STAFF EFFICIENCIES: THE IMPACT ON
STAFF ETHNIC DIVERSITY
50. One issue of real concern to the Committee is
the effect of the staff efficiencies and the transfer of jobs
away from London and the South East, where almost half of all
non-white people in the country live. Following the Gershon Review
and Lyons Review in 2004, the DWP is now committed to cutting
30,000 staff - from a staff complement of 130,000 - by 2007-08.
A further 10,000 posts are to be redeployed to frontline roles
and 4,000 are to be relocated out of London and the South East.[44]
The 2004 Pre-Budget Report states that DWP has already relocated
2,050 posts and reduced the workforce by over 6,000.[45]
51. In evidence, Frank Bonner from PCS warned that
the job cuts and relocation plans will have a significant impact
as so many of the staff in the lower grades of the Department's
Agencies are from an ethnic minority group. PCS informed the Committee
that 48% of the staff in the administrative grade and 37% of those
in the executive officer grade in London are from an ethnic minority
- five times the average across the whole Department.[46]
Mr Bonner said: "In many offices a white face on the frontline
is unusual."[47]
52. PCS is concerned that the job cuts will both
reduce the number of ethnic minority staff employed by the DWP
and diminish the quality of service available to ethnic minority
clients due to the lower number of staff available with multi-lingual
skills and the social and cultural knowledge required to assist
customers claim benefits and find work.[48]
This view was also expressed by the Local Government Association
(LGA) who commented that any reduction in ethnic minority staff
in London will impact upon the Department's quality of frontline
services and outreach work. They argued that efforts will need
to be made to raise cultural awareness of staff and that greater
access to interpreters and translators (so far uncosted by the
Department) will be required.[49]
The move across DWP to provision of services through call centres
rather than local offices and the consequent effect on services
to ethnic minorities was also raised by many of those giving evidence.[50]
These issues will also be addressed in following sections of the
report.
53. PCS pointed out that not only is the ethnic minority
unemployment rate higher than the overall rate, but that London
has a higher level of unemployment and worklessness than any other
region in the country. PCS stated that around 20% of staff - many
of whom are likely to be ethnic minority women - work part-time,
due to childcare and other caring responsibilities, and therefore
are restricted as to where they can work. Consequently, the relocation
of civil service posts outside of London and the South East will
make it very difficult for them to find alternative employment.[51]
In written evidence, PCS recommended that DWP should instigate
area-based ethnic minority staff targets based on the population
of the local area.[52]
54. In evidence, the Minister for Work admitted that
the "efficiency challenge," the requirements presented
by the Lyons report and the large scale reconstruction of DWP
and its Agencies have resulted in a time of turmoil. The Minister
went on to say that DWP is conducting a race impact assessment
for each of the Department's Agencies, most of which will be published
"by the end of the [current] financial year".[53]
At the time when this Report was agreed, with less than a fortnight
remaining of the financial year, the race impact assessments were
not available for the Committee to consider.
55. Responding to the question of how the job cuts
and relocations will affect the ethnic diversity of the workforce,
the Business Strategy Director of Jobcentre Plus said:
"We have an overall efficiency challenge
which is for Jobcentre Plus to achieve its part of the targets
for staff reduction set by the Chancellor. That means change.
Those changes are…broken down into a whole set of component
parts…One part of that plan, for example, is centralising
the benefit processing work in different parts of the country.
Another part of the plan is to complete the roll-out of Jobcentre
Plus …We have to subject every element of that plan to a
race impact assessment to address exactly the question you ask:
How does that impact, if it does impact differentially, on the
different parts of Jobcentre Plus and the make-up of staffing?
We will go through that process and we are going through that
process and we will publish a race impact assessment. It is important
to understand that, as far as the centralisation of benefit processing
is concerned, a lot of that was done, as far as London is concerned,
in the early nineties…We are not going to change the fundamental
geography of the frontline offices. There will still be frontline
offices dealing directly with customers in every single part of
London as there are now. To the extent that we are making further
changes, it will be with the backroom staff...But we will be putting
every single element of this plan through the proper race impact
assessment process."[54]
56. The Minister for Work accepted that the migration
of jobs out of London and the South East would affect the ethnic
balance of the Department and the prospect of meeting all of the
staff ethnicity targets. She also told the Committee that the
Department has agreed with the trade unions an ethnic monitoring
process of staff leaving DWP.[55]
The Minister went on to say that the Department has commissioned:
"…an in-depth analysis of the selection
criteria that is going to be used when we are selecting staff
for early release or redundancy, either voluntary or any other
form of redundancy. We hope this will identify whether any aspects
of the criteria that we are using…creates any bias against
any particular group."[56]
57. The
Committee is concerned that proposed job cuts and relocations
will have a disproportionate impact on black and minority ethnic
employees, which could contribute to a worsening of relative unemployment
levels. The Committee recommends that by 1 May 2006 the Department
publishes the race impact assessment of the job cuts and relocations
out of London and the South East; the criteria used for selecting
staff who are likely to lose their posts; and also the ethnic
breakdown of the staff who will be leaving the Department as a
result of the job cuts. We also recommend that the Department
gives serious consideration to the effect on staff ethnicity targets
when deciding which staff will be selected for redundancy.
Ethnic monitoring of clients
58. Most of those submitting evidence to the inquiry
highlighted the importance of ethnic monitoring of clients and
its centrality to assessing the service standards to ethnic minorities.[57]
Frank Bonner of the PCS said that the lack of data on client ethnicity
leads to a lack of hard evidence and that such data is also important
as it "concentrates people's minds on a day-to-day basis."[58]
He went on to say:
"…we can have the greatest equal opportunities
policies in the world but if they are not part of the day-to-day
experience of what is going on, almost second nature, then they
get lost in the pressures of delivery."[59]
59. The importance of ethnic monitoring of benefit
claims has long been recognised and was a recommendation of a
joint pilot study conducted by CRE and the Benefits Agency in
1992/3.[60]
60. In evidence to this inquiry, both the CRE and
Disability Alliance stated that the Department will have difficulty
meeting some of its duties under race relations legislation on
the basis that if an organisation does not know the ethnicity
of its customers, it will be unable to identify and measure any
adverse or beneficial impact of its policies on people from different
ethnic groups and ensure equitable access to services.[61]
This was reinforced by other evidence submitted to the inquiry
suggesting that the Department's failure to conduct ethnic monitoring
has resulted in an information vacuum, with little hard evidence
available on issues such as the quality of service received by
minority ethnic people; the comparative level of benefit take-up;
the impact of specific policies; and the identification of best
practice.[62]
61. DWP itself acknowledged that the gathering of
customer ethnicity information is crucial in its progress towards
compliance with the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2002 but, when
submitting evidence in May 2003, admitted that data on the ethnic
composition of DWP clients was patchy.[63]
More recently, in the Race Equality Progress Report, the Department
admitted:
"Monitoring has proved to be one of the
most difficult areas for us…mainly due to the size and complexity
of the Department, and the huge number of customers that we serve
across the UK. Achieving the level of monitoring we require relies
on an ambitious programme of data linking for ethnic minority
customers, and cross-departmental working to align the IT necessary
to monitor all our staff functions."[64]
62. In May 2003, the CRE, said that, at that time,
the DWP had no reliable data on the ethnicity of the vast majority
of its customer base (eg, those using the Disability and Carers
Directorate, the CSA, the Pensions Service and the Appeals Service).[65]
More recently, in evidence, the Minister for Work said ethnic
monitoring is largely confined to Jobcentre Plus and is specific
to certain areas of delivery, such as the New Deals and Jobseeker's
Allowance. However, the Department aims to collect ethnicity data
on all working age clients by 2006. The Minister also stated that
the Pension Service have had difficulties in undertaking ethnic
monitoring due to issues around customer consent and the necessary
changes to IT systems that prevented ethnic monitoring being implemented
along with the introduction of Pension Credit.[66]
63. The RES Progress Report outlined ongoing work
on improving ethnic monitoring across DWP including preliminary
work to combine data from different sources within the Department.
The report also stated that ethnic monitoring of Pension Credit
via postcodes now takes place.[67]
When questioned on when full ethnic monitoring will take place
within the Pension Service, Barbara Burford, the DWP Director
of Diversity said:
"There is a great deal of information, not
collected operationally but collected almost on a project basis.
We have used what we have to make sure it helps us to inform
the services and the Pension Service, but we have to wait until
we install the proper large databases before we can collect that
information operationally. In the meantime, we are trying to learn
what you do with the information, because it is not just good
enough to collect it and tick the box; we have to learn how we
turn that information into the knowledge to act."[68]
64. DWP has undoubtedly made some progress in introducing
ethnic monitoring of clients since the Race Relations (Amendment)
Act was passed, but there is still a long way to go. The Committee
is concerned at the lack of speed shown by the Department in recognising
the importance of ethnic monitoring of clients to measure the
quality of service delivery and the impact of policies. We are
very surprised that the ethnic monitoring of its client base was
not introduced at the time of the inception of the Pension Service.
We are also concerned that the paucity of ethnicity data across
DWP makes it very difficult to measure whether the Department
is meeting all of its duties under the Race Relations (Amendment)
Act 2000.
65. The Committee
recommends that the Department takes urgent action to implement
ethnic monitoring across the Department and its Agencies at both
entry point and exit point and for all benefits and services.
We also recommend that the Department works closely with the DWP
Ethnic Minority Working Party, the Commission for Racial Equality
and other representative bodies to ensure that full and proper
use is made of the information gathered through ethnic monitoring.
25 Qq 242-243 Back
26 DWP,
Progress Report on Realising Race Equality in the Department
for Work and Pensions 2004, July 2004 Back
27 Ev
110 Back
28 DWP,
Progress Report on Realising Race Equality,July
2004 Back
29 Q
20 Back
30
Ev 209 Back
31
Qq 21, 23 Back
32
Qq 31, 242, Back
33
Q 242, (Mr Bismal) Back
34
Ev 110 Back
35
Ev 12 Back
36
Q 266 Back
37
Ev 12 Back
38
Q 261 Back
39
Ev 148 Back
40
DWP, Progress Report on Realising Race Equality, July 2004, pg
47 Back
41
Q 262 Back
42
Ev 9 and 12 Back
43
Q 44 Back
44
Sir Peter Gershon CBE, Releasing Resources to the Front Line:
Independent review of public sector efficiency, July 2004;
Sir Michael Lyons, Well Placed to Deliver? - Shaping the pattern
of Government service, March 2004 Back
45
HM Treasury, Pre-Budget Report, December 2004, Cm 6408 Back
46
Ev 127 Back
47
Q 21 Back
48
Ev 127 Back
49
Q 41 Back
50
See, for example, Ev 5, 11, 48, 123, 126, 199, Qq 21-22. Back
51
Ev 127 Back
52
Ev 9 Back
53
Q 263 Back
54
Q 267 Back
55
Q 269, Minister for Work Back
56
Q 269, Minister for Work Back
57
Qq 1-5, 62, 151, Back
58
Q 1 Back
59
Q 3 Back
60
Ev 24 Back
61
Ev 24, Q 100 Back
62
Qq 1-9, 62,151, Back
63
Ev 131 Back
64
DWP, Progress Report on Realising Race Equality, July 2004 Back
65
Ev 24 Back
66
Qq 272-276 Back
67
DWP (2004), Progress Report on Realising Race Equality,
July 2004, p 62 Back
68
Q 273 Back
