2. To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides to retired carers. (S6T-01394)

Local carers centres provide information and advice services for unpaid carers, which must include information about support services, including when a caring role comes to an end. We have improved support for carers as a priority with our social security powers. Carers allowance supplement means that eligible carers in Scotland will receive up to £540 more than those in the rest of the United Kingdom this year.

The carer support payment will replace carers allowance from the end of this year. Carers who receive the carer support payment will continue to receive national insurance credits to protect their state pension entitlement.

I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Yesterday, BBC Scotland reported some very troubling accounts of carers who reached retirement age only to find themselves facing the rise in the cost of living without any substantial support.

As a result of dedicating their lives to caring for a family member or a loved one, many unpaid carers miss out on a workplace pension—something that many other people have and rely on in old age.

The Scottish Government has said that we can now expect the new carer support payment to be introduced later in 2023 with a roll-out in 2024, but does the cabinet secretary agree that the process of rolling out that new carer payment has been too slow? Does she agree that the Scottish Government should be acting with all urgency to introduce a fairer payments system to prevent unpaid carers from falling into poverty?

Any changes that have been made recently, over the past couple of years, have been made as a direct result of the impact of Covid on the social security programme. I refer not just to the social security programme here, in Scotland, but to the very real and challenging situation that the Department for Work and Pensions was in during Covid, particularly in the initial months.

We have laid out to Parliament when we will introduce the new carer support payment. Important aspects to point out are the level of consultation that has gone into that and the real care that we need to take to ensure that, while we are including case transfer, we do not have a two-tier system for our carer payments involving those who are still to have their cases transferred and those who are being paid directly by Social Security Scotland. We will make changes on introduction and we will make further changes once case transfer is complete.

The cabinet secretary has had five years since the bill was passed in which to prepare for the new benefits. For the carer support payment truly to be an improvement on carers allowance, it will have to be paid to more unpaid carers and take into account their varied and very difficult situations, which I have already outlined.

Carers Scotland estimates that only one in 10 carers is eligible for the payment, with many not meeting qualifying criteria. I think that members in the chamber would agree that it seems wrong that unpaid carers cannot access a benefit that has supposedly been made for them.

Since the establishment of Social Security Scotland, we have been promised repeatedly by the Government that things will be better, yet many Scots are being made to wait with uncertainty, just as they were under the DWP. Therefore, can the cabinet secretary say with confidence that the proposed carer support payment will be the much-needed, long-term improvement to carers allowance that will allow more unpaid carers to access support, or will it merely be a tweak that fails Scotland’s unpaid carers who desperately need it, now more than ever?

There will be changes to the carer support payment—for example, a reduced past presence test to allow carers to receive support sooner and the extension of eligibility to more carers in full-time education. Once case transfer is complete, to avoid that two-tier system and when it is safe to do so, we have committed to providing additional support, including extra support for those caring, for example, for more than one person, extending support after the death of a cared-for person from eight weeks to 12 weeks and providing short-term assistance when the carer or the person for whom they care is challenging a decision on their benefits.

Our consultation also set out further improvements that could be made in the future, on which we are continuing to consider feedback. They include increases to the earnings limit and the provision of extended support for a cared-for person in hospital or care.

Therefore, important changes are already planned. We will, of course, consider what further improvements will be made, but let us be very clear that they will require further funding within a fixed Scottish budget, and decisions will need to be taken about how we will take forward that funding in the future.

Unpaid carers provide vital support to the people they look after, as well as benefiting Scotland as a whole. Will the cabinet secretary reiterate how the decisions that the Scottish Government has made—for example, through investment in the carers allowance supplement—are helping to provide carers with the best package of support anywhere in the United Kingdom?

We have invested £230 million in the carers allowance supplement since 2018, and carers continually in receipt of carers allowance since its launch will have received over £3,300 more than the majority of carers in the UK by the end of this year. Since 2019, we have also invested £2.4 million in the young carers grant—the first support of its kind in the UK—providing £359 to eligible young carers this year. The carer support payment will replace carers allowance from the end of this year, as I mentioned earlier, and that will deliver an improved service and will, for example, allow more carers in full-time education to receive support.

The Presiding Officer:

That concludes topical question time.