Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR ALAN
BARTON, MR
STEVE JOHNSON
AND MS
LINDSAY ISAACS
3 NOVEMBER 2004
Q20 Vera Baird: It sounds from what you
have said that you are particularly concerned if these job cuts
hit partner liaison managers, who are the key people, I guess,
between the Pension Service and the Local Service.
Mr Barton: Yes, we would be concerned
if it hit there and we would also be concerned if it hit the more
junior staff, who are the people who are going out and seeing
pensioners in their homes.
Q21 Chairman: The Pension Service has
sent a note to the Committee dated 1 November which says, in relation
to part of the modernisation programme and the staff cuts, ".
. . as a contribution to this commitment, the Local Service has
reduced staffing levels from 3,075 at 31 March 2004 to 2,675 on
1 October 2004". According to my arithmetic, that is a reduction
of 400, which is something like a 13% reduction in the Local Service.
That seems to contradict something you said earlier, that you
were not expecting many inroads into the Local Service staff complement
as part of the modernisation programme. What is your reaction
to that, if these figures that I am reading are accurate? I do
not know whether they are for the UK or whether they are just
for England and Wales, by the way.
Ms Isaacs: What I said before
was based on a colleague of mine who attended a Scottish DWP forum
at the end of October. She was assured then that there were not
going to be any further cuts to the Local Service in Scotland.
Whether or not that is the way it will pan out, I am not sure.
As I said, the service seems to be working well on the ground
now, but it is probably working at capacity. If there were cuts
to that staffing level, I think that it would have a significant
effect on the level and coverage of service that they were able
to provide.
Mr Barton: I would agree with
that. Those figures do sound quite worrying. I am a member of
one of the consultative groups that the DWP has, the Partnerships
against Poverty in England and Wales group, which meets about
four times a year. We were quite surprised, at our last meeting,
to be told of the changes in what the local Pension Service would
be doing. They had been reviewing this. One of their activities
which in quite a lot of places they do not find is a terribly
good use of their time are the drop-in surgeries. It appeared
that they are looking fairly critically at that. Obviously we
do not have a problem about DWP wanting to use its staff efficiently,
but we were rather disappointed that, given that the Pension Service
now says it is working in partnership with other groups, all this
reviewing of the Local Service had been going on and we were then
told, "This is where it has got to", but we certainly
were not told in that group of the sort of numbers that you have
just told us, Chairman. So it is both the numbers and the process
which are a little disappointing from our point of view, in the
partnership context.
Q22 Mrs Humble: I have a very brief supplementary
on the issue of drop-in centres. The Pension Service had run a
drop-in service in my constituency office one morning a week,
which was very successful. They unilaterally, at very short notice,
withdrew it and also withdrew drop-in services in other locations
in my constituency. I am engaging in correspondence about this.
However, what I am finding very difficult to identify is this.
Is this part of an administrative overhaul or is there a policy
behind this? When some years ago the Committee interviewed the
then pensions Minister, Ian McCartney, on this, he was very clear
about the desirability of a Local Service, so that pensioners
would have exactly the sort of face-to-face contact that you have
identified as being so vital. So who is leading on this?
Mr Barton: The DWP is making the
decisions; the Pension Service is making the decisions. As I said,
we do not have a quarrel if DWP are cutting back services where
they are not being effective; but we would certainly argue that,
in a local situation such as your constituency, changes in the
Pension Service surgery/drop-in arrangements ought to be made
in consultation with the local partners: not something that the
local partners are told is going to happen.
Q23 Miss Begg: I was quite interested
in what you were saying, Lindsay. Also, as a Scottish MP, my experience
of the Pension Service in Aberdeen is that they have been doing
quite a lot of outreach work, have been taking up the ideas that
both Steve and Alan have mentioned, and are trying very hard.
Is there any evidence of regional differences? Is it that, if
you are lucky enough to live in one of the areas where it is very
proactive, where it is a local manager and Pension Service, it
means that the Pension Service is doing particularly well but,
in other areas, it is falling short?
Mr Barton: There certainly are
variations. Initially, when the Local Service was set up and the
partnership concept was promulgated, as far as we know the staff
who had to operate this were not trained in operating with other
organisations in a co-operative way. This meant that the quality
of interaction with agencies such as CABx was very dependent on
the personalities and skills of the people in the local Pension
Service. Some of them were absolutely terrific and got really
good arrangements going. In other places, somebody would march
in and say, "You're our partners now, and this is what you
have to do"—which is not very satisfactory. I think
that has all got much better now and the Local Service staff have
got more experience, but I am sure that there are variations—although
I could not quantify them for you.
Q24 Miss Begg: The issue about the training
of staff, or the lack of training, the bad advice, and so on—again,
it was a new service. It has been up and running for just over
a year now. Is that getting better? Can you track an improvement
in these things or are the initial problems still persisting in
some areas?
Mr Barton: We have not recently
been getting these sorts of reports of very high-handed behaviour.
We have just recently signed a partnership accord with the Pension
Service, and it has with it a code of practice on working together,
which we agreed jointly with the Pension Service. We have provided
a copy of that to the Committee's secretariat. There is a good
framework there now to build on, therefore, providing there are
some people in the local Pension Service to do their end of it.
Q25 Miss Begg: Can we move on to the
accuracy of the calculations? As Citizens Advice, you have probably
been inundated by people with problems with tax credits and how
that did not work as smoothly as it might have done. What has
been the experience of Pension Credit? Has the administrative
quality been of a high standard, or are there a lot of errors?
Are people querying something as an error and, where there is
an error, can they get it fixed quickly? What is the general opinion
about the Pension Service?
Mr Barton: We have had quite a
lot of evidence in from CABs about this. It suggests that the
service is not as good as it should be. There are too many errors.
There are errors that occur at the application stage which can
involve somebody not even applying, because they are told that
their income is too high when actually it is not, because they
have premiums which mean that they would still get it. We had
one case where somebody was told that their savings were too low,
so they could not qualify for Savings Credit. This was a complete
misunderstanding. Probably some people do not apply at all. Somebody
else was told that he could not apply because he was on statutory
sick pay. So there are problems at that point. When it comes to
the actual assessment of the claim, after the client has checked
it, signed and sent in their documentation, there are quite a
lot of errors that we have seen. There is wrongly recorded information
about people's income, with weekly and monthly figures being got
the wrong way round, which means they get too much or too little.
Then what must be keying errors, where people get 10 times or
a tenth of their capital recorded for Pension Credit purposes.
There is information which is provided but just omitted altogether
from the calculation. It may be an occupational pension which
a person has sent in and received back their documentation on.
Probably the biggest area of all are problems with the wrong premiums
being awarded. It is a very complicated set-up with premiums,
with the carer's premium and the severe disability premium; but
we have had cases where the bureau has filled in the claim form
and has written, "This couple qualifies for two carer's premiums
and two severe disability premiums" in the box at the bottom,
and it comes back with one severe disability premium. In this
particular case, it was very bad news for the clients because
it meant that they only qualified for Savings Credit not Guarantee
Credit, and they had quite a lot of savings. With Guarantee Credit
they get Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit; with Savings
Credit they would not. So there are a lot of complications there.
We also find problems with loss of papers and their being put
in as "dormant" when they are cases that are not. When
you have a problem to get put right, it does not seem to be a
high priority within pension centres to do this work. Obviously
we welcome the take-up targets but, when they are busy, that is
the work that gets done—getting the new claims processed.
The people who have erroneous awards are further down the queue.
Ms Isaacs: It is very much the
same picture in Scotland: problems the whole way through the process,
from the application procedure; people doing a telephone application
process receiving forms which are either completely blank or information
has been recorded incorrectly. They then have to start the whole
process again. For a lot of vulnerable pensioners who have little
savings and income, the delay in terms of when they receive their
Pension Credit can lead not only to financial hardship but also
to a lot of anxiety and stress. Also, incorrect payments, and
just cases of poor communication: there has been some sort of
hold-up or problem with their application and they have not received
details about what the hold-up is and how they can address it.
They just have not received any communication.
Q26 Miss Begg: Do you have any sense
of why these errors are happening? Is it human error? Is it simply
keying errors? Is there a problem with the IT, or is it a range
of all of those things?
Mr Barton: All those.
Ms Isaacs: Yes, a combination.
I think that some of the staff on the telephone application line
are well trained and can deal with standard applications. As soon
as there is anything that is more complex—and that is certainly
the indication we get, not from clients but from bureaux staff—they
feel very much that, when they speak to people on the end of a
phone, they are not able to resolve the problems. Often bureaux
staff end up explaining the process to them.
Q27 Miss Begg: How long does it take
to resolve one of these problems then?
Mr Barton: It can take several
months to resolve problems where the award is wrong. Another thing
which is a concern to us is that very often it takes quite a long
time in terms of telephone calls to get through to the person
who is dealing with it and to explain what the issue is. Twenty-minute
telephone calls to pension centres about a credit problem are
pretty common. A lot of that time is spent sitting waiting for
the right person to be available, or being passed on to another
person. That is not good news for us as an organisation, because
it is not a good use of our advisers' time.
Mr Johnson: We have not spoken
about the linking benefits—Disability Benefits and Carer's
Allowance. I would suggest that the helpline staff should be equally
competent in those benefits because, from our point of view, one
of the main reasons things go wrong is because these entitlements
are not picked up. Something like the carer additional amount,
in many cases you are telling someone to claim a benefit they
cannot get—because they are receiving an overlapping benefit
and that will then trigger a carer additional amount. That is
very difficult to explain to clients. Time and again, we find
that the staff, although they are obviously trying their best,
do not know about Disability Benefits enough to spot the entitlements,
and that is a great shame.
Q28 Miss Begg: What is the solution?
Mr Johnson: I think the CAB should
train DWP staff! You should get us in.
Q29 Miss Begg: Train the Pension Service
staff?
Mr Johnson: That is my humble
suggestion.
Q30 Miss Begg: Is it a problem with the
telephony system? Is the problems number that a pensioner would
phone if they have a problem with it different from the claims
number?
Mr Barton: Yes.
Q31 Miss Begg: So that they are already
separated?
Mr Barton: Yes, there is a claims
line which is a Freephone number, and then there is a single number
to phone to get through to the Pension Service for any query on
Pension Credit, which should route you automatically through to
the pension centre which deals with you. That does not always
work. Then, when you get through, you will not be speaking to
the person who is dealing with the case. It does not appear that
the IT is terribly good for them to be able to tell what is going
on. This is why one gets into these fairly lengthy calls in order
to resolve each case. I have said that it is not good use of our
advisers' time. For clients who are trying themselves, the length
of call may well be difficult and, for people who do not have
a telephone of their own, standing in a callbox—we have
had cases of 80 year-olds standing in callboxes for 30 minutes
phoning to the pension centre—it is pretty unacceptable.
Of course, it costs them quite a lot of money as well, because
it is a local call charge.
Q32 Miss Begg: What if that same pensioner
went into a drop-in centre? Could they resolve it for them?
Mr Barton: Yes, I should think
they would be able to deal with it completely.
Q33 Miss Begg: My next question is this.
As the system gets up and running, there will possibly be a need
for fewer and fewer processing staff. Would you accept a cut in
the numbers of processing staff if that meant that those staff
would be transferred on to the front line?
Mr Barton: On the processing side,
we are just rather sceptical about how it is going to be done.
It certainly does not look as if the processes are terrifically
efficient at the moment. Keying in of a lot of information that
has already been given on the claim line seems to be part of it.
So I am sure there is scope for that. The first thing we would
like to see with process, I suppose, is an improved service. There
is a priority rather below that—cutting the number of staff.
Ms Isaacs: We learnt at this forum
recently that the workload of two of the pension centres that
are closing is going to transfer to one in Motherwell and one
in Dundee, in Scotland. Again, we have concerns about the impact
that will have, not only on the workload but we already have examples
of claims not being processed because correspondence and forms
have been lost. As the work transfers across the country, I think
that we will see an impact.
Mr Johnson: In our local CAB we
have a relationship with our Housing Benefit office where, if
things go on for too long or there is delay for more than a couple
of weeks, we have a suite of trigger points. When the trigger
point is reached, we automatically get referred to a supervisor
to try to resolve it. Maybe that could be piloted with the helpline
service.
Q34 Mr Dismore: I would like to raise
some questions about the direct payment system. The switch to
cheques started last month, I think. What do you think is the
extent of stress and worry that pensioners have suffered as a
result of the change? I have certainly had a lot of grief from
people in my own constituency.
Mr Johnson: My mum is very worried
about it, and she refuses to have a bank account despite all my
injunctions. I think that there is a lot of concern about that.
People just do not want to do it. They get to 70; they have never
had a bank account before; maybe their deceased partner had one.
They are very reluctant. Anecdotally, older people do like and
trust order books.
Mr Barton: Certainly, of the reports
that are sent in to us in the office in London about people who
have come in with problems about their direct payments, a strikingly
high proportion of those people are pensioners.
Ms Isaacs: Of the evidence we
have seen, all of the case evidence seems to indicate not only
that they not want to do it, but they do not want to do it because
it is causing a significant amount of anxiety and stress, and
it is having quite significant effects on them. Also, we have
seen another group of clients who would be willing to open, for
instance, Post Office card accounts, but the system is so onerous
and complex that, even though they are willing to go through that,
they are finding it very difficult to do it.
Q35 Mr Dismore: Is there a difference
between new pensioner claims, as it were, and existing ones? What
the DWP tell us is that 91% of new customers are choosing to be
paid by direct payment; in fact they say that 90% already have
an account suitable for direct payment, for the existing pensioners.
Is there a difference between new people and existing claimants?
Mr Barton: I think that the problem
probably gets more severe as the pensioner gets older. People
in their eighties who have run their financial lives all that
time without a bank account probably find the prospect of having
to have one rather daunting.
Q36 Mr Dismore: Citizens Advice have
not actually said that you have had complaints about people being
harassed and bullied into converting. One or two other organisations
have mentioned this. Is that your experience, or did you not mention
it because it is not your experience?
Mr Barton: We have had some cases
where people have felt that they have been very pressurised, initially
pressurised, into going for a bank account rather than the Post
Office card account, and then going for the Post Office card account
rather than to the cheque system that will come in. So we certainly
have had some. It has not been such a heavy amount that we have
felt we needed to make an issue of that.
Q37 Mr Dismore: So it has not been a
widespread problem?
Ms Isaacs: Also, even if people
are not overtly bullied or harassed, if they are not made aware
that there is an alternative then they are almost forced, just
by default, to go down that road.
Q38 Mr Dismore: But you have not come
across it as a major problem—being harassed?
Ms Isaacs: No.
Mr Johnson: From my memory of
the report, I think it says that if you do not want to be converted
you have to talk to the conversion centre. It is quite daunting
to have to talk to the people who want you to be converted, to
ask them not to be.
Chairman: It sounds painful!
Q39 Mr Dismore: Can I pick up the point
Lindsay was making regarding the problems of opening a Post Office
account? What do you think could be done to make it easier?
Ms Isaacs: Personally, I think
that there are so many stages involved, it requires—particularly
for pensioners who might have mobility problems—repeat trips
either to the bureau, if they are helping them, or to the Post
Office. Postwatch has identified eight discrete stages in the
process, which is incredibly complicated—for someone to
understand at the beginning of the process all the steps they
will need to go through. So a reduction in the number of stages
and the complexity and paperwork that is associated. Because there
are so many stages, it is very time-consuming. One bureau reported
that it was taking on average about six to eight weeks. That can
cause delays in payment, which we are seeing, and pensioners having
to claim Social Fund crisis loans. So a decrease in the paperwork
and the number of stages—which hopefully would have an impact
on how long it takes to open an account.
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