Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I declare an interest in regulatory and professional services, having chaired the Legal Services Consumer Panel, sat on the Board for Actuarial Standards, overseen insolvency practices and sat on the Bar Standards Board, the Pension Regulator and the Property Standards Board. So I have a long involvement with non-economic regulators who oversee the professional delivery of services. These kinds of regulators have a large role to play as they are very much about what we called raising standards—although the words used by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, when he talked about “driving up” standards may be even better. This goes beyond public services. That may be what is in front of us now but consumers are demanding this from a whole range of service providers. It has shaken some of the barristers who do not really like the fact that they have to conform to new consumer-set standards. But that is what the users of all services now want and that is what this kind of regulator provides.

I am less afraid of the idea of quangos—although I am sure that that is not a general view—but what these kinds of regulators do is to adopt codes of conduct; set good practice guidelines and minimum service standards; and then ensure that quality assurance by way of setting minimum training or entry qualifications, CPD requirements and the monitoring of services. That monitoring is not just about compliance, important though that is, but also provides a feedback loop so that lessons are learned, either for standards and the way they are defined and set, or for the way staff are trained, or, as was discussed this morning, to allow systems to continue to be developed in the light of the way the service is delivered.

This kind of standard-setting is particularly important in view of the ending of legal aid to assist complainants and users because the only other monitoring will be via this kind of organisation. This kind of regulator—for want of a better word—can identify whether particular groups are underrepresented in any category and whether all groups are being properly serviced and properly served. As the Minister has stated on a number of occasions, some decisions must be taken on a case-by-case basis—in-work conditionality is a particular example. This will involve tremendous discretion in the hands of thousands of decision-makers across the country, so clear guidance, good and consistent training and ongoing monitoring of decisions by some kind of regulator with authority will be crucial to ensure that the service is fit for purpose.

Unfortunately, the Government refused to accept our earlier amendment that the Jobcentre Plus side of the claimant commitment should be laid down. It is therefore even more important that this standard-setting will be open, transparent, raise standards and, most importantly, create confidence in the new system. This proposal has some merit. I am not sure whether or not the formula will achieve it, but we look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, perhaps I may make one brief point. In common with others around the table today, I have had long and—I hope—harmonious working relationships with DWP staff, who have been almost universally helpful, constructive and anxious to take policy forward. However, I believe I am right in saying that in the DWP, more than in any other area of government, staff often start work in benefit offices at the age of 16 with fairly low-level qualifications. Like the police force, this is a field where one can go up through the ranks. The Civil Service is very good at in-service training and so on. However, this is nevertheless an area where a great deal of responsibility is delegated, rightly, to staff at EO level, many of whom have come up through the ranks. Certainly when meeting and discussing policy development with them, it was always clear to me within a few minutes where their education had effectively stopped. As a result there was, in some cases, a real issue about driving up standards and trying to professionalise the service. Nothing that I say should be taken as criticism. It is clearly obvious that in benefit offices staff may very well start at 16, 17 or 18 rather than go through higher education, particularly given that higher education has only recently become more widely available to young people. However, junior staff at the DWP, more than in any other field of Government that I am aware of, are taking key decisions affecting the well-being of hundreds of people and need professional support, training and the continual driving up of standards from the department.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Like other noble Lords, I very much welcome this. The problem in the past has always been the length of time to get a learning loop into systems. By the time there has been a pilot and the evidence has been assessed and reported back, three years have passed—by which time, alas, usually incumbents have moved on and questions have changed. I am delighted that we will get pilots. Will the Minister give an undertaking that the results of the pilots will be published and made available to Members of both Houses as soon as is practicable? Sometimes they will not be supportive of positions that the Government wish to develop. However, at the core of research must be the integrity of publication.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, the Committee will know that my noble friend Lord McKenzie and I have added our names to this amendment, but we are delighted that it has been overtaken by the Minister’s own amendments. I am getting a bit of a record for doing this. Last night I commended the Government on their move on the Housing Ombudsman, and I am doing the same today. However, I have a couple of questions. Whether this is to be piloting or testing throws up exactly what I wanted to ask: what is the purpose of each of these pilots? Are they to test whether the principle of a particular part of the Bill is right—in other words, that the aim of each part of the Bill is being met—or are they simply to determine how best to implement each proposal?

We always welcome piloting and testing of whatever it may be, but the exact purpose of a pilot needs to be absolutely clear at the start, particularly for those who have to design and implement it, as well as for all the participants and evaluators. What is the pilot meant to achieve, and therefore how should it be monitored and evaluated? That is because whether it is simply to find the best way of making something happen or to see if the idea behind it is right is quite an important distinction.

We hope that the Government will be confident enough not to assume automatically that what they think will work, will work—whether to incentivise people or to simplify systems—and that they will use these pilots in order to test the assumptions underpinning particular proposals in the Bill. That means being confident enough to design the pilots accordingly to see whether the particular objectives behind the proposals in what will by then be the Act are being met. That is asking quite a lot of a Government. We are saying, “Are you confident enough and in a sense big enough to be able to call it a day if the end results of any particular pilot call for a big re-engineering?”. I believe that pilots of this sort will be worth their weight in gold to the Government in financial and administrative terms and to claimants, landlords, employers, carers and providers, all of whom are going to be affected by different parts of the legislation. The pilots can play a role in creating the sort of welfare system that is able to meet the demands made of it. We would ask the Government to be as adventurous as they can with these pilots by putting the difficult questions. Also, following up on what my noble friend Lady Hollis said, the results should be transparent.

Who is going to oversee the design and delivery of the pilots? Who will decide, under subsection (5)(b) of the proposed new clause, that pilots may be replaced or extended, and on what grounds? To whom will the evaluators report? That is more or less the same question as that posed by my noble friend Lady Hollis. How will Parliament be able to ensure that the lessons from such pilots are learnt?

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 10th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I think that “um” would be a very good response from the Minister.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Some of my comments will not be appreciated but I thank the Minister for his response. Clearly, I have not received the same response as did my noble friend Lady Lister. I will take it back and think about it. She does not know when she is ahead. However, I am afraid that I have to express some regret. A lot of us have done a lot of work in preparing for the Bill although I am sure that we have done much less than the Minister. I blame my noble friend Lady Sherlock in that when I asked her what I should do she advised me to read everything that was said in the Commons. I thank her for that. What I found again and again were promises from Ministers in the other House that by the time the Bill reached Committee stage there the relevant information would be available. Again and again I am afraid I read that our friends in the other place found that that was not the case. They nevertheless were given absolute assurances that the relevant information would be available before the Bill reached Committee stage in this place. To have something published today concerning a debate that is taking place today is simply not good enough. We cannot work that way; “before” ought to mean before. Anything that is relevant to what we are talking about should be with us in time to enable us to read it and think about it.

I welcome the remarks about our being involved in the debates about how this process is going to work. I think that those remarks were probably genuine. However, that means that we have to have the relevant information available, especially as we are trying to discuss the Bill without a wonderful array of staff to help us.

I also regret the remarks about ESA, maternity allowance and earnings. The women who will be getting this who have been in work may simply not qualify for a statutory payment because they have changed employers. However, they could well have been working full time before that. In that sense it is not a benefit but something that they earned and are entitled to. Therefore, to treat it as unearned income—as if a sugar daddy had given it to them—would not be the right approach. It has been earned, albeit in a different way.

Similarly, the Minister did not respond to the question of whether ESA affected the self-employed. They are another group of people who have paid contributions into a system. If they then discover that what they get when they are possibly very seriously ill with cancer is seen not as something that they have earned but something from a very kindly Government, that will not be the right way to ensure that people see the system as enabling them to get something for what they have put in, which is what many of us want. I am sorry about that and I hope that, even if the Minister does not respond orally now, he will think about those groups of people, and in particular about women whose circumstances may have changed and who may have moved to a better job. On the whole it is young women who get pregnant. They may be moving up in a career and may have moved to a different employer and therefore may not qualify.

I have two further brief points. We are obviously delighted about any monitoring and assessment. If there is to be no formal review, I will have to accept that that is the best way of doing it. Nevertheless, it would be very nice if the Minister or his successor will bring those reports to the House, where they can be debated in the same way as we are able to now.

Finally, I accept that the Minister may not want to set a target rate for a taper. He said that perhaps 65 per cent was too high but that a future Government could perhaps do something about it. I look forward to sitting next to my noble friend Lord McKenzie when he is the Minister in a future Government—