then to under-16s as soon as we could, which required our having data from the DWP, was a position that was agreed in order to deliver the Scottish child payment as quickly as the Scottish Government could. Of course, the Scottish Government created the Scottish child payment using powers that it acquired as a result of making the case for more powers through the Scottish Parliament. It is important to bear those points in mind.