Wendy Chamberlain

In addition to all your work in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and so much behind the scenes, you are also a constituency MP. Like me, like the Minister, and like the other Members here this evening, you will be written to by your constituents, and I am sure that you and your team will know how incredibly frustrating it is when we cannot get Government systems right. That is why we are here this evening, and I hope the Minister will provide some constructive responses about departmental improvements. The issue I want the Minister to address is the fact that Department for Work and Pensions systems are continually failing to understand and correctly account for Scottish carers who have an underlying entitlement to the Scottish carer support payment, but who do not receive the payment itself because of income—for example their state pension or part-time work. I am currently supporting two constituents who see continual wrongful deductions. One has passed state pension age, and the other receives employment and support allowance. They do not receive any payments for the carer support payment from Social Security Scotland, but the DWP continues to make those deductions from their universal credit—I hope colleagues are keeping up. I want to pause at this point and reflect on how long it has taken for us to know what is causing the confusing and distressing deductions from my constituents’ payments. My fantastic caseworker Neve has spent literally months trying to unravel payments and deductions, while being told different things by different DWP and Social Security Scotland caseworkers. I have met the Minister for Social Security and Disability in relation to one of those cases, and he is aware from previous correspondence of the myriad communication problems that we had in one particular case, with DWP officers calling my constituent and causing considerable distress. My constituent was inadvertently misled—I like to think it was inadvertent—about where and when voicemails could be left, and there was a general refusal to engage with my office, despite requests to do so because my constituent, in addition to having learning difficulties and being a carer for his family, was also going through cancer treatment. Those are all underlying issues within the Department for Work and Pensions and do not specifically relate to Social Security Scotland, but we see similar confusion with almost every case that comes through our office, and we need it to be sorted.