Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 1998
MR CHRIS
THOMPSON AND
MR GERRY
KEENAN
20. As it appears from this, it was much
easier for the adjudicating officers to give in and accept the
claims rather than dispute them. This is what it looks like to
me. When were any instructions given to the officers to say, "Come
on, what is happening here? Why are we running at a greater rate
than Great Britain?" Were any instructions issued?
(Mr Thompson) We could not issue instructions
like that because an adjudication officer has to deal with every
case on its merits and I think that as adjudication has improved
so our levels of award have increased.
21. I appreciate that, Mr Thompson, but
the fact is that you have already admitted that you were closely
monitoring statistics and that this trend was different, yet you
do not seem to be able to say when your officers were given instructions
to say, "Examine what you are doing because we appear to
be parting company with what is happening in Great Britain".
(Mr Thompson) I am not sure that I accept the
premise of your question that it is much easier to get DLA in
Northern Ireland than Great Britain. I think that there are reasons
for the higher rate of claiming in Northern Ireland than in Great
Britain. Indeed, I do not think you are even comparing like with
like.
22. Fair enough. That is a legitimate point
to make back to me and I understand that. If that is the case,
why was your Agency ignoring the work of the MRS? Why were your
officers sending them so few cases?
(Mr Thompson) I do not think that those two facts
again come together. That is really a separate issue. I think
that as time has gone on we certainly have looked for much greater
medical input to the claims.
23. Mr Thompson, is that true? I have got
evidence here that the cases referred to the MRS fell from 12
per cent in 1993/94 to two per cent in 1996/97. How can this be
searching for extra medical input if the cases being referred
have gone down by this percentage?
(Mr Thompson) At the same time the number of cases
that we were sending for medical examination or further evidence
by the claimant's GP was increasing dramatically and one could
say that that was a more effective way of dealing with these cases
because the GP would very probably know the case and would be
much easier able to provide advice than independent medical practitioners.
24. Mr Thompson, I hear that, but can I
take you to paragraph 3.12. These are the reference points of
the Medical Referee Service. It says here, "... advising
adjudication officers on all medical aspects of adjudication"
yet it appears to be a department you do not need because you
are not using it to the extent you previously were.
(Mr Thompson) That is not the case. Although we
send a smaller number of cases for independent examination, we
use the Medical Referee Service quite extensively and, in fact,
we have good links with them. We hold seminars with them and they
give us advice on the day-to-day workings and on medical issues
and this generic advice is very useful to our adjudication officers.
25. I am led to believe from this Report
that they have submitted various findings but the Agency say they
do not know that they have received them, they have not acted
on them.
(Mr Thompson) There are one or two cases, particularly
in relation to the audits that they did, where we did not have
those links and we have now ensured that those links are there
and that we will receive all reports.
26. If I could take you on to one other
part that I would like to ask about and this is to paragraph 3.50
and that whole section there. It seems here that you have senior
adjudication officers who were not comparing the functions and
the various rates of success of the adjudication officers. So
one has the feeling, because you have not been using the MRS,
according to the figures we are seeing here, according to what
we see about the senior adjudication officers, that your adjudication
officers were solo units, flying on their own, making decisions
that perhaps were not comparable with each other. There will be
some people that have got benefit who should not and there will
be some who should have got it and have not.
(Mr Thompson) I do not think that you can look
at the whole period and make a judgment for the whole period because
the process has developed as we have put greater emphasis on the
whole improvement.
27. Mr Thompson, I agree with that, but
the crimes have been committed. It is no good saying, "We
will be good boys now and let us ignore all the things that have
gone wrong in the past". We have here a catalogue of woe
stretching over six years. I appreciate that you are relatively
new to the job and I appreciate you are putting in a whole lot
of new methods that are hopefully going to produce good results,
but these things have gone on in the past and I think it is right
that we refer to them.
(Mr Thompson) I accept that totally, but what
I am saying is that improvements were made in the past as well
as now. For instance, the organisation of the branch was changed
some years ago to separate adjudication from the general administration
and I think that was the start of the improvement and then we
have introduced a specialist adjudication officer and that has
moved it on. So it is not a question of us sitting for many years
and doing nothing and now starting to improve it, I think it has
been an improving picture over the period, as the standard of
adjudication has shown.
Mr Page: I would like to ask one
last question and this is to the Department of Finance and Personnel
and I see it is a Mr Thomson. I take it you are not a relative
of the other Mr Thompson! How strongly did your Department complain
to the Agency that they were costing much much more money than
originally estimated, £20 million approximately more than
the first years?
Mr Thomson: Social security is clearly
a very large area of expenditure both in terms of programme and
also DRC and therefore there is quite a lot of concentration on
spend in the social security area within DFP and regular contact
with the Agency. In the Public Expenditure Survey Round we will
ask and seek a lot of information from the Agency and we will
challenge them as to what they are doing. That is important not
just for DFP but also because social security is funded directly
by Treasury because it is demand-led. Treasury also seek that.
Mr Page: How tough did you get? How
many letters have you written saying, "This is unacceptable.
Get your act together"?
Mr Thomson: I could not tell you
the number of letters, but certainly there has been a significant
level of challenge over the years on this, but I could not give
you the precise detail.
Mr Page: The NIAO in paragraph 2.35
considers the Department's methodology for calculating the success
rate as flawed, etcetera, etcetera. Do you get involved in looking
at the way in which they were calculating the whole cost that
was going to come your way?
Mr Thomson: We would not seek to
second-guess the Department. We will ask them questions, but we
would not get down to the details and second-guess the methodology.
Maria Eagle
28. Do you agree with me that in administering
this benefit the absolute key is the adjudication officers?
(Mr Thompson) Yes, I would agree with that.
29. That is where all the problems start.
If you get things wrong to start with it then becomes an administrative
nightmare to put them right. It was clear when this benefit was
introduced that that was going to be the case, that the adjudication
officers and their quality were going to be key. Would you agree
with that?
(Mr Thompson) I agree absolutely with that.
30. And yet if we turn to page 36, tables
3.5 and 3.6, the standard of adjudication to start with was just
appalling, was it not?
(Mr Thompson) It certainly was totally unsatisfactory.
31. It is now somewhat better and there
have been improvements and people should be congratulated for
that, but it is still at a totally unacceptable level.
(Mr Thompson) It is at an unacceptable level,
I would agree with that entirely, although I do think that in
looking at that you have to bear in mind the difficulty of the
benefit. It is not a simple decision like child benefit where
it is clear--
32. I accept that, but it was clear from
the start that it was not going to be simple. It is actually quite
a difficult, fairly judicial kind of judgment that is required
with lots of case law and lots of loose phrases can be interpreted
in different ways by different people. Did that not cry out for
the need for excellent training from the start?
(Mr Thompson) Yes, it did. The difficulty is in
doing that right from the start you really do not know the sort
of things you are going to get until they arrive. While we took
the advice--
33. You do accept that there were other
benefits before DLA that related to issues such as this and phrases
which one might come across. There is case law going back prior
to the introduction of this benefit in those fields which could
have been used as a basis for training.
(Mr Thompson) The significant difference here
is that the preceding benefits were a measurement of the disability.
This benefit was based on the effects of the disability, on self-assessment
and lay adjudication and that was the big difference. 34. I
accept that the benefit is different and that its aim are different,
but in terms of interpretation of disability problems, there were
precedents in the law beforehand which could have formed the basis
of training of your adjudication officers. It was obvious that
your adjudication officers were immediately going to run into
problems of interpretation, was it not?
(Mr Thompson) Yes. Let me make it clear, there
was training for our adjudication officers.
35. How good do you think that training
was?
(Mr Thompson) As the Report sets out, when it
was reviewed later it was found that there were a number of areas
where it was not good enough and where we had to start to provide
further training and remedial training to meet those problems
and that is what was done.
36. But do you not believe that these problems
should have been, and could have been, foreseen in advance?
(Mr Thompson) It is difficult to know seven years
later just how good the initial training was. I think it was as
good as we could make it. We work very closely with our colleagues
in the Benefits Agency in Great Britain and indeed, we relied
on the training that they had developed initially for Northern
Ireland and I think that that probably made sense at the time
because while the Central Adjudication Service provides most of
our adjudication training now, they were unable to provide that
training for the new benefit and therefore they had the best we
could do at that point in time.
37. Let us refer to page 13 of the Report,
paragraph 18 in the Summary and Conclusions section. A finding
of the Report was the fact that a substantial number of the decisions
being wrong was due to this problem of insufficient evidence.
Is that a problem with people not filling forms in correctly?
Is it the forms not been comprehensive enough or is it the adjudication
officers being unable to decide?
(Mr Thompson) The whole question of insufficient
evidence is a very complex one. It is not a simple question of
either there is sufficient evidence or there is not. One of the
things that is interesting from the Report is that when you put
together three or four experts they can disagree in a particular
case. They can each come to a different conclusion. That suggests
to me that the terms right and wrong for a certain number of cases
are perhaps unhelpful, that there are a number where we are clearly
dead wrong and I am sure to a degree that is the case and that
is far too many, but then there are a number where really it is
up to the adjudication officer and he or she decides the case
on its merits where they believe that there is sufficient evidence.
38. Paragraph 18 suggests that there were
a substantial number of incorrect decisions due to the wrong decisions
having been made by the adjudication officer. If the adjudication
officer has not got enough information he should refer and get
some more medical help or something and that did not occur to
start with. Why was that? Was it because adjudication officers
were told that they should make the decision themselves, that
was their job? Were there those kinds of directions?
(Mr Thompson) When an adjudication officer has
a problem he can send it to the senior adjudication officer and
if the senior adjudication officer cannot sort that out then it
would go to the Central Adjudication Service for advice.
39. I am aware of that. What we seem to
have here are a lot of decisions being made which should not have
been made because they were based on insufficient evidence and
they were wrong.
(Mr Thompson) Yes, I have accepted already that
there are too many cases that were dead wrong.
| 
