Examination of Witnesses (Questions 155
- 159)
MONDAY 21 MAY 2007
MS ABIGAIL
HOWARD, MS
GINNY LUNN
AND MR
MICHAEL FOTHERGILL
Q154 Chairman: Good afternoon and
welcome everybody to this our third evidence session on benefit
simplification. We are sorry to have kept you waiting but we seem
to have lost two or three of our Committee members; we have tried
to find them, but we will crack on anyway. Welcome to our three
witnesses; it is good to have you with us. Ginny, no doubt you
will know that we had a very good visit to Stratford; it was really
good, so thank you for that.
Ms Lunn: I heard about it. Thanks
for coming; it was really good.
Q155 Chairman: If I can kick off
with just a general question, what is your opinion, is the UK
benefits system just too complex?
Mr Fothergill: There is huge complexity
in the benefits system. I was just handing around this book, outside,
in the corridor, which some people had not seen, and that is it;
there are 1,500 pages in there, and that has grown, doubled in
size, in the last 10 years, so that says everything, really. As
far as I am concerned, it is not just the complexity of it, because
some benefits actually are quite straightforward—Jobseeker's
Allowance, Income Support, quite straightforward—it is the
awareness of those benefits, that people do not understand. For
the likes of people with that sort of life, even then you cannot
really work out what the benefits system is about. I worked in
it for 28½ years, I used to work for DWP, and even I do not
know all about it.
Q156 Chairman: So it is your fault?
Thank you for that confession.
Mr Fothergill: It is my fault;
absolutely. It is very, very difficult to get your head round,
but it is the awareness of it, because some of the benefits are
very, very complicated, and some of the subtleties that are put
into legislation, which hardly ever happen. I was also part of
the DSS Social Security Bill in 1997 and we legislated for the
tiniest expectation of something which would hardly ever happen,
and that all gets chucked into legislation. If it were left out
and we decided on those kinds of issues as they came up and then
guidance, and whatever, came in actually to address that, that
would be a lot easier. There are complexities, for sure, lots
of complexities, but I think a lot of the benefits are quite straightforward,
it is just the awareness, for people to know that they are there
and what they are for.
Ms Lunn: Also, we find that our
Team Leaders, as you saw, spend so long themselves trying to work
it all out that they cannot give proper advice to young people.
I think it is as much about people working with those young people
as the young people themselves so that proper advice can be given.
If you think of a book like that, it takes a lot to get your head
round that, does it not?
Ms Howard: I think complexity
in itself is not necessarily a bad thing but when it becomes dysfunctional
it is difficult for clients to understand what they are or are
not entitled to, and difficult from the point of view of someone
administering it and understanding then what they are meant to
be doing with it. That becomes a real problem. I suppose you have
to be careful not to say complexity in itself is bad, but too
much complexity or it is something that you cannot navigate through
obviously becomes very problematic.
Q157 Chairman: There is a line of
argument that people's lives are complex, therefore inevitably
you will get a complex benefits system. Is it possible still to
have whatever necessary complexity there is but shield the claimant
from that; so the poor old staff have a complex problem but the
experience for the claimant is easy? Is it possible to do more
to shield the claimant from that complexity?
Mr Fothergill: I think there is
still an issue about simplification of benefits but, as I say,
I think the main benefits are not really that complicated; when
you go into things like DLA then it is another story. I think
the issue is about actually having someone to advocate on your
behalf, or someone to navigate around the benefits systems for
you; certainly we do that with some of our programmes. Our Transitional
Spaces programme has coaches who work with people to enable them
to understand the opportunities that are out there, not just benefits
but for employment and housing as well. It is very much the awareness
of this, and certainly we work with people who have multiple needs,
homeless young people, and their capabilities of actually manoeuvring
themselves around the benefits system it is very, very, very difficult
and certainly they do need someone to work on their behalf. I
am not saying forever; this is just developing roles and responsibilities
really and educating people to know about the benefits system.
There is another issue with front-line workers as well, because
there really is a big requirement for upskilling front-line workers,
Personal Advisers in Jobcentre Plus, key workers in hostels, especially
in London, there is such a huge turnaround of staff there is hardly
any retention of the skills that once were there. That is another
really big issue for us.
Ms Howard: I would agree with
that; that is what our worry is about, shielding people from the
complexity, about guiding them through that process and reassuring
them, I suppose, that there is a way through it and that we can
help them do that. I think there is more to be done. In terms
of shielding; for example, if there were a one-stop shop or one
route-way to the various agencies I think you could shield clients
and make their experience much simpler, hiding the complexities
from them, in a way.
Ms Lunn: I agree. I do not think
it is about hiding what is there, I think it is about how you
work with them so they can understand it.
Mr Fothergill: There is a whole
issue about choice as well; we say people need choice but some
people do not need that much choice, they just need to know what
their entitlement is and what actually they should get and legally
what is theirs. It almost breaks my heart, when I see that then
they start splitting up benefits into different government departments
and giving some to the Inland Revenue and retaining the rest in
the Department for Work and Pensions. That is just kind of going
away from the whole issue, as far as I am concerned, to different
central government departments doing lots of sets of very important
benefits.
Ms Lunn: I think then the administration
that goes with that, it is all being dealt with separately, so
there is a cost.
Mr Fothergill: There is the whole
data-sharing issue as well. People have to present their personal
information so many different times, to so many different organisations,
not just those two, the Department of Health, and so on.
Q158 Chairman: I take your point
about the question of an advocate but when you have a Department
which employs over 100,000 people do you not think it is more
a case of getting them to do the job that they are paid to do,
to provide a better customer experience, rather than running up
another bill, somewhere else, to create a load of advocates to
tell people their rights which these 100,000 people should already
be telling them? I do not want to do anybody out of a job.
Ms Howard: Upfront benefits advice
given at the Jobcentre, for example, would be a simple solution,
if people could go through the door and be told exactly what the
situation is, get a better-off calculation. We did a survey with
our clients before we came here today because we thought we had
a lot of anecdotes but not many facts and only 27% had had a better-off
calculation at their Jobcentre before they came to us for help,
so they are not getting that advice and that information up front,
which I think would make the journey easier and a lot less scary
for people. People are scared of losing their benefits, and that
could be quite a reassuring thing, if it were done properly.
Ms Lunn: Our experience of using
advisers, for example, is that the caseloads are just huge, absolutely
huge, so I suppose it is the time they have got and the motivation
they have to spend the right amount of time to help people, because
that is part of the issue.
Mr Fothergill: It is very much
about the flexibility. Having worked there, and realising that
Personal Advisers have 40 minutes to do their bit, and the Financial
Advisers, who basically are just checking the accuracy of the
claim forms, have 20 minutes, one hour is possibly long enough
for certain people who have their lives sorted but certainly not
for the type of people that we engage with, who have a whole raft
of problems. It is interesting, talking about actually enabling
the Personal Adviser to give all this advice. David Freud, in
his recent report, readily admitted that Jobcentre Plus, year
one, 95% of people get into work with hardly any direct help from
Jobcentre Plus at all; recognising the fact that probably they
do not have the skills to deal with people who have multiple disadvantages,
who are on Incapacity Benefit, and actually handing over the whole
responsibility for that to the private or voluntary sector to
work within a costed basis for the next three years, to try to
get them sustainable employment. Freud is saying almost the opposite,
that he is recognising that Jobcentre Plus do not have the skills
to deal with the people who are the hardest to help.
Q159 Chairman: I think where possibly
Freud fails is not recognising that the vast majority of new claimants
at Jobcentre Plus have got recent experience of the labour market,
you are not talking of people who have been away 10, 12, 15 years,
they have come from either statutory sick pay or redundancy situations,
so they have, more or less, come from the labour market to Jobcentre
Plus, I think is the difference. Ginny, as you know, we heard
from your people at Stratford. Abigail and Michael, are there
any particular factors that you find with the people you are trying
to help get back into work that this complexity affects?
Ms Howard: I think the complexity
affects people with complex situations themselves. There are a
lot of our clients who have been out of work for a long time but
have a fairly straightforward situation and for them the benefits
system is kind of okay. I do not think any of them particularly
relish the system but they do not find it a massive problem. It
is our clients who do not fit neatly into boxes; they are not
just the lone parent, it might be a lone parent with mental health
issues, they are not just in want of cash because then it becomes
complicated to work out what they are entitled to, what their
eligibility is, where best they would be served. I think that
is a problem. Another problem I think, as Michael has mentioned,
is the interaction between the benefits system and the tax credit
system, and getting the people into that transition from unemployment
into employment is a big problem for our clients.
Mr Fothergill: As far as the real
issue there is concerned, certainly it is the ignorance of what
benefits are there, and certainly, as far as in-work benefits
are concerned, we have found from quite a lot of our research
that people have absolutely no idea what in-work benefits they
are entitled to. Certainly in relation to Housing Benefit, I have
always found it remarkable that people do not know that they are
entitled to this but then, when they do know they are entitled
to it, they have also got a big shock coming their way because
they lose 65 pence in the pound for every £1 over the figure
they have earned. Something just has to be done about that, especially
for hostel rates, which are so high you just cannot possibly afford
to work. It is the inadequacy of knowing what benefits are out
there. As far as the whole Working Tax Credit regime is concerned,
even to me, finding out about how it works, that is an incredibly
complicated benefit for the man on the street. Even if you do
get it awarded then, in year one, if you were on benefits the
year before you are assessed on nil income, so you get the full
amount of Working Tax Credit; in year two it is reduced to almost
nothing because then it is assessed on your year's work that you
have been doing. People are just not aware of that, so they are
living in this false reality of year one, of having this income,
and in year two it disappears. It is the transparency of actually
what the benefits do, really, and having a more realistic sort
of tapering system, if you like.
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