Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MS JODI
BERG AND
MR PHIL
LATUS
21 JULY 2004
Q20 Ms Buck: May I just push you one
last time on that, because I am not sure that quite answers the
question? By implication are you saying that you do not think,
at the present moment, that your assessment is that delays are
arising from a staff shortage? If you were saying that, then you
would be saying you need to have a view and talk to the Agency
about this.
Ms Berg: If we are talking about
new scheme delays, for example, I would say that the problem is
not so much staff shortages as system problems and the way in
which staff then deal with those problems. I do not think that
is a matter of headcount: it is a matter of understanding what
can be done in those kinds of situations, taking the right sorts
of steps, making sure that the cases are moved through in appropriate
ways.
Q21 Ms Buck: That is fair. And in old
scheme delays the same?
Ms Berg: Old scheme delays are
often rather more due in our experience to the fact that cases
are just put to one side and forgotten about for lengths of time
until somebody wakes the Agency up again; by a customer asking
what has happened to their case, "There is a problem, will
you please sort it out for me?". I do not think that is so
much a matter of headcount as a matter of how you manage case
load.
Q22 Ms Buck: The absence of an alert
system effectively.
Ms Berg: Yes.
Q23 Mrs Humble: Securing compliance is
a very important area and some of the statistics show that the
CSA has not got it right. Why do you think the compliance rates
are so low?
Ms Berg: It is about the relationship
you forge with people at the very earliest stages of the Agency's
involvement. It is about the way in which you make sure that you
understand the Agency's expectations. It is about the way in which
you form their expectations of how the Agency will deal with non
compliance and when there is non compliance you make sure that
the warnings you have given them in pleasant ways are then repeated
in perhaps not so pleasant ways and acted upon. In the past there
has been a problem of crying wolf far too often. If you keep sending
people warning letters and you then do nothing about it, people
naturally tend to ignore you. You build up a relationship in which
people think they do not have to take any notice of this particular
agency. There are things which you can do and it is about that
initial interaction with customers. It is fair to say that the
Agency has made significant changes to the specialist enforcement
teams and there have been real improvements in the way in which
they deal with their work, significant increases in success in
different areas of work within that small specialist team, but
of course that is 2% of agency staff and they are only dealing
with a small percentage of enforcement cases. A number of others
are not given that same kind of attention.
Q24 Mrs Humble: A colleague will ask
you more questions about enforcement so I should just like to
concentrate on how we can achieve some compliance without having
to resort to the heavy stick of enforcement.
Ms Berg: Absolutely.
Q25 Mrs Humble: Although, having said
that, under the new system we are told that there is a so-called
whole-system approach. When members of the Committee have spoken
directly to staff who are operating the new system, they do say
that they are trying to achieve exactly what you are saying. I
have spoken to them and they say that from the first contact with
a non-resident parent (NRP) the member of staff outlines what
the Agency wants of that individual, how the individual should
respond, what measures can then be taken against them, but the
initial contact is supposed to build that relationship. When I
ask questions about the statistics—you said that 2% are
directly involved in enforcement—under the whole-system
approach securing compliance is part of that first interview,
yet you have been telling us that you are getting complaints under
the new system as well as under the old system. Have you noticed
the difference under the whole service approach under the new
system in securing better compliance from the beginning?
Ms Berg: It is fair to say that
complaints about enforcement and lack of compliance under the
new scheme have not come through in great numbers as yet. So it
would be wrong of me to say that it is not making a difference.
I would be very optimistic that it would make a big difference.
A great part of the problem in the past has been that the Agency
tended, certainly under the old scheme, to work in chimneys. If
your job was the assessment, that is what you did and it was not
your job to make sure that compliance then followed it. The whole-system
approach is the right way to deal with these kinds of issues.
I was very hopeful, when the new scheme was introduced, that the
vision was the right one. It seemed to me that a vision of a case
officer or a team dealing with the whole of a case until payments
were made was exactly the right way to achieve long-term compliance.
As you rightly say, you build up the right sorts of relationships
from the start. The Agency initially suffered some difficulties
because of the system failures and as a result of that the whole-system
approach wobbled for a while. I hope that the Agency is now back
on course and if it is, it should make a significant difference.
Q26 Mrs Humble: If compliance then is
primarily a problem of the old system, is there any way that the
old system could be tweaked whilst we still have it—and
it looks as though we are going to have it for quite a while longer—in
order to do what you are talking about so the people are not working
in chimneys, so that initial approach takes into account compliance
issues. Is there any way it can be done?
Ms Berg: You have to try to start
to build a new relationship with people. You have to say yes,
we recognise there have been problems in the past. We appreciate
that this may now be a problem because arrears have arisen. You
are facing people in the old system and the old scheme with a
bill. You are going to them and saying "Here is the bill
you already have and now we want to talk to you about compliance".
That is far more difficult is it not? I still think it can be
achieved and you have to do it by putting some real training into
staff, into some specialisms, so that there are people who know
how to make those approaches—and I know that there are people
within the Agency who are very good at that—to these people
and say "We are starting afresh on your case and it is not
going to be me talking to you now and then disappearing for six
months; that will not happen". If the Agency is serious about
that approach and if staff maintain that contact, it will have
a very good effect.
Q27 Mrs Humble: May I ask about one area
which does undermine compliance, which is that these hardworking
members of staff often cannot talk to the non-resident parent
because they cannot find them? They do not know where they are,
so they cannot build up the relationship because these people
have disappeared. Of course non-resident parents are not required
to keep the Agency informed of their whereabouts. What can be
done? What should be done? What new powers should the CSA have?
Ms Berg: It is a great shame that
it was not recognised initially, despite the fact that the Agency
spend so much time and effort trying to trace people, that people
should, in my view—and I am talking about both parents,
both non-resident parents and parents with care—have a responsibility
to tell the Agency where they are and about their circumstances
and about changes in their circumstances so that the Agency can
do its job sensibly and properly for the benefit of their children.
The fact that people do not have to do that and they know they
do not have to do that means that in a number of cases we see
there is what I would describe as the game of cat and mouse. People
get to know the Agency is involved and they then immediately move.
The Agency then spends months and in cases we have dealt with
years chasing them around. When it eventually catches up with
them it can do nothing about it. It can make no comment about
it; it cannot say this was inappropriate. It simply starts the
ball rolling by sending out the assessment notices, the inquiry
forms. Then people can move on again. It seems to me that is a
huge waste of Agency resource. It is a great shame for children
that they are put in the position of people having to chase round
a parent for them and it would be far more sensible if parents
had a responsibility to keep the Agency informed. I am not saying
it would always work, because there are always some people who
will want to ignore their responsibilities regardless of whether
they have a legal duty to let the Agency know the situation, but
it would help.
Q28 Mrs Humble: You made a point about
parents needing to be reminded that the CSA was set up for the
benefit of the children. Do you think that the issue of compliance
is actually undermined because many parents do not see it as benefiting
the children? Too many non-resident parents see the money going
to the resident parent, often the mother, and doubt that it goes
to the child, or, because the relationship when they broke up
was so acrimonious, they do not want to be seen as supporting
the mother. There is a message to be got across that this is the
Child Support Agency, that this money is for the benefit of the
child and that whoever the absent parent is, the non-resident
parent, they have a responsibility to that child. How can we get
that message across and if we do, would that improve compliance
rates?
Ms Berg: If you could get the
message across, it would certainly improve compliance rates and
in my view it would be an excellent thing to do. Putting the legal
responsibility on parents to work with the Agency, to make sure
the Agency knows where they are, is one step along the route to
that. It has been the case that people have felt that it was almost
all right to ignore this agency and that if you do that is it
not a bad thing at all and you have the choice about whether you
want to comply or not and if you do not, and you get away with
it, that is also okay. It seems to me that is an odd situation,
because whether or not one likes the fact that the Child Support
Agency is involved, or agrees in principle with there being a
Child Support Agency, the fact is that is the way that Parliament
has decided that these matters should be dealt with. In that kind
of situation, you have to make it clear to people that there is
an expectation of them as well to work with the Agency for the
benefit of children. We do not all, for example, like paying tax
and some of us might want to avoid that, but we know that we have
a legal responsibility.
Q29 Andrew Selous: I should like to ask
a little bit about the definitions as far as compliance and cash
compliance are concerned. I am somewhat surprised to see in the
figures in our brief here that apparently cash compliance was
73.1% in 2002-03. I asked a Parliamentary Written Question earlier
in this Parliament which revealed that in total 70% of parents
with care were either receiving nothing or less than they should
have been. I am clearly missing something in terms of the definitions
here. Can you elaborate a bit on that?
Ms Berg: I do not know that I
can, to be honest.
Mr Latus: You really should be
addressing that question to the Child Support Agency rather than
to us. It is my understanding that cash compliance relates to
the assessed cases; the compliance with the assessments which
have been made, not necessarily the case load itself. Does that
help at all?
Q30 Andrew Selous: No, not really. Can
you tell me how that affects money getting through to the parent
with care (PWC)? That is the bit I am interested in. Can you elaborate
a little further?
Ms Berg: To be honest with you,
I am not sure that I can. I do not know that I entirely understand
the correlation between cash compliance figures and the money
which gets through.
Q31 Chairman: Is this something a note
could help us with or are you really saying it is not for you?
Ms Berg: We can certainly ask
for one.
Mr Latus: We can approach the
Agency and get the information for you, certainly.
Chairman: So it is an Agency matter.
I do not think that is fair. We will tax the Agency.
Andrew Selous: I think we need to look
into the reference to my Parliamentary Question and these figures.
They do not tie up.
Q32 Chairman: I share your confusion.
Ms Berg: I am sorry not to be
more help.
Q33 Mr Dismore: May I pick up on the
problems with addresses? I am going to refer to a specific case
which has been through your Office three separate times now and
is about to come for the fourth time and I want to come back to
that and the role of your Office in this, which I am certainly
not happy about. It is the case of Ms Priedom and her ex partner,
Mr Ferrol. It is a case not unfamiliar to the Committee either,
because it is a case I referred to this time last year when we
last looked at the CSA. The problem here in relation to enforcement
is that because Mr Ferrol refuses to respond to any correspondence,
the CSA is not convinced it has his address right. So although
they have sent correspondence to him, saying they are going to
take his licence away or send him to prison, because he does not
reply, they are effectively saying they are not sure they have
the right address. It seems to be rather peculiar that no-one
actually goes round and knocks on his door, which is presumably
an easy way of checking it. The other point Ms Priedom makes to
me is that they all know what his phone number is, it has not
changed for years, yet for some reason the CSA does not seem able
to work through the mobile phone company to get his address. Equally,
if one looks at the question of driving licences, presumably the
DVLA has an address for him, by definition, because he has to
give his address to the DVLA, why could not service at that address
be sufficient for removing his driving licence without having
to go through all this routine of him acknowledging it, which
he is clearly not going to do. Basically we have a problem with
data protection here which needs to be resolved.
Ms Berg: I cannot really comment
on the particular case, because to be honest with you I do not
remember the details of it. It is right to say that the way in
which the Agency approaches tracing is not always as robust as
it might be. I do not know what we have said in this particular
case, but I know that you will know of other cases where we have
dealt with the Agency's failed attempts to trace non-resident
parents, where we have criticised the fact that the Agency has
not been as robust as it should have been, has not taken, for
example, action to make all the inquiries it could with DVLA and
with others, has not sent somebody round to check the address
to see whether the person who is purported to be living there
is living there, as it can and should do and has not acted in
a systematic way. One of the things I find in general with cases
which come to me, which cause me to criticise the Agency, is that
these steps tend to be taken on a step-by-step basis, in other
words, first of all, we will try the checks within the department's
systems. If that does not work, we will then take another step.
One gets to a point after some months and sometimes years when
really there is an argument and a very good argument for taking
a number of steps together, if you want, you are using all the
means at your disposal to try to make sure that somebody is where
a parent with care is reporting them to be. I do not know whether
that is the case in the particular situation you are talking about.
Q34 Mr Dismore: The problem here is that
lots of people know where he is, but because of data protection
rules, apparently the CSA cannot track him through those people
who know where he is. They froze his bank account and surprise,
surprise, there was no money in it. So the bank knows where he
is. He has a mobile phone, so the mobile phone company knows where
he is. The DVLA will know where he is, but there seems to be no
effort to track him down. The point I am coming to here is that
this case has now been through your office on three separate occasions
and it is about to come for the fourth and on each occasion it
is treated as a new complaint, whereas in fact it is the same
complaint, because CSA has not followed through on what it promised
to do. Then each time it does that, it is treated as a new complaint
with an extra six weeks hiatus before you will intervene.
Ms Berg: I am not sure how that
happens. Let me start by apologising if it has happened, because
you will know from other cases that we have dealt with—we
have corresponded on cases—that we have this six-week turnaround.
In other words, what we say to people is that they have not given
the Agency an opportunity; we are going to refer them back to
the Agency. If they do not get the response they are looking for
within six weeks, they can come back to us. We should be able
to track those cases through our system and indeed we have quite
robust systems to make sure that we do. I am surprised that one
has slipped the net and, if it has, I apologise to you. By all
means bring it back to me and I can assure you that we will deal
with it right away.
Q35 Mr Dismore: I do not know whether
this is an isolated case or not, but the problem is that each
time you say the case is resolved to the constituent's satisfaction,
which at that moment it is, in that the CSA have promised to do
all these different things—
Ms Berg: Then it does not happen.
Q36 Mr Dismore: — and then it does
not happen and when it comes back it is treated as a new complaint.
Ms Berg: It should not be. Write
to me personally.
Q37 Mr Dismore: In this case effectively,
if that happens again, it will have lost six months just through
you.
Ms Berg: I apologise for that.
Please write to me personally.
Q38 Mr Dismore: I shall certainly do
that, but the whole point here is that the real problem is that
other people know where he is and they cannot track him down.
Ms Berg: Yes. It is not of course
for me to talk about the data protection issues, but we know,
do we not, that a number of matters which are described as being
data protection problems are not necessarily data protection problems?
When I get that case I shall certainly look into that issue. Since
you raise the issue, I shall make it my business to have a word
with the Information Commissioner's office and see whether we
can have a mutual understanding of situations which CSA is dealing
with.
Q39 Mr Dismore: It would be useful if,
when you have done that, you could let us have a supplementary
note about the things where it might be appropriate to try to
get the data protection rules changed to allow these things to
go ahead.
Ms Berg: I shall certainly take
that forward.
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