Chamber and committees

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to give evidence on the draft Disability Assistance for Working Age People (Transitional Provisions and Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2022.

I am grateful for our recent discussion on case transfer more generally, which I hope that members found useful. I also appreciate the work of the committee to date in considering the case transfer provisions for people whose awards are moving from disability living allowance to child disability payment and from personal independence payment to adult disability payment. The draft regulations that we are discussing today mirror the processes in the regulations on those benefits in many ways, but there are some key differences, which I will come to shortly.

As I have set out to the committee and Parliament before, we are determined to ensure that case transfer is a seamless process and that we transfer people’s awards safely and securely. It is not a simple administrative process. We are refining information from Department for Work and Pensions systems, some of which are decades old, and transferring it to Social Security Scotland’s new, agile single benefits system. Ensuring that we have the right information and that no one falls out of payment across the total of approximately 700,000 awards that will transfer is a project that takes planning and time. We are doing that work at pace, while ensuring that we do not risk the process’s being undertaken in a safe and secure way. Protecting payments is our absolute focus. The benefits in question are payments of money that people rely on, and we will make sure that recipients continue to get paid the right amount of money at the time that they expect.

From 13 June, we will pilot the PIP transfer, with full transfer beginning at the end of August with the national introduction of our adult disability payment. At that point, adults who receive disability living allowance and would otherwise be required to apply for PIP will start to have their awards selected for transfer. It is that transfer, which is known as natural case transfer, that we are here to discuss.

The draft regulations will ensure that a Scottish resident who was born after 8 April 1948 will have their DLA award selected for transfer to ADP if one of the following three criteria is met: a change of circumstance relevant to the DLA award is reported; the DLA award is due to be renewed; or the person asks to have their DLA award transferred. Once the transfer completes, the person’s initial ADP award will be a like-for-like copy of their DLA award. Then, because the eligibility rules for DLA and ADP are different, the person’s award will be reviewed and ADP rules will apply.

I must make it clear that that review will mean that some people’s awards will stay the same, while other people’s awards may be increased, reduced or ended. That said, the process will not be a repeat of the DWP’s transition from DLA to PIP. In line with our case transfer principles, people will not have to apply for ADP in the way that they had to for PIP. Instead, they will be supported through a review process. People who undergo that review will have our new forms of support available to them through our local delivery service and our independent advocacy service. People will have the enhanced rights that we have built into ADP available at every stage of the process.

I will briefly outline that support. We have replaced the adversarial approach of the DWP through the removal of assessments and degrading examinations. We start from a position of trust in what people tell us. The onus will be on Social Security Scotland to collect information on people’s behalf. The agency will need to collect only one piece of formal supporting information when it makes a decision. Short-term assistance will also be available for anyone who has a reduced or nil award after the review and wishes to seek a redetermination or appeal.

We are also exploring ways of providing support to anyone who may lose the enhanced mobility component on review, given the impact that that will have on their ability to continue to access the accessible vehicles and equipment scheme. I will update the committee on that as soon as I can.

We have designed the process to be as supportive as possible, while acknowledging the challenges that moving between different benefits with different rules could create. I believe that, with the regulations, we have struck the right balance.

I will be happy to take questions.

I cannot speak for individual circumstances after the review, because that will be part of the review process under the eligibility rules for ADP. However, we have explored a number of options for people who might see a reduction in their award or might receive a nil award when their ADP is reviewed, and I will just set out some of those different options now.

We will support people in a number of ways. First, as I have stated, we are ensuring that individuals transfer at their current award level in the first instance, so that they can be supported through the review process. We are also, as I said in response to the deputy convener, setting out clearly in advance the support available to them through our local delivery service and independent advocacy service.

Individuals will benefit from the changes that we have made to ADP to ensure that they are treated with dignity, fairness and respect. For example, we will trust what they tell us. We will place the onus on Social Security Scotland to collect information on people’s behalf during the review and require only one piece of formal supporting information. An important point is that people will have the right to challenge any decision that sees their award reduced or results in their getting a nil award, and they will have access to short-term assistance through that process. The situation for people will, as a result, be a significant improvement on their situation had they been in the DWP system.

As I said in my opening statement, we have thought about how this process will affect individuals. First, there is the case transfer process and then there is the review, which is what I think—if I am not mistaken—you are referring to. The very clear position is that, at the end of the case transfer process, no one should be worse off than they would have been, had they stayed with the DWP.

As for the review of cases, which of course will happen in due course, the differentiation in our system is that, if an award is increased after being reviewed, that increase will be backdated to the point of case transfer, ensuring that no one misses out. That sort of backdating does not happen in the current system.

If an award is decreased, that change will only take effect from the date of the decision, which means that there will be no overpayment that the person will be asked to repay. That clear difference will be of advantage to people.

I would refer you to what has just been said. I would also point out that we also have to transfer people on PIP and that we need rules that are consistent and like for like with PIP. We have 300,000 PIP case transfers to undertake.

As I said, any increase will be from the date of case transfer. In terms of a reduction or a nil award, there is the process of case transfer—which will take 13 to 17 weeks—and then there is the review, which takes time, and then any redetermination or appeal.

There might be circumstances where, under the DWP system, the time before the reduction was applied would have been longer but, in a significant number of circumstances, we anticipate that, in the event of a decrease or a nil award, people will generally be better off within our system, because of short-term assistance and the fact that we will apply the decrease only from the date of final decision rather than date of transfer or change of circumstance, which is the situation with the DWP. Kate Thomson-McDermott can say a bit more about that.

I am not saying that, because that is what the evidence shows happened for people going from DLA to PIP, but that is the evidence from the DWP’s undertaking of its process. We will see how that situation develops in our system. A key point of emphasis that members will appreciate is that we expect to get more decisions right first time. The split of a third, a third and a third comes from initial findings, but 65 per cent of PIP appeals are successful, so there is a different outcome in the end. We have those background situations that help us to consider how this process into the ADP will progress. Certainly, we would look to get decisions right the first time. That is a determination of ours so we are likely to see more success.

I respect Pam Duncan-Glancy highly, but I just want to emphasise again that since 2018 we have been building from scratch an agency that is now highly performing and which employs nearly 2,000 people. We have delivered several benefits; we will start to deliver our 12th on Monday; and seven of those 12 benefits, some of which we are discussing uprating today, are new and available only in Scotland.

That is an important question. I do not want to go into too much detail on the complexities of the internal correspondence within Government, although I will bring in Dominic Mellan if he wishes to add anything that is relevant.

Ministers have, of course, looked collectively at the situation that is before us, with the real pressures that families are encountering and will encounter in the period ahead, and we are determined to provide assistance and help where we can, using the powers and resources that we have. We looked at what we could absorb within the social security budget. The additional amount that we are allocating in order to undertake the uprating for the financial year ahead is £2.7 million. We have absorbed that within the social security budget.

I thank Marie McNair for those important questions. We have had no indication from UK ministers in the DWP or the Treasury of an intention to uprate above the September CPI figure of 3.1 per cent. Of course, we would encourage them to do so. In the regulations that we are laying, we have set out our intention and determination to uprate the six social security benefits that we can fully determine by 6 per cent. Of course, we are increasing the Scottish child payment by 100 per cent.

We are doing what we can, with the powers and resources that we have, to provide assistance. I would encourage the UK Government to also do the right thing and uprate social security benefits across the UK, especially in the areas where there is the current dual process of delivery and introduction by the Scottish Government and case transfer with regard to disability benefits—in particular, the child disability payment and the adult disability payment.

I would encourage the UK Government to increase PIP and the disability living allowance for working-age adults above 3.1 per cent and to look again at universal credit. The case for increasing universal credit and the other benefits that it controls is compelling and I hope that the UK Government does the right thing in the March statement.

I will come to those two points in turn. Of course, the regulations that were based on the September CPI rate followed the position that had been taken in previous years since we introduced the social security benefits—of uprating on that basis. The rising cost of living pressures that we saw before the invasion of Ukraine and have seen since it have, of course, changed the situation for all of us, and in particular for lower-income households and unpaid carers. The Government is committed to doing the right thing and helping people where we can. We therefore looked carefully at what we can do with our powers and our resources, and we have done what is necessary to ensure that we deliver the uprating.

With regard to the point about the social security benefits that are delivered under agency agreements, we cannot create a two-tier system. We will have people in the Scottish system and people in the reserved system until they transfer to the Scottish system, particularly those on disability benefits. I appreciate Pam Duncan-Glancy’s position, but the Government is moving at pace to undertake the delivery of devolved social security and to transfer people into our system in a safe and secure way.

We have had—and, in fact, are still in—a pandemic, and that has made it challenging for us to do all this to our original timetable. As a result, the timetable has had to change not just for the Scottish Government but for the DWP. The fact that Social Security Scotland will launch its 12th benefit on Monday and that seven of those 12 benefits are new is pretty remarkable, as is the fact that we have done all this since 2018. We are building an institution and an organisation that needs to be strong not just in the period ahead but for years to come, and that will rely on having a strong foundation.

In an ideal world, we would, of course, have had everyone in our system quicker than has happened, but these things take time. It is not as if we get a USB stick from DWP and plug it into our computer; the process is much more complicated, and we are undertaking it with diligence and responsibility.