Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-146)
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS & JOBCENTRE
PLUS
MONDAY 4 FEBRUARY
2008
Q140 Mr Touhig: Yes, but is it an
overpayment of 1.5 billion?
Mr Burr: In the sense that that
payment exceeds the entitlement if those people were reassessed,
yes.
Mr Touhig: I feel like a dentist drawing
teeth! Thank you very much.
Q141 Mr Davidson: Can I just turn
to the hotline because I think earlier on you mentioned you had
a target which was that 70% of hotline calls were to be investigated.
Does that mean that your target allows 30% of hotline calls not
to be investigated?
Sir Leigh Lewis: It does not.
It means that the target is for 70% of calls to result in a referral
to one of our customer compliance teams or to our Fraud Investigation
Service. When the hotline receives a call they go through a series
of basic questions to identify whether there is substance behind
the call. It is inevitably the case that there are occasions when
it rapidly becomes clear that there is no substance behind the
call.
Q142 Mr Davidson: I have got a fair
number of malicious gossips in my constituency who would quite
clearly shop their neighbours out of badness. In that case, how
can you have a target for that? If you are saying that 100% of
calls come in, they are filtered, a number of them are rejected
as being erroneous or malicious, how do you have a target for
the number of those that are left to be pursued because presumably
you pursue them all?
Sir Leigh Lewis: This target has
stayed the same over a number of years. We believe that is what
experience shows us to be the number of calls received on the
hotline which are worthy of genuine and serious follow-up either
by one of our customer compliance teams or our Fraud Investigation
Service.
Q143 Mr Davidson: Why is it a target
in that case because it is something over which you have no control?
Mr Couling: It is a quality measure.
There is a discussion—
Q144 Mr Davidson: Fine. If you are
saying it is a quality measure as distinct from a target I accept
that.
Mr Couling: It is a target because
it incentivises our operators to ask further questions to try
and get the information from the person giving us the tip-off
that will allow us to investigate. It is a quality measure in
that sense but it is a target because we want to have a discussion
about referral because the person making the referral to us will
not know the evidence we need to pursue the fraud.
Q145 Mr Davidson: That is fair. Do
the people who call in, recognising they will wish to stay anonymous,
have any possibility of obtaining feedback in any way? Is it possible
to give them a number which they could ring? One of the complaints
that constituents make to me about raising things with the police
and other agencies is that they will raise things, they will not
necessarily want to give their names, but they have no way at
all of finding out whether or not anything is happening as a result
of that. Have you got some sort of mechanism that people can access?
Sir Leigh Lewis: Not as far as
I know, no, so let me take that away and think about it. It is
difficult because we are not generally in the business of divulging
what can be very confidential investigations to other people and
who may have any number of motives, both entirely right and sometimes
entirely wrong, for making allegations.
Q146 Mr Bacon: The Chairman is only
indulging me to the extent of my asking for a note. I read in
the newspapers, so it must be true, that apparently the Department
is now recognising polygamy and is paying benefits to polygamous
families. I do not know if this is correct or not, but do you
have a brief on that?
Sir Leigh Lewis: Since you have
raised it, because I just had a suspicion this might arise but
it has only arisen right at the very end, the press articles which
you quote are wrong, we are not making any changes to the current
arrangements.
Chairman: Well, thank God for that. I
am not going to ask any other questions but I will just one make
point, which is quite an important point. When the Permanent Secretary
of the Ministry of Justice was here he said he was appointing
a specific official to oversee the recommendations that are made
by the PAC and whether they have been implemented by the Department.
Given the importance of your Department, I hope you will be doing
the same thing. We have had a very interesting discussion which
we will continue with the NAO on your accounts being qualified.
The only point I would make is if you have different thresholds
for different benefits that might remove the incentive for dealing
with the complexity of those particular benefits. I just make
that point. Sir Leigh, you have been very generous with your time
and we are very grateful. Thank you very much.
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