Social Security Advisory Committee
Agenda item 4 is an evidence-taking session with Paul Gray and Professor Janet Walker, chair and deputy chair respectively of the Social Security Advisory Committee. I welcome both witnesses to the meeting.
I think that it would be useful to explore two issues in this session: first of all, the SSAC’s work on passported benefits; and, secondly, the report published yesterday on the UK Government’s welfare reform regulations. To start us off, I invite Mr Gray and Professor Walker to take 10 or 15 minutes to talk us through the SSAC’s work on passported benefits and its key findings.
Paul Gray (Social Security Advisory Committee)
Thank you very much for the invitation to give evidence this morning, convener.
I do not think that I need add any more to your introduction, so I will just say a few words about the committee’s general role. The committee was established back in 1980 in a piece of Westminster primary legislation as an independent, arm’s-length statutory body that is linked to the Department for Work and Pensions and which receives grant funding from the department to carry out its role. In summary, we are the main UK advisory body—I emphasise that we cover the UK—on social security and related matters, such as links with the labour market and employment. We seek to position ourselves as being independent of Government, the DWP and other sectional interests, and to independently review relevant issues and evidence.
Our role, as laid down in statute, is essentially twofold. First, it is to advise and assist the UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, either at their invitation or on the committee’s own initiative. Secondly, it is—and this is the role most precisely embedded in legislation—to scrutinise secondary legislation on social security that is brought before the Westminster Parliament.
It is a requirement of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 that social security legislation introduced by the UK Government is referred to the SSAC for scrutiny. The committee has the right to take that on on what we would term an informal basis, by taking the material and reviewing it with the department, and we may then decide not to make any further formal inquiry about it. Alternatively, we may take on legislation as—as we term it—a statutory referral, in which case, typically, we would go out to consultation with an appropriate range of stakeholders, gather their input and views on the proposed secondary legislation, and then formally prepare a report that sets out the committee‘s considered views in light of the evidence that we have reviewed and collected. That is then formally presented to the secretary of state, who in turn considers our report before publishing it along with the Government’s response to our observations when the regulations are formally tabled in the Westminster Parliament.
On our recent activity, clearly we are—as the committee knows—going through a period of great welfare change in the UK. We have observed that the primary legislation on working-age benefits has tended to set out broad, high-level principles but not the detailed regulation. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 probably took that move towards setting out high-level principles a stage further. Most of the detail about how the policy will operate is included in the secondary legislation for which we have a formal scrutiny role. There is, in a sense, a further step in that process—this was certainly true of the main universal credit regulations that we reviewed in the summer, which I will mention in a minute—in that even the regulations are not specifying all the implementation requirements in precise detail. There is an increasing reliance on the guidance that the department prepares for its staff but which is also made publicly available. It is becoming increasingly important in understanding precisely how welfare is being administered. As a committee, increasingly we are wanting to scrutinise that guidance, as well as the formal regulations.
That is a general scene-setting explanation of the committee and its role.
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I will say a few words about passported benefits, as you invited me to, convener. Back in spring 2011, the DWP invited us to undertake a study of passported benefits, in particular in the context of the upcoming introduction of universal credit. That was probably a rather unusual remit for us. It falls within the first of our formal roles that I mentioned earlier when I talked about ministers inviting us to study a particular area, but it is a much broader and bigger remit than the committee has typically received from Government until now. Members will have seen our terms of reference; we published them in the report. They were to broadly identify ways in which benefits might be developed in future on the introduction of universal credit, including taking into account differences in accountability in different parts of the United Kingdom, specifically in relation to the devolved accountability for passported benefits in Scotland that rests with the Scottish Parliament.
I know that, in all the evidence that it has taken from others, the committee has been made aware of the background to our study. The background to passported benefits is long-standing. More than a century ago, the initial forms of some benefits in kind had an automatic or quasi-automatic link to core bits of the benefits system. Over that period, the overall structure of passported benefits has changed, and undoubtedly they have grown considerably in number and complexity. Our review identified something like 25 interdependent passported benefits in England and around 20 in Scotland and Wales, and there were quite significant differences in eligibility criteria. There was also a lot of variety in how the benefits were administered by UK departments, devolved Administrations and, increasingly, a number of non-governmental organisations in, for example, the energy and utility areas. In the context of that lack of an overarching and coherent strategy for passported benefits, the UK ministers were keen for us to undertake a review.
I will quickly summarise some of our key findings. The major consultation that we undertook with a range of stakeholders gave clear evidence that passported benefits are seen as important in fulfilling needs and are highly valued by those who receive them. The great burden of the evidence that we received also suggested that benefits in kind for services were viewed as particularly beneficial and we sensed no great appetite among stakeholder groups for the cashing up of those benefits.
A big area that we considered was whether passported benefits might constitute a disincentive to work, in the context of the potential of passported benefits as well as cash welfare benefits to generate high withdrawal rates as we go up through the income scale and people take on more and more work. We found no strong evidence to suggest that passported benefits were a disincentive to work. As much as anything, our sense was that people who move into work or take on more work are often unaware of exactly what the consequence of that will be, which, again, seems to be a feature of the fact that there is no single overarching structure or strategy. Often, people were not absolutely clear of what the overall impact would be when they took a work decision.
Although we saw no strong evidence of passported benefits constituting a direct disincentive to work, it is very clear that under the current patchwork—if I can use that word—there often are very significant cliff edges in the system. Once passported benefits are put on top of direct welfare payments, there are very sharp cliff edges and certainly major reductions to the gains from taking on work, or from taking on more work.
Among our other conclusions, we thought that as the UK Government and devolved Governments reviewed the medium and longer-term arrangements, there would be huge benefits in looking for more simplicity and better co-ordination. For example, there could be an attempt to reduce the multiple administrative costs that are involved in the current patchwork and to improve targeting. When the patchwork is put together in order to see what is happening, it is not clear that the net result is a reflection of conscious targeting decisions.
We did not come up with any easy answers; it is a very complex area. In line with our terms of reference, rather than coming up with any specific recommendations about what the UK Government should do or what you should do in Scotland, we sought to highlight what seemed to be some key principles that the various Administrations should take into account. Those are particularly around the areas of simplification, on which we came up with a number of thoughts, and trying to improve the extent to which work pays as the overall system is put together. I will not go on about that in these introductory remarks; we can say a bit more in response to questions.
Shall we leave it there or do you want me to say anything about universal credit at this stage?
If we give committee members the opportunity to ask questions, we might get into that area. Would Professor Walker like to add anything at this point?
Professor Janet Walker (Social Security Advisory Committee)
Members will excuse my failing voice.
Perhaps it is important to know that we talked extensively to officials from Scotland. My sense from doing that was that in some areas it is less complicated for Scotland, particularly because of prescriptions being free across the board and because some schools offer free school meals to younger children anyway. It seemed that you had already made quite a few steps to simplify some of the complex benefits and that there are opportunities to look for further simplification in that.
Thank you. I will kick off by asking what I hope is a small question. You mentioned monitoring and evaluation. What sort of level are those at and how far do they need to progress for you to be confident that they will be robust enough, as changes start to come in, in terms of universal credit?
Do you mean in terms of universal credit or passported benefits?
I mean either universal credit or passported benefits.
The picture in relation to passported benefits is very variable. The responsibilities and accountabilities for the individual passported benefits rest in a whole lot of different places. I will not say that we looked at monitoring and evaluation in detail for each of those, but it would not be unduly unfair or unkind to say that, in many areas, the system has been a bit like Topsy—it has just grown. The big value of the necessity for all the relevant Administrations to look at these issues is that it provides the opportunity to have a much clearer focus on what we are actually seeking to achieve with each particular passported benefit. How—if at all—do we want to target it?
Professor Walker has already made the point that there are differences between Scotland and England in the extent to which some of the key benefits are targeted. It is clear—this is an observation rather than a criticism of anyone in particular—that an overarching strategy for the network of passported benefits has been lacking. Frankly, I do not think that anyone has seen it as their job or their role to take an overview of the system. That is one of the key points that we are making as a committee. It is important that, rather than have all these things happen rather randomly, the opportunity is taken for the relevant authorities to take more of an overview.
I thank Mr Gray and Professor Walker for their time. It is useful for the committee to take evidence from you and to have the benefit of your experience.
I have before me some of your recommendations on the overall changes to the system and the introduction of universal credit. My first question relates to a recommendation in which you urged caution with regard to information technology development. Will you say a bit more about that? You did not explicitly state that there was cause for concern, but that seems to underlie the recommendation. What is the cause for concern?
I take it that you are now talking about universal credit specifically, rather than passported benefits.
Indeed.
I did not say anything about that in my introduction. Before I deal specifically with your question, I will mention the fact that we undertook a major consultation report in the summer, when we received from the DWP the then draft universal credit regulations and various related regulations on the benefits cap and so on. As the convener said, that report was published yesterday by the DWP, alongside the Government’s response.
As far as the IT issue is concerned, our committee is conscious that we are talking about the introduction of a major set of changes. We are mindful that other major transformation projects in Government that have involved IT development and implementation have had their moments, shall we say. In our recommendation, we were encouraging the DWP to be cautious, not to try to do too much too soon and to take a phased approach to new IT development, and I think that that is the approach that the department is seeking to take.
Earlier in the year, I and one of our other members visited the main IT development centre up in Warrington—I should say down in Warrington; it was up in relation to where I set out from. It would be fair to say that, in general, we were encouraged by what we saw—a careful and incremental approach was being taken to IT implementation. Frankly, it is not the role of our committee to set ourselves up as IT experts; there are others who are better placed to make such observations. Basically, we urged caution and care. The phased approach to the introduction of universal credit, which will take place over a four to five-year period, is broadly consistent with that aim.
So where did the recommendation come from? You say that it is not your role to be IT experts, but did IT experts provide you with evidence that led you to make your recommendation?
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We did not get very much input from that quarter in our consultation. One or two of our members have significant knowledge of and expertise in the development of IT systems from previous business experience, and their judgments were brought to bear in our work.
However, I do not want you to put too much weight on the particular experience that we brought to IT development. The real point that we are trying to get over is the importance of being cautious and deliberate, given our observation, which I think all of us would make, that putting too much weight on too rapid IT development in major transformation projects is sometimes a risk too far.
In our consultation, we heard endless concerns about a digital-by-default approach and the pressure that is being put on people to use an IT system to make claims. As a result, we looked specifically at how user-friendly the IT system would be, whether people would be able to manage it and what the barriers might be. I sense from some of your discussions—and we certainly heard it in our consultation—that a lot of people are very concerned indeed about the ability of a number of the most vulnerable claimants to manage an IT system. In the report, we reflected those concerns about the early expectations that people would be able to manage the system.
I suppose that the flipside of all this is indeed how service users, rather than those processing claims, utilise IT. Nevertheless, I thank you for that somewhat reassuring response. When I saw that recommendation, I was immediately concerned that some disaster was about to unfold, but it does not seem that that will be the case.
On the housing element of universal credit, you have made a recommendation that, given our breadth of experience, we would certainly endorse. The recommendation calls on the UK Government to reflect further on the potential consequences of the underoccupancy proposals on a variety of categories of people. How did you reach that view and what response, if any, have you received to it?
We have indeed received a response.
We looked very carefully at the issue. In the initial draft proposals that were tabled, it was proposed that there be a special arrangement or exemption from the underoccupancy rules for people who need live-in care and support. However, after reviewing the evidence that we collected, we urged the Government to further consider whether there might be other circumstances in which the underoccupancy arrangements might be modified. In our report, we identified essentially three groups in that respect, the first of which was the recently bereaved. The second group comprised disabled children and adults; indeed, with regard to disabled children, we asked whether, in considering the number of bedrooms a household might have, the Government might give further thought to households with several children in which one of the children has significant disabilities. The third category comprised temporarily absent members of households such as students.
The recommendation that further thought be given to those groups was one of the very few that the UK Government has declined to accept. As yesterday’s report shows, it has pointed out that the original and current proposals contain special arrangements for live-in carers. However, despite our observations, it does not intend, having given the matter further consideration, to shift the position any further.
Did it set out why?
Yes. You will be able to see from the document that it was not persuaded that those shifts should be made. It drew renewed attention to the range of other options that are available to claimants to mitigate the position in relation to underoccupancy.
One group of people from whom we have taken evidence is single parents with shared childcare arrangements. In your thinking, do you include such families in the category comprising temporarily absent family members?
No. I think that they are in another category, which we had a lot of consultation responses about. In the consultation, the Minister for Welfare Reform asked us to look at where policies around universal credit might conflict with policies elsewhere. We pointed out that all the policy within family law is very much about shared parenting, of course. There are likely to be changes in England very soon that will make shared parenting the presumption. The expectation of children being able to spend time in two households is very strong in family law in Scotland, as it will be in England. We put that group forward as one that we felt needed special consideration, but, as our chair said, our doing so did not find much favour in response.
So the kids can sleep in the cupboard—I am not asking you to comment on that, incidentally.
It will be a very interesting issue. There are a number of family issues.
I have a question on exactly that point. Jamie Hepburn raised the issue that I was going to raise, but I would like to tease it out a wee bit further. It is not simply about the best or hoped-for outcome of shared parenting. There are certainly circumstances in Scotland, particularly where young teenage girls are involved, in which the sheriff would agree to overnight access, or what is now called contact, on the basis that the accommodation was suitable. If the Government is now saying that we have to exclude all such scenarios from the definition of temporary absence, that is likely to cause significant problems in family law on both sides of the border. In my example, what is the sheriff to do in the best interests of the child and the family when there is no suitable place for a teenage girl to stay overnight?
I absolutely agree with you. I hope that the area will be looked at again in due course, because there are conflicting priorities in how we should deal with families, particularly ones that have separated.
I want to ask about a different issue. If I lose my voice completely, Professor Walker and I can just wander off together.
I have looked at the recommendations in relation to the self-employed, and it struck me that they have never been well served by our benefits system. You have many recommendations in relation to the self-employed. Can you talk a wee bit about what you see as the issues that are coming up? I refer in particular to recommendations (x) and (xii) in the report. It seems to me that there is again a contradiction in public policy. The policy seems to be militating against people starting up businesses, whereas other fields of policy encourage business start-ups.
The self-employed emerged as one of the biggest issues—I will not say the biggest issue—as we considered matters in the summer. The universal credit does a big thing in bringing together a whole range of legacy benefits into one place. Certainly on a UK basis, the majority of claimants will be in-work claimants. That characteristic has been familiar to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in its operation of the tax credits system, but the majority of claimants to the DWP have obviously been out of work or seeking to move into work.
There is quite a big cultural issue for the DWP in thinking about the consequences of an integrated universal credit because it now needs to give much more thought to the issues of those who are in work. That certainly raises many issues in relation to the traditionally employed population. However, we must layer on top of that the fact that there is a clear socioeconomic trend—I think that that is true in Scotland as well as in England—of an increasing amount of work being done not only by those who are formally self-employed in traditional ways that we have understood for some years but, increasingly, those who work on a more flexible, quasi self-employed basis, if I can use that term. That was why that set of issues emerged as a big set of priorities.
I think that you have had a quick chance to see the areas on which we focused in our report. Monthly reporting is proposed as a key bit of the infrastructure of universal credit claims. We think that that will give rise to quite a lot of difficult issues and we recommended that further thought needed to be given to whether a single, blanket system could work for everybody. The Government has responded positively to that.
Another area on which you touched in your question was that the original draft proposals that came to us proposed that there should be an allowance for only one start-up in a self-employed business. Drawing on the material that we gathered from our consultation, we took the view that that was too rigorous and strict. Another of our recommendations is that that should be changed. I am pleased to say that the Government has indicated that it will accept that recommendation and now proposes that the self-employed should be allowed one start-up period every five years.
Our recommendations also contain quite a lot of issues about the alignment of the reporting systems for the universal credit and those in the tax system. We spotted that there seemed to be quite a lot of detailed differences between those, so we pressed the Government strongly to ensure that those rules were fully aligned so that people who move into self-employment or who are at a relatively immature stage in the development of their business do not have to navigate subtle and detailed differences of treatment between HMRC and universal credit, as well as dealing with all the other handicaps that they have to face. I am pleased to say that the Government has also accepted that recommendation.
I return to my general point that there could well be quite significant teething problems. There will be a need to keep under review whether the universal credit works as effectively as it could for the self-employed.
I was going to raise some issues about self-employment, but the issue that concerns me the most is that of irregular or highly seasonal income flows, which you relate in recommendation (vii).
Coming from a rural area, I am aware that there are business models in Scotland that create low-income self-employed people whose incomes are extremely seasonal. In fact, I know of some who get their entire income perhaps on a single day of the year. Do you believe that the flexibility that is needed is there? I see that you recommend that the Government looks at the matter further, but is there enough evidence available in the area, or is there a need to expand the research significantly?
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As a committee, we still have concerns about the issue. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We are encouraged that the Government, in its response yesterday, acknowledged the underlying point that we tried to make—that regular, monthly income flows are not the norm for all kinds of businesses and that flexibility is needed. I think that there is going to be quite a big administrative issue for front-line staff in determining exactly how to respond to such businesses.
It was literally only yesterday that the Government produced the first draft of the detailed guidance material, which I mentioned in my introductory remarks, so to be frank we have not had a chance to look at it yet. I have it with me and it is a very thick document. I hope that, when we have a chance to scrutinise it, we will see that it provides further interpretative material that adds to what is in the regulations. That will reassure us that the issues are being addressed. However, as we speak, I honestly do not know whether the department has responded satisfactorily yet.
Janet Walker might want to add to that.
A few years ago, the committee produced some of its own research on how seasonal workers are dealt with in terms of job search activity when they are not working and how their income is taken into account. In that research, we found that the picture around the country is patchy, with some people in seasonal work doing really poorly when it comes to having their affairs looked after in a way that makes sense for them over the year.
In answer to the question, I do not know whether there is a need for further research, but when we have had a look at the guidance, our view may well be that further work to understand the size of the problem would be quite helpful, because I suspect that it is quite a big one.
Would it be fair to say that the level of Government awareness of the issue is rising? Would it also perhaps be fair to say that the current level of concern is only a recent introduction to the mix?
I would say, “I hope so,” but if we reach the judgment that awareness has not risen as much as we believe to be appropriate, we will look to make appropriate noises to further encourage the process.
Mr Gray, you said in your introductory remarks that this tranche of welfare reform legislation goes further than any other that you can remember in pushing discretion down to the guidance rather than that being in either primary or secondary legislation. Does your committee believe that that potentially compromises the rights of those who try to access the system, given that they would have fewer rights in law, with matters being dealt with through the discretion of guidance? Secondly, do you believe that it compromises your scrutiny of the system, given that, as you said, you have a formal scrutiny role when it comes to secondary legislation?
On your first point, it could potentially compromise those rights. As a committee, we well understand why the process is happening. I do not interpret it as an indication of malign intent on the part of the UK Government. It is an almost inevitable consequence of a development of policy that seeks to link the benefits system to much more proactive intervention in the labour market.
If we look back many decades, we see that bits of the benefits system operated mechanically, without any attempt to have a dynamic impact on getting people into work. Through a succession of Westminster Governments from all the parties that have been in government during the past few decades, we have seen a consistent wish to push the process of generating a more proactive impact on the labour market. The intent is benign, not malign, but the approach could compromise rights, which is why we have been pushing very hard and saying that we need to follow the case. If there is more in guidance, it is important for us to have a significant impact on that.
On the second part of your question, I am encouraged by the approach that DWP ministers have taken. This year, they have already agreed to expand the committee’s role significantly beyond what the statute entitles. There is an arcane bit of history called the six-month rule, which says that there is no requirement to refer to the SSAC any regulations that are brought forward within six months of the enactment of the initial primary legislation. The thought was, 30-odd years ago, when the committee was set up, that it should scrutinise regulations that proposed to revise and amend initial or previous sets of regulations.
Following dialogue that I had with ministers at the beginning of this year, they readily agreed to bring the main initial universal credit regulations to the committee on an equivalent basis—that is, as if they were statutorily required to refer them to us. Ministers were not legally required to bring the regulations to us but I agreed with them that we would operate the process on exactly the same basis as we would deal with a statutory referral. I therefore take encouragement from the Government’s recognition of that process, and the initial indications are that there is a similar willingness to engage with us on a non-statutory basis in scrutinising the guidance. We will have to see how that goes, but so far, so good.
I want to follow on from the convener’s points about the committee’s remit and role. One of the things that is exercising folk out there to a huge extent is assessment and decision making. What role has your committee had in advising the Government about assessment and decision making in benefit entitlement?
We have been involved in that regularly; Janet Walker might want to add to what I say in a minute. Most aspects of assessment and decision making require a regulatory basis on which to proceed. Whenever regulations are required or the Government proposes to amend regulations that bear on that process, that comes to us for formal scrutiny or—as I have just described to my namesake, Mr Gray—an informal process.
To illustrate that point, I had the benefit of sitting in the back row and listening to the committee’s earlier evidence session on work capability assessments. All the regulations that underpin that process came to the SSAC. Our committee has operated in parallel with, and kept in close touch with, Professor Malcolm Harrington in his independent reviewer role, which the committee touched upon earlier. The issues that were flagged up during that evidence session were exactly the sort of thing in which the SSAC takes a close interest as and when regulations are brought to us.
If we felt at any point that there were aspects of those arrangements in the benefits system that would benefit from further consideration or a consultation process that we might initiate, that is exactly the sort of thing that we might consider for the independent part of our work programme, in which we generate an exercise rather than formally respond to an invitation from Government.
At the beginning, when the ESA was being introduced, a member of our committee worked with a group of officials in the DWP, looking at how the WCA would be put together. She came back to the committee and shared that with us and we were able to feed into the process.
When Professor Harrington took over, we worked alongside him although clearly he was the person who was charged with doing the reviews. One of the pieces of work that we did, which I think had some influence, was thinking about how decisions were communicated to claimants. You probably know about an excellent pilot in Aberdeen in which staff started having direct telephone conversations with claimants to talk about the decision-making process. That proved to be very successful, and Malcolm Harrington suggested that it should be rolled out. We in the SSAC also suggested that that should become a routine part of the process, and it has become so. That is the kind of involvement that we have had over the past few years. However, we are well aware, from the most recent reviews, that there are still things to be sorted out.
I am an Aberdeen MSP and many of my constituents would not call that pilot “excellent”. However, it is a matter of opinion.
On the committee’s work on assessment and decision making, have you made any recommendations to the Government on the fact that the personnel who are involved in the decision-making process are entirely separate from those who are involved in the assessment process?
We have indeed. Something that emerged from one of the earlier reports from Professor Harrington was the fact that decision makers tended to be rubber-stamping the Atos assessment and not necessarily taking a decision that was independent of the assessment. At the time, we made representations to the department about the need to strengthen the role of decision makers and give them more independence. We have talked about that and we have been told that it is being followed up.
We were talking earlier about ticking boxes. From our point of view, the decision that somebody was fit for work may have been based on the box-ticking exercise alone, when additional information could have swayed the decision to one in which somebody was deemed not fit for work. You are talking about rubber-stamping. Are you talking about folk taking a brief overview of the tick boxes and saying, “Ach, we’ll go with the flow”, because there is no recommendation from the assessor?
What Professor Harrington was concerned about, and the SSAC was concerned about two or three years ago, was that the decision tended to be driven by the points system from the assessment rather than by the meaning of the content of the assessment. We recommended that the decision makers should look not just at the numbers but at the claimant in the round and their capability for work. The decision makers should seek further information at that point, before a decision was made, if there was insufficient information on which to base a thorough decision. Fewer claimants would therefore go off to tribunal. The idea is that the decision maker makes a decision based on all the evidence that they have in front of them.
I have one final question. You probably heard us discussing the role of general practitioners in the process. Have you come up with any findings on that issue?
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Again, I think that we have heard the same concerns that you have talked about this morning. The position that is always taken is that the work capability assessment is precisely that, and that it is not a medical assessment. There is always a tension in the WCA between it being about work capability, which is what Atos is charged to assess, and the fact that medical evidence contributes to that assessment. We have no other information beyond what we have heard through the reviews and the information that has reached the SSAC that some GPs have been charging and that GPs do not always provide the detailed evidence that might be helpful.
The position of GPs in relation to the benefits system has frankly been a long-standing and very difficult issue. For decades, GPs have been a key gateway, if you like, to the benefits system through successive legislative frameworks. The difficulty one faces there—as with any devolved or delegated system—is that it is very difficult to get consistency of treatment and outcome where there are many thousands of individuals who are undertaking the gateway role to the benefits system almost as a by-product of their core day job.
The WCA has brought up particular issues of the sort that you have observed and discussed, but the generic issue has not arisen because of the particular form of the WCA; it is a long-standing issue about the position of GPs as a key gateway to benefit entitlement.
Thank you. That was useful.
I would like to raise a slightly different issue that was alluded to earlier, which is online applications and the flip-side of the IT systems. I note that the SSAC recommends that
“The Government should ensure that it has sufficient resources in place to support those claimants who are initially unable to make claims online because of capability or accessibility difficulties, to make claims by telephone or, where appropriate, through a home visit.”
What has been the response to that issue and where do you think the issue will go?
You make reference to
“claimants who are initially unable to make claims online”
because of the various problems. Presumably, if claimants have those difficulties at the outset they will continue to have them, so what does “initially” mean in that context?
That is another area in which the jury is out. We made that recommendation to Government and there has been a positive response to it, in general terms. It is certainly an area on which we will keep a strong focus. I await with interest more detail from the Government on exactly how it proposes to provide more targeted help and possibly financial assistance to third sector organisations to help support the process.
On the word “initially”, our view is that there are significant numbers of people for whom the use of digital technology is a foreign art. We have no objection to the Government’s desired direction of travel, but over a period it will be increasingly important for as many people as possible to be able to use digital access in different aspects of their lives. Our thought around “initially” is to identify particular individuals and groups who need appropriate, targeted, initial support, to get them over an initial barrier, so that perhaps over time they will be able to do things more independently. Online is a perfectly sensible approach.
I will make one other general point that is germane to your question. Following all the work that we did during the summer, one of the next bits of work that our committee will undertake—which is generated partly by our own wish to explore further, although I know that Lord Freud and other DWP ministers have been quite welcoming of the suggestion—is a study over the next two or three months of vulnerable claimants in relation to universal credit. We will try to go a bit deeper into the key characteristics of vulnerability, and look at what needs to be done in more detail and—more practically—at the need to ensure that those vulnerable individuals and groups are not disadvantaged through the introduction of universal credit.
We aim to present by next spring our thoughts on that issue, which I expect will be relevant to the precise question that you are asking.
Thank you—that was a helpful and interesting response. I would like clarification on whether you anticipate that, through your further work in this area, the UK Government will recognise that a safety net is required for a number of individuals for a number of reasons. Those reasons might relate to physical capability, financial capacity, cultural preference or geographic access to computers or online activities—for example, people may not be able to apply online at the outset, or may never be able to submit an application online. Do you anticipate that the UK Government will accept that there should be some sort of safety net for such people?
I would hope that that is recognised. On your point about whether there are people who are never in a position to apply online, I think that time will tell. I definitely anticipate that the UK Government will be responsive to the proposition—certainly during the introductory period—that individuals may share particular characteristics or groups of characteristics that will point to the need for greater intervention and support to ensure that they can get access to universal credit. That could, for example, include applications being made online, but with greater intervention and more targeted support from departmental officials and possibly third sector agencies to aid people in that process.
There is a difference between whether people can be expected to apply online independently, and the extent to which it will be appropriate and practical to support online application for a larger proportion. I accept that it is unlikely—certainly initially—that absolutely everybody will be able to apply online, but that is exactly the type of issue that we want to pursue further. We will push the UK Government as we think appropriate to take the action that we identify.
Thank you.
Thank you for your evidence, which has been very interesting. I am sure that we will keep monitoring as you move forward, because there is a lot of work ahead of you. I thank Paul Gray and Professor Walker for their contribution.
11:23
Meeting suspended.
11:31
On resuming—