Select Committee on Social Security Minutes of Evidence


Examination of witnesses (Questions 60 - 79)

WEDNESDAY 14 APRIL 1999

MR GORDON HEXTALL, MR ALAN BURNHAM, and DR E ANNE BRAIDWOOD

  60.  Yes.
  (Mr Hextall)  Dr Braidwood?
  (Dr Braidwood)  This is a very interesting subject. One of the things that has not come up yet is the standard of proof in war pensions which is not a balance of probabilities and it is not scientific proof—it is a reasonable doubt. If a person claims within seven years of leaving service it is even more advantageous to the claimant than that, because unless the Secretary of State can show by evidence beyond reasonable doubt that service has not played a part causally in the condition claimed then a certificate and award has to follow. For the majority of claims of which you are speaking today, these were governed by Article 5 of the Service Pensions Order where it is for the claimant to raise by reliable evidence a reasonable doubt that service is causally related to the condition. I apologise for this long-winded answer but it is pertinent. As you understand, the very nature of the terminology "reasonable doubt" is a little difficult and it is a bit like 15 different people having 15 different views. Case law has given some guidance as to what terminology means but nevertheless it is quite nebulous. What it says basically is that reliable evidence means evidence that is not merely fanciful. It then goes on to say that raising a reasonable doubt is, equally, a rather difficult thing to determine. It is not something that one can easily express and say "it has got to be a 51 per cent chance". There is nothing of that about it. It is said in case law that it is for the Secretary of State to recognise that there would be a time medically when there was no doubt about the link, there would be a time when the evidence became such that something might have been due to service, and then there was a point at which a consensus was reached on the matter. The point we are looking for to identify the causal link in terms of war pensions is, before that consensus but, in-between it and the point that nobody felt that service had anything to do with it. All I am trying to say—and I apologise for the circuitous route—is that it is a very low standard of proof.

  61.  A very low standard of proof for the claimant?
  (Dr Braidwood)  For the claimant. Given that service is almost inevitably going to result in some degree of noise exposure more often than not entitlement to that label had to be given in a very large number of cases.

  62.  What happened in these cases where people suddenly woke up to the fact in 1992 that they could claim for deafness that may have resulted from 20 years before? To what percentage did you award some sort of war pension?
  (Dr Braidwood)  I do not think we have that absolute figure because at that point——

  63.  Do you have a rough idea?
  (Mr Hextall)  If I can get back to you. Can I give you a note?

Mr Leigh:  You can always write to us. Thank you. That is the end of my question.

Chairman:  I want to come back to some of that in wider policy options if you will allow me but that was very helpful.

Miss Kirkbride:  Dr Braidwood really raised a very interesting point which crossed my mind earlier in discussions with my honourable friend here which is to say bearing in mind what you have just said I wonder whether or not a case has come up of a potential for war widows whose husbands have died as a result of lung cancer. Bearing in mind that all servicemen were issued with cigarettes during the war as part of their rations, where cases have arisen where a chap died of lung cancer, does that create an entitlement because on the basis of what you have just said it strikes me that there might be a whole area there of people who have an eligibility for a war pension.

Mr Leigh:  Be very careful how you answer that!

Chairman

  64.  You are covered by parliamentary rules but nevertheless I think Edward's advice is probably very sound.
  (Dr Braidwood)  Could I refer you to statutory instrument 1994/772.

  65.  Wonderful answer!
  (Dr Braidwood)  This is obviously a very real issue. May I just say, Mr Leigh, quickly finishing off the hearing loss point, if entitlement was granted to a large percentage of people, one of the reasons why the then Government introduced a legislative amendment in 1992/93 was to produce a threshold so that people who had a low degree of hearing loss and therefore in their eyes, (looking to target war pension at those who were seriously disabled), would no longer be entitled, although they had a disability which we were acknowledging, they introduced legislation to make that low degree of hearing loss below the compensation threshold. With respect to your question, Miss Kirkbride, in 1994 a legislative amendment meant that the definition of "injury"—War pension is paid for "disablement due to injury due to service" and the definition of injury was amended to exclude injuries which were causally related to the use of alcohol or tobacco except under a particular circumstance. This was if a particular individual, so injured and disabled had an existing war pension for disablement due to a psychiatric disorder and that was assessed at 50 per cent or more. The logic behind that was to protect those war pensioners with a psychiatric disablement due to service which rendered them unable to exert personal choice. In reaching that amendment I understand that expert opinion was taken as to the possible effects of injury of a psychiatric nature likely to lead to 50 per cent disablement. Earlier than that, if I may quickly say this, from the 1940s there was a lot of case law on war pensions. It may be of interest to the Committee that Lord Denning, who has recently died around his 100 birthday, was asked on one of the many programmes which related to this what he felt was his biggest contribution to the English bar. Very interestingly, he said he felt perhaps his greatest contribution related to war pensions determination in the 1940s. During that period he served as a nominated judge of the High Court and one of the things that he established at that time as a matter of case law was that injury in the personal sphere say due to consumption of alcohol and tobacco should not be deemed to be war-related injury. So there has been legislation in 1994 but the tradition and the underlying policy has always been not to so award such war pension disablement.

Dr Naysmith

  66.  We want to shift the discussion now for a short time anyway. I am sure we will come back to some of these things once Mr Dismore gets round to asking his real questions and that is something for you to look forward to. I want to move on and ask a couple of questions about the War Pensioners Welfare Service. It is very clear from your business plan which actually I found to be a very well laid out and useful document and under the "Our Values—Putting Service First" section you talk about the development of this welfare service. We have had evidence that it is a valued service from war pensioners and it works closely with ex-service organisations who gave evidence here. Many of them commented on how highly they value the service and I suspect they want the development to take place, but some of them expressed concerns about its future and particularly the War Widows' Association were anxious to be assured that it would not be hindered by financial constraints, and one understands that. They also talked about ways of improving the quality of this service and wanted to be sure that these were investigated and implemented. They wanted an assurance that they were being taken seriously and, interestingly, they talked about the opportunities to widen the scope of the service such as giving help to what they call recently bereaved young widows which of course is open to interpretation. The British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association expressed concerns at suggestions that the Welfare Service might be absorbed by the work of voluntary organisations entirely. This is a chance to scotch some of these rumours. I would be grateful if you would tell us how you see the future of the War Pensioners Welfare Service.
  (Mr Hextall)  It is clearly a valued service that we want to continue and make the most of. The point about visiting recently bereaved widows, I think someone said the other day the welfare service is so old it is almost new because what they are doing in the role of the caseworker and personal advisor is providing a gateway to local services, to ex-service organisations, and to the statutory and voluntary services that are available and that is their key role. Increasingly we have been looking at giving them a focus on life events so for the recently bereaved widow we have undertaken—it was a Secretary of State target last year and a management target this year—to visit all newly bereaved widows within 15 days of a visit being requested and we are doing that and meeting it. In addition to that we have undertaken over this last year to offer a visit to widows who have not had a visit previously and we have written to some 5,000 widows as a result of that. The exercise is still on-going and as a result of that some 150 have taken us up on the offer and we have had a visit. So increasingly life events ought to trigger us being interested in someone. In terms of giving guarantees about the future, it is an excellent service as far as I am concerned and we would want to continue to provide that excellent service. The only doubt would be around the Prior Options Review that will be considering the future of the Welfare Service as well as the future of the Agency. I really do not know what the outcome of that would be. I value the support we have received from ex-service organisations in connection with the War Pensioners Welfare Service.

  67.  Is improving the quality and widening the scope a policy that is actively considered?
  (Mr Hextall)  It is an on-going policy. Could I invite Mr Burnham to comment?

Chairman

  68.  Alan Burnham?
  (Mr Burnham)  I had discussions with the war widows on some of the points they raised in the letter and one in particular we have pursued is the issue of the newly bereaved widow in service because we had a number of cases where for a young widow there was a good deal of support from the particular armed forces at the time but our own welfare staff were not getting in touch for anything up to six months later and much as that was appreciated the comment was, "I wish you could have been around six months ago particularly to help me through the morass of benefits not just for war pensions but access to other DSS benefits." So we were working with colleagues both in the Army, Navy and the Air Force to ensure that where there is a death in service case there is contact with the relevant welfare manager right away. Even though there is a great deal of welfare support the widow will know who the welfare manager is, which is particularly relevant if they move out of service accommodation back to another part of the country if we can make a link there and we can make it a seamless service. That was very much a prompt from the war widows we have been pursuing.

  69.  Is there regular not day-to-day but regular contact with the voluntary organisations?
  (Mr Burnham)  Across a whole range. Particularly in relation to the war widows there is a group called the Widows Defence Working Group that brings together ourselves, SSAFA, the Legion, the main organisations, and we meet about twice to year to ensure that we co-ordinate and colleagues from the armed forces are there as well. For about the past 18 months/two years the main case working welfare organisations meet in the ex-Service Welfare Liaison Group which has been put together primarily to ensure that we do not waste resources on overlaps. The great thing about welfare delivery in the ex-service field is the specialisms that exist. There are many organisations, some targeting particular groups, some with expertise across particular areas such as the Legion in advocating appeals. Collectively we can deliver a much better service than we can individually. If I have a criticism of the situation I found when I first came into this work it was tremendous effort and tremendous achievement but it tended to be a bit compartmentalised. I think we have worked a lot with the ex-service organisations in the last two or three years to really get closer. You talked about how we could improve the service. The one thing I would mark out in the next few years for dramatic improvement is to continue that integration across the board.

Mr Dismore

  70.  When I was doing cases for widows of fire fighters who had been killed in service in my previous life we had a very well-established and well-developed welfare service and the police do as well. Have you had any discussions with the fire service and the police about how they do it because that may well help your discussions?
  (Mr Burnham)  I must confess we have not, but we will do so. Thank you for the prompt.

Chairman:  Can we turn then to the Prior Options Review? I know particularly Joan Humble and Debra Shipley have concerns in this area. Joan is going to start.

Mrs Humble

  71.  First of all, chair, I have to declare an interest that Norcross is just on the boundary of my constituency and I have visited it several times including the War Pensions Agency and large numbers of my constituents work there so I was actually very pleased to read in the written submissions that most voluntary organisations concerned with war pensions applaud the commitment of the staff who work there. I know from personal experience from visiting it that people are very committed to the job that they do. I found it very enjoyable going round and I found some of the historical documents that you use as part of your examination of claims fascinating, but that is by the way. Nevertheless, there are some issues around the Prior Options Review and I will ask you one or two questions and I will understand if you cannot give me definitive answers because of the nature of the timing of this meeting and the fact that you will now be formulating your review to then be submitted to Government Ministers. But, nevertheless, there are some issues and before moving on to some of the staffing issues can I first of all raise with you some of the concerns and indeed draw attention to the observations of some of the voluntary organisations who by and large seem to believe that the War Pensions Agency is doing a good job, thank you very much, and leave it alone, nothing needs to be done with it. Have you got an initial response to that?
  (Mr Hextall)  I recognise that comment and I am quite pleased about it in actual fact.

  72.  Can you share with us what sort of issues you are going to be addressing in the current review because it has been going on for quite a while now? What sort of issues are you looking at?
  (Mr Hextall)  We are not actually conducting the review, we are helping to inform the review. The review is being conducted independently within the DSS. The head of the planning and finance division is chair of the steering group and he has appointed an independent project manager and the steering group has got people from the Treasury and the Cabinet Office as well as from DSS on it. Our role is really to inform that project. I think it was announced by parliamentary questions the week before Christmas and is due to conclude with an announcement in the autumn, which I am interpreting to be round about September. You are right that we are in the middle of that process. I believe that there will be two documents put into the public domain, one will be an evaluation of the Agency's performance since it was given Agency status five years ago and the other will be a recommendation about how it is taken forward in the future. On the evaluation of the Agency's performance, I am hoping and expecting that that will say that the Agency achieved what it set out to do and it has created, in my view, and this is probably one of the reasons why the ex-service organisations are content with the current arrangements, a focus for management attention on war pension claims. So I think that ought to be reflected in the evaluation because we have met targets and achieved efficiencies and done all the things that the Agency set out to do. Granted there will be areas of criticism I am sure because of the cases Andrew Dismore raised, things like that, so there has got to be room for improvement in the future. Is that sufficient for now?

  73.  I am not entirely clear but I am glad that you have clarified your role within the overall Prior Options Review. You meeting these targets that are being set for you has to be set within the context of the wider picture of looking at war pensions, the number of claimants and the number of claims that you are dealing with. I am therefore interested in the graphs that you have given us because, as you said when you circulated this information, prior to receiving this information we had been told that the number of claimants was declining and the Prior Options Review and indeed the MoD Review are taking place within the context of a reducing number of war pensioners and so all of that was going to be the background to this. I just wonder what therefore do you see as the major challenges for the War Pensions Agency given that larger picture and how the information we previously have been given about declining numbers and people who are coming forward is then set in the context of your delivery of service?
  (Mr Hextall)  I mentioned that my role is to inform that decision-making process and the reason I produced those graphs in the first place was to get across to the Prior Options Group exactly the scenario that is real rather than the perceived scenario of this very rapidly declining organisation that is not going to have a life for very long. It was very pertinent and has arrested that perception. They recognise that there is still a good deal of work to do that is going to continue for quite some years, certainly beyond the next life of the Agency of five years if we were granted another five years. The Prior Options Review because it is a Cabinet Office process has to go through a process of examining options and even though there might not be a lot of mileage in some of those options they still nevertheless have to be considered and it needs to be demonstrated that this is a non-viable option. The order in which they look at them is whether the function can be abolished. In our case we have a legislative responsibility for lots of war pensioners and therefore the function cannot be abolished. The function still needs to be done by somebody. Then whether it can be privatised or contracted out and I do not believe that those two options, whilst they will have to be considered and any recommendation will have to be supported, they are really going to be serious considerations for the future. That is a personal view. So we then come down to the real option that if this function needs to continue how can it best be administered and most efficiently administered in public service and could it be part of another organisation? In the field we operate in, the likelihood is that they will be considering whether we could be administered by the Ministry of Defence or by the Benefits Agency or continue as a separate Agency. I think they are probably likely to be the three front runners which would receive real consideration. I think that the view of the ex-service organisations is extremely relevant and valuable in all of those considerations. Certainly they have the opportunity to make their views known to the Prior Options Review as well and have done. So I think it is over this next period when those options start to be evaluated and even if we were to continue as a separate Agency there are still some considerations about the individual functions within the current services we offer. The War Pensioners' Welfare Service is one which would be scrutinised as to whether this was a valuable service and whether it was a value for money.

  74.  What about the other?
  (Mr Hextall)  The Ilford Park Polish Home is another one that has been identified. The question has been asked why is the DSS administering a residential care and nursing home in Devon? So that is another aspect and I think the medical services and the way we provide our medical services through our own medical advisers has been identified as an area for being questioned. So there are a number of considerations. When I was thinking about how this process is going I am feeling comfortable with the process. I think it has been considered objectively by those involved in it and I am having an opportunity to inform the debate but I really cannot predict the outcome.

  75.  Although you may feel comfortable with the process, when I talked to some of the people employed at War Pensions they are rather less than comfortable because they feel that this review has been going on for a long time and have understandable concerns about their jobs. Norcross is a huge site and there are lots of people employed there and some of the options you have outlined the staff there fear may involve removal from Norcross so there is staff uncertainty I did notice in your memorandum, which I found very useful, that you do emphasis "valuing our people". There is a whole section on that. Can I just ask you how you are negotiating with your local unions, with local employees, keeping them up to date with what is going on, offering them the necessary reassurance because it is having a well-motivated staff that is vital in the delivery of this essential service and if the staff start to feel demoralised then they are not going to be delivering that service? How are you actually keeping lines of communication open with staff and letting them know what is going on in as far as you can?
  (Mr Hextall)  We are formally and informally, and my approach has been to be honest and explain to people what is happening along the way. I have done it as recently as Monday of this week at a conference of all of our managers. So I recognise that there is likely to be some concern about the future of their employment and have tried to reassure them that in actual fact the job still has to be done. Whoever we report to in the end the job still has to be done. The day-to-day work of the Agency in processing claims and dealing with appeals and answering enquiries all has to be done. They ought not have real fears is my message for them for their own individual job prospects or anything like that because the job still has to be done.

  76.  Are you emphasising as part of your commitment to the review the fact there is skill and there is expertise there that can be used by the DSS?
  (Mr Hextall)  Absolutely, I agree with you. I was very impressed when I arrived at the Agency and set about going round in my first week meeting as many people as I could. I was very impressed by the calibre and quality and commitment of the staff that are there and I do recognise that and dealing with war pensions claims does take a while to build up that expertise so I do value that.

Ms Shipley

  77.  Could I come in at that point then because the Burma Star Association has told the Committee that they are very concerned because a lot of work experience is being lost through the introduction of early retirement as a way of reducing staff levels and there you are actually losing the expertise which you just said you valued, the experience you said takes time to build up. Could you comment on that as the most useful way of reducing staff?
  (Mr Hextall)  Yes, a year ago when I arrived in the Agency, it was in May, I arrived on the back of an exercise which had recognised that the workload had actually reduced and a study had been done to identify the levels of staffing needed to match the amount of work within the Agency. During 1997-98 something like 200 staff left the Agency, 82 of those on a voluntary early retirement scheme. When I arrived apart from being impressed by the commitment I was impressed by the turmoil of the Agency because people had been moved around and were sitting at sections with new colleagues, a new boss and getting used to a new alphabetical split. There was a perception around certainly that this was an Agency in decline and there was no future so I had to set about convincing people that that was not the case. We came round about last June to saying there were no special arrangements for people leaving, normal conditions applied and we have since introduced a number of promotion exercises which have really picked people up. We have confirmed a number of short-term appointments and made them permanent appointments because I am satisfied and convinced that for the work we are currently doing the staff do match the jobload. We have not had to do anything to increase the number of staff reductions over the last 12 months and whilst this needs to be closely watched to make sure we do keep pace with the workload, what I want to do because of the decision-making and appeals improvement we want to put in is focus the current staff on the work in progress. There is a lot of work in progress and we need to get that work in progress done. I think we have done an awful lot to improve the morale of staff over the last 12 months and keep people informed.

  78.  I do not think I talked so much about morale. Joan talked about morale. I was talking about losing expertise which is a bit different.
  (Mr Hextall)  We did lose expertise towards the end of last year but not during this year.

  79.  What sort of percentage of people are now leaving on early retirement?
  (Mr Hextall)  None.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries

© Parliamentary copyright 1999
Prepared 23 June 1999