Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2004
Department for Work and Pensions and Department for
Education and Skills
Q80 Mr Allan: In terms of the relationship
between health and Incapacity Benefit, do you do any monitoring
of the health levels? For example, in places like Yorkshire, we
have one Government Department, the DTI, paying out large amounts
of money to people with lung disease, with vibration white finger
and so on.
Sir Richard Mottram: I think we
are paying that.
Q81 Mr Allan: The DTI are managing
the programme. There are much more serious health needs in somewhere
like South Yorkshire than, say, Suffolk, for example. Do you correlate
the two when you look at the rate of Incapacity Benefit? Do you
have indicators coming from the Department of Health to tell you
what the long-term illness rates are so that you can have some
idea of what the Incapacity Benefit claim rates will be?
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes, we have
a breakdown of the underlying medical conditions that relate to
. . . I have to be slightly careful about this because Incapacity
Benefit is not really paid in relation to underlying medical conditions,
but we have knowledge of the reasons why people cannot meet the
all work test related to underlying conditions, if you understand
the distinction I am trying to make, and all I would say on that
is, speaking from memory, the biggest category is actually around
various forms of mental illness and we can obviously give you
that breakdown. So, we should not think that this is a heavy industry
benefit. This is a benefit which relates to all sorts of conditions
that lead to people not being able to work and these conditions
can be found right across the country. There is no reason why
they will be concentrated in these areas. I am not disputing the
point you make about what obviously some of this is about because,
when you look at the map, it is obvious what it is about but,
looking forward, one of the key issues for us is, can we find
ways of helping people who have for example, various stress-related
illnesses back into work and that will be just as important as
worrying about people who have heavy-engineering related health
problems.
Q82 Mr Allan: I think it is also
correct to say that mental illness correlates quite well with
overall levels of social deprivation. So, even if it is not heavy
industry related, it is poverty related.
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes.
Q83 Mr Allan: I think I am perhaps
slightly pushing the softie liberal approach but someone on the
Committee has to. The fear out there is that the department is
going to come along and try and cut Incapacity Benefit in a fairly
crude way which does not actually protect the underlying need
for Incapacity Benefit.
Sir Richard Mottram: Why would
the department want to do that?
Q84 Mr Allan: Because everybody is
talking about it and it is government policy to get people off
of Incapacity Benefits.
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes, but
the essence of the policy that we are pursing on this is about
giving people more active help. The emphasis is on help. There
is nothing which the department is saying which is anyway seeking
to stigmatise people on this benefit or to call into question
why they are on it. What we are focusing on is, if we organised
our intervention differently and if we worked in partnership with
the National Health Service, could we produce a different set
of outcomes for this group of people and we believe that it is
probable that we could. There are some very interesting resource
issues about how cost effective it might be etcetera, but that
is our approach.
Q85 Mr Allan: But you have no targets
for getting people off Incapacity Benefit as such?
Sir Richard Mottram: We do not,
no.
Q86 Mr Allan: That is helpful to
know. Can I move on to LSCs and, I guess, to Mr Marston. Again,
following on from Mr Steinberg's point, the impression I get from
my local LSC is that the whole thrust of policy is about young
people and the LSC's priorities are all about training young people.
It does not have any kind of focus on older people. Is that a
reasonable judgment to make?
Mr Marston: I do not think it
is fair to say that that is its sole focus, no. What is true is
that the law requires us to provide for young people up to the
age of 19 in a way that we are not required to do for older people.
For example, each and every 16 to 19 year old in the population
who wants to stay in education and training has an individual
legal right to do so. So, we have to meet that priority. There
is no way round it. Having met that—and it is worth noting
that participation rates in school sixth forms and sixth-form
colleges are going up all the time—then it is important
to try to address skills needs, retraining and upskilling right
across the whole age range including older people, yes.
Q87 Mr Allan: When we look at the
Report which says that older people are not participating in the
same way as younger people, we are doing that in the context of
the system where the agents of delivery, the LSCs, have, as I
think you would accept, as their first priority younger people
and older people come in after that.
Mr Marston: Currently, that is
what the law requires. We are saying that there is a legal entitlement
from 16 to 19 which does not apply elsewhere, so we have to meet
that first.
Q88 Mr Allan: In terms of the adult
entitlements and level two entitlements, again is it fair to assume
that a level three entitlement would be much more helpful to older
people, the A level equivalent because, if it is a level two entitlement,
it is likely to be the younger people who are going to take that
up, if anyone is, whereas somebody who comes out of work at 40-45
probably has a level two skill and it is the level three that
they need.
Mr Marston: No. Unfortunately,
in a sense, it would be good if that were true but we have in
the workforce of adults at large about 7,000,000 people who do
not have the equivalent of a first full level two qualification,
five good GCSEs. So, right across the age range, we have large
numbers of people who do not have a first full level two and therefore
the entitlement at level two applies throughout and it applies
every bit as much for older people as it does for younger people.
Q89 Mr Allan: So, an old person coming
out of work going to their LSC and saying, "I want skilling",
if they do not have a level two, they are a priority.
Mr Marston: Yes.
Q90 Mr Allan: For my final set of
questions I would like to come back to the personal advisers and
address Sir Richard. We employ quite a lot of people in the Employment
Service in Sheffield and they are very good jobs and they do a
tremendously effective job, but people have come to me and said,
"We don't see how these job cuts can be made without affecting
frontline services", which is what we have been talking about
here. Can we just go through it, please. You have 130,000 employees
in DWP at the moment.
Sir Richard Mottram: Whole-Time
Equivalents.
Q91 Mr Allan: And 10,000 are personal
advisers.
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes, about
that.
Q92 Mr Allan: You have been told
that you must take 30,000 jobs out of that.
Sir Richard Mottram: Out of the
whole 130,000.
Q93 Mr Allan: You cannot at this
stage say whether some of those cut posts will come from the 10,000
personal advisers, can you?
Sir Richard Mottram: What I said
earlier is that we were working on the detailed plan.
Q94 Mr Allan: In other words, you
cannot say at this stage whether or not the 10,000 personal advisers
will grow or shrink in five years' time.
Sir Richard Mottram: It is in
2008, so less than four years' time.
Q95 Mr Allan: Post that, you cannot
say that we will have more or fewer personal advisers, whether
there will be more than 10,000 personal advisers or fewer than
10,000 personal advisers.
Sir Richard Mottram: What I am
trying to say is that we have, right across the department because
obviously this 30,000 applies to the whole department, a number
of approaches to how we think we can significantly improve our
efficiency. I will not go through them all but a lot of them are
to do with better processing, streamlining overheads and all those
sorts of things. So, what we are trying to focus on all the time
is how we can provide a responsive local service in the case of
Jobcentre Plus through the network we are reshaping now. While
for those things which can be delivered to a sort of national
standard, we drive up performance and have a common approach.
Q96 Mr Allan: Aside from that, the
whole Report points to the fact that where you have this new approach,
you should be proud of it—Jobcentre Plus.
Sir Richard Mottram: We are proud
of it.
Q97 Mr Allan: You have personal advisers
to go in there and what the Report seems to be saying is that
we want more of this, not less—more personal advisers helping
older people, that is what they need to get back into work.
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes.
Q98 Mr Allan: We seem to be facing
a situation where there is no certainty that because of the crude
national target, that programme is not going to come.
Sir Richard Mottram: "Crude
national target" are your words. We are saying that we think
we can tackle this problem through a range of ways of improving
our efficiency and end up with a Jobcentre Plus which will be
significantly smaller but which will have a strong emphasis on
providing frontline services. Just to be absolutely clear, what
we are not saying is, to repeat the point that I think I made
earlier and I apologise for doing that, we do not have a plan
within the 100,000 to roll out a massive programme of help for
people on Incapacity Benefit because, when our budgets were agreed
in the last spending review, we had no basis for such a plan.
Mr Allan: A "significantly smaller
Jobcentre Plus" which are your words does not inspire me
with much confidence that we can live up to the recommendations
in this Report.
Q99 Mr Jenkins: Sir Richard, when
you read the Report, no doubt you were pleased with it.
Sir Richard Mottram: I thought
the Report was fair. I would not say that I was pleased with it
but I thought that what the Report recognised was that significant
progress had been made and if you compare where we are in the
UK with other countries, I think we have a good story to tell.
Is what is said in the Report a satisfactory position? I think
there is plenty of scope to do a lot better as we have been discussing.
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