Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 338)
MONDAY 6 MARCH 2006
RT HON
JOHN HUTTON
MP
Q320 Michael Foster: Would there
not be a case for at least having specialist advisers, who dealt
particularly with those who had mental health problems as opposed
to the generalities of others? I appreciate that it is not always
as clear-cut as that, but where mental health is the issue and
is clearly identified, could that not be dealt with by specialist,
special advisers, in that sense?
Mr Hutton: That is something we
can certainly look at, but it is part and parcel of the personal
advisers' training programme to have exposure to issues around
mental health, and if we can or should improve the level of that
training, and if that is what people would like us to do, I would
be prepared to look at that.
Q321 Michael Foster: I think we also
recognise that people with mental health problems often have variable
abilities to work. You mentioned that a moment ago. It may well
be that the patterns of work are also something that need to be
looked at. I cannot see anything—maybe I have missed it—in
the Green Paper which suggests that there is an approach at looking
at different forms of work. Some of us heard evidence in Holland,
where at the end of the day they say it is down to the state;
it has to be a public service job when you cannot always find
the answer in the private sector. Is that something that the Department
may well want to develop with other departments and so on, to
look for work that is appropriate to people with mental illness
who can do work, probably at a very high standard, but they cannot
consistently do work that enables them to do the nine till five
which the average private sector employer and most public sector
employers would require?
Mr Hutton: I think we should try
and support people into appropriate employment, whether that is
in the private or the public sector. The public sector clearly
has a set of responsibilities, but so too do all employers under
the Disability Discrimination legislation and so on. We have a
variety of programmes—Access to Work is simply one—where
we try and provide that little bit extra, that bit more proactive
help and support that a person with a disability might need if
they are to hold down and retain employment, but I do not think
we would approach this, Michael, simply from the point of view
of saying that we are going to carve out a set of unique and discrete
responsibilities that we are going to place upon one type of employer
in relation to incapacity benefits. One thing that has struck
me—and I do not know whether this is the view of the Committee
as well—is I think there is evidence that employers now
are certainly much more prepared than they were to consider employing
people who have been on incapacity benefits, some of them for
long periods of time. This is a very important development. Some
big companies are co-operating very successfully with Jobcentre
Plus in helping to place people who have been on incapacity benefits
into work. I have met some of these success stories, and it is
fabulous to see it being done. Once you have made that connection
with the world of work, it is possible to make progress and to
develop, and that is clearly the responsibility of the employer.
We do provide ongoing active help and support in some cases where
we think that can be important and make a difference, but I think
essentially this is about our responsibilities versus the employers'
responsibility. We are reasonably clear what ours are: Pathways
to Work to work, more active help and support, ongoing support,
Return to Work Credit, that whole suite of services designed to
get people back into work, but once someone is in work, the primary
responsibility for that person is clearly the employer who has
taken them on, and if that is about occupational health or in-work
training or whatever it is, career development, that is where
the employer has to do the business. Our job is to help support
that person get themselves ready to take on and hold down a job,
and once they have succeeded in doing that and have been employed,
then clearly we have some ongoing responsibilities, but the principal
responsibility then is with the employer.
Q322 Michael Foster: Do you think
you have given enough support to employers to deal with that sort
of spasmodic work? Somebody can arrive Monday, Tuesday, may need
to be off till the Thursday week, and then come back again? You
see, that sort of employment, which is often the sort of employment
that those with mental illness can cope with, the average employer
is not going to do that unless he has an awful lot of support
and back-up. Is that a possibility?
Mr Hutton: It is very difficult.
Do we do enough? Probably not. We should always be looking to
do more to help people in that situation, and we will be doing
that as part of Pathways. That has been part and parcel of our
approach to date and it will continue, and it obviously is harder
to do that in relation to acute psychotic illness, of course,
by definition. All I can say really in relation to that—and
it is a generalisation; I accept that, but I do not think I can
be more specific—is that, as I said, our job is to help
that person to be in a position where they can actually hold down
a job successfully, and it may well be in those circumstances
that the best sort of job for that person would be flexible, part-time
employment, flexi-hours or whatever, and it will be our responsibility
in Jobcentre Plus to try and match the actual capacity, the functional
capabilities, of incapacity benefits recipients with a job vacancy
that we think will best meet their needs, and that is very much
what Jobcentre Plus and the personal advisers try and do all the
time in relation to people with mental health problems.
Q323 Michael Foster: I am sorry to
keep pressing you on this matter, but can we therefore look for
some models of that sort of work by the time the White Paper appears?
Mr Hutton: We are not planning
a White Paper as such, so I would not wait for that, but this
issue about how we can best support people with a mental health
problem I agree is a fundamental issue for us. We will continue
to discuss with the mental health lobby, the organisations who
are interested, the doctors and all of the representative organisations
the best way we can continue to support the needs of people with
a mental health problem. We really want to do this, and we, I
think, have a platform in Pathways to Work that we can build on,
and that is one of the reasons why I said earlier, in relation
to what Justine or Greg was asking me, that we should look at
Pathways as an evolving journey. I do not want it to become a
highly prescriptive, process-driven exercise where there are certain
things that have to happen in a mechanical way. You have to have
your conditionality arrangements properly defined, because that
is absolutely essential in terms of legal clarity and so on, but
in all of these areas we should—and I hope this is what
comes out of our involvement in the private and voluntary sector,
by the way—be able to develop a more sophisticated model
that in relation to mental health provides more ongoing post-employment
help and support as part of the package that we provide, and I
think, looking at the expertise of the mental health organisations,
the mental health charities, the voluntary sector, we have a unique
opportunity. It will be a big collaboration between the public
and the private and voluntary sector, a great opportunity to build
into our successful Pathways programmes more of the expertise
of the voluntary sector. That is one way that I hope we can provide
more effective and tailored support for people with mental health
problems.
Q324 Mr Dunne: I would like to ask
one or two questions about the practicalities of roll-out of Pathways
at the same time as the efficiency savings programme is going
through the Department, and in particular in Jobcentre Plus. With
the move to contact centres and the much-reduced office network,
do you think there are going to be sufficient personal advisers
in the right place to be able to carry out the roll-out across
the country?
Mr Hutton: Yes, I do, and I say
that for two reasons. There is a head count reduction programme
under way in the Department and we have lost nearly 15,000 staff
through it, and another 15,000 still to go, as it were, over the
next two years or so. Alongside that head count reduction, Jobcentre
Plus is trying to make a major shift of emphasis and focus within
the organisation to more people actually doing face-to-face work
with our customers in Jobcentre Plus. So I think something like
10,000 staff in Jobcentre Plus are being moved from one part of
the organisation into our front office, and that is entirely right,
so they can provide more of this proactive help and support. The
second reason why I think we will be able to do this is that Jobcentre
Plus is currently involved in delivering a third, essentially,
of the Pathways exercise. Two-thirds of it will be delivered by
the private and voluntary sector, and there will clearly be a
commissioning and procurement process established to do that,
and clearly, it will be part and parcel of that procurement exercise
that the private and voluntary sector provider establishes that
capacity and capability within the service that it is running.
So I am confident that we will be able to provide the very important
face-to-face contact on a regular basis that is key to the success
of these types of support packages.
Q325 Mr Dunne: Are the current personal
advisers ring-fenced from the efficiency-saving work force reduction?
Mr Hutton: As I said, we are clear
that we can do the head count reduction and build up at the same
time our personal adviser network, our range of contact services
between ourselves and our customers. To that extent you could
say that that is true; they are ring-fenced, yes.
Q326 Mr Dunne: One of the things
I always bring up at these sessions, I am afraid, is that I represent
a very rural constituency where, for example, in the town of Ludlow
the Jobcentre Plus has just been closed, and there is a particular
issue. I hope you will forgive me for bringing up a constituency
matter, but it came to me by e-mail on Friday. The 12 people formerly
working in the Ludlow office, of whom a number were personal advisers,
have shrunk to three, now operating out of the local library.
I received an e-mail from a claimant on Friday and, if you will
bear with me, I will just read it to you to illustrate the problem.
It says that "everyone going the library can see who is attending
the Jobcentre. Often there are a line of people. Secondly, there
are private matters discussed clearly within earshot of other
people. I cannot understand why the centre is not positioned in
a private room." This is an issue which I have brought up
with the Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus previously, but it
just illustrates one of the problems that I see, this clash. You
are trying to do so much in the Department to be able to provide
sufficient access to people in remote areas for their initial
interviews, their work-focused interviews, and I can see that
it is going to give rise to problems for claimants who feel embarrassment
at having to discuss their personal affairs in front of other
people?
Mr Hutton: I do not like the sound
of that arrangement and I think that will need to be looked at
again. On a broader level—and I will certainly have a look
at that—I think it is perfectly possible to do this restructuring
exercise through a combination of efficiency measures like centralising
the benefit processing function, using call centres as a method
of contact, as well as reinforce the front line, which is really
important, that people actually do the face-to-face contact work,
and that is very much what Jobcentre Plus are trying to do through
this reorganisation exercise. I think it is really important that
we focus on the front line here. Many other organisations, both
in the public and the private sector, have been through these
sorts of change exercises, and I think what you have to be really
clear about is the outcomes that you want, what you do not want
to see knocked on the head or compromised by these changes, and
I think what that means in terms of Jobcentre Plus is an absolutely
rigid and clear set of priorities about our front line, about
the need to support people on incapacity benefits with proper
face-to-face advice, and everything I see convinces me that we
are capable of doing that, we are doing this in the right way,
and I am sure this is what the private and voluntary sector will
want to do as part of the roll-out of Pathways to Work over the
next two years.
Q327 Mr Dunne: One of the issues
that was raised by some of the groups giving evidence was the
workload of an individual personal adviser, and in particular
the difficulty as the number of claimants increases, given the
pressures that we have been talking about, with the length of
claim. Put simply, it takes longer to deal with somebody who has
been on incapacity benefits for a longer period of time. We also
had evidence from some of the specialist voluntary groups that
they do not feel they are being used properly to address some
of the specific issues of some client groups. In particular, we
had the RNIB and the RNID saying that they could deal with people
who are, respectively, blind or deaf much better than any of the
people who are likely to be less trained in the specific requirements
of those claimants. What steps are you taking to try and address
clients groups being referred properly to the most appropriate
voluntary groups to help get them into work?
Mr Hutton: I agree. This is an
area where we should be prepared to think some new thoughts. In
relation to the Pathways roll-out, again, organisations like the
RNID and RNIB are perfectly capable, and I hope they do say to
us, "Look, we would like to work as a partner in delivering
the roll-out of Pathways." That would be a tremendously good
thing to happen for our welfare state. That sort of broader partnership,
where we involve the public sector but with the expertise of the
private and voluntary sector, would be a good thing for the welfare
state, not a bad thing, particularly, I suspect, in this case,
for the reason you are alluding to, that it will be in those parts
of the voluntary sector where some of the expertise is very especially
concentrated, and we should use that for the benefit of incapacity
benefits claimants. I think the roll-out of Pathways gives an
opportunity for the voluntary sector in the example that you have
given to become a much more proactive partner with Jobcentre Plus,
and I really do hope that happens. In relation to the wider question
about personal advisers, in relation to IB, we are seeing a very
significant fall in the number of new claimants coming into the
system, down by a third in the last two years, and I hope that
will help ease some of the pressure on some of the front line,
particularly the personal advisers, who do a brilliant job actually,
but again, I think with the personal advisers, you will find quite
a variation in contact and interviews and so on that they have
across the week or the month or even the year with other parts
of the country. There is not, I think, a standard operating model,
and neither should there be. It will depend on horses for courses
and everything else. I think the Green Paper offers us the opportunity,
in simple terms, to join up the public sector with the private
and voluntary sector in a very dynamic and important way, and
that will benefit everyone.
Q328 Mr Dunne: Is there any evidence
from Pathways that it improves the reduction of long-term incapacity
benefits claimants from coming off and getting into work? When
we were in Holland we saw some particularly good evidence that
the greater the amount of time that personal advisers and voluntary
groups were able to devote to longer-term claimants, the higher
the success rate they appeared to have in getting people back
into work.
Mr Hutton: The roll-out of Pathways
initially, of course, was Jobcentre Plus. We have not had a huge
amount of opportunity to test the private and voluntary sector-led
exercises, but in the Employment Zone, for example, the private
and voluntary sector providers have a very good track record in
improving outcomes for incapacity benefits claimants and Jobseeker's
Allowance claimants. I think their performance actually exceeds
Jobcentre Plus in a number of very important respects. So there
is some evidence there to that effect. What I do not have is any
evidence, for example, in relation to Pathways that says the critical
moment of trajectory lift-off is after, say, three work-focused
interviews or four or five. I do not know the answer to that question.
I would like to find out.
Q329 Mr Dunne: When you do, if you
do, perhaps you could let us know. On outcomes—I am sorry
to labour the point—do you have any evidence from Pathways
that providing a greater incentive for outcomes assists, again,
those who are the most difficult to get back into work?
Mr Hutton: I do not think we do
from the Pathways because it is not outcome-based funding that
we have applied. We certainly do have evidence from the Employment
Zone that outcome-based funding can really make a difference,
and the one thing that we have not mentioned today in relation
to this point is that we have a twin-track approach. We have talked
essentially about Pathways. I do not know whether anyone wanted
to mention the city strategy that we outlined in the Green Paper,
but we have another tool in the locker here which I think potentially
could be very significant. In our so-called city strategy we are
proposing to try and mobilise not just our resources in DWP but
resources across the public sector, and some in the private and
voluntary sector, in waging what I hope will be a new war on worklessness
in some of our big cities. It is a major problem. We have tackled
unemployment very successfully but economic inactivity in some
of our big cities is still chronic and is a serious problem for
us, for our economy and for the health and wellbeing of those
communities. The city strategy is an attempt to try and pool the
resources, as I said, right across the public and private and
voluntary sector, using outcome-based funding where we can, to
incentivise particular outcomes, and of course, in this case it
will be getting people into work and keeping them in work. There
is certainly evidence that those sorts of contractual models can
be effective and that is why we are interested in exploring in
the city strategy how much further we can go.
Q330 Mr Dunne: Does that mean you
will be extending Employment Zones?
Mr Hutton: No, it is not really
an extension of Employment Zones. The city strategy is slightly
different. A lot of them will be local authority-led, they will
involve consortia of other parts of the public sector and the
private and voluntary sector, and they will be certainly in the
general area of back-to-work help and support services, but they
will involve a broader and wider partnership than the Employment
Zones. In terms of outcome funding, it is not a totally different
model.
Q331 Mr Dunne: But in relation to
Employment Zones, is that programme going to be left to wither?
Mr Hutton: We have not made any
decisions with regard to Employment Zones. They have had some
success, and I think it is usually a good idea to promote success,
not to strangle it.
Mr Dunne: I would agree with that.
Q332 John Penrose: Minister, having
talked about your job as getting people prepared and closer to
the world of work as the main thrust of what you are trying to
do, having got them as ready as they can be to re-enter work,
can we talk about whether the barriers of getting employers to
agree to employ them and, having employed them, keeping them in
work once they are there? A number of the charities we spoke to
last week were saying they had huge difficulties convincing employers
to take on potential employees with disabilities of one sort or
another, so much so that one of them said the only way they could
make it happen was to personally go and talk to the hiring managers
and convince them over a period of time that this was not a terrible
thing they were asking them to do. Do you have any plans to introduce
more carrots or more sticks to get more employers to accept people
with incapacity issues as employees?
Mr Hutton: There are a number
of things. There is a process of education that we need to be
involved in and we are involved in. The Disabilities Rights Commission
I know does a lot of work in this area, and so do we. We have
run a number of campaigns around disability awareness, and we
are actually in the middle of the final phase of that campaign.
That will last for several more months. I think we should continue
to do that energetically, because I think education is a very
important part of it. I think we have to move people on from the
stereotypes, as I said earlier about incapacity benefits. It is
difficult. I have met employers, and I am sure you have as well,
who will say, "I am not interested. It is not right for my
business, I cannot have people like that working." We have
to really tackle that. Our fundamental responsibility, however,
through Pathways to Work and these other schemes is to make sure
when we are providing people for employers to consider that they
are job-ready. That is the most important single contribution
we can make in this process. Beyond that it is difficult but we
have the backdrop of Disability Discrimination legislation. I
know that is obviously a last resort, not a first resort. The
other thing I would say is that I do generally become frustrated
about this, because it is I think it is possible to do this, and
I am hacked off when people say "It is too difficult, we
cannot do this. Let us just give up." We should never give
up, and the success of Pathways to Work, with 21,500 job entries,
many of them people who had been on IB for some considerable time,
many with mental health problems, shows that it can be done, and
I think we should approach this problem from that perspective,
not say it is too difficult, it can never happen and employers
will never be interested. In a changing labour market and with
the process of demographic change that is under way, more and
more employers are going to be looking at whether this is a potential
source of new recruits for their business. They will not do that,
however, if we cannot provide people with proper help and support
so they are job-ready. It is a bit of a chicken and egg, but we
have to do our bit. Our bit is the job readiness, and I think
if we can do that, we can break through this barrier. It is a
barrier. It is probably the last great social emancipation issue
of our time, the rights of disabled people. We have to make progress
here. We have to keep driving it and not say it is all too difficult
and we should not bother.
Q333 John Penrose: I completely accept
it is important not to say it is all too difficult. I am just
concerned that you are focusing, in economics terms, on the supply
side of the problem rather than the demand side and, from what
you are saying, you recognise that there is a very long way to
travel on the demand side to match that up. Is education going
to be enough, and is it going to get us there fast enough?
Mr Hutton: No, I think we have
to do both. I do not know whether you have heard any evidence
from the Disability Management Employer Coalition. These guys
are doing a really good job for us up and down the country in
explaining the benefits of recruiting in this area and making
sure employers themselves understand the issues and the difficulties.
There is a very well-established network now of employers who
are prepared to co-operate with Jobcentre Plus, nearly 1,000 across
the country, some very big, who are willing to sit down and talk
through these issues with us, and I think we need to do more of
that. I am confident that is the right way to tackle these problems.
But there is no silver bullet. I wish there were. I have been
annoyed to hear what I have picked up from some sources and some
employers saying, "Oh no, I could not possibly have someone
on Incapacity Benefit working for me." We have to challenge
that and we have to be absolutely clear in this modern society
that that sort of attitude is not acceptable. Clearly, an employer
is not going to employ someone if they do not believe that person
is capable of doing the job that they have on offer. That is our
job, that is fully our responsibility to respond to, and that
is what Pathways, the whole Green Paper is all about trying to
do. It is our offering, it is our part of the equation, and we
are determined to try and deliver it properly.
Q334 John Penrose: Finally on this,
you said you have roughly 1,000 employers in this network. Do
you have a target or figure in mind for what you would regard
as a success to expand that network to indicate that you are making
enough progress on getting the demand side of that equation right?
Mr Hutton: I would like more employers
involved, of course, but we are working with the employers themselves
on this. The CBI and others have provided very good support to
us on this and we are going to continue to work through that network
of employers. Often, the messages that employers need to hear
are best heard from other employers.
Q335 John Penrose: But no target
on that?
Mr Hutton: We do not have a target
for that, no.
Q336 John Penrose: Having got people
into work, obviously it is important to make sure they stay there
if at all possible, so can we talk about job retention? We have
had a number of people who have given us evidence saying that
various kinds of in-work support either could be extended to provide,
for example, personal advisers to remain in touch with people
after they got jobs, or alternatively to extend the existing sorts
of in-work support which you are providing beyond the six months
that you are providing it in the Pathways areas for a longer period
than that. Do you have any plans to extend in-work support either
in duration of time or in terms of type?
Mr Hutton: I think this is something
that probably will emerge through the evaluation of the Pathways
to Work through pilot schemes. There may be more we need to do
here. I accept that, and we should be open-minded about that.
The help and support that we provide for people in work is not
just confined to that sort of service. There is the Access to
Work programme, which is a very important part of this. There
we have more than doubled the numbers of people getting help under
that scheme. We are rapidly improving the turn-around of applications
under Access to Work for help and support; that is going exactly
in the right direction, and we are planning to spend more in each
of the subsequent years of the Spending Review on providing access
to work. We have Workstep and we have other programmes in that
area that are making an inroad into this. I think it is a very
important part of the overall component of the support we should
provide and we should be willing, if the case can be made that
the evidence is there for doing more in this area. Yes, absolutely.
Q337 John Penrose: I was going to
ask you about Access to Work but I think you have answered my
question about extending the funding of that, because it sounds
as if you are going to need to ramp up the amount of money you
are spending on that quite substantially.
Mr Hutton: We have published plans
for how we are going to extend Access to Work.
Q338 John Penrose: A final query
on retention. The RNIB came up with the idea of rehabilitation
leave, rather like, I suppose, parental leave or something for
people who were becoming sick or ill, developing incapacities
while working. Is that extension of employer responsibilities
and working with employees who are becoming ill something you
have considered?
Mr Hutton: It is not. I think
we have to be careful about imposing additional cost and burdens
on employers in that regard, but if the RNIB have specific proposals
that they would like us to consider, we would obviously look very
carefully at that. You would expect me to say that, but if that
emerges from the Green Paper as an issue of concern, again, we
would have to carefully reflect on that.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Secretary
of State. You have escaped alive!
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