Examination of witnesses (Questions 60 - 66)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 1998
RT HON
HARRIET HARMAN,
MP and RT
HON FRANK
FIELD, MP
Mr Goggins
60. Would either you or Harriet see the point being reached
where you could make block grants to local partnerships and the
Benefits Agency, local authorities, health authorities, whoever,
to actually administer the system? Where is the cut-off point?
(Mr Field) I think you should wait as we unveil
stage-by-stage our proposals for reform. We are reformers who
have open minds but not empty minds. We are anxious to learn from
the best examples that are around and fully appreciate that however
talented the Government is, it is not as talented as the people
out there.
Mr Roy: Could I make some observations? The area I
represent in West Central Scotland is one of the trial areas for
the lone parent initiative. Earlier on you were speaking about
how to measure success. I have to say coming from the area I do
that I measure success individually, every single lone parent
we can take off benefit into work is a major, major success. I
am delighted to hear you are both determined to stick to your
manifesto commitments because, at the end of the day, it was that
manifesto for change that so many people voted for and good luck
to you on that. The Chairman started his remarks by speaking about
the fact Cabinet Ministers may be wasting their time going round
the country explaining the Welfare to Work policy, but I can tell
you that if any minister wants to come to West Central Scotland
to explain it, I will guarantee them a full house. I can guarantee
it.
Chairman: And you will do the security as well!
Mr Roy
61. And I will do the security as well! I would like
to bring you back to the statement you made about the fact we
have a duty to protect the vulnerable, and you also said that
a lot of vulnerable people could be frightened by your plans for
change. This Committee was in the United States looking at their
plans for change and what they have done and although we did not
agree with a lot of what we saw, one in particular we most certainly
agreed with was the way they use personal advisers. I was very,
very struck by one relationship. I would like it if you could
both expand on that. I know it is in your plans and you are using
it, but I would like it if you could spend a few minutes and expand
on further plans for personal advisers. It seems to me that we
have a culture where people know the individual system and know
what they might be entitled to but they need someone to talk to
about taking that step up off welfare into work. I just think
that is so important and I would like to hear your thoughts on
that.
(Mr Field) I liked the way you described one of
your criteria of success being about the importance for every
individual; about them succeeding. I think that while we have
to think in global terms, behind those global terms are our concerns
about the uniqueness of each individual and trying to provide
an environment in which they can fulfil their potential. I was
in the Barking office—Margaret Hodge's constituency—the
other week and the manager of the Employment Service was coming
to the end of his public career. You know sometimes when you meet
people at the end of their careers, you think, "They cannot
wait to get out", it could not have been more different.
He said, "Today I received back the bids for our training
places which we will want to provide under the Welfare to Work
proposals. It is the first time ever I have done bids where I
have said to people, `I do not actually know what I will be asking
you for because I will not know until I have met people in the
office and we have talked about what their abilities and aspirations,
are and we have worked out what therefore might be the best way
of advancing.' Previously I would have had to book block training
courses on motor mechanics and car repairs and send people on
them because we had to fit them on to the courses.'" Chris
was asking, "What is the new society about". Part of
it is going to be about a benefits system which does value each
individual and tries to offer a service. We want to do that because
of our views about the importance of human beings, and actually
it is also the best way to protect taxpayers' money. They are
not exclusive these things. Actually having a service like this
will make it more difficult for those people who are laughing
at taxpayers at the present time. It will also service, much more
effectively, those people whose whole energies are about trying
to get off welfare, but at the moment we have a benefits systems
which makes it difficult for them to do so. This is central to
the ideas we are developing in the Department.
(Ms Harman) When the New Deal personal advisers
started off, I asked them to innovate, to basically do what they
felt was necessary to help that lone parent who was there in front
of them. Most of the New Deal personal advisers for lone parents
are women, most are mothers, many are lone parents themselves.
It is a direct personal service where they are out from behind
the glass, where they are not simply dealing with somebody's problem
with their mortgage, giving them money, rather than addressing
the reason why they have a problem with the mortgage, which is
because they are not in work. What they have done is innovated.
Their task is also to report back to me where rules are preventing
them doing what needs to be done, that they let me know and those
rules are to be changed. Their task is to work not just as employees
of the Benefits Agency but they work seamlessly with the Employment
Service, they work directly with the local employers, they work
directly with all the other agencies, so they become if you like
generic helpers of that person; a very well informed friend who
is on the inside track. So they can guarantee their benefits,
they can give them access to a whole range of information. Prior
to that, if you were a lone mother looking for work, you would
have to go to the council to sort out your Housing Benefit, to
the job centre to find out about jobs, go to the Benefits Agency
to calculate your benefit, you would have to contact the council
to find out (if they had the information, which many of them did
not) about what vacancies there are potentially for out of school
clubs or child minders. You would go to five or six different
places, you would get conflicting information, and then you would
give up and be back where you started. So I think that pulling
all the information together with the advice and information in
one place and working cross-departmentally are very important.
It is outcome focused—if I can use some jargon—rather
than process focused. The outcome, as Jean Rogers no doubt said
to you, is to help them get a job, and you just focus on the outcome,
just do everything you need across the different agencies to deliver
that outcome.
62. Yes, the focus is to get a job, but once they get
a job will there be space for them still to be there because different
problems arise once you start work? Will there be a mechanism
whereby that relationship can continue for them?
(Ms Harman) That is what happens. People have
developed very warm, close relationships with their personal advisers
which has not been a feature of the relationship between claimants
and social security in the past. They have developed warm, close,
personal relationships where the personal adviser has felt a real
stake in the success of the lone mother getting a job, and the
lone mother has felt really pleased at the support they have got.
Some of them have already been in a situation where they have
seen there is another job available which is better and more suits
them, and then they go back to their personal adviser in order
to see whether they can go on in their work. So although it was
established for getting into work, it is moving into a phase of
getting on in work, and that is as a result of the personal relationships
which are developing. In fact, recently when I went to Halesowen
and no doubt you will meet them all, there was somebody taking
photographs of the employer, the woman herself, the personal adviser
and me all lined up. The woman said, "The only person who
is not here to complete the picture is the child minder."
Everybody was woven together to achieve the outcome of the woman
being able to get work and be off benefit. I said to one of them,
"How many hours are you working", she has three children,
she is working 40 hours, and I asked how much better off was she
and she said, "£40 a week." So I said, "So
you are working for £1 an hour. You have three kids, you
are working 40 hours and you are only working for £1 an hour",
and she said, "No, I am not working for £1 an hour,
I am working for my dignity, for my self-esteem and to be an example
to my children." That is what this is all about.
Chairman
63. Can I just go back finally to the question of public
expenditure? Some people have characterised the work you are doing
as being cuts-driven, yet some of the ideas we have been discussing
today actually would require investment to save. Some of the plans
you are talking about are not cheap, and certainly that is the
experience of our study visit to America. Obviously we will need
to wait for the Budget and I am not looking for Budget-sensitive
information or indeed for Department spending review outcomes,
because we will look at those when they are known, but can you
say anything positive about the suggestion that your agenda is
being driven by any working assumptions in relation to cuts in
public expenditure?
(Mr Field) The Prime Minister has made it very
clear, it is not a cuts-driven agenda programme. Indeed if you
look at what we have done so far, the Chancellor has raised an
extra £5 billion to under-score the Welfare to Work proposals.
I think they are the views we want to leave with you.
Mr Gibb
64. In the Labour manifesto, in the "Contract with
the People" section which is written in the fair hand of
Tony Blair, it says, "Over the five years of a Labour Government,
education will be our number one priority and we will increase
the share of national income spent on education as we decrease
it on the bills of economic and social failure." What hope—not
target, because clearly you are not in the game of giving targets
it seems—have you of getting the social security budget
down by the end of this Parliament? Do you want to see it reduced
by 1 per cent, 2 per cent? What is your anticipated hope?
(Mr Field) I have every hope that the objective
the Prime Minister sets out will be fulfilled. He was too sensible
to actually deal with it in the mechanical way that you are, saying
1 per cent less or 2 per cent less. The drift of policy is very
clear, we wish to slow down the rate of increase in social security
expenditure so that we can move from financing failure to opening
up large numbers of opportunities for large numbers of people.
65. So there will be no money then for education?
(Mr Field) By the end of the Parliament, I hope
we will be able to support success not purely because it will
make it even easier dealing with your questions, Nick, but because
we will be a better country if we succeed in doing that.
Chairman
66. We could spend all day on this. It has been a very,
very useful session. Could I maybe suggest that the work we will
be doing in the future will focus on the Green Paper and it is
very helpful to know we are now getting that on 26th March. The
comprehensive spending review will be very important and the departmental
report. The Minister of State has already kindly indicated that
he will come back once that is known and help us through the thought
processes surrounding that. But maybe I could say in passing to
the Secretary of State, that her role as a woman might be something
in the future we spend some time looking at, if you would be prepared
to consider that at some appropriate time?
(Ms Harman) Certainly.
Chairman: Can I just make it clear to people who maybe
do not know this, that it was your own idea that you should come
together this morning. I must say the result of this morning's
public evidence I think vindicates the decision that you took
to make that offer, and we are very grateful to you for the time
you have given us. It has been very useful for the work of the
Committee. Thank you very much.
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