Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
29 OCTOBER 2003
MS KATIE
LANE, MS
FOSUAH POKU,
MR RICHARD
WILSON, MS
DEE SPRINGER,
MR FRANK
BONNER AND
MR ROLAND
BIOSAH
Q20 Mr Dismore: I would not argue
with that. I am glad I have made the point. Mr Biosah, would you
like to comment on some of those issues?
Mr Biosah: Yes. Both the Department
and the union are at the same stage, in the context that the CMS
is supposed to deliver a facility, when the computer comes on
stream, whereby individual members can go in and amend their own
details. The union is going to be doing the same. By the end of
November, every member of the union can go into the system with
their own separate password and amend their own details, so that,
maybe, with a bit of luck, come January we will know who is who,
where everybody is based. I think the union has tried very hard
to help in this organisation. I was at the very first monitoring
exercise, where we were promised at the time that if we had 60%
we could do some work with it. When we got the 60%, the goal post
was moved: it became 70, 80, 90. The last time I have just been
around, I have been asked by black members: "How many times
do you want me to tell them I am black?" You see, this is
the question. Therefore people have asked me, "Roland, what
do you suggest?" I have tried very hard to explain it very
simply: "Let's not waste money by targeting everybody in
DWP any more. We know those who sent in the application forms.
Our next move should be to target those who have not sent in a
form, give them a deadline." Because I believe very passionately
in it being voluntary, therefore, if that second exercise has
not targeted that little grouping that is stopping us from getting
100% or whatever, let's then say, "Okay, this is the cut-off
point. We now have a few more people, everybody else is going
to be put in as white, but you have a time to amend it" and
put a deadline there, so the element of being done voluntarily
is still there. You see, my concern is that we keep monitoring
and monitoring and monitoring and what then happens is that people
begin to wonder what it is all about because it does not seem
to have any effect on the way we are processing things.
Q21 Mr Dismore: Could I turn to a
slightly different issue and that is in the context of Jobcentre
Plus's decision to move a lot of staff out of London. It is clear
to me that there are significant regional variations, both in
the population at large and in DWP's own workforce. Even if we
do not have the statistics to prove it, I think that is self-evident.
I understand from PCS in London that they had a meeting with the
management on 14 October and management referred to the relocation
of work from London as "ethnicity versus efficiency".
I am extremely concerned about that. I understand it was in the
context of DWP management nationally saying that they thought
it was more efficient to do work out of London, whereas DWP in
London thought that they had some responsibility to provide employment
in areas where the BME population is a much higher proportion.
Do you have any knowledge of those issues? Would you like to comment
on them?
Mr Bonner: We do acknowledge and
think that this is probably one of the biggest issues that will
affect minority ethnic groups. We are already in a position, in
terms of the pensions organisation, that there are no call centres
in London so black and minority ethnic pensioners have to deal
with people in Norwich, Liverpool, wherever. A point that has
been made to me is that it is a bit of an irony that Jobcentre
Plus insists on seeing people every fortnight, some of whom would
rather not be seen, when numbers of pensioners who would like
to be seen cannot get to be seen and have to deal with issues
on the telephone. The fact that something in the order of more
than 60% of the phone calls that the pension service gets are
from people acting on behalf of pensioners rather than pensioners
themselves, is an issue, it seems. In terms of the work being
moved out of London, it will have a significant impact because
disproportionately the numbers of people in the basic grades in
London are from black and minority ethnic communities. In many
offices a white face on the front line is unusual. It would be
primarily those jobs which are being migrated out by call centres.
Q22 Mr Dismore: The effect of that,
presumably, will be that Jobcentre Plus will find it that much
harder to meet their own targets.
Mr Bonner: I think that is true.
They have opened up the employment direct-call centre at Pembroke
Dock—this week, I think—which deals with that. There
are operational issues, we think: it means employers in London,
looking for work, are having to contact people in Wales who, with
the best will in the world, do not have detailed knowledge of
the local labour markets—something that we think can and
should be done in London. That is not to say that it cannot be
done by a call centre, but location is important. It also means,
as Jobcentre Plus itself rolls out and all the other call centres
are moved out of London, that people making contact about benefit
queries and so on will be making contact with call centres outside
London primarily in areas that do not have any significant ethnic
minority population—Pembroke Dock being a case in point.
That will clearly affect jobs for people from black and ethnic
minority communities, but it will also further exacerbate the
points that others have made about language difficulties and so
on.
Q23 Mr Dismore: We may come back
to that later, but the other point I wanted to raise with you
briefly, if I may, is the question of the concentration of BME
employees in the lower grades. The DWP talked about setting inspiration
of equality targets and so forth. Do you think that is actually
going to help get people up the greasy pole to the top or not?
If not, what do you think they should be doing? Have you made
those representations to the Department?
Mr Bonner: I think they are aspirational
rather than inspirational targets! Obviously it helps but I do
not think it really takes us forward significantly. If the organisation
were serious about dealing with it and if the organisation has
a good culture internally in relation to black and minority ethnic
groups, that will be reflected in the services provided to them
as well. I think you have to start at the top, in a sense: Why
is there nobody on the Jobcentre Plus boards? Never has been.
Why is there nobody on the Child Support Agency board from black
and ethnic minority groups, given that they have recruited externally
as well as internally? I think that is the route into it. Until
we start to see it at the top, all that will happen is we will
get loads of people on the front line doing the sharp end and
the hard work but not getting the support and not seeing it develop
up through the organisation and not seeing that sort of culture
that is key to the whole change developing.
Q24 Ms Buck: We are going to ask
a couple of questions about the language issues in a minute, because
clearly they are significant, but could I just test one or two
of you, perhaps the CAB, and ask: Is there a danger that we are
overplaying the language issue as being one of the main drivers
of potential disadvantage for minority ethnic communities? The
reason I say that is partly to explore other barriers but also,
when you get beneath the surface of black and minority ethnic
communities, you see these dramatic variations and we have seen,
for example, that the black British and people from Afro-Caribbean
backgrounds will also be severely disadvantaged in many respects
and in other services without, presumably, for the most part,
the language barrier being part of the problem. What can we learn
from those variations? What does it tell us about there being
other issues than the oft-quoted language barrier?
Ms Lane: That certainly is an
interesting one. I think it is right in that overplaying it may
hide other things but I think monitoring is a thing that would
bring that up better than our evidence would. In our evidence
it is easier to see if the problem is a language problem, because
it is easier to see that a person has not understood, that that
has led to a delay, they need help filling in the form. That is
a clearer thing to pick up on. Other barriers are less clear.
But I think it is really important that those cultural things
that we picked up on, in our evidence that are often misunderstood,
are also looked at. There is the question of asylum seekers—and
the issues are not necessarily language things. With regards to
the benefit system, it is difficult to tell around the discretionary
issue, again, whether there is discrimination in there. That is
the other thing that we do need monitoring on, because maybe for
the discretionary social fund there may be things where people
do not understand needs because needs may be different and priorities
may be different within different cultural groups. For asylum
seekers, the issues there are obviously language, for a large
number of people, but there are other issues that you link to
various groups. As I say, we have emphasised language because
it is a very clear one to pick up on, but there are other issues.
Ms Poku: I would say that the
language issue has been very effective in highlighting issues
and problems which affect ethnic minorities, and for that matter
people who are not from ethnic minorities. For instance, we have
just heard in relation to elderly people that 60% of calls to
call centres are by advocates, because for the most part elderly
people do not like dealing with the Department by telephone. Just
to highlight it, we had a client who was 85, an Asian language
speaker, who wanted to make a back-dated payment for income support
because she had gone abroad because of an ill relative and had
come back. It took five months and numerous calls from one of
our advisers to Dundee to get the problem sorted out. I actually
think it is useful, in that it highlights a lot of problems for
other groups of people, including other black and ethnic minority
people. I do not think we can overplay it. I think we have to
make sure that we do not underplay the other issues. The other
issues are quite often more difficult to identify. There is a
nervousness from black people and ethnic minority people about
highlighting issues around race, particularly if they are having
to deal with and try to resolve problems with the Benefits Agency.
For instance, asylum seekers and refugees often come into us and
say they get a feeling that they are being treated in a particular
way. If we say we want to highlight it or should we highlight
it, they say, "No, we don't want that to happen, because
we feel that that may impact on our benefits claim." People
maybe who are going through challenging decisions, appeals, are
not always in the position of being able to raise concerns effectively
which they may have because of fears of how that is going to impact
on the appeal process. As has already been said, language is always
a readily and easily identifiable thing, but I think it does help
to highlight the other issues for other people.
Ms Lane: There was a case we received
recently where a decision about living-together rules can be misunderstood
because of cultural issues. We have had a number of cases where
people have been investigated after they have undergone a divorce
but in certain Asian communities that would not necessarily mean
that they live in separate houses, at least in the short term.
People have been challenged about that. Improved training on cultural
reasons and cultural issues would improve the way those kind of
cases are dealt with rather than making assumptions about living
together. Rules that are more discretionary and complex can sometimes
lead to advisers/staff taking a simplistic way of seeing things
rather than thinking: "Let's dig a bit deeper here and see
what the real issues are." It is the same with discretionary
decisions about habitual residence tests and things like that.
Often it is the automatic simple answer that is given, rather
than saying, "Let's examine this. What are the real issues?"
If someone is late for an appointment or does not turn up for
their medical assessment, is it because they are being awkward
or is it because they have seen that it is a male doctor, they
did not know they could request a female doctor and they feel
it is really inappropriate to have that? Or is it because the
appointment was set at very short notice and they wanted to bring
their own interpreter and they were not able to do that: the person
who regularly interprets for them could not get a day off work
and things like that? Sometimes it is digging deeper to see what
is the real reason, and getting more proactive actions from Jobcentre
Plus staff rather than assuming non-compliance or just assuming
that things have been understood, making sure that people do know
what is available to them. When looking at what is currently available
in terms of having correspondence in their own language, I see
that the Jobcentre Plus charter says that this facility is apparently
available, but how many people know about that? We think it is
encouraging to see things in the Race Equality Scheme that enhance
and build on all these things, but there is actually quite a lot
on paper that is available to black and ethnic minority groups
now but I just wonder how many people know about it and how many
people are proactively told, "Do you know, we can help you
with this, this and this" rather than wait until they are
asked. You can only ask for something if you know it exists.
Q25 Ms Buck: Does this not raise
the question about the role of both your types of organisations
and the less formal organisations of and for ethnic minority communities?
Do you feel, as advice and advocacy organisations that you are
resourced to a degree that would enable you to fulfil that function?
Ms Lane: I think we always have
resource issues. Interpretation services are very expensive. Last
year, particularly after dispersal of asylum seekers, there was
one bureau in Manchester that suddenly got a phone bill for the
language line for £2,000 in one month. Obviously that was
completely out of their price range, but as part of the membership
criteria of bureaux they have to do a community needs assessment
of their local area and look at language to work to build a service
that would meet the needs of the community. There are always cost
issues there. The Legal Services Commission fund bureaux with
legal service contracts and pay for the costs for that, but that
leaves lots of bureaux that are having to cover their own costs
or make do, and then, when local Jobcentre Plus offices see someone
with a language difficulty, they immediately refer someone to
a CAB. One bureau is saying that they get one referral at least
every day for someone to just help with filling in their forms
because they need help with the English. That is a huge cost burden
on bureaux, with valued funding on that increased all the time.
Ms Poku: I think, for a voluntary
sector organisation, we do a very good job. The majority of our
staff are volunteers. The CAB actively recruits volunteers and
we actively try to recruit staff and volunteers from across the
board. We actually do very well in monitoring because we do it
on an annual basis. For instance, I am the Director at the Wandsworth
CAB Service, and we have sought and got funding for an Asian advice
project which is based in a local Asian community centre. It employs
two part-time advisers who speak four Asian languages, but where
we are hampered is that we always have to go out and seek resources
from various charitable trusts and funding bodies, et cetera.
So the provision is different across the service: some bureaux
are able to provide it; some are not.
Q26 Ms Buck: Both Ms Springer and
you have briefly alluded to the issue of the use of discretionary
powers. What information do you have from data which you collect
and monitor that would guide the Committee as to whether there
is, indeed, a problem on the use of discretionary powers which
works against the interests of black and minority ethnic communities?
Ms Lane: We do not have statistical
evidence on the details of those things and that is why it would
be hugely valuable. We can see our evidence on habitual residence
tests and the problems we see on that. We see that, for example,
on varying communities, and it is difficult to see why this rule
is being applied in this way. It is the same with the Social Fund,
and, again, the Social Fund problems we have picked up in our
written evidence. There was a case we heard of last week where
a woman was trying to appeal or question her Social Fund budgeting
loan which she had been given, which was a quarter of what she
had asked for, and she was given an interview over the phone.
She was not understanding, she was not communicating effectively,
and that is a really poor quality way of someone going through
an appeal or reviewing their decision. So we see those kinds of
things. But in terms of statistical data, we do not collect the
detail.
Q27 Ms Buck: You do not monitor your
own clients?
Ms Poku: Yes, we do. The evidence
we have illustrates the problems. By definition we see a disproportionate
amount of people who have problems with the Department for Work
and Pensions. We can provide evidence which illustrates the problems.
In terms of the monitoring, this is something that we asked our
local office for years ago, for instance, with the habitual residence
test. That should be down to the Department. It would be very
useful for us to see, in terms of how many people appeal against
habitual residence refusals, how many of those came from ethnic
minority groups. I actually do not think that is the CAB's responsibility
because we will not have access to all of that data.
Q28 Ms Buck: We will be, no doubt,
raising these questions elsewhere. From our point of view it is
helpful for organisations that are doing the delivery, advice
and advocacy on the ground; you presumably have your own data
and that data gives us the basis on which we can ask questions
of others.
Ms Poku: Ours is very much illustrative
data. What happens is an advisor sees a client, and the client
feels that they have been treated in a particular way which is
outrageous, or the adviser feels that there are problems with
the administration. What we will do is paint a picture, so the
adviser will produce evidence which describes what that person's
experience is. That is how we build up and monitor the problems
which people bring into us. I think it is useful if it is used
alongside any monitoring data which is collected either by ourselves
or by others. We do do monitoring but it is not on a systematic
basis. We did a big benefits administration campaign last year
where we actually head-counted issues and problems which people
brought into us.
Q29 Mrs Humble: The CAB has given
us examples of how it has identified problems that people encounter
when they go to benefits offices. Can I then address my comments
to the PCS, because you have quite explicitly stated in your evidence
that you believe that there are "embedded racist attitudes
in the Department". You particularly single out the anti-fraud
initiatives. What evidence do you have of that?
Mr Biosah: We have not been collecting
any secret statistics about what is actually going on. Again,
it is more to do with circumstantial evidence of what is happening
within the Department. When I say "circumstantial evidence"
there are a couple of questions which I have been asked. For instance,
the question about interpretation. Staff within the DSS used to
interpret and get paid for it. Suddenly they now decide to employ
outsiders who cost a lot more money. Two: we had links with the
Gurdwaras, the mosques, and at the earliest opportunity they took
it away. We are talking about promotion within the service. We
found that six departments within the Civil Service were explored
within the last few years and it was very, very apparent that
black people were getting underpaid. OK, they did not say it was
racist but the fact of the matter is that they are paying less
for promotional positions, etc, etc.
Q30 Mrs Humble: How do you know that
if you do not do the monitoring? You have said to us that you
do not actively monitor the situation, so how can you say that
racism is embedded? It is a very serious accusation. Is it just
a few people coming to you with stories, and are you then building
a wider picture out of those few people?
Mr Biosah: What I am saying is
that we have not real, hard evidence. I tried to explain, it is
mainly circumstantial, because we, as black civil servants, are
within the system. We are the ones who try. There are things like
third-party attitudes towards black members of staff on the frontline;
there is the business about the dress code, there are things like
moving 20,000 jobs out of London which is going to affect us in
a lot of different ways from our communities. At the end of the
day people are being told that this is being done as a sort of
social engineering. It was referred to as social engineering by
somebody; that as far as they are concerned, maybe if they move
the jobs out of London minority people will go after the jobs.
Well, it does not happen like that because you live within a community
for all sorts of reasons.
Q31 Mrs Humble: What response have
you had from the Department to your concerns? I assume you have
expressed concerns to the Department. If you have, what response
have you had back from them?
Mr Biosah: I think the best way
to illustrate this is to give you an example. The flagship for
the Department on progressing and the fulfilling of targets of
low representation of black people within the senior Civil Service
is "realising the potential" programme. Now, everybody
knows that. Within four years we have managed to get seven black
Grade 7s. There is a halt on it at present because we are doing
some review. It is ridiculous. We talk about this moving of jobs
out of London, explaining very clearly the adverse effects. Now
I have even made it clear to them that it is against the law because
the Race Relation (Amendment) Act 2000 does state very clearly
that you need to do an impact analysis before you put your programme
into effect. That impact analysis has not been done and they refuse
to do it. So where does that leave us? When you make your statement
very clearly and you try the best you can to help and all you
get is this type of block "We need to deliver X, we need
to deliver Y", that is it. Everything that has built up over
the DHSS, the DSS, and the gradual process of developing a very
sensitive Civil Service that understands the communities which
we serve is no longer there. This is the problem.
Mr Bonner: Can I add a point to
that? For instance, we know from elsewhere—CRE and others—that
there are concerns that performance pay systems can adversely
affect people from minority ethnic groups. We have been trying
for years now—it almost seems like forever—to get
the Department to equality-proof the pay systems that they want
to introduce, and we have been unable to get them to do it. It
is always "We will do it next year". I think those are
the sorts of things that drive people's attitudes. We picked up,
I think, in the evidence we put to you the example from the counter-intelligence
newsletter to fraud staff which identified Jamaicans as a group.
Now, you may take the view that that is simply infelicitous use
of language—personally I do not. I think you have to be
careful how you identify people. Clearly there is an issue about
fraud that has to be addressed and nobody is arguing that, but
how you address it and how you identify people who are potentially
defrauding the Department and taxpayers generally is an important
issue. If you identify them on a racial basis, then it seems to
us that it does raise a question about what the mind-set is of
the people at fairly senior levels who are pitching those types
of things. As Roland says, there is a range of things that really
do give our black and ethnic minority members some cause for concern.
Q32 Mrs Humble: So what would this
network of ethnic minority liaison officers do that you are suggesting
the Department set up? What have they said about it?
Mr Biosah: We had it in Birmingham,
we had it in Leicester. We minority people not only live in our
communities, we go to our mosques, we go to our gurdawaras. This
is the link between our communities and the Department. Black
people go in there, they bring up the issue of milk tokens and
they mention to old people things like Winter Fuel Allowance and
advise people who have difficulty getting jobs, and we tell them
about it free of charge and in our own time. We demand to be paid
because if you can speak Spanish or French you get paid for it,
but if you can speak Gujarati or Bengali or Urdu you might not.
These are the slight changes which we would like to put in place
to make sure that we are not only a staff serving the public well,
we are also taking information from the Department into our communities.
It is a two-way thing, which we work beautifully. It worked at
Leicester, for instance, but at the very first sign of something
that is happening, it was abandoned.
Q33 Mrs Humble: My final question:
can you give us some information in writing because we are running
out of time. Most of your comments have concerned benefit delivery,
and they have not covered the other agencies—the CSA, the
Employment Service, etc. The Department's response has tended
to concentrate on those areas. Could you just give us some comments
in writing on the wider issues, the other areas that the Department
for Work and Pensions covers if you think that there are concerns,
obviously, about service delivery—New Deal, etc?
Mr Biosah: Certainly.
Q34 Mr Dismore: I wanted to talk
about some of these language issues but they have already, in
the main, been dealt with. Could I ask particularly the voluntary
organisations if they could do us a note to say what are the languages
they think the DWP should be translating its main literature into,
and whether they think there are other leaflets or forms or whatever
that it is not translating at all that it ought to? If you give
us a lot of detail on that that might help, rather than trying
to go through that now. I would also like to pick up the point
that Mr Biosah made on the way the DWP uses or does not effectively
use bi-lingual staff. Did I get it right from what you were saying
that if somebody speaks a Western European language they get an
add-on in their wages for that, but if they speak a language from
Asia or Africa they do not?
Mr Biosah: It is even a bit more
funny than that, because what happens is although you have somebody
in the office who speaks Gujarati or Urdu you are instructed to
go onto the interpretation line, you are not supposed to allow
that person to do it.
Q35 Mr Dismore: So even though you
have people who speak the minority languages—
Mr Biosah: We use an interpreter.
Q36 Mr Dismore: They are not allowed
to use those skills?
Mr Biosah: You are laughing, but
this is the type of logic that I find difficult to understand.
Mr Bonner: We have to use the
Language Line, which the Department has to pay for.
Q37 Mr Dismore: I heard the other
day that as far as Language Line is concerned in one of the DWP
offices in my own constituency, one member of staff was criticised
for using Language Line. I do not suppose you have any direct
knowledge of that. It does seem to me that it might be helpful
if you could give us a more detailed note on this particular aspect
of both terms and conditions in relation to discrimination, it
seems to me, between the traditional languages we all learn at
school and languages that minority communities speak. Both in
terms of conditions and wages, and also in the rules in relation
to the use of people who actually are fluent in minority languages
not being allowed to use them, because that seems bizarre to me.
The other point I would like to put briefly to the CAB is whether
they have been consulted on the proposal that they should be using
the interpreters at appeal tribunals to improve the quality of
service. Have you been consulted on that?
Ms Lane: They do already offer
the services of interpreters at tribunals.
Q38 Mr Dismore: I understand that
they are proposing to review their policy on this.
Ms Lane: We have not as yet. I
understand as part of the Race Equality Scheme they are reviewing
that currently and it is something we would be—
Q39 Mr Dismore: You have not been
consulted so far?
Ms Lane: No.
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