Examination of Witnesses (Questions 198-199)
MR LEIGH
LEWIS CB AND
MR TERRY
MORAN
15 MARCH 2007
Q198 Chairman: Let me call the Committee
to order and welcome our witnesses, Leigh Lewis, who is the Permanent
Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, and Terry Moran,
who is the Chief Executive of the Disability and Carers Service.
Thank you very much for coming along. As you know, we are doing
an inquiry on public services and the extent to which they are
user-focused, and part of that is looking at complaint systems
and not only looking at that, but at complaints more widely. I
think it was the Ombudsman who said that you were an interesting
bit of government to look at because you provided lots of complaints
business, but also that you were taking it seriously and seeking
to get a better system in place, so that is the context for asking
you along. Would you like, either of you, to say anything by way
of introduction?
Mr Lewis: Only
the briefest introduction, Chairman, and thank you for inviting
us to be here. We welcome the opportunity to meet the Committee
and answer your questions. I think we are in some ways interesting.
We certainly do not for one moment believe that we are always
getting it right and that will no doubt occupy part of our discussion
today, but we do, I think, believe that we are a department that
is genuinely trying to put the customer at the heart of our business.
I do not know whether members of the Committee were able just
to have a glance at the memorandum which we put forward, but we
attempted to set out there some of the wider context, so, if that
was helpful, perhaps it forms a sort of backdrop to the discussion.[1]
Q199 Chairman: We have had a memorandum
and we are very grateful for that, but, in a nutshell, just tell
us how you are redesigning your system to try to ensure that complaints
are better handled and that customers get a better response from
them.
Mr Lewis: Even before I come to
complaints, let me just try and set that a little bit in the context
of the handling of customers as a whole, if you will, the deal
for our customers in the Department. I think actually, as a department,
we have come a long way, as we said in the memorandum, from regarding
our customers almost as an irritation to the business to the well
running of the Department. I think we have moved over some years
to genuinely seeing ourselves there to provide a service, and
of course we get it wrong on occasions, but for the most part,
if our customers have to deal or need to deal with one part of
our Department, Jobcentre Plus, the Pension Service, the Disability
and Carers Service which Terry Moran runs, then most of the time
I think we deliver a good service and sometimes a very good service,
though of course we get it wrong on occasions. I think where we
are much less good is where our customers need to deal with more
than one part of our business and there too often, I think, we
leave our customers to make the joins, we leave our customers
to find their way through our systems and at times even our silos
and, therefore, an absolutely core ingredient of our business
strategy looking forward is how do we really regard each customer
as an individual so that, wherever we can, we deal with the whole
of his or her needs, wherever that customer may first make contact
with us, rather than requiring he or she to navigate their way
through our systems.
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