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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 497-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
THE PUBLIC GUARDIANSHIP OFFICE
Tuesday 24 April 2007 RT HON BARONESS ASHTON OF UPHOLLAND and RICHARD BROOK Evidence heard in Public Questions 1-43
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Constitutional Affairs Committee on Tuesday 24 April 2007 Members present Mr Alan Beith, in the Chair David Howarth Bob Neill Keith Vaz Dr Alan Whitehead Jeremy Wright ________________ Witnesses: Rt Hon Baroness Ashton of Upholland, a Member of the House of Lords, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs and Richard Brook, Chief Executive, Public Guardianship Office, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: Lady Ashton, Mr Brook, welcome. The Public Guardianship Office does important and valuable work affecting very vulnerable people and their families so we are glad to have the opportunity of a short session to raise some points with you. Could you start by giving us an indication of what progress you are making in relation to the performance targets? If you take 2006-07, back over that period, how has the progress been? Richard Brook: We seem to have improved and I am really pleased that is the case. We have 29 published KPIs. We have reached and succeeded in exceeding 24 of those; so that is really good. We have five where we have very nearly reached them; within 1% or 2%. So generally we have been improving and that is really good, although I would not want to be complacent and say we have, by any means, got to a level of customer delivery that I would be totally satisfied with, but generally in the right direction, very positive. One particular thing which is very pleasing is our customer satisfaction survey which has got to 75%; that is really positive although it still means that we need to improve with one in four. Generally in the right direction. Q2 Chairman: Have you slipped back on any targets? Richard Brook: Not this year; every one showed an improvement. Q3 Chairman: The Adjudicator's report back in 2003, which is obviously engraved on your heart, was highly critical of the PGO and its handling of individual cases. Perhaps people not familiar with it will not quite realise what the impact of that is. What steps were taken to address those mistakes and failures? Richard Brook: You are right that it is engraved on my heart, although I was not actually here in 2003. If you read the subsequent Adjudicator's reports from then on, she has actually reported year on year an improvement in the Public Guardianship Office work and we are down to 13 cases which went to her this year, some of which were partially upheld, as far as I recall, none fully upheld and this is an indication of us improving. It is really important to learn as well from those cases that get that far because inevitably it means that people have been dissatisfied with us; it is not sufficient to say it is getting better and we do have a process of improvement and we are particularly looking to the case management issues which were raised in 2003 and have significantly improved since then but still need our attention to ensure that we improve further. As you rightly said in your opening statement, we are dealing with some very vulnerable people here and it is very important that we get the services right for them. We are going in the right direction without being complacent. Q4 Chairman: Do you now have an electronic case management system? Richard Brook: We have improved our IT system quite significantly. When you actually make an application for a lasting power of attorney, as it will be, enduring power of attorney as it currently is, that is totally case managed. We have an improved case management system for what we call case work, although it is not totally automated in workflow and that probably is some time off and will depend on further investment. In terms of actually having computer information, that is increasingly being put in place, has been over the last year and with the new Mental Capacity Act will improve further again in October as the IT programmes that we are running this year come to fruition and delivery. Q5 Chairman: So the answer is "Not yet". Richard Brook: The answer is yes in many parts but still more to come. Q6 Keith Vaz: I do not know whether the NAO report is also engraved on your heart, but it made a number of recommendations as to how to improve the operation of the PGO. Can you outline briefly how much those recommendations have impacted on the workings of your Office? Richard Brook: Again, I came six months after that report had been completed but in those six months we had already started to do some work. There were particular areas, were there not, such as making our services better known to the wider communities? We have done quite a lot of work through GP surgeries and healthcare professionals. We have done quite a lot of work in linking with outreach work. Q7 Keith Vaz: How much do you spend on raising the profile of the PGO with those stakeholders? Richard Brook: I would need to give you exact figures for that if you wanted, but it is quite a small percentage of our overall budget which is £23 million; it is probably less than £1 million. Q8 Keith Vaz: Has it made any impact on the number of referrals you have? Richard Brook: Enduring powers of attorney are increasing quite significantly. That has been correlated back to some of the work we have done with GPs. I need to say that it is the wider awareness in the community which has risen by other ways. Those of you who are fans of The Archers for instance will know that enduring powers of attorney featured quite strongly in The Archers about 12 months and our registration shot up quite significantly. Q9 Chairman: Was that your doing? Richard Brook: Not at all; if only. Q10 Chairman: In the old days government departments used to supply The Archers with storylines to get information to people. That was how it started. Richard Brook: Those were probably the old days. We use any way possible, particularly for enduring powers of attorney, because clearly if you make an enduring power of attorney, you do not get caught up within the court process that occurs if you do not. We are very keen on promoting that and indeed the LPAs in the new legislation. Q11 Keith Vaz: The report also says that the PGO did not have "... routine mechanisms for collating aggregate information on the main types of financial mismanagement or abuse occurring," and I am quoting here "the circumstances when these have occurred, how instances of mismanagement or abuse have been detected and whether its regulatory controls have operated as intended". What procedures and practices have you put in place to address this very serious criticism? Richard Brook: That is right and any situation where people are subject to abuse of any sort is a really serious concern. One must not make light of that. We created a complaints and investigations unit shortly after that report, so all complaints and investigations that come in are actually looked at by that unit. Q12 Keith Vaz: How many complaints did you have last year? Richard Brook: Complaints or investigations? Q13 Keith Vaz: Complaints. Do you not investigate every complaint? Richard Brook: We classify them in two different ways. We have complaints about what we do and we have investigations where people are complaining about other people's actions and they are dealt with in the complaints and investigations unit. Q14 Keith Vaz: So how many complaints did you have last year? Richard Brook: Three hundred. Q15 Keith Vaz: And how many investigations did you have? Richard Brook: It is a little bit difficult to say within the year, but currently we have 200 ongoing investigations. Q16 Keith Vaz: Three hundred complaints and 200 investigations. Richard Brook: That is right. Q17 Keith Vaz: And how long do you take to complete these investigations? Richard Brook: The investigations --- Q18 Keith Vaz: What is the backlog? Richard Brook: There is no backlog; they are all current cases and they take different lengths of time to deal with. Some involve us getting financial and legal advice and that can take quite a long time when we need access to bank accounts and other sorts of material. Some are dealt with very quickly, particularly where it is a question of whether someone is spending appropriate money on a relative and that we can deal with very quickly and they will be dealt with in a matter of a short number of days or even weeks. For the longer ones, where people are arguing about estates that might be worth £400,000 to £500,000, it takes longer to acquire the detail. Q19 Keith Vaz: How many complaints, as a percentage, relate to the appointment of a new receiver? You were criticised for your failure to appoint these quickly enough, were you not? Richard Brook: Yes, the agency was historically criticised. Most would actually be more about the decisions undertaken by the court, where people come to us as the administrator. If you want the exact percentage which is about applications, I would need to get that information and send it to you. Q20 Keith Vaz: What is the average length of time it takes for you to appoint a receiver, from the time of application? Richard Brook: Currently it is between three and four months. Q21 Keith Vaz: It was five months, was it not? Richard Brook: Yes; it is dropping. Q22 Keith Vaz: Do you think that is satisfactory? Richard Brook: It can improve further. It is theoretically going to be more than about two months, because you have a legal process where you have to give notice to other parties and that creates a pathway and you cannot shorten that pathway unless you get specific permission from the court. There is quite a lot of room for us to improve further. Q23 Keith Vaz: Have ministers given you a target, when you meet Baroness Ashton of Upholland, as you do, quarterly is it? Richard Brook: Quarterly through the ministerial advisory board. Q24 Keith Vaz: Does she say to you "Mr Brook, this is not good enough, you need to improve. This is your target"? Richard Brook: It is one of our KPIs; it is the one that we are about 3% or 4% off and it is subject to discussions at those ministerial advisory board meetings. Q25 Keith Vaz: "Subject to discussions", but are you set a target? Richard Brook: Yes, in terms of KPIs. Q26 Keith Vaz: And you have failed to meet that target? Richard Brook: We are 3% or 4% off it at the moment. We are about 92% instead of 95%. Q27 Keith Vaz: One of the other points which was raised was the lack of an electronic case management system which you cancelled in 2003, not you personally but the PGO cancelled in 2003. This was regarded as a very serious failing. What are you doing about it? Richard Brook: Under the new changes in the Mental Capacity Act, we will introduce a different form but a very similar form of case record management, but what it will not have, as I said earlier, is the process flow stuff that was originally intended in the programme that you are talking about; that is still some way off unless we can find further investment. Q28 Keith Vaz: So you lack resources from the DCA, or whatever it is now called, the putative Ministry of Justice, to do this? How much money do you need from them? Richard Brook: We have a capital amount next year that will make us take further steps forward and we are probably going as fast as we can. It will be clear that if we had further funds, that would allow us to do further developments of the IT systems, but one accepts that has to be put against other priorities and other needs. Q29 Keith Vaz: I asked how much? Richard Brook: We would have to scope that. I could not give you a view. Q30 Keith Vaz: You do not know? Richard Brook: We are spending £1 million to improve it next year; it would certainly be well in excess of that to completely re-fit the system. Q31 Keith Vaz: But you need this, do you not, to have a proper system? Richard Brook: No, we are working on a system where we believe that the improvements to our current system will deliver a satisfactory service and indeed we are showing a much improved service to our customers. Q32 Dr Whitehead: In the same report the NAO said "... the DCA needs to continue to support the Public Guardianship Office" and it specifically said that it needs to do so "... to ensure that it has the right skills, the right resources and the necessary infrastructure to meet demands that will be made of it". That does appear to be a recommendation perhaps slightly beyond the former relationship between an executive agency and a government department. Does the DCA see things that way concerning the Public Guardianship Office? Is the DCA acting, in terms of its support, in the way that the NAO report suggested? Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I hope that we are, but it is in the context of the Mental Capacity Act, because of course that made huge changes to the way in which we pursued issues of mental capacity and the way in which the Office of the Public Guardian and Court of Protection operate. My ambition has been to work closely with Richard, who I was delighted to appoint with his background, and his team to make sure that the DCA appropriately resources to the point it can, supports, in terms of the needs of the organisation, provides the resource, in terms of ministerial support, the opportunity to talk with stakeholders outside and so on so that it can make that transition satisfactorily. We are on schedule to do that. The Court of Protection will be available from October, the Office of the Public Guardian will also be available and being very mindful in that that one of the ways in which the public have become more aware of this is indeed through the Mental Capacity Act. If I go back to The Archers, I do not know but I suspect that it was a lot of the publicity around the Mental Capacity Act that actually led to that being one of the themes within The Archers, so we have tried to do that appropriately. We have put in place for the new organisation a board, which came out of the Mental Capacity Act and was actually an original idea of Lord Kingsland, but one which I was very happy to seize upon, which gives, by appointment of individuals with backgrounds in health and business, expertise in different areas, another way in which Richard gets additional support and expertise to be able to think through the strategy for the organisation for the future and in a sense provides an additional link to the DCA. Q33 Dr Whitehead: Will that board then be inside or outside the formal function of the framework document? Are you or have you renegotiated and re-discussed the framework document in the light of the emergence of the effectively new agency under the terms of the Act? Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The Act brings into being the board so it is within the framework of the legislation that has been put forward. The ability of the board to be able to provide the expertise and support is what we wanted to achieve through the membership of the board and we were very careful in thinking through where additional advice and support would make a difference to what Richard and the team were doing and have appointed accordingly. Our ambition is that if you link between the DCA's functions and the role of both ministers and senior officials there, a board which is available to think through the strategic approach that we want to take to this and the management team within the new organisation, that combination gives the right and appropriate framework to enable the organisation to develop. Q34 Dr Whitehead: Does that then have a formal structure? Baroness Ashton of Upholland: Yes it does. Q35 Dr Whitehead: What then is the shape and extent of that formal structure within what I would normally understand to be the sort of framework arrangements that exist between parent department and agency and obviously the changed circumstances in which that framework document might function? Baroness Ashton of Upholland: One of the criticisms which has been made about way the Public Guardianship Office was not as effective as it might have been was that it was very far distanced from the Department for Constitutional Affairs and that however much ministers wished to be involved with it, it was always going to be a small part of a portfolio of a junior minister, with the Lord Chancellor of course playing the appropriate overview role. So looking at how we could perhaps add additional expertise and support into the Public Guardianship Office, the OPG, was part of what I was trying to do with the Mental Capacity Act. I seized upon the idea of a board not least because, having chaired a health authority board, I could see how valuable the kind of non-executive function, if you could get the right people, could be to those who were trying to be the executives in what was essentially going to be a new way of operating. We have tried to produce what we think is the right vehicle for this particular agency, which is, as has been rightly pointed out by the Chairman and by Mr Vaz, looking at some of the most vulnerable people in our society, to enable the executive team to have that board's knowledge and advice available to it. Rosie Varley will be the chair of the board and it is now in shadow form. She has a long history of experience in mental health and in the Health Service and is very good at working between ministers and executives without getting in the way, as it were. We have also appointed to that board people who have history with the business community, with the Health Service and we have others, for example the immigration commissioner sits on it, people who have expertise and we shall have judicial input as well, to be available as a resource. We hope that that will, in a sense, enable the organisation to call upon that experience. Just by contrast, on the ministerial advisory board we have two non-executives at the present time: one has a lot of experience in external communications, the other in terms of HR, very valuable assets when we are trying to think through, for example, how we best get information out into the public domain or thinking through the changes that will be necessary and which Richard has largely put in place for staffing for the future organisation. Q36 Jeremy Wright: Can we stick with the Mental Capacity Act for the moment and focus on the changes which the Minister has been talking about? Mr Brook, can I just ask you something on that for a moment? The Minister has described the changes which the Mental Capacity Act makes to your Office as being huge changes and I assume you would agree with her that changing the Office from the Public Guardianship Office to the Office of the Public Guardian is more than just moving the words of the title around; it is a little more significant than that. Do you think that the changes which the Mental Capacity Act makes to your Office are going to be sufficient to deal with the problems which we have talked about already which it has faced in the past, or does it require further change and if so, what should those changes be? Richard Brook: The Mental Capacity Act makes a huge change, not just to our work. Sometimes people see us as just the Mental Capacity Act solution, but of course we are changing how decisions are made for people in hospitals, health care, social care, a huge range of things. A lot of work is being done currently in trying to ensure that everyone who delivers those types of services for people who cannot make their own decisions understands the issues around the Mental Capacity Act such as lease intervention, specific decision making, not assuming people cannot make decisions in every area of their lives, but just those ones which are assessed as not suitable. We are part of a solution about changing the landscape of how you care for people experiencing Alzheimer's or road traffic accident victims or people with learning disabilities. We are going to go a long way to achieve what we need to do under the Mental Capacity Act in October and onwards. We are moving to an empowering regime, we are moving to us becoming a regulator rather than actually interfering in people's lives, but hopefully a regulator that takes very seriously those cases that we identify. I am amazed even in the year I have been here at the number of situations where people sadly do take advantage of relatives and family in quite a disturbing way. We have gone a long way, but you actually asked a much more profound question as well in a sense because if we actually just put something in place in October and say that is it, we are actually missing the main part of what the Act does. The Act allows us a formula to continue forward to develop some sort of regulatory regime that picks up some of these things that we have been talking about earlier, about where the high-risk cases are and where the cases are where we should not be intervening. At the moment we have a very similar approach to someone who has been living with a partner for 40 years and has a joint bank account and to someone who is perhaps inheriting for the first time several million pounds, perhaps through a court settlement, and in a situation where perhaps the family are not agreeing how that should be used. We have to have a much more differential approach to individuals and I believe that is deliverable from October onwards. We are building into the organisation a learning concept so we really start to learn further. Surprisingly, the amount of research in this country and internationally is very, very small in this area. It would be really lovely if we could just open a book and work out why it is that people behave the way they do, but sadly that is not available. Indicators yes, but certainly we need a much bigger evidence base, so hopefully those sorts of strategies are the way we will take it forward. Q37 Jeremy Wright: Some regulations have already been issued in relation to the Act; I think they were out last week. Can you tell me a little bit about the feedback which you have had, either of you, from various organisations in relation to the Act and to the regulations, whether that is positive or negative, where particular concerns have been raised with you about it and what you propose to do about those? Richard Brook: One encouraging thing about the debate around mental capacity is, although obviously there are specific issues that people get very focused on, that overall there has been a huge amount of support from professionals, from the legal profession, from the voluntary sector, from organisations with which some of you will be very familiar. There is a huge consensus that we are going in the right direction. That is not to say that we have not been pushed and challenged in some areas about whether we have it exactly right and I welcome that debate, it is really important that we have that feedback and one of my commitments is to meeting with people who have direct experience of these situations from different perspectives. The feedback has been enormously positive about the process, the legislation and the documentation such as the code of practice and I am sure Baroness Ashton of Upholland will want to build on that because she has been very active in making sure that groups have been engaged very much with the process. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: It has been essential. Getting the Mental Capacity Act through Parliament was merely the very beginning of the process and the organisations who have worked with us have been incredibly helpful in making sure that, for example with the code of practice, they have given us input. So we have been able to balance providing information for practitioners, for example in the Health Service, while also providing information for family carers. One of the things that we debated at great length during the passage of the Act was the relationship between families and making sure that family members were not forgotten in the process and that it was not all about the professional carer but also families being involved. I have met with a variety of round tables of different organisations from the BMA and GMC through to the National Autistic Society, Alzheimer's groups and so on. We have kept informed the key members of both houses who were involved in the passage of the Act. Last night we had a reception for members of both Houses and all of the organisations who had helped with the code of practice which has just finished being laid before Parliament and could be issued. We have done our very best to work with them. As Richard said, there are challenges no doubt, and there have been areas where they have disagreed with each other, but I think they would all say that, with what we have produced, both in terms of the regulations we have laid and the lasting power of attorney forms that we have produced and the code of practice, we have done a good job and that they were pleased with the results. What I would finally say is what we have also said about the code of practice: it is a living document, it is not the end. As we develop and implement the Mental Capacity Act, we will learn and I am sure that professionals and families will come back and say that actually the code of practice ought to be amended, we ought to do this differently, we ought to give these examples and that is what I have committed us to do. Q38 Jeremy Wright: May I just raise a couple of specific things which have been raised with me and invite your response to them in that context? One is that in the replacement of an enduring power of attorney with a lasting power of attorney, there is a concern that the amount of work involved for someone who holds an enduring power of attorney is much less than the amount of work required for someone who holds a lasting power of attorney on behalf of someone else and that there is the danger, it is said, that that will put people off the idea of holding a lasting power of attorney on behalf of someone else. That obviously is not your intention; one understands that you need to build in safeguards. However, is that a concern still and is there any more that can be done about it? The second point is the cost of a lasting power of attorney compared with an enduring power of attorney. Assuming you go to a solicitor and you ask him to do you an enduring power of attorney now, it costs X pounds. The estimate which is being made by some lawyers, as you will know, is that the cost of doing the necessary work to put together a lasting power of attorney is considerably in excess of current fees. So again, for some of the people that we are talking about, the extra financial burden of having a lasting power of attorney instead of an enduring power of attorney could be considerable. Those are the two things. I just wonder whether you could make comments on both of those. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: What we have been seeking to do in producing the lasting powers of attorney is to make sure that we make it as simple and as easy as possible for people to fill in the forms to take out a lasting power of attorney and to be clear what the responsibilities are that they are giving individuals to whom they choose to give the power of attorney and to make that as simple and clear cut as possible. We have also, as Richard was saying, in looking at the role of the Office of the Public Guardian, tried to move much more to a risk assessment of which cases need to have a lot more work done with them. As Richard says, at the moment we have the same process for Mr and Mrs Smith who have been married for 40 years, where one of them sadly develops Alzheimer's and the requirements upon their partner would be the same as a great nephew who has just arrived from Australia and inherited a huge amount of money for whom there was no relationship, where you might wish to be a little bit more cautious. We are trying to alter that to enable us to decide which cases need to have more input from the Office of the Public Guardian and which essentially can be left to continue while making sure that every now and then we dip into a random sample or whatever to make it clear that we are not leaving things on one side forever. That will have an impact on the amount of work that people have and in a sense, what may have put people off in the past, where you have to provide quite a lot of information to somebody you do not know in an office in Archway who you may not believe has the expertise to give you the advice that you want necessarily in any event and where people can get frustrated if there are delays. That will make a big difference to how people will view it, but time will tell and of course we have to build confidence in the new system so that people feel that is what is going to happen. Richard Brook: In answer to your question about whether it is a more complex and thus a more costly process, I do not see any reason why people cannot in the majority do their own lasting powers of attorney. The forms have been designed so you can do that. You can actually go to get it certified by a number of people who do not need to be legally qualified. We have a large number of EPAs which are done by individuals and LPAs are the same. In terms of the amount of work a professional would have to exercise, I am not a lawyer, but certainly if I just take a very simple look at the form, I actually do not believe there is a huge amount of extra work in LPAs compared with EPAs. It would be very sad if we saw a fee increase as a result of that. Of course, people need to question their own solicitors about the costs that they are incurring in those matters. The other thing we need to remember is that the cost is not going to be hugely different between the EPA and LPA; we have not finally announced our fees but in the fee proposals the difference was £20 or £25, so not huge. One of the major criticisms of enduring powers of attorney I am sure you will be aware of is that many of them are used unregistered. It is the unregistered ones that are fraudulently used. By having a much more robust system and making sure they are registered, people know they are being registered, family members are aware that a family member is being placed or a friend is being placed in that situation and you have a much more robust system. In a sense what you gain is much less vulnerability for people making lasting powers of attorney. Q39 Bob Neill: I just wanted to touch briefly on the fees regime as well because that has changed also; the underlying thrust seems to be to move towards making the Office financially self-sufficient. That is fine; we have already touched upon the number of vulnerable people and so on. What is the scheme going to be for exemptions and remissions and so on? Do you intend to do this on some sort of means test or some other basis? How do you decide who is able to pay and who is not? Richard Brook: We are not in a position to confirm finally where we are with remissions and exemptions but yes, it will have an element of means testing, obviously related to benefits and also related to asset levels. Those are the two things we are looking at actively. Many people who come to us with a small amount of capital or a small income are currently exempt and we would expect that to be the same and we are very committed to that. The other thing on which we are being pushed very hard, and I am very happy to be pushed in this direction, is to make sure that our scheme is very accessible to people, they are very clear about how it works, it is on the website. We are planning to make our internal instructions to our staff about how they exercise the scheme available to people and we will send everyone that approaches us about an order or a power of attorney the form that explains how they can apply for exemptions. We are very committed wherever possible to try to make sure that take-up is high. Q40 Bob Neill: What is the timeframe for that? Richard Brook: We would expect to be making an announcement in the near future, that is in a matter of weeks. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: We are in the middle of the consultation process and we are trying to finalise it and I am doing part of the pushing. It is very important that people can see very quickly whether they might be eligible so that we do not put anybody off from getting some of their money back or having the fee reduced if that seems right. Q41 Bob Neill: There is also of course a difference in the level of charge for supervision in the deputyships between light touch and close supervision. People will want to know what the difference is, who decides, what basis. Richard Brook: Absolutely. We are following the National Audit Office's recommendations about trying to create a risk-based assessment. We are expecting to make public and clear how we are using that risk assessment process. We obviously will put people into two categories. We have to recognise that is good news for many people, because we are expecting people in the lower category of fee to be paying less than they currently are. Clearly that means some people will pay more. We have piloted the risk assessment model currently and it works out that around a third at the moment would be in the higher risk level. We hope over time that we will be able to reduce that, but we do need to have good data because we are, in some cases, talking about people's assets that need to cover 30 or 40 years of care; we need to be cautious, but I am hoping that we will drive that down. If you are not happy about a decision to put you into a higher supervision level, you will be able to raise that initially with us because it is a decision which the Office makes. We are in discussions with the Adjudicator to allow an external review where people feel very aggrieved, so they can be assured that we have followed the agreed system that we have made public. I need to say that I think this will be a pressure point because it is difficult for people to understand perhaps why they are in one category or the other and they may not agree with us. Undoubtedly this is something we are going to have to work very hard at to try to explain to people and make it clear, but at the end of the day it is very important that in the higher risk cases we do have an ability to provide more supervision and support for the person who is not able to make a decision. Q42 Bob Neill: When do you expect to publish the details of that external review's procedures and so on? Richard Brook: The Adjudicator will do that. I am not very au fait with this but she tells me it is very similar to the sort of review of the system that they are doing currently for the tax credit system. It will be the same sort of system. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The good news for a lot of people will be that there will be less interference than they may feel there is at the moment, less information needs to be provided, but for some it will feel more and they may feel "Why me?". We want to be as clear as we possibly can be about the criteria and of course keep it under review; it does not mean they have to be there forever but, particularly with a new case, we may decide that actually, for various reasons to do with the relationship, the amount of money and so on, we do feel it needs a higher level of supervision to begin with and then over time that can be reduced. It is not necessarily forever but it is people's understanding that it is important to make sure that we do not, by setting up this new regime, put vulnerable people at risk. Q43 Bob Neill: So I take it that the criteria will be published in advance of the commencement of the new regime? Baroness Ashton of Upholland: Yes. Richard Brook: The assessment criteria; yes. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: So people will know where they fit in and know why we have made the decision, but nonetheless some people will feel they want to challenge that and I understand that. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. |