Social policy

Our ‘Burden of Proof’ report explores the role that medical evidence plays in assessing ill health and disability benefits, from the perspective of Citizens Advice Bureaux clients, advisers and some of the professionals involved.

Citizens Advice Scotland welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to inform the Committee’s consideration of the Bill. Scotland’s CAB Service sees the effects of child poverty on a daily basis, and the majority of advice provided by citizens advice bureaux in Scotland relates to issues related to maximising low incomes, particularly access to social security benefits and dealing with problem debt.

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) warmly welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation. These draft regulations represent the first piece of legislation as part of the social security powers devolved to the Scottish Government under the Scotland Act 2016. The use of the Universal Credit flexibilities has been of considerable interest to CAS, alongside the wider rollout of Universal Credit, which is already a significant impact on many CAB clients.

CAS welcomes the Government’s ambition to reduce the disability employment gap, which is important in ensuring equality, fairness in the workplace and helping people with disabilities and health conditions maximise their incomes. However, it should be recognised that there are people who will not be able to undertake paid work because of their condition or impairment, in a number of cases for the remainder of their life.

Scotland’s CAB network provides a substantial amount of advice relating to problems at work. In 2015/16, citizens advice bureaux in Scotland advised clients on 48,530 new employment issues. 

Examples of unfair employment practices that have affected CAB clients include unfair dismissal; not being paid for work carried out; being paid considerably below the National Minimum Wage; being denied sick pay or paid holiday; and instances of bullying and discrimination including racism, and women who were dismissed when they became pregnant.

The emergence of so-called new forms of employment relationships between
workers and employers has put a strain on existing employment protections. In
particular, the misuse of zero hours contracts has been a major concern for CAS over the past three years.

Designing a new social security system for Scotland is a major opportunity and challenge. In this substantial consultation response, Citizens Advice Scotland has attempted to bring the best of our unique evidence base to inform the development of the new system based on the experiences of those who work with the current system on a daily basis.

CAS has responded to the call for evidence to inform the second independent review of Personal Independence Payment.

Despite improvements having been made to waiting times and other aspects of benefit delivery, fundamental problems remain with respect to the design of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), specifically around assessments, medical evidence, length of awards, accuracy of decision making and mandatory reconsideration.

These are all issues that CAS raised in our response to the first independent review, and it is now crucial that solutions to these issues are found before more people experience similar problems as they undergo the transition from DLA to PIP.

In 2015 Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) published a report, Remotely Excluded, which used our advice statistics to identify the major issues facing consumers in rural Scotland. One of the most important themes identified by Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) and our clients was the difficulty people had accessing essential services, such as healthcare and work opportunities, using the bus network. To look more closely at what was happening with public transport across Scotland we carried out regional research lead by 16 of our local CAB members.

This briefing focuses on the opportunities that the devolution of social security powers to Scotland with a particular focus on disability benefits – it is the chance to design a system that has the principles of dignity and respect at its heart. The following pages outline the challenges and issues that the Parliament needs to address to make this system a reality.