Scottish Commission on Social Security: interim report

Introduction from the Chair

SCoSS board members: Sharon McIntyre, Judith Paterson, Mark Simpson and
Sally Witcher, Chair

It's been a great pleasure to chair the Scottish Commission on Social Security, or 'SCoSS', since it opened for business in February 2019. There has been much to do to establish the new Commission and deliver a demanding workload. We have aimed to establish SCoSS as a trusted, impartial and influential body. We have achieved a great deal, but there is more to do.

Like every other organisation in the country, we've been affected by COVID. Without this, we would have published a business plan earlier in 2020, detailing all our main areas of work and detailed objectives for the year ahead. However, the disruption caused by COVID meant this was not possible.

As a new and publicly-funded body with a key role to play in scrutinising Scotland's devolved social security system, we believe it is important to provide clear and accessible information about what we do and how we do it. This interim report provides key information about SCoSS, our activities to date and our priorities, as we work towards producing a full annual report of our activities later in 2020 and our business plan for future activities in early 2021.

This report is divided into two main sections:

• What SCoSS does, focusing on its legal duties
• How SCoSS works, explaining its vision, values and aims, and its main work to date.

We hope you find our report useful and we welcome your feedback.

Sally Witcher, Chair of the SCoSS Board