Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
MONDAY 17 MAY 1999
MR RICHARD
EXELL, MS
PAT HAWKES,
MR FRANK
BONNER, MR
ALAN CHURCHARD
AND MR
KEITH WYLIE
160. Pat Hawkes, would you like to say something?
(Ms Hawkes) Thank you, Chairman. We have made a submission
on behalf of disabled people, because we realise there are sensitivities.
For example, we must make it a priority with the Gateway that
it is accessible, that there is communication support as well
as accessible buildings. It is obvious but it does need to be
said. What is more, anyone who is claiming at the moment must
be able to trust the people giving them the advice about their
employment because it is a double edged sword for them. On the
one hand it might be they have got to be reassured about their
benefit entitlement and yet they are being asked "can they
work?" One must consider these sensitivities we believe.
We are pretty confident that the person skills, like listening
and sensitivity, will be brought into the training but very specifically
for people who are vulnerable and yet would perhaps wish to be
included fairly in the Gateway. We want those considerations brought
on board, please.
161. Turning to the PCS, is there any view about
the choice of location of the sites in terms of being able to
get an assessment that would be easily translatable to other parts
of the country? Are these sites the right ones, do you believe?
(Mr Churchard) I think they were chosen primarily
because they were not sites which were complicated by other changes
that were taking place within the benefits system, so in a sense
you could isolate those sites from other factors which might distort
the results. We are broadly content with the distribution of them.
It would have been ideal if we had a better mix of perhaps local
authorities and until the recent elections it was quite difficult
to find a broad mix of local authorities that were representative.
By and large I think we are quite content with the broad pattern
of choice.
Mr Dismore
162. Can I follow on from where you left off
and that is looking at call centres. PCS mentioned in their memorandum
that you have got examples of call centres working well and not
working well. Perhaps you could give us some further information
about what works and what does not?
(Mr Wylie) Our main concern on call centres is that
they are remote from where people are making their claim and if
claimants are ringing for information or ringing to register or
calling to lodge an application for benefit they should be able
to speak to somebody who is close by. One of the problems we have
seen in the Benefits Agency is the problem of remote processing
where people in north London are making applications via the central
processing unit up in Glasgow. We find that a problem because
we would prefer to see local processing and integrated local offices
there so that individuals can go along and speak to the people
there.
163. We have been to Glasgow. I have a north
London constituency, although it is not covered by Glasgow. I
know the feedback. Certainly the impression I got from visiting
Glasgow was that the staff are very enthusiastic about it and
had a very "can do" approach to it and seemed to think
that the recipients of the service, although it was a lone parent
service that we were looking at, were very happy about what was
going on. I have not heard any negative feedback from constituents
about it.
(Mr Wylie) That is right, but to the extent that the
Single Work-Focused Gateway pilots are operating, they will all
be dealt with on a local basis and all of the basic models will
be dealt with locally.
(Mr Bonner) I could give an example. The Employment
Service is running, still as a pilot, this ES direct service which
is in the locality. One of the great advantages of that—and
we have to put it in the context of what we are doing—is
that you have people who not only are easily contacted by the
people using the service locally but who have a lot of local knowledge
of the local labour markets and those sort of things are important.
By having a lot of small call centres around the country and keeping
the numbers manageable you can move with changes in the market
very quickly, whereas part of the problem, it seems to us, with
the big national type of call centre is it is a bit of an ocean
liner, i.e. when you want to shift it takes quite a long time
to do so. So the model of local call centres seems to us to be
one that works well in terms of dealing with benefit claimants
and jobseekers.
164. Does that not defeat the object of the
exercise to some extent? From what I saw in Glasgow, one of the
benefits was that you had a relatively small number of staff who
were very skilled in their area of work and who, because of the
volume of calls they were dealing with, were able to make maximum
use of their skills and training, whereas if you are working at
a local level the number of claimants you may have dealing with
that subject may not be sufficient to enable them to make either
full use of their skills or to maintain their skills because they
would not be using them so often and, indeed, they would have
to have a much broader spread, which comes back to one of the
criticisms that was being made earlier on.
(Mr Bonner) Certainly just dealing with JSA claimants,
which is all the Employment Service Direct is, it is certainly
generating more than enough telephone traffic to have people fully
utilised and fully using their skills. In terms of the Single
Work-Focused Gateway we are bringing in another 20 per cent of
people. I would expect that it would be capable of being fully
utilised, but again that is a pilot and I suppose we will see
what we will see.
(Mr Wylie) The additional problem is that the claims
being taken by our members in Glasgow were being taken from people
in Ealing and Acton and they were talking to the staff in Glasgow
about their claim, but when the Personal Adviser interview was
taking place, of course it was the people from Ealing and Acton
that were carrying out those interviews with the claimants, not
people from Glasgow.
165. We also spoke to people from the Ealing
and Acton Benefits Agency in Glasgow while we were there and they
seemed to think it was working quite well. Do you disagree?
(Mr Wylie) We do not think that it did not work well.
We would prefer to see a system where benefits were processed
locally, where advice was available locally and where the staff
taking the claims were available to meet the claimants locally.
Kali Mountford
166. My own constituency is going to be involved
in a call centre pilot and while I think there would be 650 call
centres if it was left to MPs because we could see the jobs that
might come to our constituents from it, the unions locally each
have different views about the advantages and disadvantages, especially
across the different departments and about how they think it might
affect their members. UNISON, in particular, who do not have the
same Civil Service background perhaps, are anxious about this.
How do you think we ought to evaluate how a call centre could
be successful given that we are bringing together three very distinct
organisations with sets of values into a call centre where really
quite different skills which might be present in all of those
areas could be put to good use for the public?
(Mr Churchard) I think it is a tricky question. I
am not sure what the answer is. I think part of the problem in
terms of whether people fear call centres or welcome them is that
it is a single term which covers a broad range of actual situations
on the ground. We are talking here about call centres in this
pilot of 35 to 40 people which is quite different from having
hundreds of people in an enormous hangar style call centre that
my colleague was referring to earlier that typically are used
by banks and other financial institutions. I think our members
would probably welcome being able to work in a call centre of
that kind of size. I think it creates the kind of set of circumstances
in which you will not get a lot of the problems that you do get
with the bigger ones. The main problem there is the turnover because
the working conditions are so repetitive and the pace is so enormous
that there are enormous difficulties keeping staff. I think on
the scale that this pilot has been devised it is probably going
to be quite workable. I do not think there are going to be any
major difficulties. I think we should also say that I think, as
a union, we do agree with enabling members of the public to have
as many different ways of access to services as we can. We should
offer them a choice. We should not say, "You have got to
get the bus to the high street". If it suits you to use your
personal computer at home or use the telephone, that is something
we are broadly in favour of. We have not got a problem with call
centres as part of the pilot exercise. On the scale in which they
are being talked about, i.e. 35 to 40 people, I think they would
be quite manageable.
Mr Dismore
167. Could I ask you about the private and voluntary
sector issues because I know that the trade unions have used objections
to those possibilities. To what extent are your objections based
on the trade union argument, in other words looking after the
interests of your members which is quite a legitimate objective
for you to do as trade unions, and to what extent are your objections
based on the service delivery aspect and the recipient point of
view?
(Mr Churchard) It is two-fold: we think in the Civil
Service we do a very good job by and large and we think our members
can deliver this Gateway service as well as or better than other
institutions. I think we have the evidence of the New Deal to
support that contention and evidence across a wide period of time
over the adaptability of civil servants to changing circumstances.
Secondly, we have the practical evidence of what has been happening
in recent times in terms of private contractors. We have covered
the points in our written evidence. We refer to cases where private
sector involvement currently in the New Deal is by and large below
average and in many cases pretty poor. So I think it is a combination
of the two. I know you would expect us to say that, wouldn't you,
because it is our members' jobs that are at stake here, but we
genuinely do believe we can provide the best service and we are
very keen to demonstrate that is the case.
168. How do your members perceive it at local
level, what information is coming back about experience locally?
Do your members at the local level share those views or do they
have a different approach to it?
(Mr Wylie) Members at local level do not want to work
for the private sector, it is quite simple. Especially in the
Benefits Agency where they have seen a number of privatisations
over the past few years, their experience is that the private
sector is a poorer employer than the Benefits Agency and the Civil
Service. Their purely selfish point of view is "I do not
want to work for the private sector".
169. Their objections will be based on the trade
union argument, ie representing your members rather than on the
service side. I have to say that is a fair point of view.
(Mr Wylie) We have also seen a break down in the standard
of service that we can provide where privatisations have taken
place. We have seen where with the privatisation of estate management
in DSS to Trillium the level of service being provided has been
getting worse and worse. Recently the Accommodation and Office
Services were contracted out to Trillium and to Group 4 and in
the first six weeks of that contract there have been masses of
complaints from our members trying to deliver the service in local
offices and they are finding it almost impossible to do so because
of the service provided to them by sub-contractors. It is not
just about terms and conditions, it is about the service that
they would like to provide to the public.
Judy Mallaber
170. At a local level my constituency is partly
involved in the private sector variant. Are you being consulted
at all on the design of the scheme and the bits that are being
put forward or is it just something that you have got no involvement
in at all?
(Mr Bonner) We are being consulted in so far as it
is possible to be consulted in something that is shifting along
at this particular pace. There are some quite severe limitations
in terms of consultation about the design of the private sector
variant in the sense that there are limitations by commercial
confidentiality. Also the nature of what is being asked of the
private sector is a very open specification, if you like, so perhaps
unlike in other areas it is difficult to look at it and say "yes,
we shall review here or review there". They are really being
given a wide choice of what they can do. Again that limits what
consultation is possible. One of the results of such a wide remit
being given to the private sector is that many of our members,
and I had a meeting with members in Leeds recently, feel almost
insulted: "does this mean that the view of the Government
is that we cannot do the job?" There is quite a strong view
there because they do not believe that they cannot do the job.
Chairman: We have two important sets of further
questions we would like to try and squeeze in with your help and
I think we can do that in injury time without impinging too much
on the next session.
Mr Keetch
171. Following on from what you have just said,
Frank, some of us saw in Australia just how difficult this is
to deliver in the huge jungle of benefits that exist. The Government
is adopting a two-stage approach, the R&O and then we go on
to the Work-Focused Gateway. Question one: for those of your clients
who have not been on JSA interviews, how strange is it going to
be for them to go from RO to then a Work-Focused interview?
(Mr Wylie) It is going to be different, I do not know
how difficult it is going to be. It is something that most of
the client group that we are used to dealing with at the Benefits
Agency will not be used to. As to how difficult it is going to
be, part of the object of the pilot is to test that and to see
how difficult it actually is. It is something that will be very
difficult and something that claimants will take some getting
used to, which is one of the reasons why in our document we expressed
some concern about the element of compulsion in the interviews
and why we believe that may not be the most appropriate way forward.
172. You think that compulsion is a serious
problem that will relate to that?
(Mr Wylie) We think it has got the potential for being
a problem. If the Gateway project is as good as the Government
would like it to be and is providing a quality service to the
claimants and providing quality counselling and quality advice
then there should be no need for it to be compulsory and I think
people would choose to take the option of the Single Work-Focused
Gateway interview. I think we saw again with the lone parent prototype
that the vast majority of people who were offered the opportunity
of the interview took that opportunity up. If the Gateway is as
good as we would all like it to be then there should be no need
for compulsion.
173. Then just following on the point my colleague,
John Healey, started to go down earlier, this problem of being
able to understand and to appreciate the huge variety of benefits.
As I say, we saw in Australia that this was incredibly difficult
where clients were coming up, they were being interviewed and
then there was an attempt at an assessment made and then advice
given. This is a huge area and, without in any way trying to suggest
that your members could not do this, is this simply going to be
possible?
(Mr Churchard) I think what happened in Australia—and
you may know more than I do and you may correct me—was that
there was an enormous organisational change in which the different
agencies were all stitched together. An attempt was made to stitch
them all together a year, 18 months ago into one single organisational
unit and then within a month or two the whole thing had to be
unstitched because it was just too complex. What is happening
here is that we are taking it a step at a time, are we not, we
are doing pilots, we are going to learn some lessons from those
pilots, and even after the pilots the objective is not to bring
together into a single organisational unit all the different agencies
that are currently there, the emphasis is on getting those agencies
to co-operate with each other and have the IT links and all the
rest of it to enable them to exchange information. No-one is talking
at the moment about trying to weld together in one single organisation
the different agencies that currently deal with clients' problems.
I think the situations are somewhat different. I do not think
we should necessarily look at the Australian experience and say
that inevitably the same will happen here.
174. We are trying to weld together at the initial
stage, at the R&O stage and Work-Focused, an individual to
give that level of advice.
(Mr Bonner) I think it is fair to say this has been
tried before, has it not, and has not worked. Equally the fact
that it has not worked in the past does not invalidate an attempt
to make it work later on. There are lessons to be learned that
only the pilots will allow us to learn about how much an individual
can handle all of this. The reality of it, and this certainly
appears to be the case within the planning, is that we are talking
about teams of people working together with a single face to the
client, as it were, with that adviser having a team of people
behind them providing support on the range of benefits and all
the rest of it. I suspect that is going to prove to be necessary.
Certainly from the PCS's point of view the idea of a single point
of contact and of individual Personal Advisers are ideas that
we strongly support. Providing we can make the back office, if
you like, work properly then it will provide a better level of
support people. The pilots are going to have to tell us whether
we can make the back office stuff work.
Dr Naysmith
175. What do you mean when you say that it has
been tried before? Are you suggesting that everything that is
in this new package has been tried before?
(Mr Bonner) No, no.
176. What is it that has been tried before?
(Mr Bonner) The one-stop shop approach was tried on
the JSA, which Richard has referred to, which in practice did
not work for a variety of organisational reasons. Going back before
my time, there were some attempts in the late 1980s to look at
a one-stop approach.
177. This is more than just a one-stop approach.
(Mr Bonner) Absolutely, but in terms of the claimants,
from their point of view one of the big differences they will
see if it all works is a one-stop approach where they can go somewhere
and that will be it.
Ms Atherton
178. Very much on that theme, for some of us
the pilots offer a possible vision of how a much more extended
one-stop shop for all forms of Government might be the interface
between Government, local and central, and the citizen, the person
on the street. We have talked very specifically about the pilots
that are taking place. Can I ask you to step back both as representatives
of your members and also as your members providing a service and
say if the technology was in there, which is very different now
at the end of the 1990s to what it was in the 1980s, if the preparation
took place, how would your members perceive a one-stop shop for
all relationships with the customer, the citizen, or would they
find it very threatening or an opportunity? A swot analysis, a
quick swot analysis.
(Mr Churchard) A one-stop shop for all their relations
with the system. Your question goes far beyond what we are talking
about here.
179. We appreciate that. But for many of us
that is what we are interested in.
(Mr Churchard) My view would be that we should take
it one step at a time. You have already heard about the experience
in Australia and I think we have got examples in the past from
the Civil Service and elsewhere of trying to introduce radical
change at a pace which is not sustainable. I think we have an
opportunity here to see whether it can work within a specific
context and if it can be then those positive lessons can be built
upon and the thing can be extended. I certainly would counsel
against any idea of going for some kind of big bang approach,
trying to link together all the services for which the citizen
may need to call upon the state or local government to provide.
I think that is some way off. You could learn important lessons
from this and if it is successful then it can be built upon.
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