The target set for the service is to deliver a Financial Health Check to 15,000 households in Scotland per annum. We will monitor the quarterly update reports provided by Citizens Advice Scotland to gauge whether the service is successful. Our decision will be based on the data submitted for the following agreed key performance indicators:

Number of clients accessing the service

Profile of clients

Client financial gain

Client satisfaction

Client financial confidence

Improved mental health as a result of the check.

Citizens Advice Scotland will calculate the financial gain as the amount of any lump sum or the sum of any payments into the household, or reductions in payments out of the household, up to a maximum of 12 months.

The service was not procured. It is grant funded.

Programme Board Dashboards are part of routine reporting, and as such any RAG statuses are provided for internal discussion and not made public, on the grounds that doing so would inhibit substantially the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation. The Programme Director’s Update is used to enable critical discussion that in turn supports the delivery of social security for Scotland.

The original PQ referred to where Police Scotland would act as a Delivery Partner. We have no definition of a Delivery Partner.

However we have been clear that we anticipate that the Counter Fraud function within the Agency will participate in formal intelligence sharing networks (other participants include Police Scotland, HMRC, DWP and many other government departments) and/or collaborative investigations where appropriate. This position is reflected in the Counter Fraud Strategy published September 2018.

Social Security Scotland’s Counter Fraud team are a Specialist Reporting Agency. This means the agency has civilian investigation officers able to investigate allegations relating to the benefit offences introduced by the Social Security Act 2018 to criminal investigation standard, including direct submission of crime reports to the Crown Office for consideration of prosecution action. Police Scotland have the remit to investigate and report alleged criminal activity of any kind, which could include these offences, however should they decide to undertake such an investigation it would not constitute a service provision arrangement.

Our assessment of the risk posed to Social Security Scotland by Serious and Organised Crime Groups takes place on an ongoing basis, and we have been consulting with experts and relevant organisations to understand these risks and to design responsive control measures. Further detail relating to this assessment is highly sensitive and cannot be shared in the public domain, however the agency’s Counter Fraud Strategy published in September 2018 outlines at high level the methods employed to adequately assess and mitigate the risk of fraud perpetrated by both internal and external threat actors, including that posed by Serious and Organised Crime Groups.

Official statistics, covering the first months of applications for the Best Start Grant, will be published in April 2019. More-detailed analysis will be published in a quarterly publication series starting from August 2019. These dates are now listed in the statistics forthcoming publications page of the Scottish Government website .

Official statistics, covering the first months of applications for the Best Start Grant, will be published in April 2019. More-detailed analysis will be published in a quarterly publication series starting from August 2019. In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, care will be taken to ensure that these publications are produced to a level of quality that meets users’ needs. Published data will be subject to disclosure control methods to protect the confidentiality of the data.

Practical implementation would be the use of DWP Verify Earnings and Pensions service in the delivery of a devolved benefit. I refer the member to the answer to questions S5W-20346 and S5W-20857 on 17 January 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

No direct or indirect decisions have been made about the implementation of the DWP Verify Earnings and Pensions service.