Examination of witness (Questions 460
- 467)
THURSDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 1999
MR JOHN
WHEATLEY
Mr Pond
460. That is very useful evidence. One of the
issues you raise is about the disregard, you welcome the £10
but would like it to be £15. That is a proposal you first
made in 1994. I can see that when the Minister is sitting where
you are sitting if we were to put that to her she might well say
that it is a bit of an arbitrary figure. Where does the £15
come from? Is it related to the housing benefit disregard or is
it a figure that you think is about right?
(Mr Wheatley) It is an arbitrary figure. To repeat
the figure now is very modest I put it to the Committee. We have
not uprated the amount since 1994 at all. I think it bears a relationship
to the amounts that people on income support are receiving. £15
is not a great deal but it would be, however, a significant contribution
to the incomes of mothers with children. It is a genuine commitment
to some of that child support going to the families with children.
It has been the single thing that has been left, so it is symbolic.
£10 is not a lot and £15 is not a lot more, but we think
it is the right figure.
461. "£40 million more!" is the
response I think one would get to that.
(Mr Wheatley) Well, we hear that there is an economic
boom on the way and this is part of the Government's commitment
to removing child poverty within 20 years, so I think if that
commitment is serious, then other measures should at least be
costed, looked at and considered very seriously before being rejected.
The Government has gone a long way by breaching a principle and
saying that the £10 should now be introduced and we want
them to go just a little bit further.
462. And we have heard this morning that that
disregard is probably the most important element of the proposed
changes in the impact on child poverty. From your contacts with
non-resident parents, would it have a significant effect, do you
think, on compliance? You have said that most of the problems
faced by non-resident parents who cannot afford the assessments
of the CSA are largely due either to arrears leading to higher
weekly payments or the wrong assessment. Does that imply that
these people cannot afford to pay more anyway and that even if
you did have a higher disregard, it would not really have much
effect on the amount that they were able to pay even if their
willingness increased as a result?
(Mr Wheatley) Certainly we heard yesterday from Professor
Jane Millar about the idea of a child support guarantee and that
would be something that we would, I think, want to look at closely
and would consider supporting. It is also a matter of concern
where the father of a child on income support is also on income
support where you are talking about transferring £5 between
families. It is always difficult to see what is going to increase
compliance, but I think a large part of the hostility from men
has been that the money does not go to their family anyway, but
it is just something that is going to the Agency and I think there
could well be an improved acceptance of the scheme.
463. Finally, if I may, in your evidence you
also give us some very powerful examples of cases where benefit
sanctions have been applied to parents with care who refused to
co-operate, but where those sanctions have been wrongly applied.
There is also, I think, your concern, or it is certainly a concern
expressed by other witnesses yesterday that there are many parents
with care who would be prepared to put up with sanctions because
they do not want the CSA meddling in their children's lives and
causing greater damage. In the context of the changes to the CSA
which are being proposed, improved administration, a more accessible
service, perhaps a more understandable service and a fairer formula,
do you think that it is still the case that benefit sanctions
are inappropriate for those who still refuse to co-operate with
the system?
(Mr Wheatley) I think, on balance, we would still
have reservations simply because of the impact of the benefit
penalty on families on severely restricted incomes already, but
it would, there is no doubt, be a great improvement if benefit
penalties were withdrawn where maintenance was not paid, where
the penalties were applied correctly. A large number of the cases
we see are where women have given all the information they have
got and in one case in our evidence, the evidence was supplied
on a piece of paper and the benefit penalty was applied simply
because that information had not been given on the correct form.
Those kinds of bureaucratic nonsenses, as we see them, if they
went away, I think everybody would be a lot happier.
Dr Naysmith
464. We have partly touched on this before about
the 600 extra people who may be employed by the Agency for face-to-face
contact which I am sure you have already said, and I agree, is
much better and it is much better than written communications,
but we also heard yesterday that 600 are not going to be employed
in the way that we had perhaps imagined. I imagined it, and I
think lots of MPs did, that there would be more officers who knew
the person's case at a local level, but in fact they will be deployed
centrally, so they will have to familiarise themselves with cases
before they actually see anyone. Do you have any views on the
way that should be conducted?
(Mr Wheatley) I think it is a pity if staff are not
going to be deployed in the locality. It would be much better
to see, and I think it is mentioned somewhere in the White Paper
that the idea is to have a system of child support inspectors
along the lines of the old Benefits Agency inspectors where they
would work on a caseload, get to know it and that model would
be better than having a central staff dealing with things. I think
the more personal contact, the better, although we did have one
case from a bureau where the absent parent was contacted in the
pub and asked to complete a maintenance assessment form on the
`phone. That level of contact might be going a bit too far, but
I think generally people respond better when things are explained
to them in person.
Ms Buck
465. I want to press you a little bit further
on the point about compliance because it is so central to the
success of the whole project. You have just said in response to
questions that you felt that compliance was related in terms of
experience that the CAB will have had to money going to the state
and not going to the families. We heard some very powerful evidence,
particularly from Professor Bradshaw yesterday, that the crux
of the issue is the sense of individualised tailoring of assessment
to the family's needs and that without that, the men are not going
to comply basically and I just wanted to put to you are they both
true, are they balanced, and what is at the heart of it as far
as your own experience is concerned?
(Mr Wheatley) I think there is an element of truth
on both sides, but it would be very difficult, I think, to envisage
a return to a system which was based on the courts, which involved
lawyers, which involved alongside some kind of Child Support Agency.
It is difficult to envisage how that is going to happen with the
amount of resources that are available at the moment to deliver
a child support system. I think we do have to accept that there
is going to be an element of rough justice. I do not think we
have taken a view on whether there needs to be an element of discretion
or departure from the scheme because that has just been something
that has never been possible with the rigid formula-based system
that there has been up until now, so it is difficult to take a
firm view on it.
466. But others did and I just want to know,
as you have had so many contacts in your organisation, whether
you would go along with a couple of witnesses, particularly Jonathan
Bradshaw, who were firmly of the view that reform was unworkable
and that we would need to return to the highly individualised,
probably legally-based system?
(Mr Wheatley) I am not sure that is right. I think
we would want to see a system that was probably administered on
time, getting decisions right and talking to people about those
decisions. We would want to see that system operating before we
moved away from it.
467. I have one last question which is on the
issue of housing benefit disregard. We had some evidence, particularly
from the CPAG, that there would still be a significant number
of people, and I suspect particularly in London and the south-east
where rents are high and housing benefit is high, who would still
be caught in the 85 per cent withdrawal trap even after the housing
benefit disregard. Is there a case for disregarding housing benefit
entirely?
(Mr Wheatley) It is not something we have looked at.
Chairman: Well, thank you very much. That has
been a very useful session. Thank you for your evidence and thank
you for the submission.
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