Examination of Witness (Questions 160-179)
23 JUNE 2004
MS VANESSA
DAVIS
Q160 Mr Goodman: What is the actual evidence
about underclaiming from these ethnic minority groups compared
to underclaiming among other groups? Is there any hard evidence?
Is the Department looking at it, as far as you know?
Ms Davis: The answer is we do
not have any hard evidence. We have anecdotal evidence but hard
evidence we do not have, other than some very small scale surveys
which we do when people ring our advice lines but that is not
sufficient. But if the Disability Benefits Directorate are not
ethnically monitoring their claims, how would there be evidence
anywhere?
Q161 Ms Buck: Just pursuing that for
a moment, I had a debate yesterday on discrimination facing Muslim
communities in Britain and I was really struck by the research
I did on that which I had not uncovered before which was twofold:
one was the disproportionate levels of poverty amongst particularly
Pakistani Bangladeshi but also some other communities, some of
which are too small to be measured in the 2001 Census, but also
the staggering disproportion in self-reported longstanding sickness
and disability amongst the Bangladeshi community, and I wondered
whether anyone had looked at or should be looking at the mapping
of some of that Census data, because that should flag up, and
I think it will flag up very clearly, that there is a geographical
mismatch that shows high levels of sickness but lower levels of
benefit claim among particular minority ethnic communities, which
is de facto evidence of some failure, either in take-up, outreach,
or something along those lines. Have you any comments on that?
Ms Davis: I agree and I am aware
of those kind of general facts that there are higher levels of
poverty and higher levels of disability in long term illness.
Whether or not that translates into take-up figures in terms of
statistics I do not know because I do not know anybody who is
measuring it, and this is the main problem. Until that information
is collected statistically nobody really has a proper baseline
to be able to comment or say, "Okay, here is where we are
at and now we need to address this problem in this way and this
problem in that way", and preparing for today I realised
it is very difficult because we do not have enough evidence; it
is just not being collected. There are lots of small scale exercises
to look at it; we have done our projects; there are lots of pieces
of research around, but the hard evidence everybody needs in order
to be able to respond and address this fully is not available,
and it is only going to come when claims start being monitored.
What I wanted to say about monitoring, if I may, is that there
are different ways of monitoring and local authorities have been
doing it for years and years, and I know there are some views
that people do not like filling in ethnic minority forms, and
that is possibly why the Department for Work and Pensions are
reluctant to begin monitoring, but there is no evidence to say
that people will not do it and those organisations that do ethnic
monitoring will get returns, so people are filling them in and
I think it is the Department's responsibility to get the message
across that this is something that is positive, and not negative.
I think people need to be told "we need to collect this information
so that we can reach groups that we are not reaching", and
that is a very important thing because if a department is saying
that people do not like filling the forms in—and I know
that is not the only reason why it is not being done, by any means—then
the message needs to be thought through. You can get somebody
to fill in a sheet which they tick and give their ethnic origin
which can get separated from their claim form and you have some
kind of evidence, if you like. The problem is if you do not track
that through right to the point of assessment on a claim, you
are not going to be able to easily carry all the evidence you
have right through from the point of claim or the point of contact
to when they actually have their claim assessed, and I think that
is most important. The monitoring needs to be tracked right through
to the very end, I do not have a suggestion about how that could
happen but I think it would be very foolish to just do it as a
tick box exercise and perhaps get those forms removed, which happens
a lot in recruitment and in a range of other issues where people
will send things back anonymously and you have no way of tracking
that. In terms of benefit provision and take-up and assessment
and award you have to track it from the point of contact right
through to the very end of the claim, whatever the outcome is.
Until that happens, we are not going to have a picture at all.
It is interesting that the race equality scheme has been written
and there are lots of great things in there, but this is all written
on the back of having no evidence and no statistics, so until
the evidence is there and the statistics I cannot see how anybody
can actively measure this more fully.
Q162 Mr Goodman: Just turning away for
a moment from monitoring and statistics and all that to something
broader, to culture, given the intimate nature of these benefits
there is clearly a problem in constituencies like mine, and I
suspect Karen Buck's, which is that for women in these communities,
and particularly older women, if you are going into a state facility
in which members of your community may not be prominent and you
are having to deal with men who are making the assessment, you
may be unwilling, probably would be, to go. What can be done about
that? How can Jobcentre Plus offices become more welcoming?
Ms Davis: There is a range of
different approaches to that. There is the internal influence,
if you like, in terms of staff and environment, and there is the
external influence which is telling people that the service is
there, and those are both as important as each other on one level,
but essentially if people do not know the service is there it
does not matter how fantastic the staff are, it is not going to
help. In terms of the internal environment, the offices need to
be welcoming and also in terms of language, and when we visited
some Jobcentre Plus offices ourselves when they were first set
up in Streatham, we heard staff making comments which were outrageous.
We actually heard staff saying, "These women, they come in
here with their kids, I do not know why they are coming in here".
We overheard somebody saying that, they did not say it directly
to us, but these women had been called in for work related interviews.
They did not just drift in; they had been asked to come into the
office, and staff were making comments like that. That is one
example and I am sure it is not happening everywhere but it does
paint a picture, and we were there visiting and you could imagine
that somebody might have said "Don't make any comments today,
we have visitors in"—at best! I have worked in those
offices and I know what it is like to be a member of staff working
on the front line. I have done that job, and I do not think people
often feel fully equipped to be able to deal with the difference
they get faced with on a daily basis. They might have a Bangladeshi
woman with her issues or a Jewish person with different problems,
so we have a whole range of issues, and the cultural awareness
in the Department in terms of the front line staff and knowing
what exists further up, in our opinion, is not sufficient in order
for people to feel comfortable with facing somebody, sitting at
the other side of the desk, who has come from a completely different
background, and has completely different ideas about what disabled
means, what benefit means, that they have a right to claim benefits,
that actually they are there to be helped into work rather than
be forced. There are all these issues which are hard to address
with so many different clients that are coming in, so staff need
to have more cultural awareness and it needs to be done in a way
that works, not in a way that just says, "Okay, we have done
it, we have given them some awareness of diversity" and that
is it. They need to have that tested to see whether it is making
a difference, and that will probably mean working with community
groups, with big diversity organisations that are doing work perhaps
on local levels. So that is the internal environment. Externally
it is about reaching people and letting them know that the services
they get in these offices are going to meet the needs they have,
and the key thing is benefits advice. We are talking about disability
benefits and the majority of disabled people are over pension
age, we know this, and you are going to get ethnic minority elders
who we already know find it difficult to get their information,
so if we are talking about disability benefits there is already
a mismatch as far as many clients are concerned because they are
going to go to a Jobcentre Plus office to get information about
benefits that are nothing to do with work, and it is okay that
they go there but the staff need to make sure they have sufficient
training to give proper benefits advice, and the evidence we have
on that is that many personal advisers do not have in-depth training
knowledge. Some do and some do not. We have produced two guides
called Moving into Work and Self-employment. Why not?
and we spoke to many disability employment advisers in Jobcentre
Plus offices to ask whether the information in there was useful,
and would it help to give better benefits advice to clients, and
lots of Jobcentre Plus offices bought these guides. I know what
the training is like because I delivered the training too, so
there is a whole range of issues. There is the internal environment
and the external environment, and internally staff need to feel
that what they are doing is good and valued and they need to have
the correct training and it needs to be updated and tested. There
is no point in saying, "We have done that; we have done our
diversity training for our staff"; it needs to be tested.
If you do not test it with community groups and the people you
are trying to serve you are never going to know whether it is
making any difference, and the Department will be investing thousands,
or millions maybe, of pounds in training staff and so on that
I am not sure are being tested for effectiveness.
Q163 Mr Goodman: Presumably you would
give the same sort of answer about the internal dimension, if
I asked about what you call the culture of stigma and shame about
claiming benefits? Is that right?
Ms Davis: It is, and that is about
following the Inland Revenue's example of high profile promotion
about benefits, pension credit. We have seen big posters everywhere,
saying "Claim it, it is yours". When the tax credits
were coming in there was not a day that went past without seeing
an advertisement on the TV or in the newspapers. We do not get
that sort of promotion of information about benefits, particularly
disability benefits. There will be adverts possibly for Jobcentre
Plus but there is not anything that is going to make somebody
think "Okay, that is about me, I can go and do that".
So the stigma and shame comes for everybody, let alone BME individuals
for whom the stigma and shame we understand is greater because
of the historic fact that people have come over to this country
and do not want to feel like they are going cap in hand, and unless
you let people know it is their right to claim something then
people sometimes have an issue with going and asking for it, so
I think the promotion of benefits would be highly improved if
the Department followed the Inland Revenue's approach to this.
As we all know from what is happening in the tax credit office
the claims are huge, but it works and people do not feel shame
about going to claim tax credits.
Q164 Mrs Humble: Can I ask you a question
about the culture of the appropriate services, a few years ago
our predecessor committee, the Social Security Select Committee,
did a report on the Benefits Agency Medical Service and one of
the recommendations was that there should be female doctors available
for claimants, especially women from minority ethnic communities
who felt uncomfortable discussing their medical complaints and
illnesses with male doctors. Of course, neither the Department
nor SEMA at the time could give us an absolute assurance but we
were told they would do their best to increase the number of female
doctors so that it would not act as a disincentive to minority
ethnic women especially those with disabilities. From your experience,
are you finding that those women doctors are there, because you
have talked about training for the staff in the offices but of
course for many disability benefits you will also have an input
from doctors?
Ms Davis: The short answer is,
no, because we have not been collecting any recent information
on that; but I know that Dial UK had a campaign called "The
Bitter Pill" which was looking at exactly those issues, and
it is possible that you might be able to get some information
from them. I do not know what has happened with their project
since, but certainly they were looking at those issues, a whole
range of issues about seeing the doctors and how they were interacting
with people, the reports they were writing and the language they
were using. There is a whole . . . I know there has been some
work done on that but we have not fed into that recently, but
I am aware of that problem. We have anecdotal evidence of that.
People will ring our advice lines and say, "I had a doctor
come round to visit me, and he stayed for 10 minutes and this
happened. I could not read the report I had to sign it",
and that has been the case since that system was introduced. Whether
it is improving for the ethnic minority, particularly for females,
women who would prefer to have a female doctor, I could not say.
I am not sure.
Q165 Vera Baird: Could I ask you more
about the Race Equality Scheme?
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q166 Vera Baird: You called it, I think,
a significant step in terms of commitment, but you also regard
it as something of a missed opportunity, maybe more good intentions
than reality, I do not know, a theme we have touched on already,
typical of the Department. Tell me what you think of it as a whole.
What your main criticisms of it are and what else you think it
should contain?
Ms Davis: Yes. I would like to
reiterate that we did welcome it; and it came out when we were
in the middle of writing our report, so we delayed our report
because we wanted to read it, all 300 pages of it also, and there
are a number of criticisms. Firstly, in order for a race equality
scheme to be useful for the Department you need to be able to
have external people having a look at it and assessing whether
the suggestions and the priorities in that scheme are going to
work; and, as we said in our report, the language of the race
equality scheme itself very much indicated that people who were
going to be able to access that were either people working in
the Department or people that had an intimate understanding of
how the Department works. If you do not have that, then how can
you assess whether this scheme is going to be good or not? Luckily,
when I was reading it and when the people who were working on
the report were reading it, we could give some input to that because
I had worked in the Department, but if we had not that would have
been a problem. So the language itself is a problem; its length
was another problem. It is a massive document, and it is very
disjointed because there are lots of different areas of responsibility
which do not seem to be particularly seamlessly pulled together
in the report. Yes, we have our doubts that the scheme will effect
changes in the operational frontline, and I think essentially
that is what makes the difference: the race equality scheme has
to make a difference at the frontline, and, if it does not, then
it is not working. It is as simple as that. There were a range
of deadlines which were laid down in that race equality scheme,
many of which have passed. There were lots of things that were
meant to be finished last year and some in March this year, and
I know that in the departmental report there were two paragraphs
about the progress that had been made, and there was nothing specific
against the targets that were set down in the race equality scheme.
So who is monitoring what is actually happening? I guess one of
our main criticisms of it, and I may be wrong about this, but
everything I have read indicates that I am not, that there is
a three-year cycle of the race equality scheme; so we are going
to have to wait three years to see whether those things that they
said are going to be done are actually achieved, and I do not
know whether or not anybody externally is going to be looking
at it. I know that the CRE will be taking a great interest in
that, obviously because of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act.
For example, the department was meant to set up a race assessment
tour by September 2003 which would test all the policies against
the race equality standards. I cannot find any information anywhere
as to whether or not that has been developed, whether it is working
and whether or not these policies are matching up with the race
equality standards. I guess our main criticism is it is just a
great big document that is not accessible to many people, and
yet to date I cannot see anything that says, "Okay, we have
done this now and this is what is happening", and I know
it is early days—nobody is expecting things to happen over
night because it is a massive department—but three years
is quite a long time to wait. So I would like to see some sort
of external assessment along the way, rather than waiting for
three years to pass.
Q167 Vera Baird: There was not much,
as you say, in the departmental report a year on to be able to
allow anyone to estimate whether progress has been made?
Ms Davis: No.
Q168 Vera Baird: Do you feel that the
RES does have targets and dates by which they should be met?
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q169 Vera Baird: You say that those have
not been met?
Ms Davis: No, I said I do not
know.
Q170 Vera Baird: You do not know because
there is not the information?
Ms Davis: Absolutely. I cannot
find any information. If it is there, it is hidden somewhere,
but I have not been able to find it.
Q171 Vera Baird: The document itself
is unwieldy and written, as it were, are you saying, for a sort
of "in-crowd"?
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q172 Vera Baird: So not so easy to scrutinise
by external people like you, for instance, if you want to?
Ms Davis: Yes. Organisations are
working in the communities that this scheme is supposed to be
supporting, if you like, so what we would ask for is that consultation
with community groups actually takes place in direct relation
to the difference, the impact, that the RES implies it is going
to make. You actually have to test it and you have to test it
with the groups that you are trying to reach, and if you do not
test it with those groups, then it is not worth the paper that
it is written on.
Q173 Vera Baird: At present there is
no way of knowing whether the best practice that is supposed to
encourage and disseminate is occurring?
Ms Davis: No, not at the moment.
Q174 Vera Baird: So your welcome for
it was just because there is one?
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q175 Vera Baird: And no more?
Ms Davis: We are glad it has been
done. It is something, but, yes, lots of buts.
Q176 Vera Baird: You made the point that
it is important that there should be comprehensible feed-back?
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q177 Vera Baird: At stages?
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q178 Vera Baird: And not just waiting
for the end.
Ms Davis: Yes.
Q179 Vera Baird: That seems very realistic.
Did you find it disappointing? Were you surprised that there was
so little in this first annual report?
Ms Davis: No, I was not surprised.
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