Examination of witnesses (Questions 40 - 59)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 1998
RT HON
HARRIET HARMAN,
MP and RT
HON FRANK
FIELD, MP
Mr Pond
40. I know Patricia Hewitt will not mind me divulging
that this last exchange over the past few minutes has inspired
her to coin a new phrase, which was "Nick-picking",
especially in the context of which all of us in this room recognise,
the enormous challenge which the two people sitting in front of
us face in terms of welfare reform, given the inheritance. A quarter
of the population are living in poverty; a larger increase in
inequality than we have seen in any other industrialised nation.
We know that those problems cannot be resolved by welfare reform
alone, but I do think we have a responsibility to be serious about
the size of that challenge. Could I ask both of you, given that
much of the debate about welfare reform has been largely focused,
if you like, on the roadworks en route to welfare reform, are
you able to give us a better idea of what the destination is as
far as you are concerned? It may well be that the Minister of
State will say, "Wait until 26 March"; but some indication
about not just the instruments to measure where the success has
been achieved, but what that success would mean in terms of reductions
in poverty, reductions in inequality, greater social cohesion,
what are the measures of success? Could I say I will not accept
from the Minister of State an answer which is yes, yes, yes and
yes, but not necessarily in that order.
(Mr Field) It is an immensely difficult question.
I know you are pressed for time but I will do my best to reply
briefly. If you are trying to describe a society, because there
is going to be political, economic, cultural change, it is much
more difficult to expect to have so many people on Income Support.
The Green Paper will make clear what our core values are. We will
be looking to what extent we have actually fulfilled that. May
I give you one example. One of our principles, which has been
very clear since being elected, is that we believe that people
who can work should work. You will probably have noticed that
we present much fuller figures now each month about what is happening
in the labour markets. It is something typical about the British
always wanting to concentrate on failure that we have previously
published figures exclusively about the numbers who are not working.
If the aim is to move people into work, an equally important figure
to publish is the numbers of people who are working. We do now
publish those figures jointly. Nick, in his contribution earlier,
reinforced the tendency, we all have as Brits, in wanting to try
to concentrate on failure and never talk about success. When Harriet
first announced the pilots of lone parents, the official Opposition
said, "This is terrible. They were our ideas which we had
in the Department." Now we are actually doing this they do
not want joint ownership of this project at all, but are trying,
as somebody said, to carp about how it is actually working. The
vision will be described around our principles. Then there will
be clearly the goals which we would want to achieve during this
Parliament. The measurements will be there as well. They do mix
together. If one principle is that we believe people who can work
should work, presumably one of our goals is that we see more people
into work than historically are in work at that stage of the economic
cycle. Therefore, we are interested in devising the best, and
the most accurate way of actually measuring that, because we all
know sometimes what can happen to figures when politicians get
their sticky fingers on them. So the vision is not saying that
we are about everybody drawing a state benefit of this amount.
The simplicity of that vision has gone. It is a much more complicated
one, about moving welfare to a society in which more and more
of us feel that we are fulfilling our full potential rather than
merely just getting by.
(Ms Harman) May I add to the points that Frank
has made there. We will expect to be tackling worklessness and
the numbers of households particularly with children without work.
We will be expecting to be tackling in-work poverty—people
who are in work but remain poor. We will be expecting to get a
much better match of cash and care and support for people with
disabilities who are not able to work but who are of working age.
We will expect to have many more people independent of means-tested
benefit in retirement. I just add those four points.
41. May I ask one other question about the difficulty
of this process of welfare reform. As was mentioned earlier, there
are a lot of very vulnerable people who are very scared about
what might be happening. I would not suggest for a moment that
any of my colleagues on the Committee have been adding to that
scaremongering in terms of prospects of means-testing or cuts
in benefits or pensions, but clearly much of the debate is made
more difficult because people see some of the effects of the previous
Government's policies which continue in the current circumstances
and confuse that, as with the Benefit Integrity Programme, with
the process of welfare reform itself. When there are reports in
the newspapers about severely disabled people having their benefits
reduced, many people assume that is part of the process of welfare
reform rather than one of the reasons why we need to reform welfare
in the first place. How do we convince people that those two processes
are quite separate and, in fact, the whole process of welfare
reform is not about the previous Government's agenda of cuts in
benefits for very vulnerable people or means-tested benefits?
(Ms Harman) The process of reassuring and convincing
people will be made easier with the Budget, with the Green Paper,
and as our proposals evolve. It was the Prime Minister who said
that we are "in the post something or other or the pre something
or other" situation. For people whose only lifeline is benefits,
the prospects of change without knowing the substance of change
is unfortunately very worrying. We have been wanting to give as
much reassurance as we can possibly give. The issue you raise
about the Benefit Integrity Project is one which has been giving
rise to serious concern both in the community and amongst Frank
and myself. What the Benefit Integrity Project is trying to do
in respect of Disability Living Allowance, is to check that people
who are in receipt of the higher levels of Disability Living Allowance
are actually entitled to them. Because of the complexity of the
gateways into that benefit, and because your entitlement to that
benefit can change depending on your circumstances and your condition
changing, previous evidence had suggested that something like
25 per cent of people who are in receipt of DLA were not actually
currently entitled to it. Now against that background, it is very
important to do a checking and a review exercise. However, we
have had great concerns about the way the exercise has been undertaken.
We have sought to amend the project. We have discussed it with
organisations for people with disabilities and we are monitoring
whether our amendments are making sufficient progress. The difficulty
is that there has been a process whereby a recommendation for
a cut altogether of the benefit or a reduction in benefit can
be made simply on a paper form filled in by the person in receipt
of benefits. Therefore, what has happened subsequently is that
one in five cases, where a review has been asked for, the person
doing a review has said, "You were entitled and we are going
to give you back-dated money," but of course for weeks people
have not had the money which their standard of living was dependent
upon. Therefore, we make a very big distinction between withdrawing
benefit from people who were on it and for whom that was their
standard of living, and not allowing people to have it in the
first place. So what we have done is that we have introduced,
as from a couple of weeks ago, a safeguard so that if there is
a proposal that benefits should be cut or reduced, that this is
not done; that this is not implemented without a check of further
evidence either from the carer with the permission of the claimant
themselves, or the doctor or some other independent evidence.
In too many cases we are being told subsequently the decision
was wrong. We want to get the quality of decision making improved
because you are absolutely right. All you need is people having
that fear. It is very worrying for them and we are concerned about
that but it also creates a very difficult climate in order to
reassure people. There has also been the issue around DLA, whether
somehow we are suggesting that these 25 per cent of people are
defrauding the system. I want to take the opportunity this morning
of saying that is not the suggestion. Presumably, as with every
benefit, there are some people who are simply defrauding the system,
but I think there our identification of the main problem with
DLA is people not being entitled to it, not a question of fraud.
Therefore, we want to dispel that myth. We have a responsibility
to check that benefits are going to those who are entitled to
them; the same as we have a responsibility to check that people
do not get benefits if they are not entitled to them. We need
to improve the way we have been doing that and we aim to do so.
Chairman: That is a very helpful answer, thank you.
Miss Kirkbride
42. Could I perhaps respectfully suggest that if we are
going to have any constructive criticism, it would help if Ministers
did not always suggest that everything which happened under 18
years of Conservative Government was wicked. If we are now looking
forward to a more bi-partisan approach when it comes to your welfare
reforms—which to some extent is in all our interests because
I do accept that we have a welfare problem in this country and
it would be nice if we did solve it—but it does not help,
as I say, if it is always suggested that what we did was so dreadful.
I would like to go back to some of the points that are being raised
by my colleagues, so that we can be clear about the answers you
gave. Am I right in thinking that in answer to Edward's points,
what you said was that because the state pension is covered by
a manifesto commitment, it will be not be means-tested in this
Parliament but perhaps we might go to the country in future occasions,
which suggests that it might be for people who are richer in old
age? Am I right in thinking that?
(Mr Field) I tried, in what was said today, to
pay due compliments to the previous administration, in answer
to the idea about citizenship, how that changed in the previous
Parliament and how I supported that. I also tried generally to
suggest to Edward that it is good sport for you to do this. We
are not in the business of saying yes to some things and nay to
others, because you can then try and pick off where we may be
with you or may not be with you. It is very important in government
that you are able to discuss ideas in an open, clear, friendly
fashion, and then, when you have actually reached decisions, to
publish those for further discussion. I was as clear as any politician
could be about what we are doing on the old age pension. No doubt
you could come up with 40 or more (if you have time) of things
which no-one ever has any intention of doing, and you could get
me to deny one or the other. As you know, when Peter Lilley was
before you, he did not participate in this game.
43. I was quite surprised because I thought you were
ruling it out and somehow that seems to open the gate a little
bit.
(Mr Field) I really drew attention to our manifesto
commitment.
44. But I would suggest that us as backbenchers, sometimes
put more into our posts than Ministers do from time to time, and
these issues are a great concern to us: whether Disability Living
Allowance is going to be taxed and whether or not child benefit
is going to be taxed. I think that people in Britain, if it is
not covered by a manifesto commitment—and you are saying
we are covered by this manifesto commitment and therefore we rule
it out—but given your statement that you are looking at
these issues, which you have made to the press before coming to
this Committee, I think it is relevant and reasonable to ask whether
or not you are looking at the possibility of taxing those people
on child benefit and Disability Living Allowance.
(Mr Field) What I have said is that we are operating
the authority of mandate which we gained at the last election.
The Chairman made the point earlier on that this is a very long
process. Therefore, if we are going to do it sensibly, we need
to think long-term. When we have proposals on that, we will actually
make them public. But we are not a government that is in business
to break our manifesto commitments. We will obviously go to the
country at the next election, to seek a new mandate for the next
Parliament, as will the Opposition. At that stage it will be totally
proper for all political parties to put forward their views to
the electorate and seek their approval. But I do not think the
debate is furthered by me prematurely gives yeses or nos to lots
of hypothetical questions.
45. Then perhaps I could return to the outcomes on objectives
and what you are proposing to do. First of all, with regard to
the New Deal for Single Parents, which goes back to some things
which Nick covered. Am I right to say that there are one and a
half million single parents, half a million of whom are already
in work. So around one in three single parents already work. Obviously
it would be very nice to get the million who do not back to work,
on that objective we all agree, but I do think that significant
amounts of public money are being spent on this scheme and, therefore,
we ought to have some idea as to what seems to be a reasonable
outcome, having spent this public money on persuading those two
or three who as yet have not been encouraged to work, to persuade
them to go out to work. I do think it would help if the Government
had some kind of figures as to how many of those million it would
be reasonable to expect to be off benefit, income support, at
the end of this Parliament.
(Ms Harman) To respond to the first point about
significant amounts of public money, the starting point is to
recognise that significant and growing amounts of public money
were being spent on keeping lone parents on benefit when their
children were the same age as those of married women who; because
they were not trapped on benefit, were able to work. So the first
figure we need to keep our eye on is the overall figure of benefits
for lone mothers, particularly with children of school age, but
as I have said earlier, it was something like £10 billion
on income support and other benefits for lone mothers who are
not working. So when we talk about significant amounts of public
money, that is the first significant amount of public money, the
cost of benefit dependency. We are going to properly evaluate
the Lone Parents New Deal. It is being properly evaluated. It
has been since it started in July. It has been independently and
academically evaluated. The result of that evaluation will be
published and then together we can judge whether or not that public
money was worth spending. But I would reiterate the point, that
it cannot be simply dealt with on the basis of a unit cost here.
We are dealing with the issue of a big cultural change, which
is saying that lone parents do not have to remain trapped on income
support. What we aim to do—perhaps another target I can
throw in here—is to narrow the gap between the participation
rate in the labour market between lone mothers and married women
with working husbands, with children the same age.
46. Would a 100,000 drop in the figures of a million
women, single parents on income support, be a success in your
eyes? Would that be a benchmark?
(Ms Harman) What figure did you say?
47. 100,000. 10 per cent of the women who are currently
on benefit or income support, there are 1 million single parents
on benefit. If that fell by 100,000, would that be successful?
(Ms Harman) The first staging post is to see the
increase in the number of lone parents on income support turning
around and turning down and the trend changing. But I do not think
that we are in a position before the evaluation to give actual
numbers. I do know that once we have laid this idea out on the
table, whichever government there was would take this forward.
It is simply not possible to carry on in the situation where women
are redefining what it is to be a mother by working for their
children as well as caring for their children, but women who are
trapped on the benefits system are unable to do that and a price
is paid of a low standard of living and children being brought
up in workless households.
48. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that the
programme is wrong if it is hugely desirable to persuade these
women to go out to work. What I am saying is that you are the
executive and that we backbenchers are here to check on whether
or not you are providing good value for public money; that we
have a reasonable expectation that you give us some kind of success
rate.
(Ms Harman) After the evaluation is the answer
to that.
(Mr Field) To go back to Patricia's point, what
we are trying to do in this area is, for the first time, to provide
a map and compass. Now, once you live in a world with maps and
compasses, these seem quite useful things to have and you wonder
how the hell you got on without them. If you look at Child Support,
when the last Labour Government left office, 52 per cent of families
on Supplementary Benefit, who were lone parents with children,
had maintenance payments in operation. That steadily fell to about
20 per cent when the Child Support Agency came in. Surely the
first objective is now to reverse that trend. What we want to
do, when we publish our measurements, is to have a proper discussion
with you about what is a sensible target. Sensible is not just
about making it slightly difficult or impossible to achieve. We
could all be very silly politicians and say that because we have
now broken open the debate into totally new areas with success
measurements, we had better, as politicians, play ultra-safe and
set targets we know we are able to achieve. The aim of having
the target is to out-perform our current behaviour. Therefore,
what we will want to do, if we have the chance, and if we are
invited back to the Committee, at the stage the measurements are
published, is to enter the detailed discussion of what is sensible.
In your context, Julie, whether it is 100,000, whether it is 150,
or whatever it is, we can sit down with you, discuss what the
trends are, and as sensible human beings, try and improve on what
we would expect to get.
49. Could I ask you whether or not you have thought of
changing the rules so that the woman who is entitled to stay at
home until the youngest child is 16; whether changing that rule
to bring that figure down to perhaps five—the benefit rule
that you would no longer be able to take support, you would have
to go on to the jobs programme—have you thought about changing
that law?
(Mr Field) No. Harriet has often rightly drawn
attention to how vulnerable people are when they have probably
spent 22, 23, 24 or 25 years on benefit after which, when the
benefit rules require them to start going out to work. That is
why this Government is about emphasising opportunities rather
than merely changing the rules, although I agree with you, Julie.
Sometimes changing rules can be important, but we should do that
in a careful and sensitive way. If we ever have such proposals
to do that we would bring forward those ideas for discussion.
At the moment we are in a stage of extending opportunities. As
you reminded us earlier on, we are merely doing what the previous
Tory Government said it was going to do if it was re-elected.
50. Do you not think it might be sensible though, given
that some of these people are on income support for a very long
time, if you brought the rule down so they could only be entitled
to stay on income support until the children were five, for example?
That would reduce the period in which they were not in work or
were not looking for work and that might help them?
(Ms Harman) We are introducing active help from
the age of five, so we have already changed the situation from
what it was previously, which was that up until the age of 16
there was no contact except once every three years to ask if you
were still living in the same place, and then as soon as your
youngest child was 16 you were required to be available for full-time
work and turn up at a job centre once every two weeks, which seems
to be a very big cliff edge. I would be very interested in what
you said in your report about this and I note that you say you
think 16 is anomalous but you do not yet propose what to do about
it. So I have noted with interest the evidence you have taken
and the conclusions you have come to, and I think both the Committee
and ourselves will continue to have an eye on this issue.
Ms Buck: I think it would be unarguable that your departmental
objectives are possibly uniquely dependent upon circumstances
and actions of other government departments not just yourselves,
but then in turn action from the DSS can facilitate and underpin.
I have three particular areas of concern and I would like to ask
one quick question on each—child care, housing costs and
of course the whole issue of the labour market itself. Let us
start with child care, as that is where we are. I am now going
to inflame Julie by saying that one of the legacies of the last
18 years——
Miss Kirkbride: Here we go again!
Ms Buck
51. —— I do not think anyone would argue
is that we do have one of the worst levels of child care provision
in Europe. There are a great many parents of children under the
age of five who would like to work and who cannot because of the
attitude to child care. Although I am happy to evangelise what
we have already said in terms of the development of child care
for three or four years and the extension of after school facilities,
it does still leave us with an enormous gap, the worst gap being
for children one to three, still a large gap from three to five,
and even with the extension of after school clubs we are still
talking about three out of four primary schools not having on-site
facilities. Let us deal with the issue of costs as well. We know
from a very useful visit of this Committee to my constituency,
I am glad to say, to an excellent public nursery which although
offering good quality child care was housed in something which
looked very like the pictures of Colditz in today's newspapers,
yet even so this facility is costing £220 on average in public
money per child. That is the scale of the cost, of admittedly
urban but still a realistic cost, of the provision of nursery
child care for very young children. On child-minding I think we
were quoted figures of between £80 and £120. In today's
papers there is reference to the child care credit which may emerge
from the Budget. I wondered if you could tell us a little about
how we can deal with this gap in child care, what leverage you
as a Department could put on the DfEE to meet that gap and how
you see assistance with child care going beyond and overcoming
the limitations of the family credit child care disregard which
I think we would accept was not very successful?
(Ms Harman) I think what we have to do with child
care is both tackle the supply side and the demand side at the
same time. On the demand side, I have been working closely with
Gordon Brown, the DSS have been working closely with the Treasury,
to look at how we can help women with one of the key points of
the national child care strategy which is affordability. We have
said the three linchpins for the national child care strategy
are accessibility, quality and affordability. The work we have
been doing between the DSS and the Treasury is in order to see
whether we can make further progress to tackle the issue of affordability.
As you have said, the attempts to do it through the child care
disregard in family credit though welcome did not work, did not
reach enough people, did not give enough help with the realistic
cost of child care, so that is something where you will have to
await the Budget, but the Chancellor has said he wants to give
more help through the tax system with the cost of child care for
low income working mothers. That is the demand side. But you also
have to deal with the supply side because we have a very weak,
under-developed infrastructure and bearing in mind it is very
important we have quality child care and continuity in child care,
the supply side issues are very important. So working with the
DfEE on the development of the consultation paper which will form
the basis of the delivery of the national child care strategy,
we are looking at the local delivery of the national child care
strategy, how we can develop from the bottom up targets bearing
in mind what is existing at local level and how we can audit what
is already there and develop targets to improve the supply side.
Quality remains a very important issue. That is to do with regulation,
it is to do with ensuring the supply of properly trained people
to work in child care. It is to ensure that people have enough
money in their hands because cheap child care is poor quality
child care, and I think that is a lesson very much learnt from
the States. So affordability plays across to quality. But also
one of the objectives of the national child care strategy is universality,
if I might be permitted to mention that word. One of the most
critical ways of underpinning quality is that it is not a poor
service for the poor, but that child care is a provision which
everybody uses. Those are the actions we are taking, both on the
supply side and the demand side, to deliver quality, affordable
and accessible child care in all areas, both to help children's
development but also to under-pin the changed nature of the labour
market.
52. I am pleased you used the word "universality".
Will you make sure that as you look at the provision in the round
that we do not run the risk of having a smaller but more deeply
excluded group of, particularly in this case, lone parents, who
actually cannot conceivably go out to work and who therefore might
be further disadvantaged by not being able to be brought into
the package you are making for working parents? To give an example,
at my last week's surgery I saw a woman who has six children,
now on her own because her marriage has broken up, three of the
children have special education needs and this woman is just not
going to be in the labour market. What we do not want is a situation
where she falls even further behind relatively as provision is
made for working parents.
(Ms Harman) I think it is very important that
the provision of the national child care strategy is not just
for working parents, it is a choice available to parents whether
they are working or not. I think the national child care strategy
will support good parenting, not just those parents who are combining
work and family responsibilities but also those who are not. That
is why we have a very pluralistic approach, we are not just talking
about nurseries and after school clubs or child minders, we are
talking about playgroups, mothers and toddlers clubs, because
it is not for us to lay down a blue print and say, "You are
a working mother, this is what you are going to get for your child."
We want to respond to the demand there is on the ground, so people
will choose. Even within one family with three people, it might
be for one child one sort of provision is right but for the second
child that does not suit that child at all. So we want to enable
parents to have that choice. They know best what is best for their
children, what they have lacked is the access and the affordability
to quality child care. It was in our manifesto and we aim to deliver
that, and it also underpins our Welfare to Work policy, particularly
for lone parents.
53. The second of my issues which are affected profoundly
by what happens in other departments is housing costs. The explosion
of Housing Benefit we have seen in recent years is heavily linked
up with shifts away from bricks and mortar subsidy towards housing
costs subsidy. I wonder if you wanted to, and felt now there was
a realistic chance, alter that balance back both in the interests
of making it more realistic for people to go to work by cutting
their rent and indeed having the other effect of cutting Housing
Benefit?
(Mr Field) The review of Housing Benefit is being
undertaken by a committee on which Keith Bradley sits, Nick Raynsford,
Hilary Armstrong and I sit, so it is a cross-departmental committee,
which addresses a point raised earlier on. We work across departments
now. The need for reform is actually set out in Focus File Five.
We have a Housing Benefit system which to some extent played a
part in driving rents up—which is putting it as gently as
I can think of putting it—and which is explained further
in the focus file. What happened was that the huge subsidy on
bricks and mortar was run down and transferred to Housing Benefit.
The overall public expenditure did not change but the nature of
that public expenditure did change. It is that issue we are looking
at and how we move on from here. The points you make, Karen, are
clearly part of that debate.
54. What is your preference?
(Mr Field) I am in the luxury position of having
a personal view in private and then having the privilege of defending,
as a member of the Government, the decision we come to.
55. A corking answer, Frank! My third question is briefly
on the issue of the labour market. In your introductory comments
you quoted a figure of a million people who were sick or had some
level of disability who might be able to re-enter the labour market.
As someone who spent many years of my early working life with
severely disabled people looking at ways of getting people back
into work I think that is a noble objective, but personally, and
indeed from disability organisations and their responses that
they are giving to some of the admittedly often ill-informed debate
in public, I think that is fine but are you actually confident
that there are indeed a million jobs in the labour market which
could absorb a significant proportion of those people?
(Mr Field) I was obviously more nervous than I
thought, because I did not think I mentioned that number at all.
I was in Malcolm's constituency the other day to witness a project
there where people with the most severe learning difficulties
are actually getting jobs. One of his constituents is now the
longest serving member of the hotel where she works. The oldest
person they placed successfully in work was 61. So the thing we
wish to draw attention to, as a Government, is that we are not
dividing people into sheep and goats. We are very, very anxious
that people who have disabilities do have full opportunities to
work. One of the most hurtful things the mothers said, when I
was with Malcolm looking at this project, was that every other
child was asked at school, "What do you want to do"
but their children were never asked.
(Ms Harman) Can I follow that by saying that there
really is a moral imperative here. Amongst the most desperate
people in my constituency are the mothers of children who, when
they have been at school, they have got help and support to develop
them, to stretch them, to see what their potential is, and when
they get to the end of school age, as Frank says, nobody asks,
"What are you going to do when you leave school?" That
is a question everybody asks a child, every other child is asked
when they get to the end of school age, "What are going to
do when you leave school", and the reason why they do not
ask that question of a child who has special needs is because
they cannot bear what the answer is going to be, and the answer
is a sense of despair. There is a real moral imperative here.
This is about social exclusion, it is about discrimination, and
we are not necessarily talking about full-time work, we are talking
about looking at whatever opportunities there are to do some work
to the full extent of that person's abilities. Just because you
have Down's Syndrome or a learning disability or something else,
it is morally wrong for the benefit system to write people off
and then wash its hands of them and say, "Our job is done.
We are paying you." That is not good enough and that is why
we are determined to do what we can to tackle this.
Chairman
56. Frank, can I ask about this Department of Environment
joint committee which Keith, Nick and yourself are on? Is that
expected to produce a document? What will be the outcome of that
work or will it just feed into the Government process? Can you
tell us anything about it?
(Mr Field) It will go before the PX Committee.
We are not yet at that stage. If we have proposals for change
we will publish those proposals. It will be co-ordinated between
the two interested departments, and co-ordinated by Government
through the PX Committee.
Mr Goggins
57. My question on housing costs has already been helpfully
answered, so I will ask something else. Experimentation. One of
the features of the system in the United States when we visited
there was the differences in different states, the different systems,
the different emphases which were placed within the different
states on different aspects, and that is likely to become more
pronounced in America with the reform from the federal system
to the state system. I wondered what thought you had been giving
to experimentation? I do not just mean pilots and pathfinders
but genuine bottom-up initiatives, which might link together the
needs and opportunities we have. It might also, Frank, bring into
play some of the community collective provision that you were
referring to in your opening remarks. For example, opportunities
to link in experiments on the social fund with credit unions.
I wondered whether either of you had been thinking about that
issue and what kind of opportunities there might be for people
to come forward with ideas?
(Mr Field) We have been thinking along the lines
you are talking about. We have a huge body of staff who are also
thinking and therefore, in a sense, we could have as one of our
goals an entrepreneurial culture amongst our staff, where many
of the ideas for reform not only come from them but that we actively
encourage them. We have had a long consultation exercise, started
by the previous Government, of which we are the beneficiaries,
whereby staff make their proposals. Thanks to the timetable the
Prime Minister has carved out for me, part of this is actually
going round listening to people and their ideas. One of the things
we would want to see, as I replied in answer to Chris' question,
is for these ideas to be safely nurtured. It is terribly difficult
to say precisely what that is going to look like, but I hope we
are beginning to suggest how different the system will look as
each year passes, from the one we currently have. So, re-establishing
the real quality of public service, the public service ethic,
openness and wanting to involve people, rather than close them
out. I am always so surprised by the ideas that people have thought
out and just how clever they are. We should cash in on them.
Chairman
58. Like decentralisation?
(Mr Field) Staff have made the point that for
a period of time Governments were unconcerned about fraud, though
they the staff, were massively concerned about fraud. The Government
then gets concerned about fraud, largely due to the work of this
Committee, and all sorts of anti-fraud mechanisms are bolted on
to the back of benefits. But staff, if they had had the power
to do so, would have built those in from the word go. Part of
what we are trying to do is to learn from that and see how we
can move from what we have now to an effective counter fraud strategy.
One which empowers the staff to provide the sort of personal service
that Harriet has been describing.
59. Jean Rogers of Wisconsin was quoted as saying that
the W-2 reform is 10 per cent inspiration, 90 per cent application.
Certainly when I go round benefit offices the staff are driven
crazy by the complexity of the system. Is workability an integral
part of your thinking?
(Mr Field) I just want to pay a tribute to the
staff given the difficulties under which they work and how, generally
speaking, brilliantly they do. The first week I did away from
the office was in Exeter and I foolishly thought the staff would
want to discuss the ideas in that book which Nick has quoted from
and other books. They did not at all. They wanted to talk about
their ideas. I immediately learnt that you can have the best ideas
in the world but if they cannot work, there is no point. We certainly
see the Department's role as trying to think up the workable,
not anything else.
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