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The Scottish Government has commissioned an independent organisation, Research Scotland, to carry out an analysis of all of the responses to the Scottish Government’s consultation on social security. The analysis report, which will be published shortly, will provide a summary of the findings to all of the questions, including those on winter fuel payments.

The Scottish Government wrote to the Minister of State for Welfare Reform on 15 December 2016 about the UK Government's proposals for “Exceptions to the limiting of the Child Element of Universal Credit to a maximum of two children”.

The letter made clear that the Scottish Government is fundamentally opposed both to the policy in its entirety and the way in which the UK Government plans to implement it. There is no acceptable process which can ever be put in place which requires a woman being forced to disclose being raped in order to access social security.

Scottish Government funding for the Scottish National Standards for Information and Advice Providers accreditation since 2009 has been as follows:

2009-10 - £150,000

2010-11 - £150,000

2011-12 - £150,000

2012-13 - £150,000

2013-14 - nil*

2014-15 - £116,500

2015-16 - £100,000

2016-17 - £150,000

From 2009-10 to 2012-13 funding was directed towards contracted delivery of the audit process.

It was not possible to award a contract in 2013-14 and the Money Advice Service delivered and funded the accreditation process for this year.

Since 2014-15, the Standards have been undergoing redevelopment and these represent development costs. Those organisations that were due to seek reaccreditations had there accreditation continued during this time.

In 2016-17 the budget includes the first tranche of accreditations that will be delivered under the new audit process.

The 20% earnings taper within the Council Tax Reduction Scheme means the maximum weekly financial effect was £3.49, although Regulation 2 of the same Scottish Statutory Instrument ensures pre-existing Council Tax Reduction awards that include the family premium have that entitlement preserved.

New applicants in receipt of a “passporting” benefit that qualifies them for the maximum Council Tax Reduction -around 70% of the present caseload - will continue to be entitled to a full reduction of their Council Tax liability.

Our package of reforms will increase the Child Premium within the applicable amount of the Council Tax Reduction scheme by £16.73 per week for each child from April 2017. This is worth up to £6.69 per week for a family with two children.

Official statistics are currently available for the period to 15 September 2016. Of Council Tax Reduction claims in payment on this date, 11,710 started on or after 1 May 2016. There is no centrally-held data on the number of unsuccessful applications.

The previous model of accreditation involved a four-year year cycle after which audit and re-accreditation was needed. From the information available the majority of accreditation periods for organisations ran to 2014, 2015 or 2016. However there was a hiatus in availability of audit and accreditation, and Scottish Government agreed to roll on the accreditation of previously accredited advice services until a new system of accreditation/re-accreditation was in place.

As the Scottish Government agreed to roll on accreditation organisations have not ceased to be accredited.

The list of Accredited Agencies published on the Scottish Government’s website at http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Justice/policies/widening-access/standardsforadvisers indicates that there are 97 organisations accredited to the SNSIAP, some with multiple accreditations for different advice services.

Funding of up to £150,000 has been allocated for the further development and delivery of the Scottish National Standards for Information and Advice providers in 2016-17. Budgets for 2017-18 have not yet been finalised but it is anticipated that a maximum budget of £150,000 will be made available, depending on the content of the Budget Bill

The majority of revenue funding for local authorities is being provided by means of a block grant. The total block grant settlement for 2016-17 was over £10.3 billion. Individual local authorities are responsible for the management of their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. Many local authorities will allocate local funding to the provision of income maximisation advice. Analysis of local authority expenditure on money advice in 2015-16 was published by the Improvement Service in January 2017. The data and reports can be found at: http://www.improvementservice.org.uk/2015-16-report.html.

The Scottish Government also provides some additional funding to local authorities for income maximisation advice projects through a number of programmes administered by the Scottish Legal Aid Board. The programmes support the provision of advice to assist people in Scotland affected by debt, the UK government’s welfare changes and the economic downturn. They are jointly funded by the Scottish Government and Money Advice Service. Further information about the programmes can be found at: http://www.slab.org.uk/providers/advice/grant-funding/.

The following table sets out the funding that has been distributed to local authorities by the Scottish Legal Aid Board using joint funding from both the Scottish Government and the Money Advice Service. The amounts represented reflect spend on both projects which are directly led by a local authority and projects where a local authority is acting as a project partner.

*includes forecast spend

The Scottish Government is committed to building a fairer nation and tackling deprivation, poverty and inequality. As a result income maximisation projects are funded from across a wide range of portfolios and it is not possible to obtain full answers to the questions without incurring disproportionate cost.

The information provided below is the best available at this time. It is drawn from a review that the Scottish Government is currently undertaking of its support to advice services. There is no standard definition of an advice service so for the purposes of the review we have defined an advice service as an organisation that provides independent advice to individuals on:

Income maximisation, including access to publicly provided financial entitlements; and/or

Statutory civil rights, including how to seek recourse if those rights are not upheld

This definition excludes services that provide support on skills development (for example, employability services), emotional matters (for example counselling services) or business development. We have also excluded legal aid funding with the exception of the money made available through the Legal Aid Fund for civil Advice and Assistance, including Assistance by Way of Representation.

The review has found that over £40 million of funding was provided for this advice provision in 2016-17. Of this total funding, the review has estimated that around
£13 million is directly attributable to advice projects that aim to maximise household incomes – either by increasing access to financial entitlements or reducing outgoings on costs such as energy. This total excludes projects that provide an element of income maximisation advice as part of a broader provision as it is not possible to proportion the amount of funding attributable to income maximisation work. The total amount of Scottish Government funding supporting this income maximisation work can therefore reasonably be expected to be higher than this stated figure. Further funding will also be directed to income maximisation projects as a result of block grants to local authorities and health boards

The primary recipients of this funding are set out in the following table:

The 2017-18 Draft Budget contains a clear commitment to continue to support advice provision for people on low incomes. Funding decisions will be announced in due course.