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7.34 pm
Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East): A tribute has already been paid to the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, for his excellent reports and for the excellent value for money provided by the National Audit Office. If I understand it correctly, the number of reports has increased, the number of staff has decreased and the NAO has kept within its operational budget. I should like to thank Ken Brown and other members of the Public Accounts Committee's staff for their excellent work in servicing hon. Members. I also thank members of the Committee, especially the Chairman, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon). We are all aware of the amount of work faced by Committee members, but it can be only a fraction of that of the Chairman himself--he cannot have very much spare time during the week, in view of the number of reports produced and the fact that he works closely with the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Last year there were 48 reports, and we are considering 27 tonight. I shall not detain the House by going through them all, but I shall comment briefly on four: the 34th report on sickness, the 36th on vehicle excise duty--they appear in Cm 3384--the first report on the Child Support Agency this Session and the 19th report on fraud in Cm 3379.
I was sorry not to be able to visit the European Court of Auditors with the PAC. I know that the Committee made a worthwhile visit. I had hoped to be able to go, but other Committee work detained me in the House. The Committee was perfectly right to draw attention to the need to work closely with the European Court of Auditors in supervising the huge amounts of money spent from European funds.
I shall deal first with the report on sickness and draw attention to two points that arise from it. I was concerned to find that the Confederation of British Industry's evidence showed that the average number of working days lost in Britain is eight per worker, but in the private sector the CBI estimated it to be seven days a year and 10 days in the public sector. If the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is looking for ways to save money, he might consider why there are three more days' sickness per worker per year in the public sector than in the private sector. I do not know whether he can calculate the cost to the taxpayer, but it must run into hundreds of millions of pounds annually, and it must be worth investigating.
As the Financial Secretary represents a constituency in the north-west, he might be interested in evidence given to the Committee which showed that sickness rates for civil service staff are highest in the north-west. Sickness rates in the north-west are consistently the highest in the country, which I find unacceptable. I have drawn this matter to the attention of the Secretary of State for Health. I received a reply from the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), in which he confirmed that the north-west does indeed have the highest sickness rates and links it to the area's
I am concerned about the number of drivers evading excise duty--some 1.3 million vehicles annually. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency estimates that there are some 60,000 unlicensed vehicles in the Greater Manchester area, which accounts for about £8 million of lost revenue. I estimate that there must be about 5,000 unlicensed vehicles on the road in Bolton itself, which emphasises the need to tackle the issue. There is also the question of false addresses being given to the DVLA. It is important that there should be a crackdown on the way in which licences are administered so that not only does everyone have a licence, but everyone gives correct addresses. People who are not interested in giving correct addresses should be made to do so.
I was concerned about other issues in the report. There is the question of whether wheel clamping should be used to impose sanctions against licence evasion. I am in favour of far greater sanctions in this area, but I hope that the Government will consider wheel clamping, because there is no doubt that it has been a racket for taking money off people who are entirely innocent and who have not intended to become the victims of wheel-clamping sanctions after parking accidentally on private land.
I will now move on to the report on the Child Support Agency. The Chairman of our Committee has already drawn attention to the difficulties of getting information from all the different parties; four partners could be involved. The problem of getting information is at the root of the CSA's subsequent difficulties in administering much of its work.
I am not happy with a lot of the work of the Child Support Agency. Just a fortnight ago, I visited the Data Protection Registrar, Elizabeth France, in her office in Wilmslow to discuss with her ways in which the CSA could operate more efficiently. That visit was in connection particularly with a constituent, Mr. Collier, who had been wrongly accused of fathering a child. The father was another Mr. Collier. My constituent was upset
because his employers had been approached by the CSA to divulge his private address so that it could approach him at home. That disturbed his employers and it seems wrong that the relationship between an employee and an employer should be disturbed by the CSA coming in with its great big boots on and making requests for information which stemmed from its desire to find a father who was not owning up to a child. That can prejudice the relationship between the employee and the employer, and it is wrong.
I spoke to the registrar and she said how dissatisfied she was by the way in which the CSA requested information from all sorts of people in areas where it had no right to do so. In the case I was raising, the agency had the right to request information; I was concerned about the way in which it went about doing so. The registrar said that in some cases the agency had been requesting information when it had no right to do so, particularly from partners of absent parents from whom it does not have the right to ask for such information.
There is an important need to look at the way in which the whole operation works. The relationship with the Inland Revenue is the important one. To find out the earnings of self-employed people and others, it is essential that the Government use the information that is available to them so that the CSA and other operations can work efficiently. That brings us on to fraud.
There is no doubt that tax records are one of the most valuable ways in which to seek methods by which fraud can be reduced. If the Government's left hand has information that their right hand needs, subject to the proper safeguards, the two hands should work together to reduce the inefficiencies. I hope that, in that way, it will be possible for the CSA to obtain information about the private addresses of individuals without prejudicing the employer-employee relationship. The Inland Revenue might be able to give a private address from its records, with national insurance numbers and so on, straight away. All that the CSA has to go on is that there is somebody called Mr. Collier living in a certain area who may or not be the father of a child. I feel that the Inland Revenue could help just as easily with that matter as could the employer, without the consequent upsetting of an employee who may be perfectly innocent.
I shall not discuss further matters to do with the CSA, which I find an extremely inefficient operation. The inefficiency raises questions about the need to continue with such an organisation. I shall now move on to fraud and refer to the 19th report and Cm 3379, in which many issues have been raised.
I asked for regional performance figures, and I see that the appendix to the 19th report consists of information supplied by the permanent secretary at the Department of Social Security. It quotes a lot of offices under headings that I do not understand. Under the heading "Scotland and Northern Territory", performance figures are given for offices AD1 to AD6. I do not have the faintest idea where the north-west fits into that. The three areas of the country are "Scotland and Northern Territory", "Wales and Central Territory" and "Southern Territory". I assume that the north-west is somewhere in "Scotland and Northern Territory". If the Financial Secretary is able to establish where the north-west and, for that matter, Bolton and Greater Manchester fit into the six offices AD1 to AD6, I shall be interested to hear that information because it would give some idea of the efficiency of fraud detection
in those areas. We know from information that has been released that in Bolton, £4.3 million was saved last year by the anti-fraud team. I hope that work will continue on that front to reduce the amount of fraud in total.
On the operations of the Benefits Agency in Bolton, I draw attention to the concern about the out-of-hours service being reduced. I hope that funding will be sufficient to maintain the service, at least until proper consideration has been given to any options that could be provided if it is to be reduced.
A number of issues are touched on in the Government's response to the 19th report. In paragraph 15, the Department of Social Security says:
The report comments on the high levels of error and on the appalling performance when the severe disability premium was introduced in 1988. I can confirm from my constituency cases how badly the introduction was handled. One constituent--a disabled person with no other means--was owed £10,000 in arrears of benefit. He became almost suicidal while waiting for the money. By the time I got on to the case, the arrears were substantial. It should not have been possible for them to have reached that level. Paragraph 23 of the Government's response shows that the average level of arrears per head was close on £4,000. I find it incredible that disabled people above all should be left with enormous arrears. Coupled with the general errors, that is totally unacceptable.
The report draws attention to visits to houses as the best way in which to establish the veracity of new claims. I would be pleased if the Financial Secretary could confirm that the number of home visits will be maintained at the levels envisaged and, if anything, increased to improve the efficiency of the detection of fraud. The Financial Secretary may care to tell us whether he thinks that the detection of fraud is better done with centrally administered benefits rather then with those administered at local authority level, such as housing benefit which is mentioned in the report.
I draw the Financial Secretary's attention to a recent report--I do not know whether he has been made aware of it--from Liverpool business school, which was carried out by the unit for the study of white collar crime. The author, a lady called Eve Coles, is a research associate. She has given a lot of information in the report, and I will touch on just one item.
"high morbidity rates and mortality rates in general."
He offered no hope that we might solve the problem. I find it wholly unsatisfactory that, year after year, the north-west should have such high sickness rates. It would be more acceptable if it happened only in some years and not others. In attempting to explain why this might be, he makes what I regard as a typical comment from the south-east--that it is
"a reflection of the more general lifestyle and health characteristics of the population"
in the north-west. In other words, because we eat tripe and onions we are not going to be so healthy. I hope that more effort can be put into ascertaining properly why sickness rates in the north-west should be higher. Clearly, the health of people in the area is just as important as that of people elsewhere in the country.
"we have commissioned a major survey of disability".
I do not know whether the Financial Secretary can comment on when that major survey might become available and exactly what its terms of reference are. I am not aware of any more information about that other than what is given in the report.
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