(S5O-04725) Covid-19 (Welfare Funding)

5. Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Government what welfare funding is being made available to support people facing financial hardship as a result of Covid-19. (S5O-04725)

The Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People (Shirley-Anne Somerville): We have provided a £350 million funding package to ensure support for people and communities that are most in need. We have significantly increased the Scottish welfare fund and we have targeted help with housing costs, including through increasing our discretionary housing payment fund and introducing a tenant hardship fund.

In recognition of the additional pressures that unpaid carers have been under, we made an additional carer’s allowance supplement payment in June, which means that over the financial year, eligible carers can get £690 more than carers in the rest of the United Kingdom.

In addition, we have introduced the £500 self-isolation support grant for workers on low-income benefits who risk losing income because they have to self-isolate.

Stewart Stevenson: The cabinet secretary referred to the United Kingdom Government’s universal credit uplift—but, of course, that ends in April. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the hardship of families who are affected by its ending should lead to a pile on the doorstep of the Westminster Government for it to deal with, while the Scottish Government does what it can to help struggling families?

Shirley-Anne Somerville: I completely agree with Stewart Stevenson’s assessment. As I said in my earlier remarks, we have urged the United Kingdom Government to make that £20 uplift permanent and, which is important, to extend it to legacy benefits. That was needed before the pandemic and is, certainly, needed more urgently now. We need an immediate announcement, so that people do not face uncertainty about whether that vital money will be removed from them in a few months.

Modelling by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation indicates that failure to make the uplift permanent will result in 700,000 more people across the UK being pushed into poverty, so the UK Government must do the right thing and ensure that social security support is sufficient to support people during and beyond the pandemic.