Chamber and committees

We have no specific definition of a delivery partner, however, we will be engaging with Police Scotland through the local community planning partnerships and will work with them and all other relevant public and third sector organisations to ensure awareness of Social Security Scotland’s services. Additionally, in Social Security Scotland’s commitment to the safety of clients, the public and staff, which is reflected in our public protection policies, we will engage with Police Scotland where it is deemed appropriate.

The Best Start Grant’s case management systems have been built to automate processes where possible. We are minimising both manual processing and the evidence that a client is required to provide with electronic checks being made where appropriate.

For example, with evidence gathering, there are automatic checks on postcode, bank details and pregnancy details.

For decision making, automatic rules have been built into the system where possible. There are manual checks in place for quality assurance.

The turnover and retention rates for Social Security Scotland in the period 1 September to 30 November 2018 are shown in the following table.

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions replied that “I understand my officials are taking these matters forward and I have asked them to liaise with yours as appropriate.” No further information was provided in the letter regarding the numbers of people overpaid.

Under the Consolidated Budgeting Rules that the Scottish Government is required to follow there is no net impact on the Scottish Budget as a result of the transfer of Carer’s Allowance debt.

The Scottish Government is currently considering the best approach to evaluate the Universal Credit Scottish choices. We intend to set out our plans for this in more detail next year.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 impose obligations on the use of all personal data held by the Scottish Government. They require personal data to be processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security and confidentiality of the personal data.

Most employee (or prospective employee) diversity information is classed as special category data under data protection laws which requires greater care when processing to protect security and confidentiality.

Producing data sets with less than 5 counts, risks being able to link that data to individuals and hence to identify them. For this reason, the data is suppressed.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-20328 on 12 December 2018. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

Details of the number of children receiving the highest care component of Disability Living Allowance and living in Scotland are published by the Department for Work and Pensions on their Stat-Xplore website. The most recent data published by DWP showed that in May 2018 there were 13,004 children in receipt of the higher rate of the care component of the Disability Living Allowance in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is holding a Race Equality Action Plan (REAP) Conference 11 December 2018 to update stakeholders on progress of actions in the REAP, including in relation to employment and work. This will also be a spring board for organising the summit on minority ethnic employment and enterprise which we will hold during the spring 2019.