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Jobcentre Plus

There is no doubt that Jobcentre Plus does good things like that. I hate to say this, but, in 1984 I established the first contact arrangement between benefit advisors and the old Department of Health and Social Security staff in Bradford, which was developed and replicated throughout the country. The more pressure we put on staff to do core tasks, which must be to deal with new claims effectively and efficiently, the less chance there is for them to do other necessary and worthwhile things, because there is less space, capability and staffing time available. There is a lot of concern about the many groups in society for whom telephone claiming simply is not possible. We have taken evidence about cases in which the claims of people who are hard of hearing or totally deaf have been almost cruelly rejected because they were unable to complete a telephone conversation to make the claim. That outrageous example is not isolated; there are many others. There are also concerns about people with problems that come under the general heading of mental illness, particularly those with psychosis. The last thing that people who suffer from hearing voices want to do is to get on a telephone and hear a voice, because it triggers problems, but that is not recognised in the system. At the end of last year, or perhaps early this year, the Department beefed up its advice to contact centres about classes or groups of people for whom it is acceptable to make claims by post or even through home visits. That is welcome, but it has not been happening on the ground. Every Member of Parliament can report cases—not isolated cases, as there are far too many—in which the practice, at ground level, has been that people have done all they could to ensure that claims had to be made by telephone. I can understand that to some extent, because that is the cheapest way for new claims to be processed, but the focus of attention should be the individual, not the unit cost. If there is a problem with unit cost, we should go back to considering budgetary matters. There is a process for dealing with such matters. So, there are real issues about those groups of people who are already severely disadvantaged—mostly by mental health, but also by other disabilities. It just is not right, fair or proper, especially in this day and age, that claimants should be abused in that way. My next point concerns crisis loans. Boy, did we get some conflicting evidence and words on those. About four years ago, the system on crisis loans changed to one in which claims are mostly made by telephone. We were told that at every office people can make a walk-in claim, but we received lots of evidence from many different organisations that people can walk in, but are then told to go away and use a phone. If they do not have their own phone, they are advised to find a public telephone that they can stand by and wait for someone to ring them. People have waited for up to three hours for someone to call them. Applying for a crisis loan is not the most ennobling situation in the first place. By definition, if someone is in such a state that they have to apply for a crisis loan, there has probably been a major incident in their life and they are probably penniless, if not destitute. For such a person to be told to wait somewhere for three hours, not knowing what the decision is going to be, and that somebody might ring them in that time is unacceptable. We received lots of evidence about the walk-in facilities at different offices around the country stating that people can get through the door, but that it is still difficult for them to have their claims processed there while they wait. All of those issues are compounded for people who live in rural areas. In major conurbations such as Stockport, Bradford, Aberdeen and Swindon—I shall not name any more—there is a reasonable chance of people being able to manage that system. However, for someone who lives in Kirby Stephen in Cumbria, the nearest office is Carlisle, which is an 80-mile round trip. Take someone who is hard of hearing who needs to make a crisis claim. Using the telephone is not an option for them, and they will not have the money to travel the 40 miles to Carlisle to get the money that might help them to get back. That might be an extreme example, but there are green and pleasant parts of this country which are 10, 20 or 30 miles from the nearest major population centre. The Committee recognises and understands the rationale behind the reorganisation of the estate. In terms of pounds, shillings and pence—I am showing my age—there is an argument for it, but there is also a service argument. We need some sort of network in rural areas which uses other agencies, if necessary, by which people can access Jobcentre Plus services, particularly for those people who are already disadvantaged and want to make new claims, for whom the speedy processing of their benefit claims is essential. The same applies to crisis loans.