GLASGOW — A Scottish family on a low income receives £15,000 more a year in state support than an identical household in England, according to a study published in May 2024 by the Safety Nets project.
The study found that a typical out-of-work couple with four children would receive £22,000 annually in benefit income in York, compared with £32,000 in Belfast and £37,000 in Glasgow. This gap is largely attributed to Scotland’s more generous child payments and its opt-out from the benefit cap, which reduces benefit entitlements for English families by £8,000 a year. Devolved opt-outs from the benefit cap in both Scotland and Northern Ireland mean families in those regions are potentially thousands of pounds better off than their counterparts in England and Wales.
Additional regional differences include housing and council tax support. Social housing tenants in Scotland and Northern Ireland receive automatic protection from the 'bedroom tax,' saving them an average of £630 and £684 per year respectively, while in England and Wales, such help is discretionary. Similarly, a low-income family with an average council tax bill would pay £248 annually in England even with maximum council tax reduction, compared with nothing in Scotland and Wales.
The report states that a baby in a family receiving universal credit in Scotland qualifies its parents for an extra £1,800 during its first year of life—support not available in England or Wales. Scotland provides weekly child payments of £28.20 per child to low-income families on universal credit and offers top-ups to other benefits, including carer support and winter fuel payments.
"More and more, the [social security] support people can receive when affected by things like low income, illness, disability or caring responsibilities depends on where in the UK they live," said the study, published by the Safety Nets project. A panel of benefit recipients involved in the report added: "We are all part of the UK, and it can feel unfair when people in one area benefit from extra support that we can’t access ourselves."
While devolved welfare policies added about £1 billion to UK social security spending in 2023–24—mostly in Scotland—overall UK welfare spending increased only marginally. The study noted that these policy differences, though modest in national fiscal terms, can affect the living standards of low-income households based on geography.