---

Jobcentre Plus

That is a valid point, and I note that one of the Government’s answers says that they are turning 9,000 staff into front-line staff. Of course, we need front-line staff, too, but they need support if they are to operate efficiently. We cannot cut one group and say that we will get a full service. The hon. Lady’s point is well made. We have had a briefing from the citizens advice bureau, which tells us:"““Citizens Advice Bureaux across the UK continue to advise clients who are experiencing difficulties with the administration of their benefit claim, particularly through the new Customer Management System for claiming IS, JSA and IB.””" It then lists some key messages, which I want to put on the record:"““There is a lack of awareness among Jobcentre Plus staff of alternatives for clients for whom the telephone-based claims system is not suitable.""Office closures are impacting upon claimants who are required to collect Crisis Loan payments or attend interviews and are having to travel long distance to their nearest office.""Many clients are experiencing significant delays in the registering or processing of their benefit claim.””" The briefing continues:"““Vulnerable clients are most at risk when things go wrong…Jobcentre Plus had over-emphasised use of the telephone system and had not promoted the alternatives sufficiently…the CABx continue to report problems in getting paper forms or face-to-face interviews for claimants unable to make a claim over the telephone.””" Examples are given of vulnerable people—one with, I think, a mental health problem, another who was an old lady with a disability, and another who was suffering domestic violence—who were not getting the right service, because of the restriction on how their cases could be processed, and, in particular, the telephone system that did not work properly. The briefing states:"““Bureaux continue to report serious delays in the processing of benefit claims.””" That is the view of Citizens Advice, which works in the field with the most vulnerable people. There has been a reduction in staff. The Government made it a policy to reduce the head count at Jobcentre Plus. I know that that is meant to go hand in hand with efficiency—it is called efficiency savings. The head count in March 2004 was 82,067; in March 2006 it was down to 71,222—a big cut; and at the milestone of 31 March 2007 it will be down to 68,550. We then had figures for office closures in a recent answer from the Minister, who attached a letter from Lesley Strathie, the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, stating that"““206 offices have closed since 1st April 2005. A further 113 offices are scheduled to close in 2006/07 and 8 during 2007/08. In addition there are a number which are scheduled to close but for which final closure dates are subject to further planning and stakeholder consultation.””—[Official Report, 13 June 2006; Vol. 447, c. 1141W.]" Others have also been identified for closure. What is meant to go with that reduction is a top-of-the-range computer system that is up and running. However, we have learned from Citizens Advice that there are problems with that. I could have quoted a briefing from the Public and Commercial Services Union, the union that represents the workers in question, to the effect that that has not happened properly. Indeed, the Select Committee took evidence that made that very point, and expressed concern that the computer system is not filling the staff gap. The consequence is an effect on the service. Recommendation 21 in the Select Committee report refers to the ““catastrophic failure”” of the service provided by Jobcentre Plus contact centres in 2005. Let us think about what those words really mean for people. That year has gone, but we cannot have catastrophic failure, or anything approaching that, for many vulnerable people this year, this summer or this autumn. I want the Minister’s response to that point. Will what is being done work? If we have problems, what remedial measures will he take so that vulnerable people do not suffer severely as a result? Recommendations 6 and 7 in the report refer to reductions in services and programmes, and recommendation 17 mentions"““ ‘a detrimental impact’ on accuracy levels””—" so they are getting the figures wrong for people too. That is extremely serious. My experience as a constituency MP is that often when such things happen the individuals concerned, many of whom are on low incomes, do not get their entitlement to start with. It may be only a small amount of money that they are bilked of, but for them it is crucial in getting through the day. Often, if things go the other way and they are paid too much, they can be accused of fraud and of somehow having cheated. Beyond that, they are told, ““Well, you have been overpaid. We will have to take all this money back off you””—money that they have spent on their daily lives. That presents them with huge bills and huge problems. The matter of accuracy is a serious one, and there is no doubt about something to which the Committee drew attention—accuracy levels dipped with the staffing head count reduction and the failure of other measures that were meant to compensate for that, including the computer system in particular. The report made some other good points to which I want to draw attention. Often some staff are over-reliant on a script. If someone puts in a claim and says, ““These are my needs,”” they are read a script. I am not against a script. It sets out entitlements and helps the member of staff to get the point over, but things go wrong with a script. People’s needs do not very neatly fit in with the answers on the script. They are slightly different, and there is a need for flexibility about that. Errors creep in, firstly as a function of employee training that is not very good, or insufficient to build up their skills and show them what the system is about and what is available—even if that is off the script. Secondly, errors are a function of the low pay. Many Jobcentre Plus employees who have the script to work from are very low paid. Clearly training needs to be improved, but the best interpretation of what is available will not be provided by people working from that low base. Scripts are needed, and there is a need to update them, too, but there is also a need for competent people to operate them, and for much better training. Personal advisers are another issue, akin to that of scripts. They are crucial for what the Government plan in their welfare reform programme. They are crucial if we are to get people off incapacity benefit into work, and make the best opportunities for them. My understanding—the Committee dealt with this in recommendations 45 and 46—was that about a third of the advisers were deemed almost to be on special measures. They were about to get the push or be moved somewhere else in the system, because they were not deemed good enough. That was because they had a fixed target for getting people into work. The trouble is that often they deal with people who have the most serious obstacles to working. I accept, again, that it is necessary to measure how well people are working as personal advisers—very competent people are needed—but the measurements must take into account the clientele that they work with, and the economic circumstances in which they operate. There might not be any jobs to get people into in a particular area. Personal advisers need to be given a bit of a fairer deal. I am not defending anyone who is not succeeding. I agree that it is a management job to move them on, or do something with them, but it is wrong that so high a proportion of the personal advisers are not succeeding. It sets off a serious alarm bell, if we are to rely even more on personal advisers to deliver the incapacity benefit reforms. The Minister needs to deal with that, too. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) referred to the new deal, to building on the new deal and, I think, to the ambition programme. The Government have not come forward with the next way to build on the new deal. I think that although the new deal, particularly in London, has not ground to a halt—it is still doing a good job—it has slowed down. When it was introduced in the late 1990s it had a terrific impact. It found people jobs, got them trained, and put them on the environmental taskforce. It was one of the Government’s success stories, but it has slowed down. It needed to be built on. That is what is proposed—building on the new deal. It is a shame that the Government have not yet thought through what they want to do. It is vital that young people are given work and training programmes, but they must go up a step; what is needed is a step change. The Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform should think seriously about building on the new deal. That is not being done because of the efficiency savings programme, which is reducing staff and offices and which cannot seem to make the computer system work well. There are too many problems here and now to get on with the job and go forward to the next phase in youth employment and training, but it must be done sooner or later and I urge the Government to do it. My penultimate point is that when the Select Committee produced the report, about 90,400 people had been added to the claimant count. The Select Committee thought that that figure was added, in the main, because of the changes; everything was not operating as efficiently as it had been and as a result the claimant count rose. That is bad for every one of those 90,400 people. Publicity about the fact that the claimant count is about to go through the million barrier gives the Opposition parties a tool with which to attack the Government. The figure could be 90,400 less than that if the changes had not had such an impact on the claimant count figures. That may be a political point, but it is not a good thing for the individuals involved. It comes down to the gap between reducing the head count and the number of people who can help people into work and getting the other systems up and running efficiently. The other groups that help people to find work, which have contracts with Jobcentre Plus, could do more in that regard. My final point is on the briefing from the Public and Commercial Services Union, which says that there should be a commitment at least to retain a consistent level of service while the changes and the efficiency savings proposed by Gershon, especially the head-count reduction, are being implemented. There has not been a consistent level of service over that period and that worries me. The PCS states that"““we are alarmed that the Government are promising a brighter, better technologically delivered future for Jobcentre Plus and the delivery of the reformed welfare state at the same time as there are significant reductions in staffing and delivery outlets.""The continuing belief that these reductions can happen before the new IT delivery mechanisms are robust and in place is an unacceptable risk, both for service users and those remaining in service delivery who will have to pick up the pieces of any failures.””" The PCS is concerned about the scale and pace of the reductions and the office closures. The Government need to consider the matter extremely carefully; they should not just roll on the set of figures that they laid out several years ago without considering the consequences of the impact on the service, especially in respect of vulnerable people. The PCS and the Select Committee say that there may be a good case for revisiting the scale and the pace of the proposals.