2. To ask the Scottish Government how it supports older people living in poverty to maximise their income. (S6O-02697)

Ensuring financial security in older age is a key priority for the Government, and we are taking a range of actions to support older people living in low-income households. Those actions include tripling the fuel insecurity fund, free bus travel for everyone over the age of 60, help with energy efficiency through warmer homes Scotland and replacing the Department for Work and Pensions cold weather payment with our new winter heating payment. In addition, our £3.2 million social isolation and loneliness fund is supporting 53 projects across Scotland to help provide warm spaces, hot meals, group activities and fuel payments to people who are most at risk of isolation, including older people.

T he on-going lack of uptake of pension credit in Scotland means that 123,000 of our poorest pensioners are losing out on an average of £3,500 a year. They will also miss out on this month’s £300 cost of living payment. The United Kingdom Government must do more to encourage uptake, given that a recent initiative that it took included only one of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. I acknowledge that this area is a UK Government responsibility, but how can the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland encourage uptake to help tackle pensioner poverty, given the poor track record of the UK Government?

I am happy to work with Mr Doris to see whether there is anything else that can be done by Social Security Scotland, which delivers our devolved benefits. However, pension credit is a reserved benefit, as Mr Doris rightly points out.

While the Scottish Government is now on its benefit take-up strategy number 2, there is no such approach from the DWP. However, that does not mean that there is no need for the Scottish Government to ensure that we are doing everything that we can, so we continue to provide funding for income maximisation and welfare and debt advice, and we are committed to increasing the availability of advice within services such as health and education and in community settings. Mr Doris is quite right to encourage people to take up what they are entitled to because, according to the social security principles that we stand on, it is a person’s individual human right to take up their entitlements, and they should be encouraged to apply for what they are eligible for.

The inequalities of the gender pension gap are well documented, and the situation of the women born in the 1950s who lost out on the state pension has also been well documented through the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign. When looking to maximise income support for older people living in poverty, what efforts can the Scottish Government make to support the WASPI women?

That issue is, again, reserved to Westminster, unfortunately, and the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament do not have the powers to alleviate the injustice that the WASPI women suffer because of the actions that have been taken by successive UK Governments, which is a deep disappointment to me, to the Government and to many members across the chamber. I hope that some of the actions and schemes on which I provided information in previous answers show the member that we are absolutely determined to support older people in general. It is a shame that we cannot do more to help the WASPI women, but it is outwith devolved competence.