The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Habitual Residence) Amendment Regulations 2013: SSAC correspondence
Correspondence relating to the Committee’s scrutiny of The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Habitual Residence) Amendment Regulations 2013 and Social Security (Habitual Residence) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
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Correspondence relating to the Committee’s scrutiny of The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Habitual Residence) Amendment Regulations 2013 (which were laid using urgency provisions permitted by section 173(1)(a) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 and which came into force on 1 January) on 30 January. Also, The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Habitual Residence) (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2013.
The Committee also considered the draft Social Security (Habitual Residence) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (which amend various sets of income-related benefit regulations following the amendments made to the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006) alongside them.
The Committee considered the above regulations at its meeting on 30 January. While the Committee decided that it would not take the regulations on formal reference, it did have concerns regarding the following aspects of implementation:
- the position of returning UK nationals
- the ‘genuine prospect of work’ test
The Chair of the Committee wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 3 February to set out these concerns. He wrote to Nelson McCausland, Minister at the Department for Social Development (Northern Ireland) on 7 February in similar terms. These letters, along with the response from the Secretary of State, are published here.
For completeness, an earlier letter from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions notifying the Committee Chair that he would be relying on the urgency procedure under section 173 of the Social Security Act 1992 to introduce The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Habitual Residence) Amendment Regulations 2013 is also published.