Chamber and committees

The budgets for the Scottish Government, including Social Security Directorate, are set out in the Scottish Budget each year, and links are provided below to each year’s Budget. These include budget lines for Social Security, which include the cost for directly employed staff and contingent workers.

2016-17: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170702005839/
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/12/9056/0

2017-18:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-budget-draft-budget-2017-18/

2018-19:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-draft-budget-2018-19/

2019-20:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2019-20/

Regarding a comparison of actual spend to budget, we report this annually in the “final outturn report for the Scottish budget”, and links are provided below to each year’s report:

2016-17 (provisional):
https://www.gov.scot/news/provisional-budget-outturn/

2017-18:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/final-outturn-report-scottish-budget-year-
ended-31-march-2018/

2018-19:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/final-outturn-report-scottish-budget-year-
ended-31-march-2019/

2019-20: to be published

For further information on the specific costs for contingent workers, we publish information on our procurement awards here, including contingent workers:

https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/search_mainpage.aspx .

Further to my response to S5W-21923, discussions with DWP have been ongoing since the devolved benefits programme began and are expected to continue while Agency Agreements are in use.

Table 1. Overtime hours and minutes worked in each month for programme management and delivery division permanent staff.

(a) each month

Table 1. Number of permanent staff who made an overtime claim for programme management and delivery division.

Table 1. Cost of overtime claims for permanent staff in programme management and delivery division.

All suppliers contracted to provide interim and contingent labour are required to provide monthly reports detailing the workers assigned and the associated rates charged.

Contingent workers are not employed directly by Scottish Government and do not have records on an SG payroll. Information on contingent workers employed by agencies and engaged in Scottish Government Core is published in our Official Statistics publication which can be found here. https://www.gov.scot/publications/workforce-information/ 

Workers in scope for IR35 are an exception to the above as regards payroll. They are counted as contingent workers and are not employed directly by SG. They have a contract for provision of services not a contract of employment but do have a payroll record. Payroll is used to deduct the necessary PAYE tax and National Insurance contributions from the payment for services provided. It does not infer any employment relationship.

Since 2017, 4 workers hired directly have been found to be in scope and we are making appropriate tax and NI deductions.

Information on tax-domicile and residency status of interim and contingent workers provided through third parties would be more appropriately collected by the supplier. We have no information on this.

For those hired directly we collect the information required on domicile and residency to ensure correct tax and NI deductions and payments.

We do not hold a central record of the number of IR35 assessments undertaken. Assessments are conducted on a case by case basis by individual business areas.

The Agency Agreement sets out the principles for audit and refers to the jointly agreed document; Scottish Devolution: A Framework for Audit and Accountability which was published on 8 March 2019. Social Security Scotland worked closely with Audit Scotland during the course of their audit however is unable to comment on the work undertaken by them.