Social security Q&A with Shirley-Anne Somerville

What has been the personal highlight of this past year been for you in your portfolio?

Since taking on this portfolio last year I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved. I think the highlight has been the establishment of Scotland’s most significant new public service – Social Security Scotland. This will be delivering six benefits by the end September and making £403 million payments this financial year. I’m particularly proud that we have changed the narrative on benefits and by removing barriers to applying and encouraging people to take up the financial support they are eligible for, our take-up rates are looking positive

It has been a pleasure to meet some of the 83,000 carers, parents and children who are already benefiting from our increased investment. It has allowed carers to go on breaks with their loved ones and it has allowed parents to take their children on days out and buy things like beds. It is wonderful to hear that the money that we are providing is making a difference to people’s lives, many who have been hit hard by UK Government’s welfare cuts.

What do you see as your main priority in the brief in the coming year?

We’ve made excellent progress to date on the establishment of our new social security system and we will continue to build on this. The benefits that will be introduced from next year, particularly disability benefits, will be more complex and we are ready for this challenge. I also know that our new Scottish Child Payment will make a major difference to the lives of children and tackle child poverty head-on and lift 30,000 children out of poverty. We will continue to involve people in how we develop and deliver benefits to make sure they meet people’s needs and ensure we do everything in a safe and steady way and support even more people.

You've found yourself having to calm tensions and try to strike a balance over gender self-ID. Do you think the conflicting issues over women’s rights and trans rights can be resolved?

As Cabinet Secretary for Equalities and as a member of the Scottish Parliament, I have a duty to encourage respectful debate on all issues.  I have already said that personally, I don’t feel conflict between my support for trans rights and my support for women’s rights - but I know that some do feel that conflict and that they feel that hard won rights may be compromised.  Before summer recess I committed to consulting on a draft bill later this year, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to understand what our proposals mean and to address any concerns.

I do think that a lot of the issues that have been raised are not directly related to the improvements we want to make for people seeking a gender recognition certificate. But I want to address those issues too, which is why I have committed us to producing guidance on effectively balancing trans rights and women’s rights, in the overall context of this government’s strong and enduring commitment to protecting all human rights. It’s why I have tasked the chief statistician to convene a working group to look at how data on sex and gender is captured with a view to offering expert advice. This year I will continue to work hard to ensure that these issues are better understood and that we do everything we can to advance equality for trans people and uphold the rights of women.

The Scottish Government has chosen to delay taking over control of some benefits for longer than originally planned. Has the process been more difficult than first envisaged?

From April 2020 we’ll take full responsibility for the remaining devolved benefits, which means all benefits will be fully funded by the Scottish Government. 

The benefits for delivery from 2020 are more complex than any we have delivered so far, because they involve regular payments to individuals and will involve more than making payments, but we also need a whole host of other systems to be put into place for the first time ever in Scotland – for example assessments, advocacy and appeals. For the first time, two governments will need to share clients. We must make sure our system works seamlessly with the DWP’s systems to ensure people get the right money, at the right time. We are dependent on DWP to do their bit to make this happen.

by Gemma Fraser

Society & Welfare

The year in social security calls for a different approach

We have heard from our experience panels – people who have direct personal experience of the current system – that the most important thing to them is that they continue to receive the correct payments at the correct times. It’s therefore imperative that we take the time to get it right for the new Scottish benefits. I am determined we avoid the mistakes made by the DWP when they moved people between benefits. You just need to look at the shambles of Universal Credit, or the discredited PIP assessment process to understand why. 

This is all in addition to new benefits we are introducing, including the Job Grant and the new Scottish Child Payment. Our timetable for delivery will ensure we continue with the safe and secure delivery of all benefits.

One of the most significant recent causes of poverty has been the delay to the first payment of Universal Credit. Should the Scottish Government not step in and bridge the gap?

There is a mountain of evidence that Universal Credit is pushing people into hardship, rent arrears and poverty. UK Government welfare cuts have increased the risk of deprivation for low-income families across Scotland. We have spent over half billion in the last financial year supporting low income people. In addition, we spend an annual £100 million on mitigating welfare cuts, including investment of £38 million in the Scottish Welfare Fund, providing much needed crisis support.

It’s simply not possible for the Scottish Government to undo every mistake of the UK Government or fill their £3.7 billion-worth of cuts. And nor should we have to. I want us to invest in our policies like the Scottish Child Payment, not constant mitigation of another government’s policies. We must continue to press the UK Government to do that, for example, fix the fundamental flaws within Universal Credit – something that the new DWP secretary has recognised is a major problem. Since the start of 2019, each month an average of 9,000 people in Scotland have been transferred by the DWP to a broken Universal Credit system that is not fit for purpose – and this must stop.

We’ve used the very limited powers we have over Universal Credit to give people more choice – to pay housing costs directly to landlords and to change the frequency of payments. We are also working towards getting an agreement from the DWP to introduce split payments to give everyone access to an independent income.

The introduction of the £10 Scottish Child Payment has delayed the introduction of Disability Assistance for Older People (DAOP) and Scottish Carer’s Allowance. What was the thinking behind this decision?

At a time when UK Government welfare reforms are pushing countless more households into poverty, the Scottish Child Payment has the potential to lift 30,000 children out of poverty and help stop many more families just above the poverty line falling into it. The hard work we have done, and the difficult decisions we have taken on timetabling, means we can start payments early for younger children in this parliamentary term, which is significantly ahead of the timetable in our Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan – something politicians and stakeholders have repeatedly called for.

As a substantial new benefit, I hope people can recognise the need to reconsider our timetable for the devolved benefits and that the difficult decision to change the delivery of DAOP for a few months was worth taking to deliver such a transformational policy which will benefit hundreds of thousands of children.

The mark of a serious and mature government is being able to balance the radical action needed to solve the big challenges we face and do so in a responsible way.

Our revised timetable remains ambitious, realistic and ensures we continue the safe and secure delivery of all benefits, protecting people and their payments. And I hope that our wider policies across government demonstrate how much we value older people and carers, and the action we are taking to support them.

What lessons have been learned so far in the setting up of a new social security agency and the devolution and creation of new benefits?

From the very start, the Scottish Government has been committed to learning lessons to inform how we can be as effective as possible, as we set up the social security service. The difference in approach we have taken has allowed us to do this. We engage with stakeholders closely but importantly we have learned a lot from our experience panels, made up of over 2,400 people with experience of at least one of the benefits being devolved in Scotland. This has made a positive difference to the design of our policy and service to ensure we are meeting the needs of people from the outset and always continuously improving. For example, we moved from a three-month to a six-month time period for applying for the Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment, because experience panel members told us that three months wasn't long enough.

We have closely considered what we can learn from social security programmes implemented by the UK Government, notably Universal Credit, which has attracted serious criticism from stakeholders. Independent commentators such as the National Audit Office and the Institute for Government thinktank, as well as the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, have published reports on the lessons to be learned from Universal Credit and we continue to take those lessons into account in considering how we implement the devolved benefits.

We have good evidence to show our approach is working, with high satisfaction levels for Scotland’s new social security service. Recent figures showed that 100 per cent of respondents rate the telephone service from Social Security Scotland as ‘good’ to ‘very good’. The online service also scored highly at 98 per cent.