Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 27 June 2023.
Paul O'Kane
Labour
Things are getting worse, not better. In Scotland, the average wait for processing adult disability payment applications more than doubled between September 2022 and April 2023. People have been waiting for an average of 19 weeks for a decision, which is more than double the average waiting time for people in England and Wales who are applying for personal independence payments through the Department for Work and Pensions.
That is an unacceptable position. We do not even have a full picture of the longest waits, and many members around the chamber will have mailbags full of stories of the inordinate waits that people are experiencing. We need granular data to be able to show the full picture of the situation in Scotland. Will the Cabinet secretary agree to publish full data, so that we understand the scale of the problem and can measure her responses against it?
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
