The Disability Assistance for Children and Young People (Scotland) Regulations 2021 and the Scottish Child Payment Regulations 2020 (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022: scrutiny report

These amendments are brought forward as part of the draft Disability Assistance for Children and Young People (Scotland) Regulations 2021 and the Scottish Child Payment Regulations 2020 (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022. These draft Regulations also contain provisions for suspending payments of Child Disability Payment and Scottish Child Payment.

The suspending payments provisions were referred to SCoSS separately on 25 June 2021 and only later combined into the draft Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations. They were referred in a draft Scottish statutory instrument provisionally called Suspension of Assistance (Disability Assistance for Children and Young People) (Scottish Child Payment) (Scotland) Regulations. SCoSS is reporting separately on the suspending payments proposals in the form originally referred.

Therefore, there are two scrutiny reports relevant to these draft Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations: one scrutinising the suspending payments provisions and this report scrutinising the three miscellaneous amendments relating to applications made in advance, the time limit to make a re-determination and residency tests for refugees. When the draft Regulations are laid in Parliament, both scrutiny reports will be laid at the same time.

The full draft Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations were not referred to SCoSS. The three proposals referred on 14 October 2021 were in the form of a briefing which contained an early indication of the amendments to regulations. A later draft of the combined draft Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations was shared with SCoSS on 25 October 2021. The revised drafting more accurately reflects the policy intention in relation to the residency tests amendment so it is this version that we scrutinise in this report. The relevant provisions are set out in Annex A.