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Jobcentre Plus

I have a deal of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. The situation has improved significantly since the low point of last August, but it would have been difficult for it not to. There is still a major problem with people’s ability to get through to chase up progress once a claim has been established. I think that the achievement level now in terms of calls answered on initial claim is about 94 per cent. That sounds impressive, but there are 16,000 new claims a day, so even 6 per cent. of calls not answered represents about 1,000 claims. That is 1,000 people who are delayed in receiving their entitlement. There had also been major difficulties with the quality of the telephone systems that were installed in the first place, but we understand that, through work with BT, most of those problems have been dealt with. The second consequence of the efficiency targets being chased was on fraud and error. In many ways, the figure for fraud and error is nebulous. No one can say down to the last pound what it actually is, but we received plenty of evidence that the rate and scale of fraud and error increased last year, and the previous permanent secretary confirmed that the efficiency savings targets had been a contributory factor in that. All this is a consequence of management being stretched and having to deliver on four major targets. What I am describing was not a deliberate action at all; it was almost an inevitable consequence of what was happening.