Weekly Update – Poverty statistics, Financial insecurity of adults with learning disabilities and, of course, the Spring Statement

It’s been a busy week in the institute!

We’ve had a lot of content to put out this week, and have also recorded a podcast on the Spring Statement that we put out this afternoon – so listen to at your leisure!

In this blog, we’ll do a quick round up of our outputs this week – and some bonus chat on employer NICs compensation!

Child poverty falls in Scotland but statutory targets are missed

New poverty statistics for 2023/24 were released yesterday. Poverty fell for most groups in Scotland (all except pensioners). Relative child poverty fell from 26% in 2022/23 to 22%. This represents welcome progress, but was not enough to meet the 18% interim child poverty target due for the year.

The statistics also showed some signs of a divergence in child poverty rates for the UK and Scotland, which may point to the impact of the Scottish Child Payment and other policy differences between Scotland and other nations of the UK.

Over the next year, we expect to see the Scottish Government lay out their plans to meet the final child poverty targets, which are due in 2030. We’ll also look out for different parties’ plans as they publish manifestos ahead of the 2026 Holyrood election.

Our latest report considers some potential policy packages that could meet the final child poverty targets – you can read more here.

Financial Insecurity of people with learning disabilities highlighted

This week, we published a report which investigated the financial situations of working-age people with learning disabilities in Scotland.

The research highlighted significant financial insecurity, with a large proportion of participants living below the Minimum Income Standard and experiencing material deprivation. Over half of participants were in relative poverty (below 60% of median income after housing costs) when additional cost benefits such as Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Adult Disability Payment (ADP) were excluded from their incomes.

The research showed that both the social security system and the social care system can be confusing and difficult to navigate for people with learning disabilities. There were challenges with benefit and care adequacy, and participants did not tend to access independent advocacy. The report also found a correlation between the adequacy of social care and financial security.

The following options for improvement were identified:

1. Better promotion and implementation of independent advocacy.
2. More accessible information on Universal Credit rollout and upcoming health-related benefit changes.
3. Exploration of ways to provide clarity on Universal Credit and employment with a disability.
4. Support for existing recommendations for Self-Directed Support implementation.
5. Wider, joined-up consideration given to improving financial security for people with learning disabilities and their families.

See here for our programme of research on adults with learning disabilities.

Employer NICS compensation numbers finally provided to the Scottish Government

As part of the Spring Statement, HM Treasury have confirmed to the Scottish Government the compensation that they are providing to cover the extra cost of the Employer NICS tax increase for public sector workers. The Finance Secretary, Shona Robison, has told the BBC that the Scottish Government would receive “a little more than £300m”, and that the shortfall between that and the likely cost would have to be met “within public service budgets”.

For those who are new to this, we covered the potential impact of this increase in a blog in the Autumn. We estimated the cost to he devolved public sector to be around £507m, slightly lower than the Scottish Government estimate of £550m (or £700-800m if the increased cost of delivering contracted out services is included).

Whichever figure is correct, it is certainly the case that the compensation provided will not cover the full cost. At the time of the Scottish Budget, we highlighted that the Scottish Government had not set aside any money in contingency for this likely scenario, which has now come to pass.

The exact amount of compensation hasn’t actually been published anywhere, unfortunately, but we have done some digging and have backed out that it is probably around £330m, which was at the upper end of the number floating around in the media  in November.

It is a shame that the numbers were not just published given the importance of this debate between the UK and Scottish Government. But I supposed that would have denied us some fun Friday number crunching!