The current Social Security Programme Senior Responsible Owner, who was also Senior Responsible Owner for each review, was approached prior to the Cabinet Secretary publishing the response.

The reviews are confidential to the Senior Responsible Owner.

Any request for copies of the review are directed to the Senior Responsible Owner.

There is no current intention to publish the reviews.

A Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 request is currently being considered by the Senior Responsible Owner.

Make the Call is an established service aimed at benefit take-up. It is not comparable to the Financial Health Check Service which goes further by offering free personalised advice for people to help them reduce household outgoings by tackling the poverty premium where they may be paying more than they need to for basic goods and services.

The reviews are confidential to the Senior Responsible Owner and have been shared with select internal colleagues.

The November 2017 review was shared with the Social Security Programme Board.

The two child limit is a UK Government policy which the Scottish Government has repeatedly called for to be scrapped. The changes announced by the UK Government last week show that it too now finally accepts that the policy is unfair. It should therefore scrap the cap for all families.

The Scottish Government plans to spend over £125m in 2018-19 mitigating the impact of UK Government welfare cuts and on measures to help protect people on low incomes. In 2020/21 UK Government cuts including the two child cap are expected to take around £3.7 billion out of the Scottish welfare system- with £92m in 2020-21 due to the two child limit and the Scottish Government cannot be expected to continually mitigate to fill that gap.

It is the policy of the Scottish Government to continue to call for the two child limit to be scrapped for all families. The Scottish Government would not request information from the DWP on mitigation as this is not an SG policy.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-20880 on 24 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 .

This information was provided by Citizens Advice Scotland. Performance information on the Financial Health Check Service will be submitted to the Scottish Government on a quarterly basis. We have not yet received the first performance report.

It is not standard Scottish Government policy practice to publish grant funding applications and grant offer letters given that information contained in these documents may be commercially sensitive.