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Benefits Simplification

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, who has anticipated what I am going to say next. The evidence that we received from the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign and the Child Poverty Action Group highlighted the fact that some complexity, to reflect the special circumstances of some people's lives, is desirable. However, it is undesirable for those people to have to go through a hugely complex system themselves. They ought to be able to access the information easily. I will return to that point in a minute. The Every Disabled Child Matters submission to the Select Committee listed the many benefits, credits and grants that a family with a disabled child might be claiming at any given time. It is a long list, but I am going to read it out. Such a family might receive"““Child Tax Credit from HMRC, Working Tax Credit from HMRC if working or Income Support from DWP if not, Child Benefit from HMRC, Disability Living Allowance from DWP, Carers Allowance from DWP, Housing Benefit from the Local Authority, Council Tax Benefit from the Local Authority, Disabled Facilities Grant from the Local Authority, Help with Health costs including fares to hospital from the Department of Health, Grants from the Family Fund””." It is not just that such families have to deal with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs for the tax credit system and the Department for Work and Pensions for benefits. They may also be dealing with the Department of Health and voluntary organisations that support them. They want a system that makes life easy for them. In the evidence to the Committee, there was reference to the one-stop shop, which in many ways has been the holy grail of the benefits system for many years. In recommendation 23, we ask the Government to look at the feasibility of Jobcentre Plus offices becoming one-stop shops for a range of Government agencies, and we say that in the meantime, the DWP should ensure that its links with other agencies are strengthened. That will help not only those with very complex family circumstances, but those with far less complex circumstances, because they too will avoid having to go to a variety of agencies to get the answers that they want. The Committee identified some areas of good practice. I do not want the Minister to think that we are here simply to criticise. We received a lot of evidence about complexity and how it affects people's lives, but we were heartened by the fact that the Government have—through various pilots and through joint working, especially with HMRC and local authorities—delivered more integrated patterns of working. I hope that they will spread those examples of good practice so that the needy and vulnerable people whom the system is designed to look after will get the support that they need. The Government have set up a simplification unit in the Department, and I know that the disability and carers service is looking at its computer-generated letters. Finally—because I know that colleagues want to speak—I want to make a point in support of the Chairman's remarks about the importance of our role in Westminster. In 1998, I spoke in a debate in the Chamber on the then Social Security Committee report on what was called the benefits integrity project. BIP was set up in the last few weeks of the Conservative Administration, and the Labour Government inherited it. If any scheme caused more chaos than BIP— [Interruption.] Well, perhaps the Child Support Agency did. However, BIP certainly caused administrative chaos and chaos among claimants. In that debate, one or two Members of Parliament said, ““It's disgraceful that decision makers for disability living allowance are causing so much panic among DLA recipients by their implementation of the benefits integrity project.”” I pointed out to Members on both sides of the House that the decision makers dealing with BIP were my constituents in Warbreck house in Blackpool. I said that we Members of Parliament had given them that job; we had determined the rules. They were working hard to implement the rules that we had set. If they were failing, it had to do with the task that we set them. We in the House have a responsibility to make sure that benefits are as simple as possible to administer, and are complex only where that is vital to meet the special needs of the most vulnerable groups. We have to ensure that there are sufficient well-trained staff to deliver that service. Above all, we must put the claimant first and make the system as simple as possible for them. I know from my visits to Warbreck house and the disability living allowance headquarters that our staff do their best. They work very hard, but sadly, the benefits arrangements system is still too complex. Work still needs to be done, and I look forward to further progress.