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Response to Committee's pre-budget letter

Letter from Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, 9 December 2021

Dear Convener,

Thank you for your letter dated 29 October 2021 setting out the Pre-Budget report of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. I very much appreciate you setting out the key points from the Committee, informed by the evidence sessions. The Committee raised a number of questions, covering issues both across my portfolio and others, showing the cross-cutting nature of tackling child poverty, and these are addressed in the annex to this letter.

The Social Justice Housing and Local Government portfolio brings together funding on social security with our housing and social justice programmes, alongside the core local government settlement. Regeneration funding now sits with the Finance and Economy portfolio.

This year’s Scottish Budget has been one of the most challenging. As we emerge from the impact of Covid, is it vitally important that we focus our efforts on our key challenges of tackling child poverty, climate change and economic recovery. As I have responsibility for tackling child poverty, my portfolio is of course vital to these aims and I am focused on that delivery.

With those challenges, and that focus, in mind the highlights of the budget from my portfolio’s perspective include:

• Doubling the Scottish Child Payment, and making bridging payments available to support 150,000 children;
• Allocating £831 million towards the delivery of 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, of which at least 70% will be available for social rent and 10% will be in our remote, rural and island communities; 
• Introducing the Adult Disability Payment to give disabled people a fundamentally different experience when applying for and receiving the support to which they are entitled;  
• Introducing, in winter 2022, Low Income Winter Heating Assistance to give further help to low-income households;
• Allocating more than £80 million in Discretionary Housing Payments to fully mitigate the UK Government’s bedroom tax;
• Guaranteeing the Scottish Welfare Fund;    
• Allocating more than £23 million to frontline organisations that help eradicate and prevent violence against women and girls; 
• Allocating £21.3 million to support third sector and advice services; and 
• Making a further £10 million available for our Ending Homelessness Together Fund. This continues our investment of £100 million transformation funding between 2018-19 and 2025-26.

Social Justice and Social Security

Tackling Child Poverty is a national mission for this government, and for society as a whole. We are maximising outcomes from a range of budgets, alongside the doubling of the Scottish Child Payment, and our Bridging Payments, to contribute toward reaching our ambitious 2023-24 and 2030-31 statutory targets on child poverty. We will publish our second tackling child poverty delivery plan for 2022-26 in March 2022 backed by a £50 million fund over the period of the plan. As part of this we will invest £10 million towards the Child Poverty budget in 2022-23 which will drive cross government activity to progress the first year of the new delivery plan.

We will invest £2.25 million in our Social Innovation Partnership to support cross-cutting, holistic and person-centred approaches that increase people’s wellbeing and capabilities. This investment will allow us to continue and build on our place-based collaborations with local authority partners to support transformation through values-based leadership. We will invest a further £1.212 million in the Scottish Mentoring and Leadership programme which will continue this work which will reach up to 15,000 young people over the next five years.

As set out in the Budget 2022-23, and in line with Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts, we are committing over £3.9 billion in social security payments to reach over one million people. Money which will go to the people of Scotland who need it the most. In addition, we will protect the Scottish Welfare Fund with £35.5 million for payments, helping people in times of crisis and £80.2 million in Discretionary Housing Payments, helping people sustain tenancies and directing resources towards mitigating the UK Government’s bedroom tax.

Social Security Scotland is already successfully delivering eleven benefits, seven of which are brand new, and is getting ready to deliver several more.

Starting in winter 2022 Low Income Winter Heating Assistance will give around 400,000 low-income households, currently eligible for Cold Weather Payments, a £50 payment every year through an investment of around £21 million. In 2022 we will launch Adult Disability Payment providing disabled people with a fundamentally different experience when applying for and receiving the support they are entitled to. It will also be the first full year of delivery of the Child Disability Payment providing support for the extra costs that a disabled child or young person might have.

We are investing £536 million to deliver the devolved social security system in Scotland, £219.6 million for programme implementation, £310.9 million for delivery by Social Security Scotland, and a further £5.5 million to administer the Scottish Welfare Fund.

The Budget commits an additional £103 million, bringing investment to £197 million overall, to double the Scottish Child Payment to £20 per week from April 2022, immediately benefiting around 111,000 children under the age of 6. We will extend this support to under 16s by the end of 2022 meaning around 400,000 children will be eligible for this benefit designed to tackle child poverty head on. Ahead of this expansion we will continue to deliver Scottish Child Payment bridging payments to around 150,000 pupils in receipt of free school meals on the basis of low income, which is an investment of £68.2 million. The doubled payment, together with the three Best Start Grant payments and Best Start Foods, can give families up to £8,400 by the time their first child turns six.

Housing

Our Programme for Government commits to delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032 of which at least 70% will be available for social rent and 10% will be in our remote, rural and island communities. We are making a total of £831.5 million available towards the delivery of these homes in 2022/23, an increase of £174 million from the previous amount set out as part of our multi-year funding CSR commitments. 

The current five year £50 million ending homelessness together fund covers the same period as our Ending Homelessness Together action plan – 2018/19 to 2022/23 – and has enabled us to implement major changes to homelessness policy in the last four years. We will invest an additional £50 million over this parliamentary term to run alongside the revised plan and carry out the next phase of our work with partners to end homelessness and rough sleeping.  £10 million will be invested in 2022-23 with a focus on homelessness prevention, rapid rehousing and Housing First.

Local Government 

The 2022-23 Local Government Settlement of almost £12.5 billion continues to provide local government with a funding settlement that is both fair and affordable, under the most challenging of circumstances. This represents a cash increase of £853.9 million or 7.3 per cent which is the equivalent of a real terms increase of 4.5 per cent.

Included in the total funding of almost £12.5 billion is a revenue settlement of almost £11.8 billion and a capital settlement of £679.5 million.  

The revenue settlement represents a cash increase of £791.4 million or 7.2 per cent equal to a real terms increase of 4.4 per cent. The capital settlement is a cash increase of £62.5 million or 10.1 per cent which is a real terms increase of 7.2 per cent.

Equality and Human Rights

In the Scottish Budget 2022-23, the Promoting Equality and Human Rights budget line is £44.98 million. This represents an increase by 39% from the 2021-22 (£32.28 million) budgetary position. This will enable continued funding to organisations supporting some of the most vulnerable in society through Delivering Equally Safe and Embedding Equality and Human Rights funds, aligned with the National Performance Framework. This increase also delivers on a range of Manifesto and Program for Government commitments in equality, inclusion and human rights including support to frontline organisations that work to tackle gender-based violence or deliver Equally Safe. This demonstrates the Scottish Government’s commitment and priority to promoting equality and realising human rights for the people of Scotland. 

I hope that this information is useful, and I look forward to appearing before the Committee as part of your Budget scrutiny process. 

Yours sincerely,

Shona Robison
Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government

Annexe A: Meeting Child Poverty Targets (373KB, pdf) posted 23 June 2022