Examination of witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
THURSDAY 21 MAY 1998
MR PETER
MATHISON, MR
STEVE HEMINSLEY
and MR TONY
EDGE
160. That is a very good answer.
(Mr Mathison) That is from bitter experience.
But it was always known that it would be down for three weeks;
the key is at what period. Because we have the records available
to us, updated on an annual basis, so for a large proportion of
our business that database then is at a point in time and can
therefore be used; it is new cases which come on which we are
having currently to deal with on a manual basis and we will have
to recover those whenever the system changes over. So it is not
what we would have desired, and if it delays any further than
currently planned we get into serious difficulty at the back end
of the year when normally all that work is carried out and we
have the new records for the next financial year.
161. You are planning to take your summer
holidays while this happens, are you?
(Mr Mathison) No.
Ms Hewitt
162. It is helpful to have this memorandum,
though, as the Chairman indicated, it would have been even more
helpful to have had it a few days earlier, and with page numbers.
But, having said that, I notice that you have, or somebody has,
responded to points I made when we saw the Minister of State about
what I encountered when I visited the Employment Service, at Charles
Street, in Leicester, about six weeks ago, I think it was, nearly
two months ago now, I think Mr Edge will be aware of this, and
I just want to remind you, and also colleagues, of the two different
kinds of problems I have encountered. One is the one that the
staff at the Jobcentre were very concerned about, that somebody,
a JSA claimant, receives a letter, with the Jobcentre's address
on it, as you explain here, saying, "I am very sorry, you
don't qualify for income-related JSA because your contributions
record isn't up to scratch." They `phone up the Jobcentre,
the Jobcentre staff who answer the `phone, and who, quite rightly,
in my view, are trying to deal with as many queries as they can
on the `phone and not just refer people on, do the best they can,
but actually they cannot really deal with the queries because
they have, obviously, some understanding of the problem but they
do not have access to the contributions record; and, certainly,
they were saying, they had no option but to refer the thing back
over to the Benefits Agency, which, of course, is located somewhere
else. That is one kind of problem, and I would like to hear more
about this workshop in Leicester and what the proposals are to
improve things. The other problem, which I have encountered on
several occasions but I actually saw happen when I was in the
Jobcentre, is the person who, in this case, had gone to the Benefits
Agency to apply for Incapacity Benefit, was told that he was not
eligible for Incapacity Benefit, because he was not ill enough,
and was then told to walk across to the Employment Service. He
turned up while I was there and said, "I've been sent to
you to claim Jobseeker's Allowance" and they sort of went
through his details, with the help of the interpreter he had brought
with him, established that actually he was having some trouble
walking, since he had broken his ankle, which was why he was off
work sick in the first place, and they ended up saying to him,
and this was late in the morning, "I'm terribly sorry but
you are going to have to walk back across town to the Benefits
Agency." What is being done to address these problems, specifically
in Leicester, but are these problems typical, or, at any rate,
common, or is Leicester, for some reason, encountering particular
difficulties?
(Mr Mathison) I will let Tony come in; but that
should not have happened.
163. The second story is common.
(Mr Mathison) It has happened, yes, I understand
that, but it should not happen and we need to address that. We
have a structure in place between ES and BA, right through the
management chain, of joint meetings and addressing issues and
problems, and that is right through the organisation, so that
I and Leigh Lewis, with our Boards, meet on a quarterly basis
and we have Action Plans and issues that are raised. Tony is—and
our terminology is wonderful—a member of something called
JOT, which is Joint Operations Team, and I think, at that point,
I will hand over to Tony. That should not happen; it varies. One
of the issues that I find, right through the country, is that
anything we do in the Benefits Agency, somewhere in the Benefits
Agency, is done really well, consistently well, and somewhere
else it is done rather badly, or very badly on some occasions,
and there is a whole host of reasons for that. What we are trying
to do through the organisation we have, and that is in with ES
as well, on JSA, is to try to get everybody up to the best of
the best. But that incident should not have happened, and, Tony,
it is his area so he needs to solve it.
(Mr Edge) I have been to Leicester, Charles Street,
as well, some time ago now, about a year ago, I think, and I was
concerned as well about some of the links between the Jobcentre
and the Benefits Office; this was just after Jobseeker's Allowance
was bedding in, and it was quite a big change to make. Can I just
go back to the first question, about the telephones. You are absolutely
right, this was agreed and discussed at great length, operationally,
about the phone number that should actually be on the letterhead,
but because Jobseeker's was seen from Jobcentres, and the idea
is that they go to Jobcentres and have all their business dealt
with in Jobcentres, we have, in every Jobcentre, BA staff, apart
from the very small ones, where you have maybe got 65, or something
like that, customers, where we do have other arrangements.[2]
And it is back again really to the issue beforehand that we discussed,
about the complexity. I do not think that one person can actually
do Jobseeker's Allowance and also understand the job market, both
those jobs together, and, in fact, when the Employment Agency,
beforehand, actually did the payment of benefit, as an agent for
us, they had that split up, as well, then. And I think this is
an issue about the computer support. But what we try to do is,
if there is a complicated inquiry, the Jobcentre people can probably
answer 80 per cent of inquiries, like, "When's my Giro due?",
they can do that through the system, that is dead easy, and there
is an 80/20 kind of cut here; but the customer then, if it is
a complicated inquiry, will be passed—and, the key is, passed
professionally—to a member of our staff, the BA staff, in
the Jobcentre, who can deal with that inquiry. I think it is important
that a member of the public actually gets a professional answer
and not an answer that has been passed from one person to the
other. So we try to do that properly in that office. And in Leicester
there are BA staff in the office to deal with that. The inquiry
you had was about the phone, was it not?
164. Yes.
(Mr Edge) With the phone, what should happen there,
we linked our phone systems up with the Jobcentre phone systems
(Feature Net), so that the phone calls would be made to the Jobcentre,
and, again, it was debated should there be two numbers on there
or should it be one, but the idea was, it was done to the Jobcentre,
the number should be on there. And, again, a lot of basic inquiries
could be answered, but if it is a complicated inquiry, especially
about a mortgage, for example, because, generally speaking, mortgage
cases are very complicated, and, as you mentioned earlier, one
of the things is that the computer system was invented before
mortgage cases became a complicated issue, we deal with those
generally, with the skilled people on a section; so they would
support that. On this telephone issue, phone calls should come
through to the Jobcentre and then can be passed seamlessly through,
or should be, to the BA office, for example, to a mortgage section,
who could answer the question on mortgages, or it might be an
issue about direct payments, and then that will go to the section
dealing with direct payments. Because, behind the front end in
a Jobcentre we have a lot of support, like visiting, passport
to Housing Benefit, direct payments, CSA links, etc., which we
do generally in the BA office. Because we have to have numbers
of people doing that to be efficient, we could not have one person
doing various jobs because it would not be efficient, and they
would not have the capacity to do it effectively either. So that
is the issue on the phones there. On the second issue——
165. Hold on one second. When you say that
somebody phones in, the example I gave you, with a letter saying,
"No contributions-based JSA because you haven't got enough
contributions", the woman who answers the phone at the Employment
Service should then divert that call to the appropriate staff
person, probably at the BA office somewhere else?
(Mr Edge) Yes.
166. Are you saying that is now what happens
in Leicester, because that was not my understanding of the position?
(Mr Edge) That should be what happens everywhere.
I cannot say that is happening in Leicester, or not, but it should
be happening everywhere; that is the general way of doing it.
167. What are the improvements that staff
from both Agencies, in Leicester, have been suggesting and are
now going to be implemented?
(Mr Edge) What we are doing locally, in most Jobcentres
at the moment, and we have now done about a year or so with JSA,
is looking at the processes and the hand-offs and trying to improve
those, from a customer point of view, so they will be looking
at maybe the links with the Benefits staff and the Jobcentre staff
within that Jobcentre, and also it should include if there is
a problem with hand-offs of the telephone calls, as well. The
key to the hand-offs is that they must be professional and you
must pass a person across, who does not feel that they have been
passed from pillar to post but have been passed to an expert who
can deal with their inquiry, and in good places that is what happens,
but if it does go wrong then it is something we need to actually
fix.
168. Could I ask you for a supplementary
note on developing this one paragraph we have got on what is going
on in Leicester, because I still do not feel I have got to the
bottom of that, so I would like a couple of pages, chapter and
verse, on that?
(Mr Edge) Yes.[3]
169. The next question is, on this business
of somebody who claims Incapacity Benefit, turned down, sent to
the Jobcentre, turned down, sent back to the BA, and I have had
several of these cases in my surgery, you say, Mr Mathison, this
is not meant to happen: what is meant to happen?
(Mr Mathison) We should be able to identify that
that person is not able to work, and therefore they would be entitled
to Incapacity Benefit, and that normally is what should happen.
170. But if they fail the all-work test,
or they are not identified, you miss them?
(Mr Mathison) That is a problem, if we miss them
and it is not identified as that they will then be passed to the
Jobcentre and then the Jobcentre may well identify that, in their
view, they are not available for work or capable for work, and
then they will be passed back to BA. I think the problem we have
is that the volumes we deal with, and, I think, the turnover of
staff does not help, in some cases, but I am not sure what the
turnover is in Leicester,——
171. It is high.
(Mr Mathison) ... does not help in that, and the
pressures around both locations of their primary roles. And the
only way I can see to address it, which is what we try to do,
is we have a management structure in place, and it is not optional,
it is mandatory, that the respective managers of ES and BA, at
all levels in the organisation, meet on a regular basis, that
any issues that are identified by our staff or by customers are
addressed by that management meeting and actions are put in hand
to overcome those.
172. Do you measure the number of cases—and
I am talking specifically about people who are ill, or believe
that they are too ill to work, and are therefore making a claim
for Incapacity Benefit—where it goes wrong and people are
transferred from one place to the other and back again?
(Mr Mathison) I am not aware we measure it as
specifically as that. We have a number of things in place where
we pick up information that we gather from a variety of sources
about specific individual situations that occur that should not
happen, MPs' letters are a valuable source of that, and, although
when I first came into the office I was rather daunted by a pile
of orange jackets this high, I saw it as very positive that actually
I had a source. Because in organisations I have worked with you
never knew that customers did not like what you were doing because
they just disappeared. So I see it as really positive that we
have that information. We also set up last year a local, we had
a, I have forgotten exactly what the leaflet is called, but complain
about it, so if you are not happy about what has happened in the
office, in any way, shape or form, you can complain locally or
you can complete a "tell me about it", which my support
office see and we follow those up. We also last year set up local
complaints panels, in all areas, those local complaints panels
are independent, ideally I said they should comprise people from
the community, with a mix, not just the voluntary groups that
we traditionally deal with but ideally from other organisations
that have a lot of people contact. And that, I believe, is beginning
to show results around making people in the local office aware
that people they deal with have an avenue where they can complain
about how they were treated and it will be looked at and addressed
independently. We collate that information nationally and we look
for trends on that.
173. I think that is helpful, but are you
also proactively surveying customers, for instance, for JSA or
for Incapacity Benefit, to see how they feel about the service
they are getting?
(Mr Mathison) It is patchy; we did not carry out
a national customer survey last year. It is patchy; some districts
do customer surveys, some of them do not.
174. Is that cost constraints?
(Mr Mathison) I think there is a combination,
on the national one, of partly cost but I think also a question
over quite what did the national survey tell us or provide us
with. I might be cynical but I felt that maybe the national survey
was designed to try to get a figure of 86 per cent, rather than—and
I probably am being cynical and should not have said it, but we
need information that tells us——
175. Why should they do so?
(Mr Mathison) I always believe that the best place
to address a problem is where and when it happens, and as soon
as it gets out of that area it all starts to get misunderstood
and it is too late. I was horrified, and still am, that I see
Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman) cases
that I get that are dealing with an issue which occurred in 1994,
I just cannot believe it.
176. One of the constraints that was mentioned
by Employment Service staff, when I talked to them about closer
joint working, was the Bichard Agreement; can you tell us what
that is and what its effect is?
(Mr Mathison) The Bichard Agreement: at the time
Jobseeker's was being developed and the decision was taken that
it should be delivered out of the Jobcentre, there was a big issue
with the trade union and with staff generally around moving into
an unscreened environment, so the issue was around being in an
unscreened environment when all our offices are screened. In order
to implement JSA in the way it was set out, Michael Bichard agreed
with the trade unions that any staff who were employed on 30 June
1995 would not be compulsorily transferred into an unscreened
environment; they can be transferred into the Jobcentre but they
are not outside the internal locked door. That adds difficulties
for us, because in some locations we have staff upstairs who are
covered by that Agreement who, if the member of staff who normally
is outside with the customer is off ill or is out of the office
for a time, will not necessarily move out.
177. Just on the various Integrated Service
Prototypes that you describe in the paper, have you had a look
at the developments in Australia and New Zealand, where, frankly,
they are streets ahead of us in providing an integrated service
delivery agency, where they are getting more of the decisions
made at the front line but where there is a single office dealing
with the range not simply of benefits but of other services as
well?
(Mr Mathison) Yes; they have been looked at from
within the Department. And I was pleased that New Zealand, for
instance, instead of, and I will not use the expression that was
used in this Committee about people in Richmond House, that people
from Richmond House, there was a person from Policy in Richmond
House, but Geoff Jennings, who actually was the District Manager
at Leicester and is actually trying to implement some aspects
of that, actually went on that fact-finding trip to New Zealand,
and some aspects of those we are incorporating into how we address
things. I would say that, on the information I have seen and in
looking at it at a sort of high level, I do not know whether any
of those countries, and America as well, because we have had some
people looking at what happens in the States, has quite the complexity
that we have. And I firmly we believe we can learn from those;
but, again, from some of the companies I have worked with, the
thing that works in another country is not able to picked up and
landed in this country and work in quite the same way. But there
is more that can be done than I think most people believe.
Ms Stuart
178. Can I slightly take you ahead then,
the kinds of future challenges or problems. The last Budget announced
some changes on delivery of benefits, and, looking ahead to Working
Family Tax Credit and Disabled Person's Tax Credit, can you actually
give me some indication of what preparations you have made so
far to prepare yourselves for working with the Inland Revenue
on that?
(Mr Mathison) There is a programme management
structure already in place, and that is populated at the different
levels within the Department and the Agency. Jonathan Tross heads
it on behalf of the Department, because it also embraces the Contributions
Agency transfer as well as Family Credit and Disability Working
Allowance. Beneath that, the person who works for me, who heads
the Family Credit Unit, has been pulled off line to work with
Inland Revenue full-time. Their role is about organising and setting
out a detailed work programme for how that change occurs. And
then Neil Ward, who works for Steve, is a member of the Joint
Group, and, I use the expression, it is the people who actually
work out what needs to be done rather than people like me, they
work out the detailed work programme, and Neil is involved in
that, because the transfer of CA has implications then for how
we work with the Inland Revenue, because of the National Insurance
record. In the same way, when Family Credit moves over we will
still need to make sure that there are linkages back into the
BA, because people move from one situation to another, for instance;
so there is a management structure in place to address that. Overseeing
all that, as well, is, I suppose it is a semi-informal/formal
thing, the guy in the Inland Revenue who will take over the whole
operation responsibility, Leigh Lewis, one of the people from
Customs and Excise, we have arranged to meet on, at least, a two-monthly
basis, to take stock of issues that are arising. And there is
also another strand, which is around personnel, which is addressing
what the implications are on people and staff, because that is
too easily overlooked in something like this.
179. I would actually like to pick you up
on both those issues; but, first of all, given that Family Credit
and the way it was administered is generally perceived to have
been a success story, what lessons do you think the Inland Revenue
could learn from the fairly successful way Family Credit was administered
by the Benefits Agency?
(Mr Mathison) It is difficult to say at this stage,
because I do not know that much about the Inland Revenue, but
I know that, for instance, the Family Credit Unit did a lot of
work around Investors In People and Charter Mark, and they have
also done a lot of work on the quality front, they have organised
around teams and they understand quite clearly goals and targets.
So I think it is issues around how it is all organised and managed.
But, again, we have knowledge of how Family Credit works, in detail.
I think it is important, and they recognise that, that the person
who heads that area at the moment, who is running that area, is
the key person in terms of ensuring how that is passed across,
over to the Inland Revenue, by the staff.
2 Note by witness: Approximately 50 ES offices
where BA staff not required. Therefore, a Service Level Agreement
exists between BA and ES. Back
3
See Ev pp. 69-70. Back
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