Seòmar agus comataidhean

Social Security Scotland is an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government. The Agency went live on 1 September 2018 and is currently accountable for payment of Carer’s Allowance in Scotland and payment of the Carer’s Allowance Supplement.

The budget for the Agency for the financial year 2018-19 is currently expected to be £207 million. The budget comprises three elements and covers the seven months from 1 September 2018 to 31 March 2019. The three elements of the budget are: Carer’s Allowance (£155.5 million), Carer’s Allowance Supplement (£34.9 million) and operational costs (£16.6 million). Significant elements of this budget will be demand led.

The final amounts to be allocated for Social Security Scotland for the 2018-19 financial year will be confirmed through the spring revision to the 2018-19 Scottish Budget.

Sections 3, 8 and 9 of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 will be commenced later this autumn.

Social Security Scotland's Corporate Plan will be published shortly, as an interim document. As with everything it does, Social Security Scotland will develop and iterate its Corporate Plan in collaboration with stakeholder communities. Social Security Scotland's Corporate Plan will comprise one of three elements which will make up the Agency's tri-partite strategic planning and reporting regime. The other two parts will be the Agency's Annual Business Plan and Annual Report and Accounts, which will be published next year.

As Universal Credit is reserved to the UK Government, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) collects data on the Universal Credit Scottish choices on behalf of the Scottish Government. In line with good practice, the Scottish Government then carries out quality assurance on this data to minimise risk of error and ensure that it is suitable for publication.

The information published in January 2018 was initial management information, covering the period 11 November to 31 December 2017, to provide early indications of the take up of the Universal Credit Scottish choices. The Scottish Government will publish further management information covering the first six months of operation of the Universal Credit Scottish choices in October.

The qualifying date for the first payment of Carer’s Allowance Supplement is 16 April 2018.

The Scottish Government responded to the Social Security Advisory Committee consultation on the Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) (Managed Migration) Amendment Regulations 2018, on 20 August 2018. A copy was also sent to the Social Security Committee.

The consultation closed at the end of April. Over 400 responses were received, and are now being analysed. The Scottish Government will publish a report summarising the findings in the autumn.

Social Security Scotland will put in place equality monitoring of its services, including for ethnicity, and will report on this as part of its performance statistics each year. This will be reviewed as set out in the Social Security Scotland Act (2018).

Disaggregation of poverty statistics by ethnic group is already available in our annual ‘Poverty & Income inequality in Scotland’ publication and associated tables, and these statistics will continue to be published.

Ethnic minority families have been identified as a priority group in ‘Every Child, Every Chance’, the Scottish Government’s Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, and statistics on these will therefore be published within the annual report.

However, while three of the four child poverty target measures can be disaggregated by ethnicity, the last one, persistent poverty, cannot. This is because the data source, a household survey, has a small sample size in Scotland. Therefore, additional analysis from alternative sources may be needed to supplement the available poverty measures.

A core of group of 30 people with lived experience of social security, carefully balanced to reflect a broad range of experiences, has been recruited and will oversee the charter’s development. To date it has met on three occasions with sessions focussed on the charter’s structure and appearance, human rights, inclusive communication and what the principles should mean in practice.

A separate stakeholder group composed of 27 organisations, chaired by Dr Sally Witcher, met for the first time on 17 August. Many of these organisations, e.g. the Coalition for Racial Equality and the Scottish Refugee Council, represent or work closely with people from seldom heard groups, including those from minority ethnic communities. An important part of the stakeholder group’s remit is to help ensure that the charter strongly reflects the perspectives of these groups and communities.