Question reference: S6W-05691
- Asked by: Sharon Dowey, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 26 January 2022
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Current status: Answered by Ben Macpherson on 9 February 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether the "ongoing issue around the preferred technical solution", referred to in the minutes from the 17th meeting of the Joint Ministerial Working Group on Welfare from November 2021, will cause any delay to roll-out of the delivery of the increase in the Scottish Child Payment.
Answer
The ‘technical solution’ referred to will not impact on our commitment to doubling Scottish Child Payment. This increase, forecast to benefit 111,000 children under age 6 this year, is included within the annual uprating regulations that will come into effect on 1 April.
Separately we have committed to extending Scottish Child Payment to 220,000 older children - aged 6-15 - by the end of this year when it is expected around 430,000 children living in low income households could be eligible. Our initial analysis suggests that this payment when fully rolled out, could lift 40,000 children out of poverty, reducing overall child poverty by an estimated 4 percentage points in 2023-24.
In order to extend Scottish Child Payments to 6-15 year olds it is essential that the UK Government provide us with the data we need in order to establish eligibility for the Payment.
The strong preference of the Scottish Government has consistently been to extend the existing interfaces, which are currently in place to support delivery of the Scottish Child Payment for under 6s. The DWP’s position is that, in contrast to delivery of Child Disability payment and Adult Disability Payment where the ongoing use of existing interfaces has been authorised, the extension of Scottish Child Payment to under 16s should be built to align with their new strategic solution. This carries a higher degree of risk to our delivery timeline, as the DWP’s new strategic solution is still in the design phase, but we have joint mechanisms in place to monitor and track that risk.