Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT HON
ALAN JOHNSON
MP, MS ALEXIS
CLEVELAND AND
MR ROD
CLARK
2 FEBRUARY 2005
Q20 Chairman: I want to move to the
importance of the Local Service in a moment, but just staying
with the important question that Nigel asked about wave three,
am I right in thinking that wave three, as I understood it from
the Glasgow presentation, is when the ability to get other benefits
connected to the customer really begins to be taken up? I understand
that there is an improvement in the customer/client service until
then, but the actual financial advantage comes in wave three.
The one thing that we came away with on Monday—and I think
I speak for all my colleagues—is that we were looking at
what we considered to be a winner, yet somebody was saying but
we are going to wait until CSR 2006 to make sure we are really,
really, really going to do this. It seemed to me to be completely
perverse that there was even the scintilla of a question mark
that this was going to be stopped in wave three, because from
our point of view, constituency-wise, that is when the real advantages
start to kick in because people get entitlements which we are
all struggling to try and get them connected with. Wave three
is the moment when that arrives, yet there is a question mark
about the funding between wave two and wave three. It seems to
be a daft way of planning what looks like a good scheme.
Ms Cleveland: Part of it is just
making it affordable across the whole Department, so you have
to look at the priority of that vis a vis other aspects of the
business. We would not want you to think that we are waiting until
wave three to try and do some of that data-matching; under wave
three it becomes automatic so that an agent would be able to see
straightaway all of the benefits someone was getting.
Q21 Chairman: Which is rather where
we want to be.
Ms Cleveland: Exactly, but in
the meantime we are doing a lot of work on linking together and
data-matching between the various systems and doing some of that
as a clerical process, but you are quite right, it does not come
through in terms of an automatic process until wave three.
Q22 Chairman: Can I just get clear
in my own mind, the 2008 total, you said, seems to have slipped
now. Am I right in thinking that the 8,000 reduction will not
now be on the horizon until later in the programme?
Ms Cleveland: Yes, 2011-12 in
the business case.
Q23 Mr Dismore: Going back to the
previous question that Archy was asking, the one thing that came
through to me from Glasgow was the problem, if you stop the rollout
with this hiatus in the middle, of getting it started again. They
were saying how difficult it was to restart a major transformation
when you suddenly stop for a couple of years, so you have to reconstruct
the team and start again. It certainly came through to me that
here we actually have a computer system in Government which, for
once, seems to be actually working on schedule, getting it right
and delivering what it is supposed to be. Should we not actually
be backing this winner and perhaps not having a hiatus to make
sure that that progress that has been made, the continuity is
there and keeps going all the way through. This is probably a
matter more for Alan in terms of how you pay for it, but it seems
to me that that is a much more sensible thing to do
Ms Cleveland: We are doing a lot
of work at the moment to see how we can manage over that transition
as we go forward. We do not need to be doing anything on wave
three at the moment under the original plan, we would not really
start doing work on the high level design and detailed design
of that for another 12 months as we roll forward, and the world
may change in 12 months.
Chairman: Thank you. Local Service, Karen.
Q24 Ms Buck: Thank you. We were expecting
some new information on the take-up of pension credit; I do not
know if that is available yet but obviously you will know that
the Committee has spent a lot of time concerning itself with issues
of take-up. It seems that the take-up question focuses on two
slightly different areas, one being the take-up of small amounts
and the other being take-up amongst hard to reach groups. In terms
of the local service, we would say that concentration on identification
of the hard to reach groups is the most important, which itself
raises a number of concerns about the implementation of Local
Service. I wonder if you can tell me what as a Department you
are doing in order to disentangle those two aspects of take-up
and make sure you are identifying the demographics and the geography
of the hard to reach groups, so you are making sure that Local
Service and other resources are properly targeted to meet them.
Ms Cleveland: We are doing a lot
of work with our analytical division and using a lot of geographic
information systems to be a bit more predictive of where we think
the take-up ought to be and then mapping onto that the take-up
we are actually achieving. We are doing that both geographically
and we are doing it against some customer segmentation that we
are putting in place. We are gifted amateurs in this area at the
moment, and I was very pleased that in January we actually appointed
to the board of the Pension Service a customer and acquisition
director whose job is to actually make sure we can get to these
harder to reach groups. He is a marketing professional who has
joined us from a utility organisation, so he is well-versed in
tackling a lot of these issues. At the moment therefore we are
doing a lot of work around trying to identify the numbers that
ought to be in receipt and then we are doing a lot of data-matching
between our various systems through scans to try and identify
people who might have an entitlement to pension credit, and then
we are either writing to them or, if we have been n touch with
them before, phoning them up.
Q25 Ms Buck: Will there come a point
when you can share with us the way in which you are approaching
that, because I would certainly find it very interesting to get
a clearer idea about how you go about identifying those groups.
In terms of staffing and delivery of the local service, that goes
to the very heart of the issue, because what we have had back
to us from various sources is that the departmental emphasis is
on the scanning, effectively, particularly with dual emphasis
on direct payment and the other priorities. By doing that, and
by doing that with a predominant emphasis on the telephone work,
the people who may be at reach of being lost are the hard to reach
groups who do not respond to the telephone, that just simply does
not work for them properly. Obviously, that has to be seen in
the context of the staff reductions in local service, which I
think are down by 10% over the previous year, and the quite significant
fall in the number of pensioners seen at information points. I
wonder if you could tell us what analysis you have done, what
is the evaluation of the impact of that, particularly among hard
to reach groups?
Ms Cleveland: First off, yes,
we can share with you what we have done so far. We have reviewed
the pension credit campaign a number of times as we have gone
forward, and we constantly review the effectiveness of mailing,
telephony and face to face calling, so we can share with you,
looking back, what we have done. I would perhaps ask you if you
would bear with us just for a little while to give the new person
chance to have a look at the way we are going to take things forward,
but again when we have that plan we will share that with you as
well. We have a number of things that we are looking to take forward.
I think one of the exciting things taken forward is the work we
are doing with joint teams of linking together with local authorities
and the voluntary sector; we are pushing quite hard on that, because
that reduces duplication, not just in the Pension Service but
in local authorities, both across their social service and their
health service so we see that coming through and getting into
those groups. But also it is really getting into some of the ethnic
populations that we have got, working through day centres and
through some of the ethnic elders in various groupings, and sharing
best practice about what actually works in any particular location.
We have got quite a lot of evaluation on those which I am happy
to give you.
Q26 Ms Buck: That would be very helpful,
because clearly one of the other things we are getting back from
the other partners is a mixed picture. I think it would be surprising
if it was not and, clearly, it is a question of trying to improve,
but what evaluation are you doing and at what levels of the effectiveness
of those local partnerships, because there is always a tendency,
in any organisation, to tick the box that says there is a local
partnership, but actually to find that in the complex reality
of say, inner London, what you might think is an effective local
partnership I could tell you and others could tell you may be
missing quite substantial groups of hard to reach people.
Ms Cleveland: Certainly, we have
been focusing a lot on the joint teams and how we are going to
evaluate those because that is something we are looking to roll
out nationally, and I think is the single initiative that can
make a difference. I was talking to our statisticians yesterday
about the evaluation measures to put in, because it is actually
quite difficult to track for an individual where you have done
a financial assessment on them, whether that has then led to a
housing benefit payment, a council tax benefit payment, maybe
an attendance allowance payment—obviously we can track the
pension and pension credit payments. We are trying to get that
holistic view, so not just concentrating on pension credit but
that wider portfolio of financial and non-financial support to
people. I do not think we will have the evaluation criteria agreed
to the point where we can give you evidence back, I think that
is planned for September.
Q27 Ms Buck: But are you sure that
in the meantime your information point, Local Service staff reductions
are not placing at risk the demographic cohorts that are most
at risk of not getting a proper service?
Ms Cleveland: The staff reductions
that we have looked at so far have been more in the management
grades than in the face to face service. We have reduced the number
of information points, but they are information points that were
not highly utilised by people and we are having far more effective
communication with people through appointment-based surgeries
rather than just the drop-in surgeries, and we have done an evaluation
of each of those. What we are trying to do all the time is just
make sure we are flexible with the local service and that we actually
get the best outcomes for our customers, and keeping information
points with partners in terms of leaflets and such like, and also
training some of the staff in our partner organisations to be
able to deal with the high level queries but also be able to make
a reference to Local Service direct.
Q28 Ms Buck: What is the planning
assumption for Local Service staff in the future?
Ms Cleveland: We are looking for
some reduction in the administrative component of that, for the
people who actually clerically book and schedule appointments
for them, but we are not planning on reducing the number of front-line
staff.
Q29 Ms Buck: How do the appointments
get booked and organised then?
Ms Cleveland: That was what we
were discussing under wave three, that they could be dealt with
when people phone up centrally, that they can be scheduled and
dealt with automatically.
Q30 Rob Marris: Following on from
that on the macro picture more on pension credit take-up, there
is a kind of law of diminishing returns that you get in any project
like this, and there are at least two main ways of measuring success,
one is in terms of the numbers of households where there is a
3 million target and a 3.2 million target, and the other, which
is the one to which you referred when you were before us two months
ago, which is the percentage of benefit claimed. Are you still
comfortable and on track on both those measures; if you are, are
you still maintaining the quality of service as well because that
can be a balancing act.
Ms Cleveland: We are on track
to put a straight line through to the 3 million target which we
were set under SR 02, and that is actually a tougher target than
the 3.2 million under SR 04 in terms of growth. We have not yet
been able to really baseline, as effectively as we would like,
a similar target based on the percentage of take-up.
Q31 Rob Marris: But you are still
working on that.
Ms Cleveland: We are still working
on that, but it is always getting that baseline which you can
measure yourself against and the percentage error around the numbers
that come out of surveys and such-like which mean that when you
start trying to break it down, particularly if you were trying
to do anything on a geographic basis, the errors become bigger
than the difference between the numbers sometimes. So certainly
on the measures we have got and the targets we have got we are
on track.
Q32 Rob Marris: Citizens Advice tell
us that they are seeing an increasing number of inaccurate pension
credit assessments. I think I am right in saying that you did
not reach your 2003-04 target of 94% accuracy, it was 90% accuracy.
Ms Cleveland: A bit higher than
that but you are right, we missed it.
Q33 Rob Marris: If it is 90% accuracy
that means that two-thirds more people got wrong assessments than
should have done, i.e. 10% instead of 6%. What are you doing to
address that and would you agree to an independent audit of your
arrangements for checking accuracy?
Ms Cleveland: On the accuracy
figure, accuracy is not always just accuracy of payment, it might
be accuracy of the process that is gone through and the recording
of evidence, so it does not mean that necessarily the payments
were wrong, but we have an independent audit of that coming through
the National Audit Office.
Q34 Rob Marris: When is that likely
to come through?
Ms Cleveland: We are doing it
on a regular basis. I cannot remember the exact date—
Q35 Rob Marris: You mean every three
months or something?
Ms Cleveland: We have a regular
check of our figures that we do internally, then there is a departmental
team that come in and check that, and then that is checked by
NAO. There is a bit of a time lag therefore before it comes through.
Q36 Rob Marris: Alan, literally on
a parochial point that I would like to leave you with in terms
of take-up, 100 metres from where I live is a Carmelite monastery;
your Department is currently refusing the nuns their pension credit,
even though they financially qualify. This is happening around
the country, and one of the explanations from your Department
is that to award them pension credit would cause them to offend
their vows of poverty, which I have to say is not a very good
argument because it is nothing to do with the Government whether
they offend their vows of poverty. Can I urge you to look at it,
please, because it seems to be unfair and, believe it or not,
these Carmelite nuns have actually paid their national insurance
stamps as well, but as a policy decision you are refusing them
pension credit. It would increase your take-up figures, because
there is something like 8,000 people in this situation in the
UK. Could you take that away and perhaps come back to me?
Alan Johnson: I will. First of
all I am just checking the date to make sure it is not April 1;
secondly, there is a whole section in our five year plan about
Carmelite nuns.
Q37 Rob Marris: So you will get back
to me on that?
Alan Johnson: I most definitely
will.
Rob Marris: Thank you.
Chairman: Can we go to Jobcentre Plus,
Mr Andrew Dismore.
Q38 Mr Dismore: Thank you, I am just
thinking about the Carmelite nuns because I have a lot of nuns
on my patch as well, I will have to check them out. Can I ask
about the extent to which Jobcentre Plus efficiencies are dependent
on IT—like the Customer Management Service, and perhaps
we could think of a better name for it than Customer Management
Service because it might give the wrong connotation?
Mr Clark: Certainly a large proportion
is looking to IT support, but as with the Pension Service there
are large elements where we are looking for other measures to
achieve efficiency. Jobcentre Plus is a very large organisation
with a large number of management units and there is a huge amount
that could be done in terms of improving the performance of the
different units within the organisation. They have already estimated
that through that sort of performance improvement they have saved
around 1,900 posts; over this period we are looking to increase
that to around 5,000. Another major programme that you are aware
of within Jobcentre Plus which relates to performance improvement
is centralisation of benefit processing, which is really about
trying to bring together bigger units where you can have more
process consistency, tighter management, the ability to support
some specialists in the more difficult areas and realise efficiencies
there. Obviously, there is an IT element in that you have got
to get the IT systems moved and made available and so on in order
to facilitate that programme, but that is something which is not
fundamentally IT-dependent. There are other parts of the programme,
particularly work around supporting the decision-making on income
support and changing the systems which support income support
of benefit processors, where we are looking for IT support, and
we are looking for IT support and help in the area of fraud and
so on, but certainly a large proportion of what Jobcentre Plus
is planning to achieve is going to be through improvements in
the way in which staff are managed and organised.
Q39 Mr Dismore: Presumably you are
talking about the central payments system?
Mr Clark: The central payments
system is a relatively small element in fact.
| 
