Designing the Social Security Charter: report on the first stage of work

1. Introduction and background

Eleven social security benefits are being devolved to Scotland ^[1] . The mechanism for these changes is the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 ^[2] (the Act). The Act requires the development of a charter that reflects the eight social security principles set out in Section 1 of the Act. The principles are listed in Annex A.

During the Bill process Ministers committed to producing the charter working with people who have experience of social security. The process officials have used to achieve this is described below in Section 2 of this report.

This is a summary report covering the work that has taken place between 1 June 2018 when the Act received Royal Assent and early September 2018 with people with experience of social security and key stakeholders. The process is on-going and the report also sets out the planned next steps.