Carer's Allowance Supplement (Qualifying Persons) and Young Carer Grant Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2020: scrutiny report

Applicants resident in the EEA or Switzerland will only be awarded YCG or CAS if the UK is the competent state for payment of sickness benefits to the individual. This is because the EU’s Administrative Commission has determined that CAS and YCG are sickness benefits for the purposes of the coordination rules. Typically, this would occur if the person is employed in the UK, including as a civil servant or in the armed forces, is a posted worker normally based in the UK or receives UK unemployment or retirement benefits, or is a family member of a person in one of these categories. As with the ‘genuine and sufficient link’ test, no definition of the ‘competent state’ is set out in the draft Regulations and this should be taken into account in the drafting of guidance. ‘Competent state’ provisions in the draft Regulations apply to both CAS and YCG, although given that CAS can only be paid to someone already receiving Carer’s Allowance, an EEA-resident claimant of Carer’s Allowance would already have passed the ‘competent state’ test before being in a position to apply for CAS.

Recommendation 4: The Scottish Government should publish the clearest possible guidance on circumstances within which applicants are likely to pass the ‘competent state’ test and update this as significant developments occur.