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Earl Russell: In tabling Amendment No. 32, the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, has been too trusting. It reminds me of a Bill which was tabled in another place in 1606. Clerks then used to be paid by the line. Some of them attempted, unilaterally and arbitrarily, to increase the rate per line at which they were paid. A Member tabled a Bill to restrict them to a specific number of pence per line. Another Back-Bencher got up and said,
- "Watch out. If you pass this Bill, all they'll do is have fewer words in each line!"
If the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, is agreed to, all we will get is very much smaller print— which I, for one, will find very difficult to read. The Bill was withdrawn; I hope that the amendment will be also.
Lord Higgins: My experience on other Bills suggests the contrary. We will get a one page sheet to fill in and a 200-page explanatory memorandum.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: All of these propositions are tempting. Again I shall be very brief. I am sure that the Committee will understand if I stay with the amendment that is on the Marshalled List rather than be tempted into the broader issues of the fiscal drag and so on raised by the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, which he argued very eloquently at Second Reading.
If there is a particular concern about take-up it might be valuable if the noble Lord could bring forward an appropriate amendment to open-up this issue at Report stage, when I will come back very specifically on take-up. If I can give him any particular information in regard to our assumptions on take-up and how we seek to overcome any problems, I will be happy to do so.
Taking the amendments back to front, the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, is probably right in regard to Amendment No. 236. However, given that the words "application form" and so on have been used by the Inland Revenue, I should like to ask the officials to discuss this with the appropriate voluntary groups with whom we are consulting in order to discover what terminology is preferred by their clients. I will then come back to the noble Lord on the outcome of those discussions. He may well be right, but let us look to see what we end up with in terms of consistency with existing tax practices as opposed to the outcome of consultations with the group.
The first two amendments—I have dealt with the third, I hope—would restrict the length of any claim form to one page of A4. They would provide that a claim may be made by means of an interview, conducted in person, over the phone or by electronic means. The noble Lord did not say very much about that.
As to the point about the one page, I have here a draft, a mock-up of what the claim form may look like, which consists of some 12 pages of print. Even with my poor eyesight, it is big enough to read. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, is quite right: a one page A4 form would allow you to list, in fairly small font, your name, your partner's name, address, nationality and phone number. If you had only one child he or she would be included on page one, but any more would be left off altogether, I suspect.
It would have to exclude all reference to disability, hours, wages and employer; it would have to exclude all questions about any other income and savings; it would have to exclude all reference to preferred method of payment; and it would have to exclude all reference to childcare. There is no conceivable way that that could be put on such a form.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, will help me, but I think it was the Victorians who used to be rather good at producing a Bible on rice paper measuring about an inch and a half by an inch and giving a magnifying glass with which to read it. On the substance of the amendment, I hope the noble Earl will realise we cannot do as he asks.
Having said that, just as the MIG forms were rightly reduced from 40 or 50 pages—with questions on subjects from pregnancy to pensions—to 10 or 12 pages, partly as a result of pressure from your Lordship's House, so this form is a model of clarity and simplicity. I would be happy to circulate draft copies to your Lordships.
We have taken up the point about interviews being available if people want them, but it is sensible that people start by filling in a claim form—unless they expressly do not wish to do so—and then follow that by going through to a help line and an interview on any parts that they may find difficult. If we say that all claim forms have to be filled in at an interview, we can be sure as little kittens that the applicant's capacious shopping bags—or my capacious shopping bag or the capacious shopping bag of the noble Earl, Lord Russell—will not have all the papers and other things that they need for the interview. A simple form such as this—which is simpler than the housing benefit form that most pensioners fill in, infinitely simpler than the JSA form introduced by a previous administration and about as simple as the new MIG forms that underpin pension credit—is the way forward, with the further option of either a helpline or interview for those parts that people need further help on, such as what counts as income or what level of savings should be taken into account.
I hope that your Lordships agree that we are going the right way on this. It is a very simple form with plenty of back-up and plenty of publicity. I would be very disappointed if the amendments were not withdrawn. These benefits are remarkable in terms of their decency and their problem-solving ability in helping those who are poor without reducing the incentive to go into the labour market. We have come up with some extraordinarily effective solutions, such
as looking at gross rather than net income. If I can help by sending out further information to your Lordships, I would be happy to do so.5.15 p.m.
Lord Freeman: I am grateful to the Minister. Circulation of the latest draft of the claim form to Members of the Committee and to those who spoke at Second Reading and have not been able to join the Committee today will be much appreciated.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The draft will come with a health warning, because obviously the final draft is determined in consultation with user groups and voluntary organisations, but if it would be helpful to your Lordships, I will do my best to get it circulated.
Lord Freeman: I thank the Minister for that, and for regarding noble Lords also as a user group.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I would be amazed if any of your Lordships qualified, apart from for child benefit, which is not dealt with under this clause. None the less, I regard this as a consultative body.
Lord Saatchi: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. As my noble friend Lord Freeman said, it would be helpful to see that draft. Perhaps it meets some of the objections.
I am surprised by the Minister's response. I have been most deeply impressed by her radiant sincerity about the merits of the Bill and her passionate belief in what it is trying to do. However, I am surprised that she does not find it completely unacceptable that 40 per cent of the people who have a right to these credits do not receive them on the grounds of complexity.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I do not know where the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, is getting his stats from. It is certainly true that the original survey, conducted about nine months after WFTC had been introduced, showed that there was a 62 per cent take-up. The latest figures we have, which I gave on Second Reading, show a further 14 to 16 per cent increase on those figures. That is why I am baffled by the noble Lord's stance. We are talking about a cash take-up of over 80 per cent and a case take-up of something like 76 per cent. From our research, we also know that those people not claiming are those who are due very small sums, perhaps £1 or £2.
I also said that approximately 25 per cent of those who were entitled to family credit but did not claim it went on to claim WFTC.
I also argue that it takes time to build up but we expect 85 per cent plus take-up at the very least of the new tax credits for those who will be claiming both working tax credit and children's tax credit. What we cannot give is a figure for the 300,000 who will be eligible only for the working tax credit simply because we do not have any experience of targeting this benefit at that group. If, however, we fail to reach those figures, then the noble Lord is absolutely right and I shall certainly be one of the most disappointed and distressed parliamentarians in your Lordships'
Chamber. However, I have no reason to think—from the degree of automaticity and the fact that almost all of those who will come within reach are already within either the tax revenue system or the DWP system—that we will not meet those figures and, I hope, overtake them.
Lord Saatchi: I am grateful to be brought up to date on the figures. Would the Minister be able to bring me up to date on the latest view of the amount of money involved in tax credits not taken up? In my remarks I used what I believed to be the current figure, which is that the Government will save £2.6 billion by not paying tax credits to those who are eligible to receive them. Could the Minister confirm that figure?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I cannot confirm that figure because I do not have it in the form I have been talking about. What is put in the accounts is not actually a statement of the cost of 100 per cent take-up; it is based on the previous year's estimate with possibly a little head space to manage the expected expenditure pattern. We would have to do some work on that. If I can obtain that figure, I shall certainly give it to the noble Lord.
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