Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2004
Department for Work and Pensions and Department for
Education and Skills
Q20 Mr Field: Sir Richard, can I
go back on a couple of questions which the Chairman has asked.
You are being asked to cull 30,000 staff and the staff budget
is less than 3% of the benefit budget, is it not?
Sir Richard Mottram: It is a little
more actually; it is about £8 billion on £110 billion,
so about 7%.
Q21 Mr Field: In preparing for this
change, given that the Incapacity Benefit recipients now stand
out as a very distinct and large group compared with other groups
of recipients, did anybody in the department work out how many
of your frontline staff would have to deliver people from Incapacity
Benefit into work to save more money than is going to be saved
by cutting staff by 30,000?
Sir Richard Mottram: The answer
to that question is that we have yet to establish—that is
precisely why we are doing the pilots—how effective we could
be as an organisation in getting people on Incapacity Benefit
back into work. When we complete the pilots, as the Report makes
clear, then the Government can take a decision on whether they
wish to invest further effort in dealing with people on Incapacity
Benefit. At the moment, what we have is the provision for going
forward and expanding work-focused interviews in relation to Incapacity
Benefit claimants as we roll out the new Jobcentre Plus model.
Our forward public expenditure provision does not include provision
to roll out a Pathways to Work approach right across the organisation.
Q22 Mr Field: Again following on
the Chairman's point to you, no one is owed a job by anybody else
we now know in this world. Therefore, we cannot make a case for
defending civil service posts because they have always been there,
but one of the big changes that has occurred under the previous
Government, much speeded up under this Government, is trying to
develop a service which helps them from benefit into work. There
is therefore a concern that when you have to make 30,000 cuts,
the change in culture that you are making to your service in moving
from a passive one of paying out benefits to one which does that
as well as helping people into work might be more difficult to
achieve rather than less difficult to achieve. Would that be reasonable,
Sir Richard?
Sir Richard Mottram: It could
be that the whole basis on which we are planning to bring our
numbers down to the 100,000 set for us by the Government is on
an understanding that we intend to maintain the policy on the
right balance between individual's rights and their responsibilities.
What we are not talking about is moving away from a regime which
had a very high expectation that the best solution to most problems
is for people to be in work. We are not talking about moving away
from that. Similarly, we are not talking about moving away from
a strong focus on trying to improve, for example, our performance
on fraud and error which we have discussed in this committee before.
So, we are not talking about a change in the strategy of the department.
Q23 Mr Field: The news coming through
from the pilots is very encouraging.
Sir Richard Mottram: The preliminary
evidence is encouraging, yes.
Q24 Mr Field: But you have just told
us that there are no plans to roll that out nationally, however
successful they are yet.
Sir Richard Mottram: No.
Q25 Mr Field: Although we are cutting
staff by 30,000.
Sir Richard Mottram: That is correct.
Q26 Mr Field: On the cutting of staff,
given that this is a Report about making sure that older workers
get their fair share of the job market, are you ensuring that
the older workers are not chopped first when you have to make
the 30,000 cuts in staff?
Sir Richard Mottram: The way in
which the 30,000 cuts in staff are being made is very likely to
be a combination of recruitment restrictions which are already
in place and I do not see why they would impact differentially
towards older people and a series of voluntary redundancy schemes
and possibly, as a last resort, compulsory redundancy. The way
in which we will frame those latter schemes is not designed to
target our older workers.
Q27 Mr Field: If you have a policy
of voluntary redundancy, given the culture about older people
generally not working, you might have a flood of older people
who apply, might you not?
Sir Richard Mottram: We might
except that what we are not yet proposing to do is have a general
departmental-wide voluntary redundancy scheme through which anyone
can apply and some rules that would release the older people differentially.
Q28 Mr Field: When you are further
down the road and you have data, might you provide the Committee
with just the age profile of those who are going of your 30,000?
Sir Richard Mottram: We could
do that, yes. Obviously, people who come to retirement will be
a part of this, that is normal age retirement, but even there
we are taking a more flexible approach to that issue.
Q29 Mr Field: If you turn to page
3 and your graph—and these questions are coming from someone
who supports totally the idea of moving to an active service—you
could almost draw a straight line to the increase in the numbers
of older workers in work and the increase starts generally speaking
when we came out of the last recession under Norman Lamont and
it continues today. Would you honestly be able that any one of
those point to where you could say that is where the welfare to
work measures kicked in which helped older people into work and,
if so, can you tell us where they are?
Sir Richard Mottram: This is a
very difficult thing, obviously. If you look at the trend line,
I think it is quite encouraging. Once you get behind it, I think
you can obviously see that there are a number of factors at work
here. There is the general state of the economy.
Q30 Mr Field: Which is a big one,
is it not?
Sir Richard Mottram: The general
state of the economy is a big factor, yes. There is the changing
level of female employment so that many more women are now employed
and obviously that is having a significant effect and then what
we would claim is that all the help that we provide helps that
process along, but we are not claiming that it is all just us.
Q31 Mr Field: It would be not only
not all of us, the truth is that the numbers of jobs in the economy
are going up and, just as the number of single parents claiming
benefit falls when that happens, so the number of older workers
taking work increases and we would be hard pressed, would we not,
on looking at that graph to say when particular welfare to work
measures kicked in or contributed. That is not to say that we
should not be doing that but we should not be looking particularly
at people just claiming benefits. It would be difficult, would
it not, Sir Richard?
Sir Richard Mottram: It is difficult
precisely to prove the effect. So, what we have to do is go out
and ask people what the impact of what we have done is and we
always openly admit that, whatever activity we are engaged in,
there is a significant group of people which have been given the
rather odd title of "the deadweight" who would probably
have done something anyway and I think that is the point which
David was touching on.
Q32 Mr Field: When you say that you
have gone out and asked people, could we have copies of any data
that you have?
Sir Richard Mottram: The data
that we have is the data referred to in the evaluations which
are listed in appendix 2.
Q33 Mr Field: Could you to turn to
2.20. The Revenue have submitted that there are 450,000 claimant
workers who have been messed about by one of their tax credits
being wrong and they are paying the price of that. At the end
of the paragraph, it says that you have anecdotal evidence from
your staff which suggests that people have found it more difficult
to engage in claiming working tax credits than the old employment
credits. What evidence do you have and specifically what do they
say on that and is it because the message has gone by word of
mouth that it is quite risky thinking about moving into work and
depending on the working tax credit because they might not arrive
or you might be overpaid and they are asking for £3,000 back?
Sir Richard Mottram: I think the
anecdotal evidence that is referred to there is essentially a
feeling that the number of job outcomes we are achieving has reduced
with the switch from the employment credit to the working tax
credit.
Q34 Mr Field: The other one was simpler
to claim, was it not?
Sir Richard Mottram: It was, yes.
The only reason why I make that point is because—
Q35 Mr Field: There are 48 pages
of it.
Sir Richard Mottram: It is not
for me to speak about how people get tax credits. It was just
a more direct way of getting the money and it was actually a higher
sum. So, it could be that it had some positive incentives, it
could be also that it had some incentives that did not add a lot
inside the system, but I think that is what is being referred
to there. As we moved to a less direct form of payment not in
our control, it may have dulled the effect.
Q36 Mr Field: Sir Richard, you are
worth every penny of your salary!
Sir Richard Mottram: Could you
record that.
Chairman: It has been!
Q37 Jim Sheridan: Sir Richard, I
missed the figure you mentioned as to how many advisers you have.
Sir Richard Mottram: We said 10,000.
Q38 Jim Sheridan: What is the age
profile of those advisers?
Sir Richard Mottram: I do not
have that with me.
Mr Anderson: We do not have a
national profile but, broadly speaking, they mirror the profile
of the age group of all our employees. I am not aware that there
is a particular skew. Certainly I have seen the profile for the
three districts that were examined in this Report where special
work was done and they were quite a range into the 30s, 40s and
50s, pretty much matching the population.
Sir Richard Mottram: We can give
you the age profile of both Jobcentre Plus and the Department
as a whole.
Q39 Jim Sheridan: The rationale behind
my question is when you are engaging advisors to try and advise
and encouraging those over 50 to get back into this, surely it
would make sense that the advisers themselves should be in that
age bracket.
Sir Richard Mottram: I am afraid
I do not know the answer but I will ask David if he would like
to answer that.
Mr Anderson: We do not have statistics
by the personal adviser job because our employment systems record
statistics by the grade of staff rather than by the job purpose
and therefore the national statistics that you have asked for
are not available. Broadly speaking, as I say, when we looked
at the specific areas that we looked at, we did actually match
the population as a whole. There were a number of older advisers
dealing with older people.
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