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6.42 pm
Mr. Terry Rooney (Bradford, North): I, too, pay tribute to the maiden speech by my poor relation from Leeds, the hon. Member for Elmet (Mr. Burgon). I suggest that he familiarise himself with social security, especially the jobseeker's allowance, because if his football team perform next year as they did last year there will be an awful lot of them on the dole.
The Bill is extremely wide ranging, with 77 clauses and 7 schedules. The House will be pleased to know that I do not intend to speak on all of them, but will confine my remarks to just a few. Before coming to the House, I spent 10 years as a welfare rights adviser. As a result, I have had to serve on 13 Bills dealing with social security, many of them with the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley). I can vouch for many of the remarks attributed to him today, but we will not go into that. I am not sure whether serving on all those Bills was a reward or a penance; nevertheless, I recognise many of the concerns expressed in the representations that we have all received and I have no doubt that they will be suitably ironed out during the passage of the Bill.
First, I will address the proposals for the appeals system. Anyone who has suffered the social security appeals system, whether as a claimant, a member of staff or a representative of a claimant, cannot in any way accept the current system--it is simply abominable. I have no problem at all with the abolition of the five separate tribunals and their being brought into one. Let us consider two types of appeal. For a client of the Child Support Agency living in west Yorkshire, the administration of the case is dealt with in Belfast; if the person decides to make an appeal, the file is then sent to Falkirk for preparation.
When it is finished with there, which can take anything up to a year if the person is lucky and even longer if they are unlucky, it is, for some reason, sent to Salford. People in Salford then endeavour to contact all relevant parties and to arrange a suitable time for the appeal to be heard in Leeds.
In the case of a claimant for disability living allowance, the administration of the case is dealt with in Blackpool, but if the person decides to lodge an appeal, the file and all the papers are sent to Nottingham for preparation. The appeal papers are then dispatched to Leeds for the clerk there to make the necessary arrangements for the appeal to be heard. Irrespective of any other delays in the system, and even if the file does not get lost--and the claimant is very lucky if it does not--that process of shuffling papers around the country can take three or four months. Nobody benefits from that and we should not tolerate or accept such a system.
As a representative, one of the most frustrating things that happened to me was turning up at a tribunal and finding that only two members were present--sometimes only one member was present. I had waited months, done all the preparation, got my client ready and turned up on the day on time, only to find that the tribunal was incomplete. I then had to decide whether to go ahead with an incomplete tribunal, or to seek an adjournment and come back at some time in the future. I should mention at this point that my hon. Friend the new Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) served for many years on social security appeal tribunals in Bradford and was an excellent, diligent and devoted member--would that everyone who sits on tribunals showed the same commitment.
That time delay, the lack of people turning up and the frequent inability of tribunal members to understand the case that they are hearing is tremendously frustrating and leads to bad decisions being made. Those are often contested and taken to the social security and child support commissioners, which leads to further delay and anger and upset among claimants, which is the last thing they need. The system needs massively simplifying and putting into order to bring back speed and justice.
Why is the number of appeals increasing? Part of the answer is undoubtedly the increase in recent years in the number of claimants. Another major development was the change from the old yellow book, which we all thought was quite complicated, to the new blue book, which is even more complicated and about 20 times as long--I see knowing looks on the faces of hon. Members who remember these things. The main contributing factor, however, is undoubtedly poor decision making. No improvements in the appeals system can replace getting the decision right in the first place.
Why are poor decisions made? Why is morale among Benefits Agency staff as low as it is? For years, they have been abused and reviled by successive Secretaries of State; the work that they do has been undervalued; their status has been devalued; their jobs have been threatened; and the conditions in which they have to work are appalling. Some 61,000 people currently work for the Benefits Agency, of whom more than 5,000 are on temporary contracts and 13,000 have worked at the agency for less than five years. The tremendous staff turnover leads to much of the bad decision making. That issue therefore needs tackling in the longer term.
Throughout the country, social security premises are abysmal. Within a mile of this building, there are three social security offices that would be closed down if they were being used as dog kennels; yet we expect people to work in those places and we expect claimants to attend there. That is a major contributory factor leading to low morale of staff and lack of accuracy in decision making.
We must reduce the complexity and number of forms that people are expected to complete. Anyone who has battled with what I believe is still called the B1--the claim form for income support--knows that it would defy an expert on completing income tax forms. Form A1, which is used by pensioners claiming income support, includes a question asking whether the claimant is pregnant. I know that science is advancing and that a mad doctor in Italy is doing all sorts of things, but by and large it is reasonable to assume that a pensioner, especially a male pensioner, will not be pregnant. Such anomalies appear in forms that have been prepared over the years--forms that appear to any lay person to be designed to prevent people from making a claim and pursuing it. That needs to be sorted out.
Separate forms must be submitted for jobseeker's allowance--contributory and non-contributory--for income support, and for housing benefit. So many of the questions on those forms overlap. I hope that the contents of the Bill will make inroads into the complexity, not only for claimants, but for the staff who process the documents. Frequently, the same information is processed three or four times when once should be enough.
Some years ago, my local authority--and, I believe, subsequently the one in Manchester--devised a standard form that could be completed to claim any benefit administered by the local authority, be it free school meals, educational maintenance allowance, housing benefit or council tax benefit. After completing one form, the person was informed which benefits they were entitled to. That innovation has saved tens of thousands of pounds and speeded up the process. Nowadays if a claim is not determined within 21 days there is almost a major inquiry, because the system has become so efficient. Similar progress needs to be made in the social security system. I believe that the information sharing provided for in the Bill will go a long way towards that.
Earlier this year, the Social Security Administration (Fraud) Act 1997 was passed. Information sharing between the agencies and the Inland Revenue and so on was a major feature of that Act. Ironically and nonsensically, however, it was only in respect of fraud--not to help people to claim what was genuinely theirs. That highlights the difference between the approach of the previous Administration and that of the present Administration. Claimants have a right to be paid their due. Certainly fraud is wrong and should be stamped out, but identical standards of service need to apply to both sections of the service. We know of far too many people who have walked away from the system, fed up with its bureaucracy; that must not continue to happen.
There are three separate forms that people can complete and send off to Glasgow--or perhaps it is Newcastle--to claim assistance with dental charges, travel costs and medical aids, depending on whether they are on income support, on low income, or retired. Three separate types
of form are sent to one address. Why cannot those matters be dealt with at the local office? That would be easy and it would save massive administration costs.
There are provisions in the Bill for tackling employer abuse of national insurance contributions. I have had several cases over the years of people who, on losing their jobs, have made their claim at the Employment Service only to be told, two to four weeks later, that their claim was disallowed because their contribution record was incomplete. Fortunately, all those cases could be resolved because they were diligent people who had kept their P60s and could prove that the deductions had been made and that their employer had been at fault.
Those were just the few people who had bothered to meet their Member of Parliament. For all we know, for every one of those people there are 20 or 30 others in a similar position. That is fine in the case of unemployment benefit, because usually it is possible to get that sorted out, but what would happen if those people had changed jobs, gone to different employers and been lucky enough never to be out of work? What will happen if, on reaching retirement age, people suddenly find that they have an incomplete record? They will not be able to look back 30 or 40 years and say, "There is the proof that I paid the contributions, but the employer did not hand the money over, so I want my full pension." It will be too late then.
An awful lot of such abuse by employers is going on. It is increasingly common, and it happens because of the lack of supervision of national insurance payments by employers. Anything that tightens up on that, and on payments by dodgy methods, is welcome, because people must believe that the money that is taken from them is credited to their contribution record.
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