Select Committee on Work and Pensions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300 - 319)

MONDAY 18 JUNE 2007

JAMES PLASKITT MP AND BRENDAN O'GORMAN

  Q300  John Penrose: I want to pick up on just a couple of your answers to us on the first set of questions. It sounds as though you see your role as a combination of either a blocker to prevent additional complexity and you have processes in place you have already described, but, obviously, preventing complexity is not the same thing as creating simplicity. Also it sounds as though you see your role as assisting and collecting bottom-up ideas from the front line and putting them into place, so creating programmes like the Lean programme, which allows them to take place. The bit which I have not heard you talk about so far is a more fundamental question about who is in charge of changing the basic design of either benefits or IT systems in order to design out the complexity which is inherent in it, i.e. the vision thing, if I can put it that way. Who is in charge of the vision thing and prosecuting it, creating those ideas and leading the simplification process, as opposed to blocking or responding to it?

  Mr Plaskitt: Ministers are.

  Q301  John Penrose: Is that you specifically or is it all Ministers?

  Mr Plaskitt: It is all Ministers, across the Department.

  Q302  John Penrose: Whose ministerial statements do I look at for a vision of the current idea of what simplification will look like and where the simplification agenda is going?

  Mr Plaskitt: Mine, in the sense of answering for the whole Department on the issue of how we are handling the question of simplification; but if you want to go into any individual benefit area, as I say, all of us are simplification Ministers, in that sense, and we are all committed to trying to achieve simplification across the benefits system.

  Q303  John Penrose: Forgive me; you said that you have actually spent quite a lot of time, so far, blocking additional complexity ideas. You were quite proud of the fact earlier on; you said you had turned back at least 30 different ideas which would have made things more complicated. I am not sure where I am getting the sense of your fellow Ministers prosecuting the notion of simplicity and designing out complexity from the existing benefit structures?

  Mr Plaskitt: As we have set out in the core document that we have in the Department, the Best Practice Simplification Guide, I think we try to set out very clearly what the objective is here, we are trying to iron out complexities in the system. You cannot sweep out all the complexity because some of the complexities in the benefits system are there actually for rather good reasons; it is because we are trying to design a benefits system which responds to a very complex society and to the very complex needs which people have. We are trying to be as fair as we can to people who are supported by the benefits system, and sometimes, to achieve greater fairness, you have to build greater complexity into the benefits system. It is a difficult equation. It is also clear that there are some complexities which are there for not particularly good reasons, or they have evolved over time as a result of lots of changes, each one made for a perfectly good reason but the end product is unnecessarily complicated, therefore you can take those out. If you like, the vision that you are asking is that all of us, as Ministers, can see, that you can make this benefits system, which we have got, easier to administer, easier for the customer to work through, easier for everyone to understand; in that sense, we are simplifying it. Does that mean that it will have no longer any complexity in it, no, of course, it does not.

  Q304  John Penrose: I appreciate that and also I appreciate that it is a difficult problem to grapple with, as you said. What I am trying to get at though is I cannot find anywhere, I do not think we have had presented to us either, any statement by any of your fellow Ministers in the Department about how far you think simplification can go, which bits of the design are essential and cannot be simplified out, which bits are fair game and to which you would expect to find solutions, and what the end point might be, what is the perfectly as simple as possible benefits system which you can envisage, or even some halfway point towards that. I cannot see any overall goal which has been enunciated by anybody in the Department yet?

  Mr Plaskitt: I am not sure that we are going to reach the end of the journey because I think it is ongoing.

  Q305  Chairman: Sketching out where you are heading would be of help?

  Mr Plaskitt: I think we have done that.

  Q306  Chairman: Could you point us to a statement which we can take in evidence?

  Mr Plaskitt: I think you can take several ways of coming at that. Look at some of the big reforms which are coming through: Employment and Support Allowance merges existing benefits into a simpler system; the huge pensions reforms which are coming through simplify the way we are doing the state pension; the huge work we have done in transforming Jobcentre Plus and the way the service is delivered simplifies the way that we are doing it. Some examples I have given already. I think, if you are asking for a definition of what constitutes a simplified system, it is one where you have got a coherent family of benefits, where you have done as much as you can to iron out inconsistencies between the benefits, and where you make it easier, as easy as possible, for the customer, and in the end that is who we are serving here, to have dealings with us, as the DWP, and to get out of it the support to which they are entitled. That would be a test. If we are making the customer journey as easy as possible, that is a crucial test, and so when we introduce, in 2008, a very important internet-based service, which will give any customer access to far more information about their records, their potential entitlements, than they can establish quickly at the moment, that again will be another big step forward towards achieving simplification. You are never going to get to the end of the journey, because the system is evolving as our society and economy evolve.

  Q307  John Penrose: I am not asking when we are going to get to the end of the journey. I am just not quite sure that anybody is clear about where we are headed. I can see it on some individual benefits, where the Department has been setting out a view on pensions reform, because that is embodied in a Bill, but I cannot see anybody standing back and saying, "Across the whole scope of DWP, this is what a simpler system is going to look like." I can see individual bits and I cannot see any overall view?

  Mr Plaskitt: I think I have just tried to give you a view of what it is.

  Q308  John Penrose: Is it not rather concerning that we are having to do it now; should not there have been some sort of an argument—- -

  Mr Plaskitt: I am not saying anything which has not been said before by Ministers in the Department and I think it has been said repeatedly. We said things like this when we issued the Welfare Reform Green Paper; two years ago now, I think, we said this. We will be following that up in our response to the Freud review shortly; we will be building on what we said in the Green Paper in that respect. We have said these things, I have said them, we publish them, and I think, if you look at all of them together, you can see a view of what we think constitutes achieving more simplification and less complexity in this benefits system.

  John Penrose: I will go back and have a closer look. Thank you.

  Q309  Mark Pritchard: Just following on from Mr Penrose's comments, trying to be helpful to the Minister, I wondered, on the point of simplification, given that we have now, I think three or four disability benefits, we have, I think, three different forms of Incapacity Benefit, using that as an example, how do you think that will progress to a point of simplification, given that it seems to have become more complex?

  Mr Plaskitt: As I say, I think the Employment and Support Allowance, when that comes in, in itself marks quite a significant step towards simplification in respect of disability and income benefits. I think the Department is going to be saying more about this as we respond to Freud; obviously I cannot anticipate that response, but it is not far off.

  Q310  Mark Pritchard: What about information duplication, given that many people have multiple benefits, and even within the same agency the same information is asked for once, twice, three and sometimes four times? Surely not only would that help simplification but also it would allow DWP to meet its efficiency targets, given that less staff time and manual inputting of information would be needed to duplicate the information?

  Mr Plaskitt: Yes, you are absolutely right; that is part of the customer journey approach towards overcoming complexity. There are fewer and fewer justifications, these days, for the Department asking for the same information from people on repeat occasions.

  Q311  Mark Pritchard: They are, are they not?

  Mr Plaskitt: We do, and what I am saying is that there is less and less justification for that these days. As we evolve with the IT, as we get more adept at data-sharing, as we complete the roll-out of the reform of Jobcentre Plus and as we introduce those internet services I am talking about, we will get towards a state where there will be far fewer occasions when we ask for repeat information. That is an objective. It should be the case, ultimately, that customers can give us the essential information which the system needs, give it to us once and then we will have what we need.

  Q312  Mark Pritchard: On a timetable, following on again from Mr Penrose's point, what sort of timetable aspiration would you have for a single entry for data, Minister?

  Mr Plaskitt: I have set out already some of the steps we have achieved here. We are still giving consideration to some of the things which need to be done to achieve that objective. Sue Royston's report also had some things to say about that, as have others, and we are still thinking about that. To some extent, the timetable is driven by the progress in transforming some of the IT platforms in the Department. I am not going to attach this to an arbitrary timetable but just establish the fact that a clear state we would like to get to is where we do not make repeat demands on customers to get this information we have got already.

  Q313  Mark Pritchard: Thank you. You will be relieved to know, Minister, that we are moving on now to incentives and disincentives to work and links with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. I do not know, I may be wrong, but I always think these evidence sessions are helped by real-life stories. Let me tell you a story. Recently I was visited by somebody in my constituency who gave me information relating to two constituents who had been on, call it, Disability Living Allowance since the early nineties; one with stress, one with a bad back. They are on Carer's Allowance, both of them, they have six children; all of the six children are on Disability Living Allowance, of some form or another, one with asthma, one with attention deficit syndrome, and other variables. In total, adding up all the benefits, that family receives £77,000 worth of benefits, net. In my humble view, that is unsustainable; it may be a genuine case, I have not looked at all the details, I have not got them yet, but there are other cases which have been brought to my attention in my constituency. If you multiply that across the 11 constituencies represented around this table, or 12 including your own, I think that is unsustainable. I just wonder what the incentives to work are now, in this country, and I wonder whether you would like to comment on how you feel, in the context of this inquiry, the complexity of the benefits system is a disincentive to work?

  Mr Plaskitt: I think a million fewer working-age people on benefits now than ten years ago is testament to the fact that something is working and more people are working. You may be able to produce an anecdotal example, as can we all, but the big question to ask is, as you indicated, are there sufficient work incentives, are there aspects of the benefits system which are an impediment to people coming into work, and I would suggest to you that all the trends that we have got, in terms of working-age people, on the whole, coming off benefit and more people going into work, suggest that incentives certainly are working. Does that mean that we have finished the process of reforming the benefits system and doing more to enhance incentives to work, no, of course not, because it is ongoing work, of course it is, and that work does continue.

  Q314  Mark Pritchard: Does the Jobcentre Plus `better off' calculation being only 20% nationally pay some credit to London? I notice they are 40%, double the national average, on calculations; do you think that has played a part: one? Two: why is it so low nationally and is it tied in with recent reconfiguration (euphemism) job cuts in DWP, particularly Jobcentre Plus?

  Mr Plaskitt: No. The `better off' calculation does not always have to be done for every single claimant; it should be done where it is appropriate, and where it is an effective device and it is going to assist someone of course we want to see it done. The 20% figure, which you have heard, we have suggested would represent an average where it was being applied in all appropriate cases. Indeed, in cases where we do think it is particularly helpful we have found the incidents of people being taken through that calculation going up quite considerably; in the case of lone parents making a new claim, for example, now 34% are taken through the demonstration. Clearly it is a tool and it is a very important tool and it is being applied more frequently where it is appropriate to do something.

  Q315  Mark Pritchard: Thank you. Given that getting people back into work is a Government priority, may I ask why the Pathways to Work programme is taking so long to roll out nationally, or certainly in England and Wales? As a Midlands MP, you will know that there has been some delay in rolling out Pathways to Work in some parts of the West Midlands, and I just wonder why the delay and can we bring it forward?

  Mr Plaskitt: I think it is a realistic timetable and it is quite a significant reform. There is a programme for rolling it out. I think we are going as quickly as we can, realistically. Brendan, do you want to add anything on that?

  Mr O'Gorman: It is connected, of course, with the legislation Bill and the entire exercise is the biggest programme outside the pensions role facing the Department; the complete implementation of the new benefit rules as well is scheduled to be later in 2008, so it is a really big programme, it is a very serious job for any department to get under its belt.

  Q316  Jenny Willott: Can I ask just a final question around the disincentives to work and the links there. We received a report by Off the Streets and Into Work which showed that there are actually groups of people who are not better off by getting into work, particularly those who are working for 15 or 25 hours a week and those who are below the age of 21, so they get the development rate, or whatever it is called, the Minimum Wage. Has there been any work done by the DWP, or what are you planning to do, to look into this area, the people who are actually caught up, whether they are better off on benefits?

  Mr Plaskitt: Yes, there is work done on that, because, of course, we are anxious to ensure that the move into work pays. It informs a lot of the work that the Department has done already and continues to do. There is ongoing work on that subject.

  Q317  Jenny Willott: What is likely to come out of that ongoing work?

  Mr Plaskitt: I think I would ask you to await the Department's response to Freud, where we will have more to say about that.

  Q318  Jenny Willott: Is there likely to be something relating specifically to those groups of people in that?

  Mr Plaskitt: I do not want to anticipate what is going to be in it, I am afraid, but I think you will find that issue is included in the response.

  Q319  Jenny Willott: Then we can call you back and ask you further questions, if it is not, presumably?

  Mr Plaskitt: You can.


 
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