Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440
- 448)
WEDNESDAY 7 MARCH 2001
ANGELA EAGLE,
MP, MR STEPHEN
WATSON, AND
MR CHRISTOPHER
EVANS
440. Can I also ask about ethnicity, because
a lot of the statistics are not broken down by the ethnicity of
the applicant groups, which does raise a question as to whether
or not you can check whether there are fair initiative procedures
in relation the one ethnic group or another, and whether people
may be discriminated against. Do you not think it would be useful
to have the ethnicity monitored?
(Angela Eagle) I am never against collecting figures
on ethnicity to ensure that our systems are appropriate. I will
write to you about it.[14]
I would have to be persuaded that the cost of collecting this
kind of information justifies any benefits that could come out
of it. I have not, again, had any evidence of systematic racism
or racism in the way in which the Social Fund works, which is
over and above the kind of comments you get about the system itself.
441. I will give you a hypothetical problem,
I do not know whether it exists or not, supposing you have somebody
from a traditional, white, protestant, Anglo-Saxon background
and he is faced with an application for a particular item from
somebody from an ethnic community, which is important given the
cultural requirement of that community, but which may be missed
by the person who is making that decision and, therefore, it would
be given a lower priority than would apply to the circumstances
of that individual.
(Angela Eagle) If it is a budgeting loan what it is
for should not be relevant at all in terms of how that system
works. If it is a Community Care Grant then Direction 4 applies.
If it is a crisis loan then it would have to be an emergency.
I am not sure how your hypothetical situation may pan out in the
way the system works. I am not against doing work to ensure that
we are not discriminating against the ethnic minorities but, as
I said earlier, I would have to be convinced that the amount of
money and costs that we would be taking on in being able to come
up with some robust figures in this respect for the Social Fund
alone, rather than as part of more general work that the Department
might be doing, would be worth the effort.
442. The last point I want to make is that for
certain types of claimants who are clearly going to be on long
term benefit, for example those with disabilities or single parents
with young children, would it not be better, instead of putting
them through the whole of the Social Fund arrangements, to look
at the level of benefit to enable them to budget themselves properly
for these one off payments for household equipments so they do
not have to go through the whole stigma of making Social Fund
applications?
(Angela Eagle) I do not accept that lone parents are
automatically going to be on benefits for a long time. I think
that was the case in previous eras but it is actually an aim of
this Government via the New Deal and the Working Families Tax
Credit, and all of the extra help with child care, to try to deal
with and assist lone parents off benefits, so I do not accept
the premise of your question. You can always look at introducing
extra grants. If you do, then that can have a beneficial effect
in one area, in that the people who get the grant benefit from
it, but it can also mean there is less money in other areas for
loans, or whatever, to ensure that other needs are met. There
is always that choice. We have talked about the old system, which
was mainly grant based, and the defects that that had, which were
considerable. What you are suggesting is a slight move back to
that. There is always a change that you can have in the balance.
443. What I am trying to do is to recognise
the realities that there are particular groups. In fact there
are lone parents who are on benefit for a long time, and people
with severe disabilities are going to be on benefit for a long
time. It is simply a question of recognising the realities that
there are always going to be some people for whom work is not
an option.
(Angela Eagle) Not necessarily lone parents.
444. The object is to concentrate help on those
who need it, who cannot provide for themselves through work. In
that context, bearing in mind they are always going to be clients
of the Social Fund, would it not be best to look at the benefits
level they receive to enable them to budget for those things that
they are always going to need to buy.
(Angela Eagle) I would say that we have done already
by some of the increases we have made in the income related benefits,
the premiums for those with disabilities and those with children,
I mentioned some of those in my opening statement. Yes, you have
to find a balance. The Social Fund is not always the best place
through which to offer this extra assistance.
Chairman
445. Mental illness was something that struck
me from some of the evidence we have had. Coming from my constituency
background, visiting North Kensington was a general education
for me in all sorts of ways. It struck me very forcibly the difficulties
that even professional advisers have with claimants suffering
mental illness. It is difficult to make provisions specifically
for individual groups, but I certainly think that some thought
needs to be given to issues of that kind, I guess covered by the
disability point.
(Angela Eagle) I think there is some interesting work
being done in the ONE pilot, with advocacy for people with mental
illness to make sure they can access the system in a more appropriate
manner. It is always difficult for a system which relies on people
making applications if they are mentally ill, for them to be able
to get round the system in a way we were talking about earlier.
Being able to offer that assistance into the system and advocacy
throughout it is an important thing. I do not accept that people
with mental illness do not have the possibility of working either,
neither would some of the advocacy and charities that have that
aspiration. We have to work on that aspect, but we also have to
ensure that people who have mental illness problems can access
the help that is there for them in an appropriate way and are
not just left to their own devices to try and find their way around
the system.
446. Can I ask you one or two questions about
the wider future picture. You said earlier, and it was important
that we take a careful note that you are still considering where
the Social Fund eventually resides within the structure. You mentioned
yourself in relation to some of the questions that Doug Naysmith
was asking about the PAT and the Social Exclusion Agenda that
there is a lot of thinking being given to all of that. You just
wonder, is this not a very important opportunity where there is
reconstruction in some of the Department, there are some very
good ideas, for example Professor Craig's ideas. He actually said
he gave up. He had all of these ideas in 1992—maybe in 1992
trying to get any progress out of Social Fund, maybe any sensible
person would give up—and he thought he had some fresh thinking,
he had some blue sky thoughts about how you fundamentally and
radically reform the system, leaving aside the amounts of money
you put into it. You cannot help thinking to yourself, maybe this
is an opportunity to do some of that. What you are suggesting,
and we do not want to diminish it, because it is a difficult situation
and there certainly have been improvements and we would want to
recognise all of that. There is, as Karen Buck said, a huge dysfunction
between the experience and the policy making in our short inquiry
so far. Maybe the real answer is that you have not had the time,
because there are a lot of other departmental changes going on
as well. If that is true that is a perfectly reasonable answer
and we are not critical about that. Are you really seizing the
moment to see what reconstruction in the long-term could be made
of some of these issues, getting the balance changed for grants,
and all of that? Is there not a chance for change?
(Angela Eagle) I do not think we have closed the door
on any of this. We have made some reforms, which I have talked
about today, right at the beginning of the first Parliament, particularly
for budgeting loans, which I think have been beneficial, we are
putting some more money in. At the same time we have developed
an enormous change programme for the welfare system as a whole
which ranges across and which the Social Fund will fit into. It
is not going to be left to be thought about afterwards, it has
to go with the modernisation I was talking about. That does not
mean to say that at some time in the future we might not want
to have a more fundamental look at how it works. I, for one, would
always be open to ideas about how to get the balance right between
grants and loans and what might be done to help those that are
really at the very bottom of the pile with the Social Fund, particularly
the discretionary part of the Social Fund. It is a difficult area
of policy. It is not easy to see what the absolutely Utopian,
best design of the system would be. I do not think we have one.
I do not think we have ever had a system that has met all of the
needs. I do not think we have had a system which has always been
fair in the way it allocates money, whether it be grants or loans,
to those who are needy at the bottom of the pile. I would not
want to close the door at all on fundamental reform in the future.
447. Professor Craig should not give up hope
altogether?
(Angela Eagle) I do not think he should, he could
send me his work.
448. I think he may. He gave a very compelling
piece of evidence to the Committee. You could actually separate
it into three separate stands, some of which was life grants,
and matters of that kind. No one is arguing there has been an
institutional change of a fundamental kind in the last four years,
we are not criticising you for not having done anything. You can
only do so much in a given period of time. If you are seriously
saying to us you might be willing to look in the future at some
of these ideas we would like to help to contribute to producing
some of the ideas and maybe log into the system, based on things
like professor Craig's work. The worry is that three days after
polling day, whenever that may be, the day may dawn when the Prime
Minister may say, "We are going to do all this, the Department
is going to change in this way", and you find that the Social
Fund gets left out almost as an afterthought. I hear what you
say and I believe it, I am sure you are genuine about it, but
the process and the momentum may work to such an extent that you
are left tagging on what you have at the moment to a system. You
might end up with three social funds. We need to get some more
confidence that some more coherent thought was actually given
to some of these issues and to be confident that it is all going
to be sorted in a way that will help the people that the system
is designed to help.
(Angela Eagle) As I said earlier, I am always open
to ideas about how we could do what we do better. One of the undoubted,
obvious elements in any idea I have seen to date is they would
all cost a lot more money. You can raise that argument, but we
certainly could not make change of that sort without finding the
money from somewhere. I would welcome discussion on what the correct
balance between grant and loans is, whether there is a correct
balance and whether we have it right. I think these issues are
all very difficult and I think looking back at the way the old
system works does reveal that a totally grant-based system was
not any fairer and did not really work either, when you look at
the way that it distributed money, 80 per cent of the grants going
to 17 per cent of the available recipients. There is something
not right about that either.
Chairman: I understand. There is a degree of
concern out there, which I am sure our report will reflect. I
hope the recommendations we do come forward with will be considered
as a positive attempt to try and change things, accepting the
difficulties and the previous history, and all of the rest of
it. It has been very helpful this morning. Thank you very much
for the written evidence as well. Thank you very much for your
appearance this morning.
14 See Ev p. 153.
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