Welfare

SFHA CEO Mary Taylor is one of the letter's signatories Thirteen of Scotland’s leading charities have appealed to the UK government to find new ways of reducing public spending ahead of £12 billion in additional cuts to the welfare bill in next week’s emergency budget.

Iain Duncan Smith The total lifetime cost of the Universal Credit welfare reform programme has increased by nearly £3bn in the past three years to £15.8bn, according to new figures from the UK government.

Alex Neil Charities and groups that work with people who receive benefits will play a crucial role in developing Scotland’s new social security powers, social justice secretary Alex Neil will say today.

Citizens Advice Scotland has expressed concern about the impact of further welfare cuts, following David Cameron’s speech yesterday. Arguing that the UK should be a "lower tax, lower welfare society", the prime minister said it was wrong to treat "the symptoms of the social and economic problems w

Jimmy Black The impact of welfare reform on the people of Dundee is set to come under the spotlight at the next meeting of the city’s Fairness Commission.

Clare Foges David Cameron’s former speech writer has urged the prime minister to axe the ‘bedroom tax’ after revealing concerns about the policy’s impact.

Working families moving onto Universal Credit could become ‘second class savers’, with any money put aside potentially counting against their benefit entitlement, according to a new report published today by the independent think-tank the Resolution Foundation. Making it work – the final repor

Alex Neil Social justice secretary Alex Neil has called for an inter-governmental meeting to discuss the implications of a planned £12 billion welfare cut on powers contained in the new Scotland Bill.

Calls for new welfare at Holyrood to be used to redress some the “devastating” impacts of benefit sanctions on women will be heard by MSPs today. The Scottish Parliament’s welfare reform committee will be given a series of expert submissions which further evidence the impact of san

The Highland Council is the first local authority in the UK to trial a new Universal Credit application process that enables landlords to electronically submit an Alternative Payment Arrangement to support vulnerable tenants. The council is working with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to

Shelter Scotland has published a paper which sets out the principles it believes should underpin further devolution of social security - including housing benefit – to the Scottish Parliament, and what steps the Scottish Government and UK governments should take in relation to the devolution of so

The UK government’s spending watchdog has criticised the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) for its failure to anticipate problems in its implementation of welfare reform. The National Audit Office has called for the DWP to use the hard lessons it learned from implementing its recent program

Alex Neil Many people accessing benefits are living in constant fear that further cuts will push them into "crisis situations", a new study has found.

The High Court has ordered that a judicial review challenge to the benefit cap and its impact upon disabled people and their carers should proceed to a full hearing, and that this hearing must take place urgently. The secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, unsuccessfully argued

By Adam van Lohuizen, senior economic analyst at Shelter The impact of the cuts already made by the coalition government has been severe. And the government has pledged to make a further £12 billion reduction in welfare spending by 2017-18. But the task of making these cuts has got a whole lot hard