People dying before they get help
This year will mark six years since the creation of Social Security Scotland.
When it was created, we were told that it would be better than the experience people were having with the Department of Work and Pensions and, in the words of the SNP’s ShirleyAnne Somerville, it would be “infused with dignity, fairness and respect”.
The implicit promise was that people across Renfrewshire who need support would get it in a faster and fairer way.
This week we were reminded that it’s one thing to say the system stands for dignity, fairness and respect, and another thing to prove it.
A freedom of information request put to Social Security Scotland revealed that, in 2023, 116 people died before their application for Adult Disability Payment (ADP) – the Scottish equivalent to PIP – was approved. Of course, some people will have just been very unfortunate, passing away a few weeks after their application was submitted.
But that certainly wasn’t the case for everyone. The stats show that many faced long and, perhaps, painful waits including two applicants who died after waiting for almost a year.
One person had been waiting 327 days by the time their death was recorded while another had been waiting 313 days.
Many more died after waiting months on end for support, with a total of 24 people tragically dying after waiting for over half a year.
Just imagine how anxious and eventually how let down some of these people must have felt.
Weeks turning into months which turned into an eternity – waiting on the system that is supposed to be infused with dignity, fairness and respect.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard about waits for Adult Disability Payment stretching to astonishing lengths.
Last year, a BBC Scotland investigation revealed that two disabled Scots who applied for Adult Disability Payment had waited over six months for their application to be approved.
One of the recipients said that, since he had applied for the benefit in December 2022, he had only been contacted by Social Security Scotland twice.
When he tried to get in touch with the Social Security Scotland helpline, he didn’t get through to anyone.
He told the BBC: “I think the longest I waited before giving up was probably about three hours.”
What is clear from these revelations is that Social Security Scotland can let people slip through the cracks and that is something the Scottish Government must rectify.
On more than one occasion recently, the Scottish Government has insisted on having debates in the Holyrood chamber about what social security would look like in an independent Scotland.
These debates were useless, not only because the government couldn’t actually say how an a completely independent social security system would be paid for, but it totally missed a larger point: we need to deal with our social security system here and now.
People are waiting months to receive what they’re entitled to, and some, as we’ve learned, end up not receiving anything at all.
Instead of another debate about a hypothetical future, the cabinet secretary should be coming to parliament firstly with an apology to all the people let down by these waits for ADP and, secondly, with a plan to rectify the system’s shortcomings.
The Scottish Government must stop focusing on what it could do one day and instead commit itself to what it can do today.