Christmas Adjournment

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I commend the perseverance of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) in pursuing this contaminated blood scandal. Like others, Mr Speaker, I wish you and everyone a very happy Christmas, but the topic I wish to raise is a bit less merry.

Jobcentres are evaluated on the basis of benefit off-flow. Plaistow jobcentre, which was, until its closure in October, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who is in her place, had a poor record. A new manager, Tony Sutton, appointed in May 2013, and a new deputy, Nazia Goci, were determined to raise benefit off-flow. A very troubled employee at the jobcentre, a constituent of mine, came to see me in September 2013. She described “awful working conditions”, and “unfair benefit sanctions” harassing people off benefits. I alerted the Department, and a senior official visited the jobcentre in October. I was grateful for that, but I understand that staff were banned from expressing concerns to him. He reported that everything was fine.

I was told that it was common to ask people to sign on for their benefit claim at irregular dates, in the hope they would forget to do so one week and their claim would then be closed; and that advisers were told to sanction a claimant if they called them on their mobile twice and they did not answer. In June 2014, I met for the first time my constituent Nasima Noorani, a personal adviser at Plaistow jobcentre, and Jannat Mirza, a team leader. They had been sacked from Plaistow the month before. A number of former staff there, not those I have mentioned, told me of a practice introduced by the new management. It was designed, in particular, to avoid people reaching 52 weeks in their jobseeker’s allowance claim, because at that point they would have had to be referred to the Work programme. There was immense pressure on staff to stop this happening and to stop referrals taking place. The procedure, which I am told was used repeatedly from mid- 2013, was that as people approached a deadline they would be taken off benefit and paid instead the same amount of cash from the flexible support fund for a couple of weeks, on a pretext—for example, to pay for a travelcard to get to a non-existent job—and then signed back on to JSA again a short time afterwards. Claimants got the same amount of cash and benefit off-flow went up by one.

However, claimants’ housing benefit was affected. One of the people on the receiving end of this, whom I know, complained about it. As a result, Naseema Noorani and Jannat Mirza were sacked. The claimant who complained, and all the staff I have discussed this with, are quite clear that those two employees were not the guilty parties. Naseema Noorani was the adviser who initiated the flexible support fund payment, but she only saw that claimant that morning because a colleague was late. It was made clear by managers that this was what she should do; the FSF payment was specified in a post-it note already on the claimant’s file. Jannat Mirza had no involvement at all. She merely authorised the use of a form for a slightly different purpose from usual. No action was taken against other staff who specified how much should be paid and who authorised the claim; nor against the managers. Naseema Noorani and Jannat Mirza were clearly scapegoats to cover up malpractice by more senior colleagues.

Jannat Mirza, unable to afford representation, lost an unfair dismissal claim. The tribunal seems to have done a cut-and-paste job on the Department for Work and Pensions’ submission, and made no serious attempt to address what had really happened. Naseema Noorani did not even try to claim. Since 2014, nobody has been able to tell me any possible gain from the fraud to the staff who were sacked. Others, however, had a clear career incentive to boost benefit off-flow. I have pursued this for three and a half years. Unable to remedy the injustice—and one of the two women is still out of work after more than three years—I simply want to place on the public record an account of what really happened.

Poorly designed numerical targets gave big incentives to managers, and in this case, as has perhaps occurred in others, they succumbed to temptation to bend the rules for their own advancement. As well as holding the managers to account, Ministers need to reflect on what went wrong and on the very high price paid by wholly blameless employees and large numbers of benefit claimants.