SOCIAL SECURITY COMMITTEE
1992-97
Report by Mr Frank
Field, Chairman of the Committee
1. The Social Security Committee
has been chiefly occupied during the 1992-97 Parliament with two
issues: the operation of pension funds and the Child Support
Agency. In both of these areas the Committee was continuing work
undertaken by its predecessor Committees in the 1987-92 Parliament.[141]
2. The other major themes
of the Committee's work have been the control of public expenditure
and the extent of fraud in the social security system. The Committee
has also carried out a number of other inquiries ranging from
the methodology of Low Income Statistics to the operation of Incapacity
Benefit, and has undertaken a number of evidence sessions on the
organisation and administration of the DSS and its public bodies,
not all of which have led to Reports.
3. Generally, the Committee
has been concerned to lead forward the public debate on the future
of welfare spending and has not tied itself down to a routine
of examining Departmental and Agency publications which are produced
according either to an annual cycle which takes little account
of the parliamentary calendar or to the Government's initiatives
or reforms in Social Security. The Committee has preferred rather
to set the agenda and several items of legislation have reflected
the Committee's influence to considerable effect:
- Pensions Act 1995
- Social Security Administration
(Fraud) Bill
- Child Support Act
1995
- Social Security (Recovery
of Benefits) Bill [Lords]
- Church of England
Pensions Measure 1997
Scrutiny of Agencies and other
non-departmental bodies
4. The role of Agencies
in the DSS is central to the operations of the Department and
most inquiries have involved oral evidence from Agency officials
at some point. The Child Support Agency has been the focus of
particular attention, not only by this Committee but also by other
committees.[142]
All of the other Agencies gave written and oral evidence on their
operations for the inquiry which led to the 1994-95 Report on
the Work of the DSS and its Agencies.
5. Non-departmental bodies
are by contrast less a feature of the DSS, although the Committee
has devoted sessions to the Social Security Advisory Committee
and the new Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority. Informal
contacts have been maintained with the Social Fund Commissioner
and the President of the Independent Tribunal Service.
Resources/constraints caused
by lack of staff and Members' time and use made by committees
of specialist advisers
6. Although the Committee
met several times during recesses for its inquiry into the operation
of pension funds, generally the Committee has met once a week,
during weeks when the House is sitting, and has maintained a creditable
74 per cent average attendance record. Finding the time to prepare
for meetings and to absorb the quantity of written material varies
from Member to Member and can be a problem for those who are heavily
committed in a number of different areas. One purpose of more
staff might be to reduce the quantity of paper circulated
to Members by more use of digests and executive summaries, although
clearly there are dangers in Members becoming cut off from the
primary material.
7. In addition to the Clerk,
Committee Assistant and Personal Secretary provided by the Department
of the Clerk of the House, the Committee had the benefit of an
officer seconded from the NAO from January 1993 to July 1994.
This individual made a major contribution to the Committee's
work on the operation of pension funds and his contribution was
much appreciated. The Committee has also had two excellent specialist
assistants, who have each in turn supplied the Committee with
thoroughly reliable and unbiased support.
8. The Committee has had
a number of specialist advisers, some of whom have concentrated
on particular inquiries while others might be called upon only
infrequently. Generally the Committee has looked for practitioners
rather than academics and has occasionally co-opted a witness
as a specialist adviser for later stages of the same inquiry.
9. Commissioned research
has been an essential part of the Committee's work on Low Income
Statistics.
Relations with the PAC and
NAO
10. The Committee has had
a constructive relationship with the PAC and the NAO. The Committee's
inquiry into the Harland and Wolff Pension Fund was partly prompted
by a PAC report. The Committee has made frequent use of the Appropriation
Accounts and other Reports from the C&AG, including for example
a value for money report on the Resettlement Agency produced by
the NAO in 1992 but not taken up by the PAC, which we used in
our survey of the work of the DSS and its Agencies in 1994-95.
11. The Committee did not
directly examine the NAO on its role as auditor of the Church
Commissioners but one of its recommendations was that a private
sector firm of auditors should be appointed, which has since been
done within the necessary approval of the Treasury.
12. The NAO has maintained
informal links with the Committee staff, but the formal communication
with the NAO has always been carried out through the Chairman
of PAC. The Social Security Committee welcomes the work of the
C&AG in highlighting fraud issues affecting the DSS, and has
recommended that the NAO carry out a thorough review with the
Audit Commission of the extent of Housing Benefit Fraud, which
we understand is now under way.
The concept of Parliamentary
Commissions
13. The Social Security
Committee took evidence on the consequences for pension funds
of the collapse of the Maxwell companies in late 1991. These
events were the subject of prolonged criminal proceedings, and
so were sub judice from 1992 to late 1996. The sheer quantity
of material now available arising from those proceedings and would
make any select committee inquiry on the traditional model very
difficult to carry out and yet there remains considerable public
disquiet that not all the truth has emerged in the course of the
ultimately unsuccessful criminal prosecutions. It may be that
a less adversarial form of inquiry, carried out on the lines of
a DTI inspectors' report, would enable Parliament to get at the
truth of a matter too complicated for an open inquiry. There
is considerable merit in the proposals of the Trade and Industry
Committee for a special commission procedure to be available for
select committees to direct expert inquiries by (for example)
a chartered accountant and a barrister into the kind of business
transactions which lay at the heart of the Maxwell affair.
Difficulties in obtaining
evidence from Government Departments and summoning of named officials
14. The Social Security
Committee has not encountered any significant difficulty in obtaining
evidence or summoning officials, although there persists in some
quarters of Government a rather tiresome defensiveness about providing
full and helpful answers to inquiries. Such paltering with the
truth is usually a false economy, as excessive caution only serves
to alert Members with any acumen at all that the Department has
something to hide.
Ordering the attendance of
Members
15. The Committee has observed
the usual courtesies in seeking evidence from Ministers or from
Members of the House of Lords, including His Grace the Archbishop
of Canterbury. We have no problems to draw to the attention of
the Liaison Committee in this area.
The "crown jewels"
procedure
16. It is hard to imagine
any context in which the "crown jewels" procedure of
allowing limited access to inspect intelligence material which
has previously been disclosed in court proceedings could have
any relevance to the scrutiny of the expenditure, policy and administration
of the DSS and its associated public bodies.
Questions of Procedure for
Ministers
17. The Public Service Committee
invited comments on Questions of Procedure for Ministers
and I drew their attention to the provisions concerning parliamentary
private secretaries, which state that PPSs should "avoid
associating themselves with recommendations critical of or embarrassing
to the Government". It would be a pity if the independence
of a select committee were impugned by too strict a reading of
Questions of Procedure for Ministers. In the experience
of the Social Security Select Committee, Members who are PPSs
to Ministers in other departments can and do make valuable and
independent-minded contributions to the work of the Committee.
Declaration of interests
18. Declaration of interests
has not proved to be a source of difficulty as the Members of
the Social Security Committee have been scrupulous about reminding
their colleagues of what they have declared in the Register when
related issues come up in Committee. The rule against a Member
with a registrable interest initiating anything with regard to
that interest is a major potential difficulty. A Member may well
be on a committee due to special expertise. This expertise may
also be reflected in his or her outside interests in which case
he or she would be prevented from suggesting lines of inquiry
or even from moving amendments to draft reports (or from procuring
another Member to do so). Given the small number of Members on
a select committee, this seems unreasonable. It would surely be
undesirable to create a situation which encouraged a Member to
get someone else on the committee to make a proposal on his or
her behalf. The good sense of Members, a reasonable degree of
mutual confidence between colleagues and the full declaration
of relevant interests in the Register should allow any committee
to operate effectively within the spirit of the rules laid down
by the House.
Advance press copies of Reports
19. The existing provisions
of S.O. No. 116 are unduly restrictive and should be amended to
allow embargoes of up to 72 hours to facilitate publication on
a Monday and should also be extended to allow committees to provide
Opposition spokesmen with embargoed copies of Reports in advance
of publication.
Pre-legislative scrutiny
20. A most important suggestion
for the future is the systematic use of select committees to examine
in detail draft Government bills in the Session before the Bills
are brought before the House for Second Reading. The Government's
response to the Public Service Committee's Report on Ministerial
Accountability and Responsibility suggested that "the Government's
plans to expand its practice of publishing legislation in draft
give departmental select committees considerable opportunity to
comment on and help shape legislation at a formative stage"
(HC 67 Appendix para 30). Subject always to the committee's right
to determine its own agenda, this development points the way forward
to a serious and influential role for select committees in opening
up the public debate on proposals brought before the legislature
by the executive.
21. The scrutiny of delegated
legislation continues to be of concern to parliamentarians and
others. The staff of the Social Security Select Committee prepare
short notes for circulation to the Committee on all DSS regulations
laid before Parliament. The "explanatory notes" written
by departmental lawyers on the SI itself are often impenetrable.
22. The more important of
the regulations in the social security area may be the subject
of consultation by the independent statutory Social Security Advisory
Committee. The SSAC publishes the draft regulations and a DSS
paper explaining the proposed changes, and invites comments from
interested parties. The conclusions of the SSAC are laid before
the House when (and if) the final version of the regulations are
laid. This consultative process is to be commended, not least
for the interval that is imposed between a draft being prepared
and the effective version being laid before Parliament. The Social
Security Select Committee was able to use this interval to hold
public hearings on the proposed changes to benefits for asylum
seekers and, with some help from the Christmas recess and a slight
postponement by the Department of the planned implementation date,
the Committee was able to publish a Report before the House debated
a "prayer" against the Regulations in January 1996.
23. Another example of a
select committee Report on a statutory instrument, this time one
outside the remit of the SSAC, was on the proposals to amend the
benefit penalty for non-cooperation with the CSA in the summer
of 1996, which followed a Departmental review of the "good
cause exemption" in accordance with the Select Committee's
earlier recommendation. The Department allowed the Committee
sufficient time between publishing its Good Cause Review and laying
the actual Regulations to hold a brief inquiry and prepare a Report.
The Regulations were subject to approval and debated as expected
in a Standing Committee, which some Members of the Committee attended
pursuant to S.O. No.101(2). Future consideration might be given
to giving some formal recognition in a Standing Committee to a
Report from a select committee, in the same way that there is
a "tag" on the Order Paper when a Report is relevant
to a debate in the House.
Informal Sub-committees
24. The inquiry into benefits
for asylum seekers referred to above was carried out by an informal
"Sub-committee" of four Members who held evidence sessions
and deliberative meetings at different times from the full Committee.
The Chairman of the "Sub-committee" was Mr Robert G
Hughes, who presented the draft Report to the full Committee which
was adopted as the First Report of 1995-96.
Seminars
25. Select committees should
be able to stimulate debate on issues of public importance in
ways additional to publishing yet another Blue Book available
from the Vote Office. One of the ways of doing this is to promote
seminars on subjects on which committees have reported. The rather
stilted procedures of the traditional question-and-answer evidence
sessions still have their place, particularly when a committee
is seeking to expose facts which others wish to remain hidden.
Where there is a genuine public debate on an issue, however,
select committees should be able to host public meetings at which
all points of view may be represented, giving others a chance
to participate in a public discussion on issues raised by a select
committee report.
26. One of the realities
of the last quarter of the twentieth century to which British
institutions have been generally slow to respond is that it is
necessary to consider policies in an international, and more particularly
European, context. More thought needs to be given to improving
reciprocal links with other national parliaments and EU institutions,
so that there can be a greater exchange of ideas and information.
27. The Social Security
Committee has taken the opportunity of visits to other European
countries (Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands) to
discuss issues of common concern with our parliamentary opposite
numbers and we have also welcomed visiting delegations to Westminster
from France, Germany and Finland as well as from Australia, Thailand,
the Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Chile. The lack of facilities and
funding to provide sophisticated and up-to-date simultaneous interpretation
facilities is a serious reproof to the standing of the British
Parliament on the verge of the twenty-first century. No doubt
the new parliamentary building above the Westminster Underground
station will at last provide the necessary physical equipment
to provide simultaneous interpretation but this will be a waste
of resources unless funds are made available to operate and use
the facilities. The Liaison Committee should give serious attention
to the need for proper funding for providing the kind of language
facilities which are indispensable in the modern age.
28. An illustration of the
short-sightedness of the present provision may be given from the
experience of the Social Security Committee, which arranged a
Seminar for 18/19 February 1997 on the subject of unfunded pension
liabilities in the European Union to which members of EU national
parliaments were invited. The only suitable location at Westminster
for this kind of event is the QEII Conference Centre, which is
run on commercial lines by an executive agency of the Department
of the Environment. The House of Commons Commission declined
to provide the necessary funding for holding the Seminar at the
QEII Centre, so the Committee was forced make alternative arrangements
and to proceed without the benefit of interpreters.
141 The Social Services Committee covered the DHSS up to the division of the Department in July 1988 and continued to monitor both the Department of Health and the Department of Social Security until the Health Committee and the Social Security Committee were established from the beginning of the 1990-91 Session. Back
142 Public Accounts, Public Service and Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration. Back
