Universal Credit - mitigation of the two-child limit: consultation

Introduction

The Scottish Government is currently responsible for delivering 15 benefits through Social Security Scotland, an executive agency of the Scottish Government.

All benefits in Scotland were controlled by the UK Government until April 2013, when Council Tax Reduction and the Scottish Welfare Fund were devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Following the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the Smith Commission recommended that the Scottish Parliament be given autonomy to determine the structure and value of a range of disability and carers benefits, as well as the power to make limited changes to Universal Credit (UC), and to vary the UC housing cost element. It also recommended that the Scottish Parliament should be given powers to create new devolved benefits, and to top-up reserved ones.

These recommendations were made law by the Scotland Act 2016, and the framework legislation which underpins the Scottish system of social security, the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, received Royal Assent in June 2018.

Social Security Scotland was established in 2018. Its headquarters are in Dundee, with offices in Glasgow, and a local delivery service in each of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas. Its Chief Executive is directly accountable to Scottish Ministers.

Social Security Scotland has been designed with the people who use it to ensure that processes are clear and inclusive, and that it delivers support to people across Scotland with dignity, fairness and respect. It administers £6.7 billion in benefits expenditure, an investment which will support around 2 million people this year - around 1 in 3 people in Scotland.

Some of the payments it makes are replacements for UK Government benefits, such as Funeral Support Payment, but seven are new benefits unique to Scotland, including the Scottish Child Payment and the Young Carer Grant.

The agency is on track to meet its ambitious timescale of completing case transfer for disability and carer benefits by the end of this year.