Social Security (Electronic Communications) Order 2011

Lord Freud Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Freud]

That the draft order laid before the House on 14 March be approved.

Relevant documents: 19th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, if passed, this order would allow jobseeker’s allowance to be claimed, administered and maintained online and would open the door for some online administration of other benefits. This change would maximise efficiency and improve customer service. In addition, it would reduce the use of paper and develop a platform for electronic claims for other benefits, including the new universal credit. I confirm that the provisions of the draft order are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

First, I shall say a few words on the department’s current position in relation to the Merits Committee. I take the duty to provide sufficient information to Parliament to enable proper scrutiny of this department’s legislation seriously. Senior officials from the department have recently had a constructive discussion with Merits Committee staff with a view to improving how we handle our secondary legislation. I assure your Lordships that I will do everything within my power to make sure that we meet the proper and reasonable demands of this important committee. In this instance, I know we were able to provide the additional information that the Merits Committee requested. I hope that additional information will assist this House during the course of this debate.

The Department for Work and Pensions is improving its customer service delivery by increasing access to its services through self-serve online channels. As part of this, the department would like to introduce a secure, automated online service. Customers will still be able to contact the department by writing or by using the telephone and face-to-face appointments will still be available. The current situation is that, at times, legislation requires the use of paper-based documents or signatures, or at least may be interpreted as requiring this. For example, currently a jobseeker’s agreement must be in writing and must be signed by the customer. This order, which is made under the provisions of the Electronic Communications Act 2000, amends social security legislation to allow electronic communication and storage. The order will also develop the department’s use of electronic signatures.

I shall take a few moments to run through the different possible formats of electronic signatures. I know that they are used in a lot of different ways and, if your Lordships will excuse me for being a little bit techie on this, I think that will help our debate. An electronic signature is something associated with an electronic document which performs a similar function to a traditional signature. It can be used to confirm the authenticity of an electronic communication—in other words, that it comes from a particular person. Another use of electronic signatures is to establish that the document has not been tampered with. Industry use is based on codes and ciphers, which essentially make the signature unique. For example, text can be encrypted and turned into letters or numbers, which can be deciphered only by someone who has the correct password or key. For the vast majority of services a combination of source data from the computer, or some other device and passwords, picture and word combinations, and other means of authentication form the basis of electronic signatures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for joining in this debate. I particularly agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord German about how nice electronic voting would be in this House, particularly given the business of the road outside. As contributors to the debate have pointed out, the provisions are really about getting the department into the 21st century, whether with iPods, iPads or Android devices.

My noble friend asked a question about take-up. As I said, our aspiration is to get to 80 per cent. At the moment, 67 per cent of people have access to a PC. Noble Lords may not be surprised to know that we have done quite a lot of research on this. I might share some of those early findings, because they are rather interesting. Well over half of people in the JSA group are now in a position to take this up. The two categories at the top—“Ready, willing and able” and “Able and persuadable”—take us well over half. Then we go through “Nudgeable”, “Unconfident” and so forth, and end up with a small group—below 20 per cent—made up of what we call “Intensive support required” and “Multiple barriers”.

My noble friend Lord Elton made the point that some people will always find this difficult. Some blind people are able to use electronic things, or telephones that translate information; but clearly we are not talking about first-order processing at the moment. For those groups, we are staying with other methods. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, made a point about capacity. By freeing up the capacity of Jobcentre Plus from looking after people who can essentially look after themselves, we can concentrate that time and energy into the people who really need the help.

My noble friend Lord German asked about action plans. They are not the first things that will go on, but in time they will. Clearly, the whole structure of the universal credit is to put it all online; enormous activity is going on in the department at the moment to structure that electronic relationship.

My noble friend asked about the security of PINs: he was cynical about whether the PIN would be enough. The answer is that security is changing all the time. I could give you an answer today, but the department is looking all the time—as are banks and anyone with sensitive online access systems—to change and develop. A war is going on between cybercriminals and those who maintain the systems, and security levels change. I am convinced that whatever we have today in the way of PINs and other security, we will be watching all the time to make sure that we do not get caught out.

We aim to give a lot of information and instruction to people who are not using their own, more secure computer, but a more public computer, that they should log off. We are looking at systems that will make sure that once a file is closed, one cannot get back into it. We are looking at very active systems. That is one of our biggest relative insecurities when compared, for example, to banking products: people may be using not their own computer but a more public one. We are looking at that in great detail.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked rather fewer questions than usual. However, the difficulty and quality of those questions was absolutely up there with his normal track record. He asked about system failure. Clearly we will look to include that under “good cause”. It would be unreasonable to penalise someone who was unable to access our system because it had broken down. I think that I answered his point about training and releasing people to do more face-to-face interviews. Of course, sensitive records will be very tightly controlled as part of our security. On the question of safeguards, we are looking to make sure that when people who are less confident with the system are helped into it, they will be helped in a comprehensive way and we will not do anything that will leave them more vulnerable. That will be part of the process.

This will not be the last time that we discuss technology: I suspect that we will discuss it much more than we have done, in this and many other contexts. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and commend the order to the House.

Motion agreed.