Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)

JOBCENTRE PLUS AND DEPARTMENT FOR WORK AND PENSIONS

  Q60  Mr Bacon: If you could send us a note about that too, that would be really helpful. In those circumstances out of that universe of people where you could apply sanctions, not the total caseload, it is broken down by category—lone parent, incapacity benefit—how often are sanctions actually applied.[2]

  Ms Strathie: Yes, we will do that.

  Q61  Mr Bacon: Finally I have a question about IT. On page 25 it says: "IT systems are fundamental to Personal Advisers' work, but Advisers have some concerns ... Future improvements could include: being able to cut and paste information from one screen to another". I remember this coming up some years ago. Your computer supplier for Jobcentre Plus is EDS, is that right? Mr Owen is nodding.

  Ms Strathie: Yes, that is right.

  Q62  Mr Bacon: We happen to know that EDS is making a profit margin of 30% on its work with DWP. You might have thought that for a 30% profit margin you could get cut and paste thrown in, would you not? Why is this still coming up after we first heard about this problem several years ago?

  Ms Strathie: We are going through a technology refresh at the moment which primarily will allow our advisers to open several windows at the same time in a much more user friendly manner. That is probably the briefest way of answering your question.

  Q63  Mr Bacon: Does it include cut and paste?[3]

  Ms Strathie: I do not really understand it.

  Chairman: Send us a note on that point.

  Q64  Mr Mitchell: Figure 1 on page 6, different categories of advisers and different programmes, are they all basically doing the same job? It is just that Jobseeker's Allowance people, for instance, specialised in that area mainly advising young people, but the basic job is still finding them permanent work. It is just that they specialise in that category of claimant.

  Ms Strathie: Yes. The basic job is the same approach. The range of help is different. If you are delivering New Deal for 18-24 year-olds it will be a very much longer and more intensive process, but the elements of the job are the same. You need a different range of knowledge. If you are dealing with lone parents you have to understand the local infrastructure in childcare, for example.

  Q65  Mr Mitchell: A financial assessor checking claims can interrupt the work of the advisers. Why is that? Why is the same adviser not doing both?

  Ms Strathie: The financial assessor role was introduced when we brought in the new model to try and speed up handling for the customer. We are trying to give advice to the customer on the information they gave the contact centre and on the evidence they have been asked to bring the likelihood of their benefit proceeding. Quite often it is interrupted because customers still fail to bring the evidence required for the interview. The NAO audit of Advisers showed the irritation of Personal Advisers of how many times they are interrupted by telephone calls and others.

  Q66  Mr Mitchell: The target for people to get back into work must differ by region or the achievements must differ by region. The figures we have are overall figures. Can you give us some figures by regions? In areas of high unemployment it must be more difficult to get work for people?

  Ms Strathie: We certainly measure the outcomes for each of the English regions and Scotland and Wales. We can certainly tell you the targets and delivery by regions as well as the employment and unemployment rate.

  Q67  Mr Mitchell: Can we have them by regions?

  Ms Strathie: Shall we write to you with those if you want us to go through each of the regions?[4]

  Chairman: Yes, please.

  Q68  Mr Mitchell: Do immigrants and East European arrivals—Poles, for instance—do they use the service?

  Ms Strathie: We see very few migrants in terms of benefit customers.

  Q69  Mr Mitchell: Why is that? Do they find their own jobs?

  Ms Strathie: Most of them come over here to work and are in work. We do see these customers in relation to their applications for National Insurance numbers but that is something else.

  Q70  Mr Mitchell: They can find jobs without your service!

  Ms Strathie: Yes, and I am very happy that they do. We exist to help those who most need help.

  Q71  Mr Mitchell: The proportion of no shows at interviews is higher among claimants.

  Ms White: Do you mean incapacity benefit claimants?

  Q72  Mr Mitchell: Yes.

  Ms White: There are certain types of claimants for whom the no show rate is higher. Is that your question?

  Q73  Mr Mitchell: Yes. Why is that? Is that incapacity people find more difficulty in showing up?

  Ms White: Yes.

  Q74  Mr Mitchell: It also says that a proportion decide not to pursue a claim. Is that they do not pursue their desire for a job or they do not pursue a claim for benefit?

  Ms Strathie: Sometimes when we invite people for an interview they decide that they no longer wish to claim; that is the reality. Some people who fail to turn up for a Personal Adviser interview do not turn up again or let us know that they no longer wish to claim.

  Q75  Mr Mitchell: Mr Bacon asked about the sanctions which seem to operate in a fairly small proportion of cases. At whose discretion is that? Is that the officer or is that a departmental local decision?

  Ms Strathie: It is described in the regulations what the requirement is for the customers. If we write to a customer and ask them to attend for a work focused interview and they fail to attend, then we will write to them again and offer another interview in 14 days. If they fail to attend again then we will take action to consider what sanction needs to be applied. The framework that we are required to work under makes it clear that we do not just stop somebody's money when they fail to attend one interview.

  Q76  Mr Mitchell: You are going to supply us with the figures Mr Bacon asked for by category of claim.

  Ms Strathie: Yes.

  Q77  Mr Mitchell: I am an admirer of the service. I think it works well in Grimsby but I fear for your future because you have Gershon efficiency targets, you are going to have to reduce staffing numbers and you are going to have to take on new and more difficult categories that have to be helped back into work because of the Government programme. Are you going to be able to cope? If you are going to be reducing staffing numbers it is going to reduce the efficiency of the back-up service for the officers who are actually doing the employment search, is it not?

  Ms Strathie: If you have a reduced budget, rising costs and a reduced headcount then you have to be smart about how you do things.

  Q78  Mr Mitchell: You have either got to fiddle the figures or cut down the amount of time at the interview phase that people are dealing with. It is a bit unrealistic at the time when these people are doing such good work to assume that you can increase the numbers that they have to see and cut down the numbers backing them up.

  Ms Strathie: I am very grateful that you are an admirer of the service because we are very proud of our Personal Advisers and the job they do and the difference that they make. My challenge as Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus is to be able to balance all of those challenges. That is why it is important that we have our Advisers doing the right thing and we have the right people doing the right things: adviser support, free up time so the advisers can do more, better management focused on the advisers rather than the whole band with running a big Jobcentre Plus office and making sure they get the right tools to do the job. It has been an enormous challenge to transform this business and reduce by 15,000 people but we have achieved it and we will carry on with that challenge.

  Q79  Mr Mitchell: You have studied the system in America as it developed, particularly I see in the Clinton reforms. Is their system more coercive than ours? What is the biggest difference between them?

  Ms White: It is more coercive but it is also that the cultural differences are so huge. The welfare system in the States is essentially only supporting lone parents and there is such a strong culture in which women go back to work within three months of having their child—this is certainly the rates for married women—with very little maternity leave. There is a culture and an expectation that women principally who are also on welfare ought to go back to work when their children are tiny. The Wisconsin experiment, for example, was very successful. There are time limited benefits you can have. You have a five-year limit over your life when you are allowed to claim welfare and once your youngest child hits three months old you are expected to return to work and get the support that is around. That compares with where we are with income support where, although we do work focused interviews, single parents are not required to move on to Jobseeker's Allowance until their youngest child is 16. Internationally we are at different ends of the spectrum.

  Mr Mitchell: It is better to be British.


2   Ev 10-11 Back

3   Note by witness: There is already in place a facility to cut and paste from one LMS screen to another and between IT applications. As part of our aim to continuously improve our IT we have commissioned work which allows the push and pull of certain data across IT systems. This reduces further the necessity for double keying. Where data cannot be replicated in either of these ways it is generally due to security accreditation issues but we continue to monitor and explore any areas where a duplication of input can be avoided. Back

4   Ev 11 Back


 
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