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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