Q
138Paul
Rowen: So, do you have a delivery plan that will show how
you are going to cope without the additional staff necessary for the
training you are going to deliver over the next few
years? Mr.
McNulty: In the first instance, what we have said and
what we would like to do is, again, pilot. I do not say that in any
apologetic way; these are very sensitive areas and we need to make sure
that it works, and works well. Clearly, we can control pilots in
England and we are working and talking with the Scottish and Welsh
Governments to take pilots forward too. Although determined nationally,
resources used at the localised level in terms of treatment and
priorities are very important, which is why we need to work with
people.
I have spoken
to the Scottish Minister and there is a drug strategy unfolding in
Scotland, but there are concerns that the treatment provision is so
inadequate, which is not enough, but it just is. There is up to an
almost 52-week referral in some cases, so Scotland needs time for the
provision to improve before it starts the pilot. I am happy to work
within those timelines and we are having similar discussions with the
Welsh
Government. In
an English context, the provisions, at their very best—this is
not true of everywhere—allow for almost same-day referral, and
in average terms it takes three or four weeks. I therefore think that
the treatment architecture exists for the numbers, in the first
instance, of crack and heroin users for the matter to be taken
forward.
Q
139Paul
Rowen: Sharon White, in terms of the staff at Jobcentre
Plus, have you done an audit of the skills that they already have and
the additional training they will need to deal with that? What are your
plans?
Sharon
White: There are already a number of people who come
to Jobcentre Plus who indicate that they have some drug issue, so we
have confidence in our personal advisers. The key thing is that the
Jobcentre Plus adviser will not be the expert referring such people to
the treatment programme; where there is a suspicion that drug use is
the main barrier to work, the adviser will refer that person to a
specialised medical officer. As the Minister said, that is taking place
on a pilot basis, and in the areas where it is being taken forward, we
will, absolutely, give extra training and support to Jobcentre Plus
staff.
Q
140Paul
Rowen: Nevertheless, the Bill’s provisions give
Jobcentre Plus staff the ability to
require. Sharon
White:
Absolutely.
Q
141Paul
Rowen: How will that requirement be enforced? Are you
saying that a medical officer will make the
recommendation? Sharon
White: The Jobcentre Plus adviser’s role will
be to indicate the biggest barrier stopping a person from working, and
the legislation allows the adviser to do so, as part of the
jobseeker’s agreement, if there is a strong suspicion that
somebody is a problematic drug user. That adviser will not then be the
person who says whether a particular treatment is appropriate or not;
that will be done by a specialist. But there will definitely be a
programme of learning, development and training for Jobcentre Plus
advisers.
Q
142Paul
Rowen: The NHS constitution gives a patient the right not
to accept treatment or to even disclose information. Do you think that
the legislation under discussion conflicts with the constitution and
people’s rights under
it? Sharon
White: It is quite interesting that we have analogies
between this and some of the employment and support allowance
provisions, which we will be looking at. They look at what we can
mandate in terms of work-related activity where there are issues
relating to the ethical code for some of our medical professions, and
whether we can actually mandate something that is a health intervention
for
people. Interestingly,
our discussions with health professionals centring on drugs showed that
the impact of problematic drug use can be so difficult for an
individual. Actually, we found that medical professionals have
been—relaxed may be too strong a word—happy with the
direction of travel on the
matter.
Q
143Mr.
Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): On the social
fund, may I ask about the extent to which external providers will have
discretion as to whom they will grant personal loans, as well as the
amount of those loans? Furthermore, what is the extent to which the
providers will be operating from a ring-fenced pool of
money? Mr.
McNulty: I am sorry, I missed the opening of the
question because the door opened or
something.
Mr.
Lilley: I will start
again. Kitty
Ussher: We got it all except the first
sentence.
Q
144Mr.
Lilley: May I ask, in respect of the social fund, the
extent to which outside providers will have discretion as to whom they
make loans, as well as the amount of those loans, and whether the total
amount that each provider will be able to allocate will be a
ring-fenced annual amount?
The reason I
ask is that there is a familiar ring to all this; I remember officials
proposing to me that I should establish a people’s bank with an
automatic right to personal loans. I resisted that, partly because I
did not think that we should be in the business of facilitating the
indebtedness of people who were not well off—I was ahead of my
time. More importantly, it seemed to be motivated by the fact that it
is a rules-based Department, as I am sure Ministers have observed in
their own Departments. Officials hate discretion and do not like to be
given those powers, so they wanted to get rid of it. I wanted to retain
it because I thought that at the end of a rules-based system, you
needed some discretion in case something went wrong with all the rules,
because however wonderful the rules are, you cannot cover all
complexities. Are we retaining that discretion, and if so, are we
privatising it? That is a rather bold step—even for
me.
Kitty
Ussher: Thank you for the useful history lesson about
the origins of the people’s bank idea, which I shall mull
over.
In a sense,
we are simply taking a primary power, and all this will be discussed
and consulted upon later, but the general view is not to have a
different system by virtue of it operating through a different body, so
the “rules,” if you want to call them that, or the
conditions would be the same. In a sense, there is discretion at the
moment in that an adviser decides whether the current criteria for
granting a budgeting or a crisis loan are met. We may want to change
the criteria across the
board. We
do not need primary legislation to do this but, for example, we are
being slightly too subjective by spending a lot of time questioning
people about precisely how their cooker has broken down and why.
Perhaps it is all right to accept that for people who are not well off,
just as for middle-class people, there are spikes in expenditure. While
it is always better to save in advance, sometimes you have to borrow
and smooth the payments over time. It is irrelevant to that whether the
reformed fund is administered by an external provider in some parts of
the country or, theoretically, across the whole country, although we
are nowhere near that. The advantage of taking the power to work with
an external provider is that they may be quite good at another thing
that we want to do, which is offering better financial advice so that
people do not have to borrow in the first place. As you say,
encouraging indebtedness is not a good thing in itself, but sometimes
people need to borrow.
Mr.
McNulty: But the broader point about the availability
of controlled and regulated credit for poorer communities, so that they
do not go to illegal loan sharks, takes us back to Mr.
Plaskitt’s point about trying to make credit unions and other
microcredit facilities more available throughout the country rather
than their current patchy existence.
Kitty
Ussher: There is not even a draft contract at this
stage. It is about taking a power to keep options open later, but our
vision is that we would only work with an external provider if it could
add something rather than take something
away.
Q
145Mr.
Lilley: I would not expect you to have the figures here,
but it would be helpful if the Committee knew the current default rate
or repayment rate—one is the obverse of the other—for
social fund loans.
Kitty
Ussher: I am happy to provide the Committee with that
information, but—this is how there might be a difference from a
hypothetical people’s bank—the default rate is quite low
because there is a deduction back from benefits. It is less of a risk
to provide a social fund loan than any other type of
loan.
Q
146Mr.
Lilley: And then you have the problem that there is a
maximum number of deductions that can be made. What happens if, for
some reason, those were used up and a crisis emerged? Does this go to
the crisis fund, and will it in the future?
Kitty
Ussher: In a sense, we have that problem already,
because there is a maximum lending amount, which is sometimes quite
high. If somebody comes back with a genuine emergency after that, we
have a duty to ensure that their basic health and safety needs are met.
That will always be the case, and of course it is right and proper, not
only under law but morally. Any system that we come up with will have
to have a mechanism for someone who desperately needs their basic
health and safety requirements to be met.
Q
147Mr.
Lilley: What about the ring-fenced budget? Will each
external provider be told, “This the amount of money that you
have to allocate,” or, “This is the maximum you can
allocate during the year,” and the devil take the
hindmost? Kitty
Ussher: That is the type of thing that we need to
specify in a contract, but the general point that I want to make
absolutely clear is that, by working with an external provider, we
would not want to provide a lesser service in any way. We would want to
add on something because a provider was better at doing things, such as
providing financial advice. At present, crisis loans are arranged over
the telephone, and that makes them very accessible. Demand has gone up
hugely as a result, and that, in a sense, is a good thing, because more
people can apply. However, we then lose the face-to-face support that
some organisations in the community might be better placed to provide
for certain categories of people.
Q
148John
Mason (Glasgow, East) (SNP): Professor Gregg talked about
different sanctions—monetary and non-monetary—and seemed
to be leaning towards non-monetary sanctions, especially for vulnerable
people, because, if they are already on a fairly minimal income,
monetary sanctions could push them over the edge. How do you see the
balance between the two in the Bill?
Mr.
McNulty: Not within the Bill because, as I said
earlier, if you come up with a conditionality regime that relies on a
relationship between an individual, their adviser and whatever plan
they come up with, the absolute end game is the sanction, and the final
sanction is monetary sanction. However, I agree with Professor Gregg
that there are any number of stops on the way to that end game, and we
envisage much greater personalisation with individuals, and the
identification of their specific barriers to getting back into work and
how the adviser and the individual collectively decide to work to
overcome them. At some stage, it might well mean non-monetary
sanctions, and I envisage them being used quite
significantly.
In absolute
terms, the financial sanction is the last resort so that we do not go
from one perfunctory work-focused interview, through a plan dictated by
the adviser, and straight to financial sanctions. Professor Gregg is
right to say that this is graded, but it is rooted in the relationship
between the individual and the adviser and their plan for getting back
to work or to work-readiness. We do not need any of that in the
Bill.
Q
149John
Mason: If we eventually reach financial sanctions, what
will happen in practical terms to a family on a fairly minimal
income—especially if there are children—whose benefits
are reduced? What do that family do?
Mr.
McNulty: It will depend on each individual’s
circumstances, what their partners do and the family’s overall
circumstances. I hope that people would get back on to their
programme—their journey—towards work-readiness as quickly
as possible. Again, that is because we envisage, I think, a gradation
of financial sanction, rather than going straight from no sanction to
lopping up to 20 per cent. off someone’s benefit over a short
time frame.
In the
broader context, there are still duties under a range of legislation,
including Children Acts, that will interact with the Bill, and it is
important that the welfare of any young children is taken into account.
I hope that that will happen in the context of the range of
sanctions—non-monetary and monetary—that, on the
non-monetary side, will be agreed between the individual and the
adviser. The sanctions that an individual might face prior to the
ultimate financial sanction are rooted in the relationship and
circumstances that have developed between the adviser and the
individual. We really want the measure to be that personalised and for
it to take account of the impact of any financial sanctions on an
individual’s specific circumstances.
Q
150John
Mason: At this level, that is quite reassuring, but many
people’s fear is that once it gets down to an individual level,
there might be a clash with child poverty. How will this work in
practice?
Mr.
McNulty: I would hope not, given that we are
about to bring in a child poverty Bill to address all that we want to
do in that regard. I take the point about getting the people at the top
signed up to this cultural change and focus, and like in any
organisation, the difficulty is how much that permeates down. This will
be nothing short of a personalisation revolution—that trips off
the tongue very lightly—focused on the individual. It is not
just about tinkering with the culture at ground level; it is about
fundamentally transforming the relationship between the individual, the
adviser and the system. The fact the measures are so root and branch
means that they will permeate down because they have to for the thing
to work. However, I accept your concerns.
| 
