Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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.

The Ill Health and Disability Benefits Stakeholder Reference group has met twice since October 2017 and cleared minutes are published on the website at https://beta.gov.scot/groups/ill-health-and-disability-benefits-stakeholder-reference-group/ .

Minutes for the most recent meeting of the Group, on 23 July are currently being circulated for comment and will be published after they have been cleared by Group members.

The website has recently been updated and the Minutes of the Ill Health and Disability Benefits Stakeholder Reference Group meeting of 12 December 2017 are now available at:

https://beta.gov.scot/groups/ill-health-and-disability-benefits-stakeholder-reference-group/

In May 2018 Experience Panel members were invited to participate in a survey to update their details and to provide information relating to their protected characteristics. This included a question asking them their ethnicity. The survey and each individual question were voluntary. The results of this survey are still being analysed and will be published later in 2018. We will continue to provide panel members with opportunities to update their details, including opportunities to provide information about their protected characteristics, including ethnicity.

Social Security Experience Panel research has focussed on understanding panel members experience of the current benefits system, and working with them to understand how we can improve the new system in Scotland. The research is structured to allow panel members the opportunity to discuss what is important to them, and accessibility is always a key priority. For example, translation and interpretation services are available through the Experience Panels helpline, and we always offer to book interpreters if they are needed.

In addition, the research team are running a series of research events with people from ethnic minority backgrounds, many of whom do not speak English as a first language. The first of these events was held in March 2018, with further events scheduled in September this year.

The Minister for Social Security wrote to the Chair, Disability and Carer Benefits Expert Advisory Group on 11 June 2018 to advise there is no requirement to obtain consent from recipients of Carer's Allowance. The sharing of data between DWP and Scottish Government for social security purposes is permitted in line with the Scotland Act 1998, as amended by the Scotland Act 2016.