Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 115)
WEDNESDAY 7 DECEMBER 2005
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS
Q100 Mr Williams: Mr Lewis, I was
looking at your CV. You had a fascinating role in your last job,
did you not, as Permanent Secretary for Crime, Policing and Counter-Terrorism?
It must have been a very challenging job. Why did you apply for
this job, or had you upset someone?
Mr Lewis: The Civil Service moves
in mysterious ways, Mr Williams. I was approached to see if I
would take on this role. I learned a lot in the Home Office. I
appeared before this Committee in my Home Office role, and survived
to tell the tale. I think some of what I have learned and the
wider experience I hope to bring back to my new role.
Q101 Mr Williams: It is 21 years
at least since the National Audit Office first warned about the
over-complexity of the benefits system. In your heart, do you
seriously believe you can do much to reduce it, or would you feel
you have made a major achievement if you just contained it, because
it is an expanding problem, is it not?
Mr Lewis: I think we can do something.
I am going to say something now that will probably expose me to
a degree of risk but I will say it nevertheless, which is that
I think we are in danger of having arrived at something of a ritual
in this area, in that this is likely to be the 16th year in succession
that the Department's accounts are qualified. I think the risk
is that it is simply becoming a ritual, in which the accounts
are qualified and the same statements are made year after year
by the National Audit Office, by this Committee, by the Department.
I would like to see if, in the spirit of this conversation this
afternoon, which I have found a very welcome one, we could not
arrive at a way of trying to see if we can give my Department
a clearer and more reachable incentive to arrive at a situation
where the National Audit Office did not feel the need to qualify
its accounts because we had a target and a challenge which was
seriously reachable.
Q102 Mr Williams: That takes me to
my next point, because I do not know how much the simplification
is within your control. Should we not perhaps, as MPs, be in a
situation where you are saying to us, "What are you going
to do about it?" I see in paragraph 10 that between 2000
and 2004 six new Acts, that is one every eight months, were passed
in relation to Social Security, and 364 new Statutory Instruments.
That was one every fourth day for four years, and we are sitting
here and telling you we are surprised that you have a problem
of complexity. I am amazed you are not only so cheerful but so
polite to us.
Mr Lewis: I have always found
that politeness in front of this Committee is an advantageous
thing to go for. Seriously, I do think that part of having a genuine
discussion and debate around this issue is to recognise that it
cannot all be done by my Department. My Department can and must
do some really important things to try and reduce the complexity,
but this is a debate about how complex a system do we wish to
have. That inevitably involves the legislature just as it involves
the executive arm of government.
Q103 Mr Williams: I accept that.
If you go to box 13, which the Chairman referred to, your guidance
on benefits for staff amounts to 47 volumes, one of which is in
44 sections and 24 internet files. It is a nightmare, an absolute
nightmare administratively, is it not?
Mr Lewis: We are always going
to have, are we not, as the NAO Report says, a complex benefits
system in this country because we are a complex society?
Q104 Mr Williams: It is inevitably
complex if it is going to be fair.
Mr Lewis: That is why I think
that the NAO Report is entirely right and fair to suggest that
there is no one simple magic bullet that you can fire at this
system to remove complexity at a stroke, but actually, it is too
easy, it seems to me, to go from there to say, "There is
nothing much we can do. We just have to accept it for all time."
I do not believe that. I think there are things that my Department
can do and should do. I would like to think it is part of a joint
effort.
Q105 Mr Williams: In paragraph 2.17
there is a fascinating dig at us from the National Audit Office,
and I think it is justified, where they say a major problem is
what is often seen as ambiguous phrasing in legislation, and in
box 11 underneath it gives a series of examples of imprecise phrasing.
If Parliament is giving you legislation guidance to what you should
be doing and it is not clear, then Parliament is obviously a major
contributor to the problem you are having to endure and your customers
are having to endure.
Mr Lewis: Of course, we play our
part in the drafting of the legislation. We cannot simply pass
the responsibility to Parliament. In a sense, using some of those
words, like "reasonably" and "virtually"—and
I think that word "virtually" for example appears in
some of the legislation relating to Disability Living Allowance—is
because we are trying to capture something which is not an absolute
by definition, someone who is virtually unable to walk, and in
a sense, there is a common-sense meaning to the word, but it is
difficult to interpret and at times the courts and Commissioners
also reach different interpretations of those words.
Q106 Mr Williams: I have been around
this place quite a while. I came in when Harold Wilson formed
his first Government, and no-one has noticed I am here so no-one
has bothered to get rid of me. I will tell you, quite seriously,
something which worries me, which is that we have now slipped
into a system of what we call programme motions, and programme
motions are a compulsory guillotine on every single Bill that
comes before Parliament. I think back over the years and years
of sitting on Standing Committees, going through legislation,
and dealing with words, and saying, "Now, why do you use
this word? What does it mean? What is your intention?" That
has gone, because with the system we have at the moment, what
you have is very truncated debate on a Bill which focuses on a
few key issues. In your experience as a civil servant, do you
share my concern that this must inevitably mean that we are producing
sloppier legislation which is therefore going to need much more
amending and, in so far as it is sloppier, it leads to injustices?
You do not have to answer that.
Mr Lewis: With the indulgence
of the Chairman, I would prefer not to be drawn into some of those
issues, which, it seems to me, are issues for Parliament essentially.
Q107 Mr Williams: That is fine, but
I think it is something we need to realise. Parliament has to
recognise that if it is turning itself into a sausage machine
it is going to get sausages. If we want precise interpretation
of our intentions, then we must precisely state what it is that
we intend. I am firmly convinced that the approach we have now
to legislation is producing less well defined legislation. Now
we can move on to one final area. You referred to the phoning
system and your colleague spoke about how much simpler it is for
dealing with pensions. If you look at table 11 on page 38, the
State Pension, to which Mr Sharples referred, according to this,
there are 20 pages in the claim form, and that is for a very simple
benefit. When you look to IS, it is 50 pages. Is it not almost
impossible for a very large proportion of the public just to get
their mind round some of these documents? They are so afraid of
making a mistake and being accused of trying to defraud the Department
and so on that people are almost afraid to fill the forms in.
They would sooner not fill them in than get them wrong. Is that
a hazard?
Mr Lewis: It is. Can I say a word
and then defer to my colleagues, who have much more experience
of this than me. I have examples here but I am not going to bore
the Committee with them, where we have actually in recent years
been able to cut quite significantly the length of some of our
claim forms, but I think we need to do more. Interestingly, I
would not want us just to have a crude "X pages is good and
X plus two is bad." Some of our claim forms, DLA, for example,
it is quite a long claim form, but we have worked incredibly hard
in recent years to make it much, much simpler and more logical
for people to work their way through and sometimes that takes
some space. But I do agree with you; there is simply an issue
about how daunting something can look and feel, and I think we
do have to take account of that. My colleagues might be able to
help on that.
Mr Sharples: Just a word on this
table. This is showing the length of the paper-based claim forms.
The point I was making earlier is that if you apply on the telephone,
you will not have to complete this paper-based form. You answer
questions on the phone and then a form will be sent to you with
all the information in it. All you need to do is check it and
sign it. So in place of these long, complex forms we are offering
an assisted telephone-based process. I think that is a major simplification
and a major improvement in the usability of the system, part of
a number of changes that are being introduced to try and address
the issues. It does seem to me that there is maybe a distinction
between making a system simple and making it usable. If one thinks
of cars, for example, they have become more complex over the years.
If you look under the bonnet there is a lot more going on, but
on the whole they are easier to drive; they are much more usable.
It seems to me that our ambition should be to make the system
as usable as possible and telephone-based claims is one example
of how we are doing that.
Q108 Mr Williams: Turning to the
point about there being 47 volumes of guidance, does your Department
have a relatively high stress level and time lost to illness?
Mr Lewis: We do have an issue
about the amount of ill health absence. We would like that to
be lower. Actually, the figures have been coming down quite significantly
over the last year, and that is an issue which we have been addressing
very much with our managers and with our staff, but there is undoubtedly
further to go. I do not have, I am afraid, the specific figures
in my head.
Q109 Mr Williams: Perhaps you could
drop us a note.[3]
Mr Lewis: I most certainly will
do that.
Q110 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: You told
Mr Khan that you would hope to be able to come back in one year
and show a demonstrable difference in the level of complexity.
Have you given any thought to how you are going to do that? Are
you going to have a set of simple performance indicators and do
you have any idea yet what those performance indicators might
be?
Mr Lewis: I would like to look
at some things. I would like to look at those customer satisfaction
levels. I would like to look at levels of take-up. I would like
to look at the degree to which people are able to access our call
centres and so on but, having just decided as one of my first
decisions as the new Permanent Secretary to set up the unit, I
do not want to constrain it before it has even in any serious
sense got to work. I want it to actually be starting to bring
me some of the ideas of how we can do this better.
Q111 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: But they
are going to be simple and not complex?
Mr Lewis: I do do simple and I
try and avoid complex if I can.
Q112 Chairman: Have you seen annex
A on page 17, Mr Lewis? It is all very impressive, the bits that
you are trying to simplify. Would it be a fair criticism to say
that, despite these elements of progress, you have no comprehensive
strategy, or is that an unfair criticism?
Mr Lewis: I think it is perhaps
a trifle unfair. I do not know that I could literally put in front
of you an all-singing, all-dancing simplification strategy, but
what I can say is I think we have a very clear simplification
ambition. We have made some genuine headway in that and I can
certainly say to you that I want to go further and deeper.
Q113 Chairman: When are you due to
retire?
Mr Lewis: I have to try and work
that out. I am 54 and a half, so in five and a half years perhaps.
Q114 Chairman: Will you promise me
that at the date of your retirement, assuming you are in your
present job, you will write to me or my successor, saying that
you have made significant progress towards avoiding by then your
21st year of having your accounts qualified?
Mr Lewis: I would love to believe
that, through a combination of really hard work on the part of
my Department and some very sensible discussion I would like to
have with the National Audit Office, we can reach a point where
I will be the first Permanent Secretary for 16 years or perhaps
a little longer who does not have to come before this Committee
with their accounts qualified.
Q115 Chairman: That is fine. Thank
you very much. At the end of the day though, fraud against the
benefits system stood at £2.6 billion in 2004-05. It resulted
in 250,000 appeals a year. Staff and customers make mistakes which
together cost over £1.5 billion a year as a result of decision-making
errors in about 20% of benefit decisions. It will obviously be
a strong Report we will have to produce, but I have to say, Mr
Lewis, I was approached by a television company which wants to
make a dramatised version of the work of this Committee, based
loosely on West Wing. I am going to suggest to them that you are
a star witness, a prime example of how a Permanent Secretary,
faced with an impossible brief, can smooch his way through an
hour and a half. Do you wish to comment?
Mr Lewis: No, Chairman, thank
you.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
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