Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill: equality impact assessment

Title of Policy - Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill

Summary of aims and desired outcomes of Policy

The Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill (“the Bill”) includes a number of provisions intended to improve the experience of people using the services provided by Social Security Scotland and a number of provisions intended to deliver increased efficiency and value for money.

The Bill takes a regulation-making power for Scottish Ministers to create assistance to help towards the costs of having a child in the family, and to create one or more schemes to provide financial assistance for people with care experience.

The Bill will allow the Scottish Government to recover relevant forms of Scottish assistance from awards of compensation, avoiding the risk of a person being ‘doubly compensated’ for the same incident.

The Bill also seeks to implement the findings of an independent review into the remit and operation of the Scottish Commission on Social Security, and to revoke emergency provision inserted into the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 (“the 2018 Act”) in 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Some provisions of the Bill seek to amend or repeal sections of the 2018 Act, and others seek to create new provisions in that Act

Directorate: Division: Team - Directorate for Social Security: Social Security Policy: Cross-Cutting Unit