Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
9 FEBRUARY 2005
JANE KENNEDY,
DR BARBARA
BURFORD AND
MR MARK
FISHER
Q280 Chairman: When that comes on stream,
you will be better informed.
Dr Burford: Yes.
Chairman: Thank you. That is very helpful.
Q281 Rob Marris: Carrying on with Pension
Credit and take up, for England and Wales the Local Government
Association told us their criticism was that The Pension Service
locally did not make enough use of the better quality information
which local authorities already have. What sharing of information
is there?
Dr Burford: I will find the information
and provide you with a note on that.
Jane Kennedy: Although we have
lots of big data systems, not only do data protection issues arise,
but sometimes the systems are not renowned for being consistent
in being able to talk to each other.
Mr Fisher: Certainly we have in
the Department more data than we ever had. We have a new thing
called the Geographical Information Service which actually gets
right down to street level and you can see street by street patterns
of ethnicity and patterns of unemployment. Most of this data comes
from the census. I know The Pension Service have been using that
sort of data to look at differential patterns of take-up, and
targeting factors, particularly the local service, on those patterns
of take-up to try to improve the situation. They have been doing
a lot of really innovative work, and they have been working hard
with the local communities on a lot of good stuff. A lot of innovative
products about how to market services, how to get the message
across particularly to Bengali women and other people who would
not naturally take up Pension Credit, and I know they have been
putting a lot of effort into this. But part of this will be about
getting even more data on to the main frames as well when they
come through.
Dr Burford: We are aware that
we already collect quite a lot of useful information, but it is
really trying to use that and showing that we can use it, as we
did in the Race to Improve project, where we produced products
within a year of starting which actually made a difference, that
are now installed in temples and gurdwaras and which will be rolling
out. The work we have done in The Pension Service is designed
as a pilot. Now that we have proved it works, and we know the
managers and we know the tools that help, we can roll it out across
something like Jobcentre Plus. We could not test it in Jobcentre
Plus because it would have been too huge to test it, but we tested
it in The Pension Service.
Q282 Rob Marris: The information you
gather may be more systematic than the information we gather as
a Committee, but, in terms of looking at The Pension Service,
one of the things which has struck me and I think all of my colleagues
is that, in terms of BME take-up of Pension Credit and those sorts
of things, a local service, with face-to-face offer to the client
or the prospective taker-up, if one can use that phrase, has a
particular resonance—for fairly obvious reasons, I think,
in the BME communities, to do with language and so on. What is
the Department doing about learning from that local practice and
the face-to-face stuff, given that The Pension Service per
se does not really have a high street presence?
Jane Kennedy: We are doing a number
of things. Barbara has touched on some of them, but we are very
conscious of the need to be as flexible as possible to reach into
communities that actually are not easily accessible for big Government.
We use the ethnic minority press and radio to a great extent.
We advertise these products and target the advertising at specific
groups; for example, we would target certain advertising at carers'
groups. So we try to be as flexible and as subtle as we can in
terms of how we contact the groups. We use the voluntary sector.
We use groups that are already well-established within the communities
that we are seeking to connect with.
Q283 Rob Marris: Could I turn back a
little bit on the Pension Credit, in terms of the take-up stuff
that you mentioned Mark, in terms of the data and the street-by-street
data. The Department's progress report from last year referred
to looking at take-up through using postcode. Certainly I could
not get from that report, and I do not think my colleagues could,
the postcodes that you are using, whether you are using all the
characters or the first three or four (depending on which part
of the country) and how deeply you are going into that.
Mr Fisher: I think it is fair,
to say, without being hackneyed, that we are on a bit of a journey
here. When we started targeting, we really only had data to do
with the whole district, like the whole of Birmingham, which is
not actually very useful. We then evolved an approach which is
about wards, which is more useful but not wholly useful. Clearly
postcodes of streets are a lot better because I think a lot of
these issues are about individual streets as opposed to large
chunks of Huddersfield or wherever it happens to be. We are getting
better systems, and, as we get those better systems and more granular
data, we will use them. I am sure The Pension Service will be
using them. We certainly in Jobcentre Plus are using them to target
this activity, so that when one of our visiting officers goes
out or when we use Ethnic Minority Outreach we really know the
streets in the wards where it is really going to pay dividends.
But that is another of our systems that we are using more and
more.
Q284 Rob Marris: I am trying to get a
sense, particularly, in terms of Pension Credit and take-up, which
is what I am interested in at the moment, of how far you have
got along that process and how sophisticated the tools you have
are for gathering the data. For example, you might or might not
be able to give us a pretty accurate view of what the take-up
rate is for Pension Credit amongst BME communities.
Jane Kennedy: I think the indications
are that it reflects their position in the overall community.
But the data is not hard. We do not have the hard data yet but
we are working towards being able to have that. The Pension Service
have developed quite a wide range of tools. They produce tapes,
CDs, videos. Before they make their home visits to a certain area,
they use, as I have already said, local organisations, community
organisations, voluntary groups and religious groups. So we are
actually using, in as subtle a way as we can, as many different
entry routes into these communities, particularly if we are seeking
to reach those areas which perhaps have not engaged with us yet.
For example, the very elderly or people with disabilities—people
who are very much less inclined to come forward and claim than
other groups.
Q285 Rob Marris: I appreciate that and
I appreciate the steps the Department is taking to reach out to
those groups. I am trying to probe a little bit—and I will
finish on this—into just how robust the information is that
you have on take-up of Pension Credit.
Dr Burford: We recognise that
looking at a postcode, looking at take-up and making a judgment
about the quality of the make-up of that, is not as accurate as
we would like it. We are sampling the ethnicity of take-up and
once we have got a large enough sample we will match that against
a local community and really begin to get a much more accurate
picture.
Q286 Rob Marris: Has that sampling process
started?
Dr Burford: The process has started.
I am due in Glasgow on Valentine's Day—not a popular place
to be for me, because I live in Yorkshire.
Q287 Chairman: I am a Glaswegian!
Dr Burford: That is not the point.
It is about the fact that I am away from home.
Q288 Chairman: I am glad you made that
clear!
Dr Burford: I digress. I apologise.
Part of why I am due in Glasgow is for us to look at how we can
take this sampled information and overlay it on the geographic
system of take-up and begin to get a much more accurate picture,
because even people who think they are fairly knowledgeable about
the reactions of minority ethnic communities are finding that
the take-up pictures are not what they expected. So we are trying
to get that accurately done.
Q289 Mr Dismore: Could I go on to questions
of language. I suppose the first question is: What is the procedure
for obtaining interpreter services for clients when needed?
Jane Kennedy: Jobcentre Plus is
probably the easiest place to start, because in The Pension Service
most of that contact is over the telephone and interpreter services
can be arranged and can be available to The Pension Service customers.
Jobcentre Plus has a more flexible approach. We use a range of
different sources of language support.
Mr Fisher: The important issue
for us is that we did an external survey of our approach to language
and we had some reassuring evidence that they could not find an
example where we had not done this process properly. Clearly,
if somebody rings up or comes into an office, we have to deduce
that they have an issue with language, either by them telling
us or by the way they are dealing with us. We have a range of
options available: translation services, Language Line. It is
important that we deploy them quickly and efficiently. We did
a survey just to check that that was indeed happening and we found
that it was. They could not come up with an example where that
had not happened as it should have happened, so it gave us some
confidence that this aspect of our service is pretty robust. Obviously
we have thousands and thousands of customer contacts every day,
so I could not guarantee it happened every time but this did give
us a degree of confidence.
Q290 Mr Dismore: What is supposed to
happen? What is the process it is supposed to go through?
Mr Fisher: When somebody first
contacts us, the person they deal with, either through obvious
language difficulty or through questioning, realises that that
person is not fluent in English and has a language difficulty.
Then, as I say, there is a range of options available to that
person: the translation service, Language Line.
Q291 Mr Dismore: A range of options—fine—but
how do you actually access them.
Mr Fisher: For example, we do
National Insurance Number allocation interviews, and the rooms
themselves have telephones on the desks with Language Line available
on those telephones. If in the middle of that interview they realise
there is a language issue, they can access those phones immediately
and the translation service is provided there and then. That is
an example, that is the sort of thing we do.
Q292 Mr Dismore: What steps do you take
to ensure that staff are able to recognise that a client may not
be functioning in English?
Mr Fisher: This is part of the
staff training. I think it is pretty clear to most people in conversation
whether the person they are dealing with has an issue with the
English language. That would be readily apparent to most of our
staff. As I say, they do then have access to the relevant technology
to help that situation.
Q293 Mr Dismore: What sort of training
do people get to identify that? A lot of people just say, "Yes,
yes, yes," without understanding what they are saying yes
to, for example, without wishing to appear stupid.
Mr Fisher: It is part of a normal
training for an advisor to recognise whether there are issues
with language. In addition, we have just issued a diversity toolkit
to all staff throughout the Department which is specifically targeted
at these sorts of issues, including wider issues, cultural issues,
so that they recognise that where there are particular sensitivities,
dealing with particular sorts of people, those sensitivities are
taken account of. So this is part of normal business.
Q294 Mr Dismore: Is there an initial
payment for staff who use minority language?
Mr Fisher: We have just introduced—and
this is across the whole Department—an additional payment
of, I think, £500 for staff who regularly use another language
as part of their own work. That is a new thing and obviously we
are going to see how that goes.
Q295 Mr Dismore: One of the problems
that arises from that is that I think they have to use the language
for 25% of the time, and there is a real difficulty in monitoring
that and objectively assessing that, and that has created a lot
of problems, I understand, in people accessing this particular
bonus. What consideration have you given to that particular difficulty?
Mr Fisher: Barbara may be able
to say more about this, but we have only just done this and we
will clearly have to look at it and review it as it happens. This
is completely new and we will have to review it and look at the
conditions, look at the 25% rule, look at the take-up.
Q296 Mr Dismore: How do staff know how
to access this? Do you make efforts to identify which of your
staff do speak other languages and encourage them to participate?
Mr Fisher: I am sure we will be
doing that. As I understand it, 134 people have already—
Q297 Mr Dismore: One hundred and thirty-four?
Mr Fisher: Yes.
Q298 Mr Dismore: Out of how many?
Jane Kennedy: The DWP employees
number about 120,000.
Mr Fisher: Yes, so 1%.
Q299 Chairman: Not a big number.
Mr Fisher: Not a big number yet.
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