Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
MONDAY 18 JUNE 2007
JAMES PLASKITT
MP AND BRENDAN
O'GORMAN
Q360 Mrs Humble: I fully accept that
many benefits claimants actually do not encounter complexity because
their personal circumstances are simple and can be dealt with
fairly simply by one of the methods that you have outlined, but
there are some groups of people who are more easily recognisable
by the complexity of their lives. One piece of compelling evidence
that we had was from the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign
and they took us, in a way, beyond your remit, and so, in looking
at a one-stop shop, I wonder if you are talking to other colleagues
as well. For example, a family with a disabled child may have
dealings with the DWP on DLA, there might be other benefits issues
because other members of the family could well be on benefit because
the parents are less likely to be at work; they could also have
dealings with the Department of Health, for transport for their
child to and from hospital. They will have dealings with the local
authority for Disabled Facilities Grants, for council tax, and
the like; there may be problems with the school, with ordinary
transport. In other words, their lives are made complex because
of their personal circumstances. The complexity of the benefits
entitlement is only part of that wider complexity. Your colleague,
Anne McGuire, does an excellent job as the Minister in charge
of the Office of Disability Issues, and so she has an overarching
role. I just wonder if you have looked at, for those people who
are thoroughly easy to identify for having that sort of complexity,
liaising with colleagues in other government departments, to look
at either co-location of advice services, and we were told that
about America, apparently America passed some legislation fairly
recently to co-locate some different departments in one setting
to offer advice for exactly this group of people, or again to
look at identifying a key worker who could liaise across departments.
That really is a very big vision. I just wonder if you might want
to consider that, or have considered that?
Mr Plaskitt: The answer is yes,
because I think that is the way government services will move,
and in terms of supporting customers it is the way they should
move. I think you can see bits of that beginning to happen already.
It will work provided that behind the shop window, if you like,
all the different bits are joined up on our side, and so successful
systems of data-sharing between different parts of government
are critical to achieving that vision which we have got, and that
is beginning to happen. There is very positive discussion and
work taking place between ourselves and HMRC, for example, on
this. Also we are beginning to see at local authority level, where
often the first point of contact is for customers, this starting
to happen anyway. In more and more parts of the country there
are physical one-stop shops appearing, where one individual can
guide someone through the whole range of public services which
they might be engaged with, which, say, are much wider than just
DWP or benefits issues. I think, logically, this is the way things
are progressing. I share your vision. Making it happen, of course,
is dependent upon the kit, actually, facilitating us offering
that kind of service. When you are dealing with something as massive
and as complex as Britain's state services, that is not achieved
at the click of a finger.
Q361 Mrs Humble: It also depends
upon where is the catalyst to make sure that this happens. I know
of good practice in Blackpool, where the local authority, in its
centre, has offices in the Town Hall where people come in, a one-stop
shop, and there is somebody there, and the DWP, who answers questions
especially for pensioners, and so pensioners can have a whole
range of advice given. That is because of local initiatives. I
hate to use that horrible term `postcode lottery'; at some point
or other somebody has to say, "If it's working in X location,
it should work in my location," taking into account local
circumstances, obviously. Of course, increasingly the Government
has used PSA targets for local authorities to deliver the sorts
of services that it wants, and increasingly those targets are
becoming outcome-based. I just wonder if there is any opportunity
for you to liaise with, for example, Phil Woolas, the Local Government
Minister, to say to him "What are your examples of good practice
in local government in this area; is there any way that you can
set targets and, through DWP, we can be part of that?"?
Mr Plaskitt: That does happen
and, in respect of my colleague, Mr Woolas, we liaise quite a
bit in respect of Council Tax Benefit, which overlaps our two
Departments, and we do work together on that. My Department also
works very closely with all local authorities because local authorities
have an involvement in the delivery of benefits, in particular
Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. I work very closely with
them. We think constantly about the targets which they are set
to work to and listen very much to what they say about that. All
the time we are reforming and revising those, in the light of
what local authorities have said to us, because we are in the
same business, ourselves and the local authorities, in terms of
wanting to deliver better outcomes to our customers, who are the
same people, at the end of the day. My Department also supports
local authorities with investment, in terms of improving their
benefit delivery. I think there is a good deal of joined-up working
already between ourselves and local authorities and between ourselves
and other departments of government, and I think you are right,
that is inevitably the direction of travel that we are on and
it becomes facilitated increasingly by more sophisticated and
co-ordinated IT platforms. As they come and as we sort out the
complex issues which lie behind the whole issue of data-sharing,
as increasingly we sort those out, the extent to which we can
offer this one-point contact, as I was saying, to our customers
increases continually, and should do so.
Q362 Mrs Humble: Do you think that
the new Local Area Agreements will help in that process?
Mr Plaskitt: Yes, I am certain
that they will. If I can speak from my own experience in my own
neck of the woods, as a constituency MP, local authorities are
already very much engaged in that with departments of central
government; they are actually being thought about and worked on
already, and I am sure that is the case in other parts of the
country as well.
Q363 Mrs Humble: Then can I just
pick you up on an earlier comment about "It will work if
we get what is happening behind the scenes right." Again,
one of the issues, which you mentioned earlier, which has been
presented to us in evidence is that the experience for the claimant
can be simplified whilst there is still complexity in the back
room. However, if there is too much complexity in the back room,
that makes it difficult for your staff to deliver the benefits.
Also, even if the claimant has a simple process in the front room,
if there is too much complexity in the back room the claimant
may not have as clear an idea of their entitlement as they ought
to have, so it is not quite as simple as just having either electronic
or telephonic, or whatever, methods of claiming and leaving complexity,
surely you also still do need to address the complexity in the
back room?
Mr Plaskitt: Absolutely, and I
tried to say, in answer to earlier questions, that we are doing,
because you need to unbundle that concept of complexity and, as
I say, I think a priority for us is to see it from our customers'
point of view, but also I have been at pains to say that we have
no interest in having a benefits system which is so complex that
our staff cannot administer it. Of course there is that dimension
to complexity as well, making it an easy system to operate. What
I have said though is that there will always be complexity in
it, it will always be an ingredient in the system, for reasons
I have set out. I have got to make sure that it is as easy as
possible for staff to administer and, as I say, that it does not
get in the way of the customer accessing the system. You are right,
there are those two dimensions to complexity and we are working
very much on both of them at the same time, and they complement
each other, in the end, of course.
Q364 Mrs Humble: Of course, if it
is too complex your IT cannot cope either; but I do not want to
get drawn into a long debate about IT. However, you did mention,
James, earlier, that you recognise that people are still getting
letters which have been churned out by computers which are not
helpful, and you did refer to trying to get some plain English
into some of the correspondence. Can you tell us how far down
the line you are with that?
Mr Plaskitt: Quite well on with
it. I have asked to see a range of these letters myself and I
am very interested in how they are being rewritten because I want
to make sure they are as comprehensive as possible to our customers.
Next month, as I say, Jobcentre Plus will begin a comprehensive
review of all the computer-generated correspondence, because the
objective is clear, that we want the letters to be comprehensible
for our customers, and they are not all at the moment.
Q365 Michael Jabez Foster: Can I
take up some of the things you have been trying really hard to
achieve, which is through some of the schemes such as the Lean
Pathfinder Project and the Transformation Programme for Jobcentre
Plus. Clearly, the Department have been making efforts to experiment
with simplification programmes; what progress have you made on
that, what are the early lessons?
Mr Plaskitt: I would say it is
going quite well. We are quite encouraged by the indications we
have had from trying out the Lean process that you referred to,
and indeed we are going to extend it, take it into some further
areas, and I can tell you what those are. We are looking to extend
those principles into claims to the Social Fund, new claims for
Jobseeker's Allowance and Income Support, the work-focused interview
regime, debt management and claims for Attendance Allowance and
DLA. I think there is a lot of potential to deploy those techniques
more widely across the system.
Q366 Michael Jabez Foster: What appears
to be common in those Pathfinders? The fact that the staff are
required to hold the hands of the claimants throughout, keeping
them informed, and so on, is that possible in a situation where
we are looking for a reduction in staffing?
Mr Plaskitt: It is possible to
achieve much of the simplification that we are after, because
the whole Lean process is designed to respond very much to what
we get from customer feedback and from staff feedback and is designed
to produce a process which is simpler to administer as well as
easier for customers who are making the claims; so it should not
cut across the other efficiency objectives which the Department
has, the two should not be in conflict. Indeed, I think the Lean
programme is one of the ways in which we can continue achieving
simplification while at the same time delivering on those efficiency
objectives.
Q367 Michael Jabez Foster: Have you
made an assessment of the staff involvement, how much more or
fewer staff needs to apply to this new process?
Mr Plaskitt: Yes. Obviously, in
the areas where we have been piloting this, we have had an enormous
amount of staff feedback on it, which has helped inform us in
deciding the programme for taking the thing forward next year.
Q368 Michael Jabez Foster: The only
other area is that of linking the Housing Benefit and Council
Tax Benefit to this whole scheme; in some places it has happened,
in some not. Is that an easy add-on, or is it something which
you think will still be difficult?
Mr Plaskitt: It is not as easy,
because of the involvement of 408 local authorities as part of
the benefit delivery process; but that does not mean that we cannot
make further progress in improving the administration of those
benefits, and we are doing. Again, the processing times are getting
better; in respect of Housing Benefit they are very, very substantially
better than they were a few years ago, quite substantially so,
which is encouraging. I think we can go further in that as well;
but it is essential that we have a very constructive dialogue
between ourselves and the Local Authority Associations, which
we do have, it is very important in helping us do that.
Q369 Miss Begg: You have mentioned
already, Minister, that you are reforming benefit by benefit and,
in response to John Penrose's vision thing, you talked about you
would see the vision in how each benefit would be reformed. Where
do you go from here; what are your next targets for simplification,
which benefits are they going to be and which areas of process
are likely to be simplified in the years to come?
Mr Plaskitt: There are already
some in the programme of work which we have got before us, as
I indicated at the outset. You will know that in 2008 there is
a big reform of Housing Benefit coming, in respect of tenants
in the private sector, with the introduction of Local Housing
Allowance. I think that also contributes towards the simplification
of the agenda. When we do that we are making the change to the
disregard for income from sub-tenancy; that is happening. I have
mentioned already the Employment and Support Allowance coming
in, in 2008. I have mentioned already, in 2009, the alignment
of payment periods. As further work goes forward in other areas
of benefit, as we proceed with reform, we will also be able to
contribute further towards simplification, in the way that those
reforms already announced have done. Clearly, there is more work
for us to do across the whole range of benefits. That is why I
have suggested that an important document, I think, for your Committee
to read will be our response to the Freud report.
Q370 Miss Begg: The DCS, in their
evidence, suggested that the Department should only put in IT
simplification; that would go quite a long way in helping with
simplifying the complexity. What plans does the Department have
in the future to simplify the IT, or indeed to bring some of the
IT systems together, which would help to answer some of the questions
we have been raising already this afternoon about the fact that
claimants are still having to give the full information to different
areas of either your Department or others?
Mr Plaskitt: We have absolutely
got to make more progress there. I think, as we roll out further
IT investments and new systems, we are trying to achieve the very
objectives that you are talking about. There must be compatibility
between different parts of it, the processing needs to be as straightforward
as possible and, as I have said before, we need to be doing all
that we can to ensure that we are facilitating the service we
offer to the customers, not requiring repeat submissions of information
which we have got already, and the IT programme is designed to
help us achieve exactly those objectives.
Q371 Miss Begg: Is there not a danger,
in pursuing incremental change to the benefits system, that you
do not pay enough attention to the overall strategic coherence
of the benefits system? Somebody is going to be asking about more
fundamental reform but really my question is, in thinking incrementally,
do you not just therefore complicate it more, rather than simplifying
things, because you are dealing with structures as they are and
you are not really looking to change the fundamental structure?
Therefore, by tinkering with one area or changing one area you
simply complicate something else and you lose that overall vision
of what the benefits system should look like?
Mr Plaskitt: I would not describe
what we are doing as `tinkering' and I would not say that we are
without an overall vision. In a theoretical world you could stop
the whole benefits system, park it for a while and build a new
one, but we do not live in that world, because we have got millions
of customers dependent upon us and whom we have to support, and
so we have not got that luxury. You are reforming a system which
is constantly on the move and supporting people who are moving
within the system and whose circumstances change continually.
We are retooling the merry-go-round while it is going round and
round and we cannot stop it, and we should not, because that would
not help our customers; so you are re-engineering while the thing
is constantly moving, and that is difficult. I think, if you track
back and say, "Well, how are we getting on?" and you
look back five, ten, 15 years in the system, it is transformed
radically from where it was, all that length of time ago. One
of the huge IT investments which were made in the system was to
switch to direct payment of benefits. I would chalk that up as
a pretty remarkable IT success. IT "failures" get an
awful lot of publicity, both in the public sector and private
sector; the big successes do not. Actually, the switch from `order
book' payments to direct payments was remarkably successful. I
think there was something like a 97 per cent approval rating from
our customers for the way that worked, which is quite remarkable.
We are building further IT changes into the system but, as I say,
you are dealing with a system which is constantly on the move
and claims within it which are constantly on the move; you have
got to keep that show on the road while you retool the system.
It is not straightforward, but we are making very great progress
with it.
Q372 Miss Begg: Is there not a danger—and
I think that is why you got the (sarnie ?) from the Chairman when
you said that you might be replacing CMS—that you are actually
retooling what you have just retooled before it has actually had
time to settle in, bed in and work, and because of the technologies
and the IT moving at such a rapid rate of progress and because
things are changing and expectations of claimants are also changing,
those things are changing far more rapidly than you, as a Department,
can move, in order to pilot and then roll out? I think some of
the frustration from this Committee is that very often things
are dropped just after they have been piloted; they have been
piloted, shown to be successful, they are about to go to roll-out
and then it does not happen. I am thinking of building on the
New Deal as one example which has never actually come about. I
do not know if you have got an answer to that, because obviously
there is a pace of change, that you can manage to keep your client
claimants continuing to get their money, which is important, but
at the same time the world is moving that bit faster?
Mr Plaskitt: I understand the
frustrations that you are describing and I hear them from time
to time, of course. I understand that completely. I do not think
I can emphasise too much, this is a huge business, a massive undertaking,
supporting the majority of people in the country in one way or
another; almost every adult engages with this system in one respect
or another. Their circumstances are changing very rapidly and
people move employment far more rapidly and frequently than they
used to. All those are changing the real world and the welfare
system has got to keep pace with it, and inevitably it means that
it is a remarkable pace of change, and I know that can be difficult
for all of us, it is ongoing and it is going to be, and in that
sense, as I said before, it is a journey which does not have an
end either. It is about keeping up, but more than keeping up,
it is also about keeping ahead, and we do have to think about
our customers' expectations; after all, how are they engaging
with the real world in respect of other things that they are doing?
They should not expect the process in respect of benefits to be
any further behind the way they are doing their banking or getting
their TV licence, or anything else that they regularly engage
with; we should be making the same sort of effort. Inevitably
it means that there is a continuous programme of change and reform
in the system. I think you will find that is the case in any benefits
system, in any other advanced industrial economy; it is just a
fact of coping with the complex and fast-moving lives of our customers.
Q373 Natascha Engel: I want to move
on from what Ann has just been talking about to the more fundamental
reforms which possibly offer themselves as you are looking at
the simplification of benefits in the system. The DWP sent the
Committee a memorandum on its research into the possibility of
buying out the transitional arrangements of claimants, and especially
those who are on legacy benefits, so those benefits for which
new claimants cannot apply. Even from Citizen's Advice, they thought
that this was a much better idea than transitional arrangements
and I want to ask you a couple of questions about it. First of
all, what do you understand by `buying out' and could the principle
of buying out be the start of more radical reforms or more fundamental
reforms in the whole system?
Mr Plaskitt: Firstly, buying out
simply replaces an ongoing obligation to pay benefit for a period
of time with a cash payment, and that terminates that arrangement;
there is a lump of money and that is the end of the transitional
arrangement. Technically, that is what it means, and it is an
option which you have when you are trying to achieve greater simplification
in the system. The whole issue of transitional arrangements is
an interesting one in itself, because pretty much all of them
have come about as a result of reforms to the system, many of
which were driven by process simplification, but you hit this
tension between the simplification and fairness, and you are always
going to hit it. I have done it, Ministers before me have done
it, we have agreed to put in transitional arrangements because
we want to protect people, legacy cases, if you like, that have
been in the system, and ensure that they are not adversely affected
by a move to a new benefit arrangement. They are pretty much all
there for understandable and justifiable and defensible reasons,
but it invites the question, therefore, if you want to do a major
simplification, can you buy some of these out? It is an option,
and that is why we suggested it in the paper which came to you.
Is it a portent of much more radical change in the system; it
is a pretty radical change in itself, if we decide to go ahead
with it, and that is why I think we have been open with you about
the fact that it is an option which we have to consider when we
are looking at all the means of achieving some greater simplification
in the system.
Q374 Natascha Engel: I am thinking
more about buying out as a principle across the benefits system,
so that you bought out and then moved on to something else?
Mr Plaskitt: I think many customers'
circumstances will not make it a feasible option, and that has
got to drive the process, in the end, and it is not going to be
a realistic option, I think, for many of our customers in the
system.
Q375 Natascha Engel: Why not?
Mr Plaskitt: Because of their
circumstances, because they might be in receipt of more than one
benefit, their circumstances might change very regularly, they
might be in and out of the benefits system; many people are in
those circumstances where the engagement is quite complex and
you have got on-off flows of benefit. It is not going to work,
I think, in areas like that as easily as others.
Q376 Jenny Willott: Can I just ask
a question. We are talking about people who are on benefits which
no longer exist. If they are going in and out of the system, how
could they still be on them? If you have been on Invalidity Benefit
and you come off it, then when you come back you have to go on
to Incapacity Benefit, you do not go back onto Invalidity Benefit.
Mr O'Gorman: We are linking those.
People can go off for a certain period and come back with the
same entitlement as when they left. It is a measure to encourage
them to try to work, without the fear of losing money they are
entitled to.
Q377 Jenny Willott: In terms of the
number of benefits that there are which have changed over the
years, Income Support, there is a list of them in there, are you
really saying that, the majority of the people who are on those,
the reason they could not report out and go onto a different,
existing benefit is because they are going on and off? I do not
quite understand.
Mr Plaskitt: I think we are running
ahead of ourselves here. All we are trying to do, in the memorandum,
is suggest that buying out is an option. I think that is about
where it sits at the moment. The further you get into it, as you
are beginning to see, the more difficult it becomes to write the
individual rules for the circumstances where it might apply; but
it is an option. I do not think, at this stage, I can go much
further than that.
Q378 Natascha Engel: It does seem
simple?
Mr Plaskitt: I know it does, but
a lot of things seem simple which when you then apply them can
throw up some other issues which are far from simple.
Q379 Natascha Engel: In the Welfare
Reform Green Paper it said that there may be advantages in moving
in the longer term towards a single system of benefits for all
people of working age. This has been doing the rounds for years,
it has gone backwards and forwards and has come up with different
conclusions. Could you tell me what you see as being those advantages,
and again can you just define what you mean by long term; and
then most critically for me is the fact that if you have got a
single system of benefits at what level would you set it and how
would you judge that?
Mr Plaskitt: I think there is
a distinction here between single benefit and single system of
benefits and we are talking about a single system of benefits,
benefits plural, so you are going to have different benefits,
as we have at the moment. The reason we are talking about a single
system of benefits, I would describe it as a coherent family of
benefits, is that the pieces all fit together. They may be different
benefits, to respond to different needs and different sets of
circumstances, and they may have different foundations to them,
but they need to be cohesive as a system so that people do not
fall between the cracks between different benefits, we can move
them from one to the other, find it a fairly seamless process,
and people who are in receipt of more than one of them and are
not having to deal with differences in the process which are not
necessary, that is what I understand by creating the system of
benefits; quite a different matter from a single benefit.
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