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The Strategic Group on Women and Work was formed following the Women’s Employment Summit in September 2012. The first meeting was on 27 March 2013 with subsequent meetings held on 26 June 2013, 30 October 2013, 26 February 2014, and 7 May 2014.

The remit of the group is to:

Agree the range of actions and recommendations from the Women’s Employment Summit;

Agree priorities across each commission and the timescales for action and by whom;

Advise on actions to further address the challenges raised, in particular how those outwith the Government could support change, e.g. employers, the third sector, communities and education and training sector;

Monitor implementation of the agreed plans, reviewing progress and challenging inaction;

Agree the content of Ministerial reports to Parliament on progress; and

The group will meet 3 or 4 times a year.

The Scottish Welfare Fund comprises of Community Care Grants and Crisis Grants.

The table below shows how many applications contained someone on a sanctioned benefit during the period 1 April to 31 December 2013.

For Community Care Grants, 31 applications in total contained someone who had been sanctioned. Of these 31, 12 applications were successful in receiving a Community Care Grant.

For Crisis Grants, 400 applications in total contained someone who had been sanctioned. Of these 400, 165 applications were successful in receiving a Crisis Grant.

The Scottish Welfare Fund guidance regarding sanctions changed in April 2014. The data in the above analysis pre-dates this change.

Statistics on the Scottish Welfare Fund can be found at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/swf

The Scottish Government has no capacity to provide funding over and above the £55 million provided in the years 2013-15. The lifting of the cap on funding for discretionary housing payments (DHPs) will create additional flexibility for local authorities to supplement their DHP funds to meet any additional local priorities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-20200 on 31 March 2014. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Welfare Fund comprises of Community Care Grants and Crisis Grants.

The number of applications that were accepted and rejected by gender was previously answered in S4W-20605 on 2 May 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The following tables show the number of applications which were accepted and rejected by gender of the main applicant and by local authority. Tables are provided separately for Community Care Grants and Crisis Grants.

Table 1: Community Care Grant Decisions by Gender of Main Applicant and Local Authority.

Note: All figures have been rounded to the nearest five applications.

Table 2: Crisis Grant Decisions by Gender of Main Applicant and Local Authority.

Note: All figures have been rounded to the nearest five applications.

Further statistics on the Scottish Welfare Fund can be found at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/swf.

Yes, the Scottish Government expects everyone affected by the bedroom tax who applies for a discretionary housing payment to be awarded one.

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland wrote to the Deputy First Minister on 2 May 2014 to offer to provide Scottish Ministers with a power to set the statutory cap on discretionary housing payments in Scotland using section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998. The Scottish Government has accepted this offer. At their meeting on 8 May 2014, the Deputy First Minister and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland agreed to prioritise the progress of the section 63 order. The order will need to be agreed by both the Scottish and UK Governments before it is laid before both Houses of the Westminster Parliament and the Scottish Parliament. It will then go before the Privy Council. The Deputy First Minister will update the Scottish Parliament once a timescale has been agreed with the Scotland Office.

(i) The UK Government provided £23.8 million for 2013-14 and 2014-15 to the Scottish Government for the Scottish Welfare Fund (SWF).

Scottish Ministers decided to use the full allocation from the UK Government to provide local welfare assistance and provided an additional £9.2 million of funding for both of these years. The total funding available for the SWF in each of these years is £33 million.

The UK Government also transferred funding for administration costs of just over
£5 million in 2013-14, falling to just over £4.6 million in 2014-15, while the Scottish Government has again provided additional funding to match the previous £5 million total.

Set-up costs in the region of £2 million were transferred from the UK Government in 2013-14 for the SWF.

(ii) Responsibility for information and advice provision rests with both the UK and the Scottish Government. There has been not been any transfer of responsibility in this regard in relation to the recent welfare changes.

(iii) The programme budget transfer from the UK Government was £328 million for 2013-14 and £320 million for 2014-15. The Scottish Government provided an additional £23 million in both 2013-14 and 2014-15 to assist with mitigating the
10% funding gap local authorities faced.

- The Scottish Government provided a one-off sum of £4.156 million to local authorities in 2013-14 for the set-up costs of the new Council Tax Reduction (CTR) scheme.

- The UK Government's funding for local authorities' administrative costs for 2013-14 (details can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/226452/s5-2012.pdf) was maintained as a single subsidy for both Housing Benefit and CTR, but was partially disaggregated for CTR only cases from 2014-15 with a transfer of £7.05 million to the Scottish Government. The UK Government continues to provide funding towards local authorities’ administration costs, but this is provided direct to local authorities and it is not possible to disaggregate to identify CTR separately.

The Scottish Welfare Fund guidance sets out the ringfencing arrangements for the Fund. The Scottish Welfare Fund guidance can be found on the Scottish Government website at:

http://scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/welfarereform/scottishwelfarefund/scottishwelfarefuindguidance.

I wrote to the Welfare Reform Committee on 2 May 2014 to advise them of our intention to introduce the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Bill in June 2014. A copy of the letter is available at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_Welfare_Reform_Committee/20140502_MB-MM_Scottish_Welfare_Fund.pdf.