Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
CABINET OFFICE,
HM CUSTOMS AND
EXCISE, DEPARTMENT
OF TRADE
AND INDUSTRY,
DEPARTMENT FOR
CULTURE, MEDIA
AND SPORT,
AND HM TREASURY
8 NOVEMBER 2004
Q20 Jon Trickett: Would
I be right in concluding that because the civil service were risk
averse men have died and more men have suffered, some of them
with almost iron lungs, unable to get even to the loo and so on,
because their respiratory problems are so bad, have failed to
receive the compensation for all this period of time, some of
them for years frankly, simply because you, as a department, were
risk averse. I think that is a fair summary of your earlier response,
is it not?
Ms Taylor: No, I do not think
so. You are twisting it round.
Q21 Jon Trickett: Well
I asked you why you did not adequately resource it and you said
you accept that you had not adequately resourced it.
Ms Taylor: Nobody understood how
big the scheme was going to be and nobody had ever done anything
like this before; it is a huge scheme. We were making up the planning
for it with the miners' solicitors, agreeing the claims handling
agreement, agreeing the processes. It was all new. What I am trying
to draw out of this for today is that we learned those lessons,
we captured those lessons and in the department, and more widely
through Whitehall, we have tried to learn those lessons so that
for next time there is a process and people can go through it
and learn from how we could have done it better. We have worked
very hard to make the process that we have got as efficient as
possible, but we have also done a lot of innovation in the process,
put a lot of e-business into it, for example. So while there are
certainly criticisms of how we started, we tried to redeem ourselves.
Q22 Jon Trickett: Are
you now adequately resourced?
Ms Taylor: I am adequately resourced.
Q23 Jon Trickett: When
can we expect you to complete all the outstanding cases, because
these are living communities, some of them with very elderly frail
men? The families who are caring for them and these men who can
barely breathe are expecting compensation from this government.
When will the process be complete?
Ms Taylor: I think, because of
the prioritisation process, most of those who are seriously ill
are already through the process.
Q24 Jon Trickett: With
all due respect, I do not think that is true. If you are under
71 years of age, even now, there are men well under 71 years old,
who have been told they must wait. I have a chap who came to see
me the other day, whose brother is over 71 and he has been settled.
The chap who came to see me is more seriously ill than his brother
and he has been told he has to wait because there is a cut-off
at 71 years. Why should a man who is suffering have to wait until
he is 71 for the thing to be resolved?
Ms Taylor: I think that is on
the vibration side.
Q25 Jon Trickett: Yes.
Why though?
Ms Taylor: Because we are prioritising
people: the oldest and sickest first. That was agreed with the
miners' solicitors.
Q26 Jon Trickett: We will
come onto the solicitors then. When did you realise the solicitors
were ripping
Ms Taylor: In what sense are they
ripping us off?
Q27 Jon Trickett: In the
sense that they were given £100 million, were they not, by
the department? Was not £100 million made available to pay
the solicitors so that the money would not be taken from the miners'
compensation fund and the solicitors were taking the money from
the DTI and then also charging the miners as well? I had miners
in my constituency who had suffered through the negligence of
the NCB frankly, it has taken too long to settle, the solicitors
were then paid by the government and they then charged the miners
as well.
Ms Taylor: The solicitors' costs
are agreed as part of the handling agreement. We realised at the
end of last year that some solicitors were also taking payments
from the claimants. The Minister, Nigel Griffiths, immediately
got in touch with the Law Society and made arrangements for the
Law Society to see that those payments were made back to the claimants.
No £100 million was given over to miners solicitors.
Q28 Jon Trickett: I think
the figure was £100 million.
Ms Taylor: Costs from the department?
It may be what they took in costs.
Q29 Jon Trickett: I think
that was the figure, but I do not have much time left. Coming
on to White Finger, when did you realise that there was a difference
in the medical test applied by the DTI and the DWP for the same
illness, that men were being compensated by you and then refused
assistance by the Department for Work and Pensions?
Ms Taylor: I think we realised
early on that there was a difference, but we felt that we had
a process which was appropriate for the compensation we were paying
out and we stuck with our process.
Q30 Jon Trickett: For
example, you were doing medical tests on men with White Finger,
the DWP were doing different tests for the same illness using
separate sets of doctors with a different test and were getting
different results. You were paying compensation and the DWP were
refusing to pay them. Why was there not a data sharing process,
if nothing else to expedite matters and also to save money frankly
for the government? Has that never occurred to anybody?
Ms Taylor: We did talk to the
DWP earlier on about the different sorts of assessment. We were
confident the assessment we had met our needs for the compensation
we had to pay out and they were confident about theirs.
Q31 Jon Trickett: May
I ask Number Ten very quickly, Sir David? Have you been involved
at all in all this? This is the largest compensation in world
history as I understand it and I understand the difficulties as
it is a massive process, but frankly each human being has an individual
story and we need to be sensitive to that side of it as well.
How has Number Ten tried to help in trying to sort this out?
Sir David Omand: May I make clear
that I am not in Number Ten, I am in the Cabinet Office? I am
the Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator. I have been leading
this particular piece of work across government in trying to improve
the standards of risk management across government. We have been
looking for examples from which we can draw lessons and, as has
been explained already, some important lessons came out, some
of which too were about the ability to spot trouble as it emerges
and to deal with it. If I may say so, I do not think your point
earlier on does demonstrate risk aversion, it could almost be
said to demonstrate the opposite, that actually the government
took a calculated risk about what the volume of compensation would
be, the number of claimants and it has turned out that the number
of claimants is very much greater than was originally predicted.
Should there have been a much larger margin for error? Well, yes,
perhaps, except that if you did that on every scheme, you can
only go on the best judgment you make on the information that
is available to you at the time.
Jon Trickett: My time is up, but I could
go on for some time, as you might imagine.
Q32 Jim Sheridan: Your
official title is Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator and if
I look at page 23, Figure 7, you also chair the Risk Steering
Group which covers many departments including the Ministry of
Defence and Treasury. Could I ask what risk assessment was carried
out when the country went to war with Iraq?
Sir David Omand: The same assessment
as is done before any commitment of military forces, which is
a careful assessment by the government of the risks, as advised
by military commanders, of the international situation, of the
legality of the operation and of the objectives to be secured
and whether the means available are commensurate with the objectives.
That is the process through which governments go about that kind
of difficult decision making. In case there was any doubt, the
group I have been running is to do with improving standards. It
does not deal with individual issues. The Permanent Secretary
at the Ministry of Defence has been an important member of my
group and of course defence brings a lot of experience, case studies,
National Audit Office Reports, in its wake. My committee has not,
of course, been looking at individual decisions such as decisions
whether or not to take action in any particular case.
Q33 Jim Sheridan: So your
committee never came forward with any recommendations then?
Sir David Omand: It has come forward
with many recommendations to ministers and to the Prime Minister
about what needs to be done in government to improve the standard
of risk management. Our recommendations have been accepted consistently
as we have gone through the programme, but it was not commenting
on the merits or demerits of individual policies or programmes,
that is left to the relevant secretaries of state.
Q34 Jim Sheridan: Mr Pullinger,
perhaps the same question in terms of an assessment. Was an assessment
carried out by the Treasury prior to going to war and has that
assessment been reached or over-reached or is there a shortfall?
Sir David Omand: May I say that
I think that is probably an unfair question to the leader of this
particular team in the Treasury.
Jim Sheridan: Why?
Q35 Chairman: I think
because his area of responsibility is quite narrow.
Sir David Omand: I would take
that question. Her Majesty's Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
were fully involved in decision making on this, as on all major
issues.
Q36 Jim Sheridan: May
I ask a perhaps less contentious question about the CSA? You are
probably well aware, certainly Members of Parliament are well
aware of the difficulties the changeover in the CSA has caused.
In fact I would suggest it is one of the most paid-attention-to
subjects in our surgeries. Was a risk assessment carried out on
just how long, and the effect that changeover would have?
Mr Pullinger: I do not know from
my risk programme job, no. Yes, I am sure a lot of planning went
in and I think lessons have been learned from that.
Sir David Omand: I think, if I
may say so, that the point you are making, that before major policy
initiatives are launched there must be a proper risk assessment
and that risk assessment must involve identification of the major
risks and what forms of mitigation there would be, must be right
and we accept it fully.
Q37 Jim Sheridan: The
point I am trying to make, and I really am not trying to be mischievous
in any way, is that one of the questions we are constantly asked
as Members of Parliament is how long this changeover will take.
The question I am asking you is: was that risk assessment of how
long the changeover would take and how much it would cost taken
at the outset?
Sir David Omand: I do not know
what the specifics were on the Child Support Agency.
Q38 Jim Sheridan: I am
not doing too well. DTI. We mentioned awarding work to sub-contractors.
How do you evaluate and keep a tab on just exactly how the sub-contractors
are delivering?
Ms Taylor: We have targets against
which we measure the sub-contractors; we also have an operations
meeting with all our sub-contractors once a month, where we go
through how we are doing on targets, what the operational problems
are. We also involve the miners' solicitors because they are part
of our machine; we depend on getting in claims questionnaires
from them so they are involved in those meetings as well. We try
to have a very open approach with our contractors in terms of
managing risk, because we are all in it together and we share
the risks.
Q39 Jim Sheridan: What
incentives are there for contractors to tell you when they are
going through difficult times?
Ms Taylor: Well, if they do not
tell us, we will find out, so they might as well tell us in the
first place.
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