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The Scottish Donation and Transplant Group last met on 8 March 2017.

The Scottish Donation and Transplant Group last discussed opt out on 8 March 2017.

As I said in my statement on 27 April 2017, Discretionary Housing Payments will continue to be delivered by local authorities. This benefit will not be delivered by the new social security agency.

My announcement to Parliament on 27 April 2017 presented the high level delivery model for social security in Scotland. Within that delivery model there are a wide range of detailed design decisions to be made. We will consider a range of options as we endeavour to provide a more integrated service for the new social security agency. Our processes and services will be evidence based, we will examine with interest the Irish approach, amongst others, and work closely with our Experience Panels to design and deliver a system that works best for individuals in Scotland.

The social security agency will be an executive agency, which means that it will be an integral part of the Scottish Government. The staff, who will be civil servants, will be directly accountable to Ministers and will take decisions within a policy framework that is determined by Scottish Ministers.

No future engagements with Atos Healthcare have been arranged or scheduled with either SG Officials or Scottish Ministers.

As I stated in Parliament on 27 April, I have made a clear commitment that profit making companies will not be involved in delivering assessments for disability benefits once devolved to Scotland.

The Social Security Bill will be introduced to Parliament before summer recess for appropriate scrutiny and will enable us to deliver a new Scottish social security which has fairness, dignity and respect at its heart.

Discussions between the Scottish Government and Department for Work and Pensions are on-going.

Recent discussions about using powers devolved under the Scotland Act to vary elements within reserved benefits have focused on Scottish Government flexibilities through Universal Credit and the Benefit Cap and implementation of the UK Government’s policy to end automatic entitlement to Housing Benefit for 18-21 year olds.

Despite several attempts we have not been able to secure agreement with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on a means of reversing the UK Government’s policy through the Universal Credit system. DWP Ministers proved unwilling to offer any compromise to respect the differing positions of our two Governments. As such we were forced to make arrangements to mitigate the policy through existing schemes. This is now being delivered at pace but necessarily requires some time to develop a robust and effective means of delivery.

Universal Credit takes at least 6 weeks to process, so those making a new claim in April would not usually expect payments for housing costs to be made until mid-May.

The Scottish Government is now working with COSLA and local authorities to put in place mitigation through the Scottish Welfare Fund within that timescale.

We continue to make the case for a long term, person centred solution.

The Scottish Government has no current plans to create a disability poverty target.

We are committed to tackling the intergenerational cycle of poverty and as such introduced the Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill to Parliament on 9 February 2017, signalling our clear commitment to reducing poverty in Scotland. The Bill will establish Scotland as the only part of the UK with stretching, income-based targets on child poverty. We would expect that disabled children will benefit from the targets being met.

Last year we published both the Fairer Scotland Action Plan and A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People, both of which contain actions to help improve the lives of disabled people; we will publish our first annual report on progress from the Fairer Scotland Action Plan in October.