I’m grateful to Dottie once more, for spotting this and alerting us to it.

This report is part of the research programme of ‘Safety Nets: Social security for families in a devolved UK’. We are the first comprehensive, four-country study of the devolution and localisation of social security in the United Kingdom. The project team spans eight universities, Child Poverty Action Group and the Resolution Foundation.

Our work is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare and Justice.

This very important report produced by some of the most qualified researchers in the UK, appeared in May 2026 and I missed it.

Why? It got virtually no coverage particularly in Scotland. You’ll see why below with these excerpts from just the first 8 pages of an 83 page report.

Through the project, we have seen great examples of what devolved and local control of social security can bring. Local representatives know the challenges their communities face – those of us who live further from Westminster don’t always feel the UK Government understands or prioritises our needs. Local and devolved systems can feel more accessible, more human than Universal Credit or Personal Independence Payment. And we have been impressed with the Scottish Government’s efforts to tackle child poverty with its Five Family Payments. (page 4)

Annual benefit income for families in otherwise identical circumstances (in 2023, before the removal of the two-child limit on Universal Credit awards) differed by as much as £10,000 between some parts of England and Northern Ireland, and £15,000 between England and Scotland. (5)

Universal Credit (UC) remains the main low-income benefit for working-age households across the UK, with identical conditions and headline award rates regardless of location. However, significant differences have emerged in payment arrangements and passported entitlements. The most financially significant is the Scottish Child Payment (£27.15 per child per week in 2025-26), which, combined with the Best Start Grants and Best Start Foods, means that a low-income family with children in Scotland can receive considerably more in social security than an equivalent family elsewhere. Indeed, in some circumstances, a four-child family in Scotland may be entitled to as much as 68 per cent more in total social security support than a comparable family in parts of England. {6)

From a system-level perspective, the additional expenditure resulting from policy decisions in Scotland and Northern Ireland remains modest. Differences in benefit rates or operational practice due to devolved decisions account for 3.2% of overall social security expenditure in Scotland. (7)

The Scottish Government’s use of social security as an instrument of child poverty reduction is the most substantial example of devolution producing different social security entitlements. The ‘Five Family Payments’ are the centrepiece of this approach, providing additional income compared to that available in other parts of the UK either every month (Scottish Child Payment and Best Start Foods) or at strategic points in early life (the Best Start Grants). The Scottish Government’s impact assessment projects that its interventions will reduce relative child poverty by 10 percentage points in 2026-27, with the Scottish Child Payment accounting for approximately half of this effect. (8)

Source:

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