[Social welfare] is a fickle and unsettled policy domain.
The UK government’s reforms to disability and ill-health benefits reminds us of an important issue: the interdependency between UK-wide and devolved social security competencies. As many ‘Scottish’ policies are in fact variations of UK government policies, or have a scope limited by equivalent UK government spending, there is always a risk that changes made by the UK government can change the foundation on which Scottish social security benefits are built. For example, the Scottish benefit known as the ‘Winter Heating Payment’ was a variation of the UK government’s ‘Winter Fuel Allowance’, a policy that the UK government revised from being a universal benefit to being means-tested (via access to Pension Credit, also reserved) in Autumn 2024. This move led the Scottish First Minister John Swinney to announce a new £100m (2025-2026) Pension Age Winter Heating Payment (now based on other benefit entitlements rather than being universal) in Scotland and paid out of the Scottish Budget (rather than an equivalised DWP allocation). A similar discussion is currently taking place around how the Scottish Government might use its own budget to ‘mitigate’ the two-child limit (a reserved eligibility decision relating to the child payment elements available within UC, also a reserved policy).
It is encouraging that the UK government clearly states in the Green Paper a commitment to work with devolved governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and create ‘collaboration committees’. There is clearly a lot of policy work needed to ensure that multi-level social security policies can function effectively and support people in times of need. This is difficult and often complicated work for policymakers, as many Scottish benefits are exposed to changes in their foundations. Perhaps we should acknowledge that this exposure might be an enduring feature of Scottish social security and that instability is the nature of the beast, as governments frequently target social security and welfare state policies for cuts and reforms.