Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280 - 299)
WEDNESDAY 1 APRIL 1998
MR JOHN
LUTTON, MS
URSULA BRENNAN
and MR BILL
FARRELL
280. I did not understand the answer you gave to Edward
Leigh about gateways. What does that mean again?
(Ms Brennan) The gateway meaning the decision
about whether you satisfy the care and mobility tests. It is not
purely an operational matter about whether we get the right information.
That is one part of the equation, equipping staff with the right
information to make a decision, but there is also the question
whether the legislation that they are applying, the tests in the
legislation as they are written down, are capable of being consistently
interpreted. There are problems with the definition in the legislation
of being "virtually unable to walk", for example. There
is quite a wide spread of views about what exactly that means.
It does not say very specifically what "virtually unable
to walk" means and over time and through court cases and
so on the definition of precisely what that means can tend to
get extended in a way that makes it difficult for staff. So we
want to tackle both those issues in discussions with the lobby:
have we got the tests in the legislation right and have we got
the evidence and the operational arrangements right for actually
delivering it.
281. What is the criterion at the moment for whether
or not somebody is medically examined for disability benefit?
(Mr Farrell) Basically, if an adjudication officer
feels that medical evidence would help, then he can call it, but
administratively we found that the highest rate of mobility component,
which involved the concept of "virtually unable to walk",
is particularly difficult both for customers to describe and to
deal with and for adjudication officers to deal with. So in the
case of the highest rate mobility component we would routinely
secure a medical report to support an adjudication officer in
that area. But on a more general basis, whether or not medical
evidence would or would not be required, an adjudication officer
would make that judgement. However, it is becoming more and more
common for medical evidence to be obtained to support decision-making.
282. It just makes you wonder whether the self-assessment
process is the right approach?
(Mr Farrell) I think the issue here is that from
an operational perspective, given the way the benefit is structured,
the best person, I think, to tell of the care and mobility needs
which arise from a disability is the disabled person himself.
I think that in some form has to be the starting-point. What that
leads on to by way of further enquiry, further testing, further
evidence needs, is an issue that is going to have to be engaged.
283. And how senior are the adjudication officers within
the DSS, what precise grade in the DSS?
(Mr Farrell) The adjudication officers are executive
officers, which is a decision-making grade within the Benefits
Agency that makes decisions. That is the normal routine grade
for deciding what is to be done.
284. How many years on average would they have been in
service within the DSS?
(Mr Farrell) It is difficult to say. The majority
of adjudication officers will have some years of experience. All
the adjudication officers working in the Disability Benefit Unit,
for example, would have been there for many years, but equally,
there is a turnover of staff. New adjudication officers are recruited
and trained adjudication officers leave, but generally speaking,
a reasonable amount of experience.
285. Will they all have been there more than two years,
would you say?
(Mr Farrell) It is very difficult for me to say
with some precision as to whether they have all been there for
two years.
286. In the DSS?
(Mr Farrell) Again it is difficult. I really do
not have the data. I could not really say.
(Mr Lutton) I would suggest that by far the majority.
Typically, executive officers who are taking decisions are at
the same level as junior managers of staff, team leaders of staff.
Many of them will have come through the grades and been promoted
to that level. The majority will have been so. Some are directly
recruited. Whether they have long experience or recent experience
is often do to with staff turnover rates in particular localities.
Given the localities that we are talking about, and in particular
the Blackpool locality so far as the Benefit Integrity Project
decision-making is concerned, we have lots of experienced adjudication
officers at the executive officer level.
287. But are the adjudication officers based in the local
benefits agencies?
(Mr Lutton) They could have been more directly
recruited depending on the particular locality.
288. That is where they do the adjudicating from? They
are based locally, are they?
(Mr Lutton) So far as the Benefits Integrity——
289. No, generally?
(Mr Farrell) There is some adjudication done in
the local disability benefits agency and some adjudication is
done in Blackpool.
290. Finally, what sort of training do adjudication officers
receive on DLA generally?
(Mr Farrell) An adjudication officer would expect
to receive six or seven week's formal training and thereafter
they would be working within teams, peer group support, and there
would be medical officers from the benefits agency, medical service
available to offer support and experienced managers available
to offer support.
Chairman: There are just two final areas we would like
to conclude with. Could I ask Christopher Pond to ask questions
about life awards.
Mr Pond
291. I think this may be one area where, in terms of
DLA, many of the problems arise. May we first start by clearing
some of the undergrowth on this, if you can help the Committee.
In Annex G to your memorandum, you have two tables, G3 and G4,
though G4 is more of a sentence than a table, and that sentence
states that 51 per cent. of DLA awards are made for life. Table
G3 above—and I understand these figures were confirmed in
a Parliamentary Written Answer yesterday—tells us that there
were just under 2 million awards overall, of which 1.4 million
were life awards. On my arithmetic that makes about three-quarters
that were life awards. Could you clarify that for the Committee?
How do those two statements on the same page reconcile themselves?
(Ms Brennan) I think that is because it is all
components and I guess there are some things not shown in here,
because in the table you have people who could have a variety
of components separately and joined up together and the 51 per
cent. will be global awards and I think that is the reason for
the discrepancy, but perhaps I could check that and come back
to you.[7]
292. It is very confusing. A Parliamentary Written Answer
yesterday told us that three-quarters of the awards were life
awards and you are telling us now that because of that make-up
of the cases it is actually only 51 per cent. I think we need
to get this cleared up.
(Mr Lutton) Particularly the detail. I think something
else that is probably going on there is the difference between
new awards and the existing caseloads. Certainly the pattern of
life awards has been changing over time in that we did make more
life awards in the past and that has been reducing, and the mention
of November 1997 probably relates to new awards at that stage.
(Ms Brennan) Yes, it is that currently we are
awarding 51 per cent. for life, whereas if you look at the caseload
as a snapshot and say how many of those awards were awarded for
life, you get a higher figure.
293. That comes to the second point I wanted to raise.
Before I do that, on the definition of life awards themselves,
in your memorandum again in paragraph 19, you make it clear that
awards, even life awards, can be changed over time if there is
a change in circumstances. Therefore I wonder whether or not this
is a sensible term at all. If I am a life member of the Royal
Zoological Society I assume I am going to continue to be a member
even if I lose my interest in pandas and polar bears. Does this
not encourage people to think that perhaps informing the Department
about changes in their circumstances is less than necessary? Is
that one of the problems with the incorrectness of some of the
awards that you have been identifying?
(Ms Brennan) I think "life" is a shorthand
term which we use and which is not helpful, I agree. We use it
as a piece of shorthand within the Department but it is actually
confusing because in most cases the award is for an indefinite
period and certainly the person is expected to report a change
of circumstances. I am not honestly sure that if you send someone
a letter in 1992 saying, "You have been awarded benefit for
an indefinite period" or "for life," it will make
a lot of difference five years later or ten years later whether
they actually report a change of circumstances. So I am not sure
with the terminology we use in the first place, whether people
would have kept that piece of paper over all those years, even
if it did say life, so I do not think merely changing the terminology
gets us out of the problem.
294. You mean people are not aware whether they are on
a life award?
(Ms Brennan) No, I simply meant that if you have
been awarded a benefit for an indefinite period and then you are
told that you should report your change of circumstances, it is
actually quite hard many years on to remember what exactly it
was you were invited to report. I think that is the more important
issue really than whether we call them life awards. The issue
is that we are awarding benefit and then leaving people in the
dark, as it were, not going back and reminding them periodically,
"Remember, you are expected to report these sorts of things
to us." I think that is probably the more important issue
than whether we in-house refer to them as life awards.
295. How significant would a change have to be in circumstances
to require reporting the change in the circumstances? It is a
matter of fine judgement, is it not, from the point of view of
both the claimant and the Department?
(Ms Brennan) That is the difficulty. What people
need to report to us is changes in their care and mobility needs
and it is obviously with DLA much more difficult to understand
precisely what you need to report to us.
296. It is something you are addressing?
(Ms Brennan) It is something we are addressing
more generally but it is, of course, one of the reasons for having
the BIP in the first place.
297. A final question from me. One of the points of clarification
about this three-quarters versus half of the awards which are
life awards is about the current award of cases and those on the
books at present. Is not part of the problem that in the early
months of DLA there is broad agreement that an awful backlog of
cases developed as a result of rather poor quality of decision-making
in those early months and that perhaps with the collusion of ministers
at the time there was a tendency to try to clear these cases as
quickly as possible? To the extent that many of those are life
awards, inevitably that problem continues over time to the current
case files. Would it not be more sensible to concentrate resources
and the focus of attention on those awards that were made in those
early months of the establishment of the DLA in 1992 and 1993
rather than to assume that the problems that arose in that time
are still problems which are current in terms of the level of
awards?
(Ms Brennan) We are looking at seeing whether
we can distinguish whether there is a significant difference in
the quality of decision-making of awards made in that early period
compared to awards made subsequently, but evidence from elsewhere,
like the award study, shows that there is a continuing problem
and it was not just a problem that happened then. But we certainly
are examining whether there is a particular problem that we need
to look at in relation to awards made around the time of the introduction
of the benefit.
Ms Stuart
298. Very quickly, the debate on life award and indefinite
period is a bit like Alice in Wonderland, that words mean
what we want them to mean. It is quite bizarre, seriously.
(Ms Brennan) In what way?
299. You say, "This is a life award for an indefinite
period but we may change it," and you say it makes little
difference.
(Ms Brennan) No, I do not think I did say that.
7 To be supplied. Back
| 
