Chamber and committees

The mid-programme peer review of the Experience Panels began in October 2019. The review was completed in November 2019. The output from the review will be published alongside the annual report for the Experience Panels before the end of 2019.

Citizens Advice Scotland’s nine month progress report (November 18 to July 19) shows verified financial gains of £6,005,338.69 for 3,198 Money Talk Team clients.

We do not hold information on the verified financial gains for each client.

We recently undertook a six week national marketing campaign in partnership with Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) to help promote the service and generate demand. We are content that this funding will match demand and continue to meet regularly with CAS to monitor on-going performance.

Scottish Government analysis of the inclusion of a mobility component in Disability Assistance for Older People (DAOP) used the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) 65+ client group from February 2013 as the best comparison to DAOP. This is because it is the most recent data available before Personal Independence Payment was introduced and the DLA caseload starts to reduce.

This analysis was conducted and last updated in Summer 2019.

Scottish Government analysis of the inclusion of a mobility component in Disability Assistance for Older People (DAOP) used Disability Living Allowance (DLA) 65+ client group as the best comparison to DAOP.

The DLA 65+ client group was used for this analysis as, prior to the introduction of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), it had a large caseload of people aged 65+. This included people in the highest age bands, meaning DLA 65+ can be used as a comparator to DAOP. Data on the DLA caseload 65+ caseload from February 2013 was used, as this is the most recent data available before the before the introduction of PIP.

People under state pension age are able to make a new claims for PIP. People may be on the PIP caseload and over state pension age if their claim started when they were below pension age. Given that PIP was introduced in 2013, only a small number of PIP clients are now over state pension age, and none are 80 or above, which the majority of the DAOP caseload will be. This means PIP caseload data is not suitable to compare to DAOP for the purpose of estimating the number of people who would receive a mobility component.

Citizens Advice Scotland’s nine month progress report (November 18 to July 19) shows 7,777 clients have been supported by the Money Talk Team service.

Between the agency launch on 1 September 2018 and 13 November 2019, Social Security Scotland passed 627 fraud interest referrals to DWP. In that same period, Social Security Scotland have received no fraud interest referrals from DWP.

Scottish Government analysis of the inclusion of a mobility component in Disability Assistance for Older People (DAOP) estimated the annual cost of mobility payments in five year age bands for ages 65-69 to 80-84, and the cost for all people aged 85 and over.

Note, totals may not sum due to rounding.

Citizens Advice Scotland’s nine month progress report (November 18 to July 19) for the Money Talk Team shows budget spend of £1,770,978. This is in line with the grant funding schedule for year one which shows two instalments of £900,000.

In response to part (a)(i) of the question, the following table presents our current illustrative estimates of the number of children under 6 eligible for the Scottish Child Payment, by local authority, as a proportion of all children under 6 in each local authority, in 2020-21. We expect the caseload to be relatively constant until the increase in age limit to 16, so the figures below are applicable across the duration of the under-six payment.