The
Chairman: I call James
Purnell.
Mr.
Plaskitt: There is a slight difference between us,
Mr. Amess. I have listened carefully to the speech by the
hon. Member for Rochdale, and it sounds as though he has presented us
with something of a long wish list for a state of perfection right
across the whole benefit system. What he has described is what many of
us might, indeed, wish to see, but will he accept from me that in
reality the benefit system works pretty well for the large majority of
claimants who use
it? Although
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should always strive to improve
the quality of service that we offer to claimants, I can see problems
in the charter that he is proposing—for example, with
workability, costs and the bureaucracy that would arise from several of
his proposals. The main point to which I want to see if he will respond
is, if we are going to seek to improve the benefit system by
introducing a charter, does he accept that it should be half a charter?
He seems to have written a charter that focuses on rights but says
nothing at all about responsibilities. Although I wonder why he is
proposing what is in the regulations list, if we look through his
charter, it is not balanced by the responsibilities that exist in
relation to claimants. If we are going to go down the road of having a
charter, does he accept that both need to be set out?
I want to
give some examples of where the hon. Gentleman would need to balance
rights and responsibilities in the draft charter that he has presented.
For example, why are paragraphs (c) and (d) of subsection (3) not
balanced by an obligation on the part of claimants not to be abusive to
jobcentre staff? In relation to paragraph (e), in which he talks about
information, why does he not balance that with an obligation on
applicants to provide all the relevant information to someone who has
tried to process their benefit at the time they are seeking to do so?
Why does he not balance paragraph (f) with an obligation on claimants
to provide timely information to support their application, or balance
paragraph (i) with a commitment to take up all the appropriate training
and work-related courses to which one is directed? Why not balance
paragraph (n) by a reference to following through all the relevant
advice that is given? My main point is—I shall be grateful if
the hon. Gentleman will respond to this—does he think that if
there is to be a charter, it needs to cover both sides of the
equation?
Paul
Rowen: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me
an opportunity to reply. I agree totally with the point he has made. I
was careful in my remarks to say that the new clause was being proposed
to stimulate discussion following the Secretary of State’s
statement on Second Reading. I accept, as I said during my speech, that
it is a matter of rights and responsibilities. I do not see my
proposals as being written in tablets of stone. I hope that we can
agree to take something away from the debate and come back at some
future stage with a charter that has had input from a wide group of
people and that does exactly what he is saying. Such a charter should
set out not only the duties of the Department and providers, but the
duty of the claimant. I have focused on the rights of the Department,
the JCP and private providers because, in many respects, the Bill
considerably changes the relationship between them.
The Bill sets
out in great detail what the claimant can and cannot do. We have had
much discussion about a personalised agenda, but the concerns we have
raised throughout the progress of the Bill have been that the other
side of the coin, of protecting the claimant to ensure that that level
is delivered, is not set out in the Bill. I accept the hon.
Gentleman’s point—this new clause is not prescriptive, it
is meant to stimulate discussion; I merely wanted to right the balance
because clear duties and responsibilities are set out in the Bill for
claimants, but not so explicitly for what JCP and its partners have to
deliver. I have tabled this new clause to stimulate debate about
that.
John
Robertson: I wish to make a couple of points. Following on
from my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and the hon.
Member for Rochdale, I have no problem with wish lists. Wish lists put
forward ideas, and as such we hope that the people who put the law
together will listen to them and put them on paper. That is how we make
laws; they all come from somebody’s wish list somewhere down the
line. I
would like to emphasise the point about those 0845 numbers. As somebody
who has worked in the communications business all his life and as chair
of the all-party communications group since 2002, I have come across
many cases of people who have been ripped off by those numbers. It is
important that the Minister allays my fears on this. It is a disgrace
that any Government body would use 0845 numbers, particularly when
calls from mobiles cost a lot more. The people we try to protect the
most are the poor, who are the most inclined to have top-up mobiles. It
therefore costs even more for them to phone those telephone numbers. I
would look at
that. I
would also be interested in using an ombudsman. I have some sympathy
with the concept, which is a tried and tested structure to ensure that
best practice is followed, empowering the people who are best placed to
know how these services are used. The services that will be provided to
empower people will come from various bodies. Surely, then, an
ombudsman would be quite
useful.
Mr.
McNulty: Like the Secretary of State—Mr.
Purnell, not Mr. Plaskitt—I have some sympathy with
the notion of a customers charter or a claimants charter; whatever you
wish to call it, I think it makes sense. I take issue with the point
that the hon. Member for Rochdale raised about the lack of equivalent
rights and responsibilities in the Bill for Jobcentre Plus. To be
straight with the hon. Gentleman, that is a fatuous
point—Jobcentre Plus has those rights and responsibilities as an
organisation all the time. The way in which Jobcentre Plus should treat
people—with dignity and other elements that people have
suggested—has not changed because the focus of the policy has
changed. People have an absolute right to expect that level of
behaviour, respect and dignity from Jobcentre Plus, notwithstanding
what is in this or any other Bill. We do not have to have a whole
telephone book of what is expected of Jobcentre Plus because it should
be expected in all circumstances anyway. I think that there are
sufficient redress and appeal provisions in the Bill and in the wider
context of how Jobcentre Plus conducts its business to resist the
notion of an ombudsman being involved.
Hon. Members
will know and understand that an ombudsman is not a dispute resolution
process. The ombudsman role has always been to find either
maladministration or that due process has been followed in any given
circumstance. That is constantly a disappointment sometimes—if
you can be constant sometimes—to my constituents when they go to
the ombudsman because part of the brand is precisely that it is a
dispute resolution process. It is not. You will have seen the responses
from the ombudsmen and they are often detailed, tortuous, but very
accurate about processes and whether due process was followed by a
range of authorities. In order to enable them to slip into a whole
array of areas involving individualised disputes and to seek to resolve
those disputes, we would need to go back to the root legislation and
change the whole focus and statutory footing of the ombudsman. I do not
think that that is either appropriate or desirable, given that the
redress of grievances is already suitably accounted for in the Bill and
the way that Jobcentre Plus
operates. We
have this tension. Our end game, with this Bill and everything else
that we do, is to introduce as personalised and as supportive a
provision for each individual as we possibly can—not just for
those involved in welfare reform and the longer-term unemployed,
towards whom the Bill is geared, but for all customers, all
individuals, who present themselves to Jobcentre
Plus. 4.30
pm
The Committee
will understand straight away how introducing the flexibility to afford
Jobcentre Plus such personalisation would look strange next to a
statutory and rather rigidly drawn charter of rights and
responsibilities for each and every customer—there would be
tension. I should resist a statutory provision. The new clause is
unclear about whether, just because it is in the Bill, a claimants
charter established through regulations would be advisory, statutory or
somewhere in between. We have had seminars—we have more to
come—with Disability Alliance and others to which the hon.
Gentleman referred to look at how we can ensure that, whether this is
called a claimants charter, a customers charter or whatever, people are
absolutely clear about what they can expect from Jobcentre Plus. I am
entirely with him about what people can expect from each programme and,
more generally, from Jobcentre Plus, but I include the caveat that my
hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington suggested about the
accompanying responsibilities that pertain.
It was
interesting that the hon. Member for Rochdale prayed in aid my right
hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his quotation about not being
restrictive and not coming up with a lawyers charter, because the more
I look at the terms of the hon. Gentleman’s new clause, the more
they seem restrictive and, secondly, a lawyers charter. I do not doubt
the good intent, but some provisions are narrowly drawn, while others
are broadly drawn. We should not dwell on them unnecessarily, but
proposed new paragraph (m) states
that “claimants
must be able to access free, independent and appropriate advice in
relation to all aspects of the
Act.” That
is a fine aspiration, but why on earth should someone who has concerns
about birth registration be entitled to access advice on every other
aspect of the
Bill? Indeed, vice versa, someone who wanted to be clear about the
automaticity of the pension credit pilot would, according to the
proposal, have free licence to get as much information as they needed
for any aspect of the Bill, even if it had nothing to do with
them. The hon.
Gentleman cited the TUC in relation to one provision, yet he made no
definition of “reasonable” in the provision
involving “activity
under this Act for which it would be reasonable to expect
payment”. Given
that there are a few shyster lawyers around, I am afraid that the word
“reasonable” could blow a big hole in work trials, Access
to Work, work experience and all the things that, by common consent,
actually help claimants to stay very proximate to the labour market or
to get a job. The provision would do the reverse of what the hon.
Gentleman suggests.
I take the
point that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West made about
0845 numbers, and I believe in the review. I am told—he can tell
me later from his telecommunications and telephony
experience—that the last nut to crack is 0845 numbers called
from mobiles, rather than landlines, and that, with existing
technology, one can either continue to offer that service or
not—there is no third technological option whereby one can offer
the service for free. However, we are exploring the issue, because I
agree with the premise of the charter and my hon. Friend’s
suggestion that, if people need access to information by
phone—mobile or otherwise—from Jobcentre Plus, it should
be free. Some customers have said that for routine, snappy information,
such as the time of interview and so on, they would far rather receive
a quick text. That makes perfect sense, but, by a literal
interpretation of the charter, that could not happen, because it says
that if they cannot obtain the service by telephone, with all that that
implies about telephony being vocal, they can demand a face-to-face
service. However, a little text would do, so we cannot draw the
provision too narrowly.
I am
absolutely with the hon. Gentleman in spirit, however, and I know that
my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney),
the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, is too. It is
absolutely right that we should put out—far more readily than we
have, because it is out there already—an overarching charter
that states what customers or claimants, or whatever we want to call
them, can and should expect in terms of behaviour, provision and
service from Jobcentre Plus. Alongside it, there should be either
programme-specific or more general approaches—probably
both—covering responsibilities for claimants or customers. That
is the way forward that we are trying to follow. As my hon. Friend the
Member for Warwick and Leamington makes very clear, that includes
saying, “You will not being abusive or violent to Jobcentre Plus
staff,” with all that that entails.
Although we
are all broadly sympathetic, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the
new clause. I know that the team has been contacted by the Disability
Alliance, which was slightly concerned that the new clause would put
more into legislation than the organisation had intended. It was
worried that the new clause, if accepted, would push the Department
away from its positive sentiment regarding of a
charter.
As I say, I
will furnish Committee with details. There is a forthcoming stakeholder
seminar—God knows what we called these people before they became
“stakeholders”; an awful word. It is a people seminar to
discuss what should go in the overarching customers charter or citizens
charter—good Lord, not John Major’s citizens charter! We
are very much with the hon. Gentleman in spirit, but I ask that the
proposal is not pursued in such a fashion.
Paul
Rowen: As I said, the purpose of the new clause was to
stimulate discussion. I am particularly grateful for the
Minister’s remarks and sentiments about 0845 numbers, because
that is something that I know that the hon. Member for Glasgow,
North-West also feels strongly about. I look forward to the
Department’s continuing work to establish rights and
responsibilities through a charter. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion. Clause,
by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause
13Passporting
of Jobseeker’s
Allowance ‘(1) The Jobseekers
Act 1995 (c.18) is amended as
follows. (2) After section 27
insert— “27A
Passporting of Jobseeker’s
Allowance (1) Regulations under
this section may make provision for or in connection with allowing
Jobseeker’s Allowance to be passported to employers of
individuals who have been on Jobseeker’s Allowance for at least
18 months prior to their
employment. (2) Claimants to
whom these regulations apply must be in receipt of the national minimum
wage. (3) Regulations under
this section may, in particular, make provision for contracts of public
works whereby employers will receive claimants’ passported
benefits should they take into employment under such schemes claimants
that have been in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance for at least
18 months. (4) The award of
public works contracts may be rendered conditional upon a minimum
percentage of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants being taken on by
the employer concerned. (5)
Regulations may further make provision for Jobseeker’s Allowance
to be passported to employers planning to make skilled or semi-skilled
workers redundant. (6)
Regulations under this section may only apply to employees who would be
entitled to Jobseeker’s Allowance if no longer in
employment. (7) The passported
benefits must be used to
either— (a) retrain the
worker concerned, or (b) permit
retraining and employment as part of a reskilling package agreed
between the employer and employee.”.’.—(Paul
Rowen.) Brought
up, and read the First
time.
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