WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY 2000

MS FAITH BOARDMAN, MR VINCE GASKELL, MR MICHAEL DAVISON AND MR JOHN LUTTON

  60. I am not really talking about the accuracy of the formula. I am talking about the work that the CSA staff do after following up the formula. I accept that the formula is very very complicated, but I am talking about the work after the formula where they do the chasing up and the mistakes that are made after that. That brings as many complaints as the formula itself.
  (Ms Boardman) Those areas of the business also suffer from the same sorts of complexities. If we are looking at a periodic case check, for example, or at a request for a change of circumstance, we need to work within the same legislative framework as we do when we are making the initial assessment therefore the difficulties and complexities are just the same. There is also the underlying problem that because of the complexity we need to spend a huge amount of our resources and our effort simply on chasing up information, asking for information, asking for it to be confirmed, and there is therefore very little time and opportunity and resources to chase up other aspects, including for example the debt issues. Again, that has been fully accepted in the White Paper.

  61. Frankly, I am not that bothered about the White Paper. What I am bothered about is my constituents and the CSA cases which make up 50 per cent of the problems I have. If I did not have CSA cases I could probably retire on a weekend rather than take these up. Let me take two constituents. These two cases cover some of the problems that I have with the CSA and the first complaint I have is lack of communication. Constituents who phone up the CSA and are kept on the phone for nearly an hour sometimes being passed from pillar to post, from one officer to another officer, and at the end they are frustrated, they lose their temper, they swear, and your officers put the phone down. Constituents who wait for years not months before anything actually happens. Let me read to you from a case. This is a Mrs Gray. As I say, these are examples I have taken out but I could have brought literally hundreds of the same sort of complaint. Let me quote to you. I wrote this to you in September 1999 and it was about Mrs Gray. "You state that Mrs Gray's application for child support was received on 5 October 1993 and an interim maintenance assessment was calculated, effective from 23 December 1993, when Mr Gray failed to return the maintenance enquiry form. You then state that until 18 August 1995, when a further maintenance assessment was calculated, following Mr Gray's failure to make payments under the interim assessment, the Centre "took very little action to enforce payment". I would therefore like to enquire what form the "little action" took, as it would appear that absolutely no steps were taken to enforce payment during these two years. Certainly, Mrs Gray was not informed of any measures to secure the outstanding payments." Then I go on and you respond to me. You say: "The Centre tells me from 22 December 1993 the following enforcement measures were taken to secure payments on behalf of Mrs Gray. On 31 January 1994, a computer-generated arrears notification was sent to Mr Gray advising that if payment of child support maintenance was not forthcoming, a deduction-from-earnings order would be served on his employer. This action was never taken. On 5 May 1994, a further arrears notification was sent to Mr Gray but no follow-up action was taken. On 16 October 1995, another arrears notification was sent to Mr Gray but again no follow-up action was taken. On 10 April 1996, yet another arrears notification was sent to Mr Gray but not followed up." This goes on until August 1999 when eventually the CSA did something about it. That is just not acceptable. You went six years and seven times you did not take the follow-up action that you said you were going to take. Why?
  (Ms Boardman) I agree that it is not acceptable. Essentially this is a legacy which we still suffer from in a number of cases from the first two years of the Agency which is well documented that because of a number of issues, which include the complexity, which include the shortcomings of the computer system and the shortcomings in the planning and implementation the new system, the Agency was swamped and was unable to cope and between the periods of 1993 to 1996 in particular there were far too many cases that were pulled into that area. Since 1997 we have gone back to many of those cases and I am glad to see that we have gone back in August 1999 in that particular instance. There are still, however, basic problems which are partly around the complexities of the system but they are also around the basic attitudes in society to compliance. Those problems are certainly not unique to this country. The United States has been operating child support for something like to 25 years and their compliance rates are only around 54 per cent as compared to our 67 per cent. That is not to say in any sense that we could not and should not try to do any better but I think the problems which your constituent has need to be put in that context.

  62. I do not accept that at all, I am very sorry. That is fine words. At the end of the day it took the CSA six years to do something. They did the notification and tracing and did nothing about that. You cannot blame formulae, you can only blame incompetence. It should have been followed up in the first year and a solution found but you did not, it was forgotten about, was it not?
  (Ms Boardman) The problem, as I have been trying to explain, was essentially that the Agency was swamped at that time because insufficient resources were given to it at the start of the new system, because the IT system that was put in did not do the job it was intended to do and did not provide the necessary support to staff, combined with the underlying problem of compliance and attitudes to compliance within some sections of the population. I am not in any sense trying to defend it but that is the explanation and that is why I think that we do need to plan extremely carefully now. We do need to ensure that we get an IT system that works and take the time and resources to do the job properly.

  63. Let's move on to another main complaint. I do not accept what you are saying there. I really do not. I think that was pure incompetence. What about conflicting information when they are told on the telephone one thing and the next day they receive some information by letter saying something totally different. Let me give you an example, this is a Mr Cleaver. There were three letters from the Child Support Agency from Falkirk. This is just towards the end of last year: "One dated 10 December, offered deferment of alleged accrued arrears (from £9,646.18 to £386.67) giving me seven days to reply. The second letter, dated 13 Dec, claims I am in arrears of £9,340.37. The third, dated 14 December, thanked me for returning further information forms and stated the CSA will use them to decide if the maintenance I am paying is correct." This is a total nightmare for somebody, is it not? They are told something and then they get three different letters telling them three different things and they do not know where the hell they are and they panic. This came on 10 December. He is told he owes £9,000 and another one says he owes £300. It is a nightmare.
  (Ms Boardman) What year was that?

  64. December just gone. December 1999, four weeks ago.
  (Ms Boardman) I find it extremely difficult, as you will understand, to comment on a particular case. I do not know the circumstances of that particular case.

  65. We are not discussing the individual case, I do not want you to answer on an individual case. I am referring to the example of what happens to the vast majority of people who are involved in the CSA. I am interested in poor Mr Cleaver but I want an answer as to why people get three different responses within two or three days all saying something different. That has got to be incompetence. It means that nobody is talking to anybody. One officer is doing one thing, another officer is doing something else and another officer is doing something else and nobody is getting together. Why is there not one officer dealing with one particular case?
  (Ms Boardman) I think there is a raft of issues here. The first is that we have had great difficulty with our IT system which, until relatively recently, has not been able, as one of its many deficiencies, to send out a consolidated letter which itemises instances where the assessment has legitimately changed on various dates because of fresh information. That has led, and we know it has led and we are trying to change the IT system to improve, to people getting apparently two or three different assessments at the same time.

  66. How can you get it wrong in the space of three days and get three separate letters giving three separate pieces of information?
  (Ms Boardman) In many instances that is a problem which results from the IT system and it has been the case in the past where we have been looking through a case history where the circumstances have changed at different times we have made assessments for each of those times. The computer has been unable to consolidate that information on a single piece of paper and has sent it out in three or four separate letters which have arrived on the doorstep at the same time. That is typical of the sorts of IT problems we are labouring under and that our customers are labouring under and why we need a new decent system to support giving that decent service.

  67. What about the poor sod who keeps getting these letters?
  (Ms Boardman) The second issue we have to deal with is because of the complexity of the systems at present we find it impossible for a single member of staff to deal with a case from end to end. I know very complaint letters, from talking to customers directly myself, that this is a key issue for them. We have moved a considerable way over the last couple of years in putting different parts of the processes together. We are now getting to a stage where there are fewer people handling a case than there used to be but, again, until we have simple legislation without the degree of complexity that has to be dealt with we will not be able to move to a fully personalised individual case officer.

  68. I am sorry, this is nothing to do with legislation, this is pure administration, it is the bureaucracy of the system.
  (Ms Boardman) It has a great deal to do with legislation because in any system where there are huge complexities you cannot train staff, you cannot expect them to produce the sort of productivity and speed that is required unless you ask them to do simply a section of the process, to learn and become expert enough in a particular part of the process. That means, and I know it is extremely annoying for customers, that individual cases need to be dealt with by different people at different stages of the process. This is one of the many reasons why we need new legislation, to allow us to get away from that position and to provide more of an end to end service which is what we would like to provide as well as what customers would like.

  69. This is my last point because the answers have been extremely long. In one of the letters that you sent to me you said "Very little enforcement action was taken due to the high volumes of work being dealt with in the Falkirk centre which meant that some cases were not handled with the speed and efficiency that the centre would have liked". That basically comes in every letter that I am sent in reply. That seems to be saying something slightly different from what you have been saying this afternoon. If the pressure of work on Falkirk is as bad as that and if it is made the scapegoat every time, why has something not been done about that?
  (Ms Boardman) The pressure of work stems back from 1993-95 when, as I have said, the Agency was swamped and there were significant backlogs. Those backlogs have now largely been cleared but they were very relevant to the time at which the complaint originated and, therefore, it was right for us to give you that answer in respect of that period. The position has moved on since then.

  Chairman: Could I ask you to keep your answers as brief as possible.

  70. Ms Boardman, I think there was a film a little while ago called 46 Charing Cross Road in which a romance blossomed on the basis of correspondence. Clearly I do not think you and Mr Steinberg are heading in the same direction. Do you have any breakdown of performance per centre?
  (Ms Boardman) Yes, we do.

  71. Would you tell us how that stacks up because I do not think it is in this document?
  (Ms Boardman) It shows us that individual centres vary between the different parts of the processes. Some are more efficient at certain aspects than others. Part of what we are trying to do is to use that information to bring them all up to the best.

  72. You gave various remedies to the problems, some of the problems were problems of legislation, some were problems of equipment and some related to staff, notably the turnover of staff and the poaching of staff. You are targeting your improvements on the efficiencies per centre, are you?
  (Ms Boardman) We are and they do vary between centres so we need a targeted strategy.

  73. As Mr Steinberg deals with Falkirk, my constituents deal with Belfast. Could you tell me what would be the major deficiency in the Belfast office that you are trying to remedy?
  (Ms Boardman) Could I ask Mr Lutton to give you that detail because this is very much his day to day job.
  (Mr Lutton) The arrears which they are working through in the Belfast centre are greater in relative terms than the other centres. Each of the centres still has a difficulty. Although they have cleared many of the backlogs they are still basically in an arrears position. There are far more delays than we think are acceptable. The Belfast centre's arrears are disproportionate to the other centres.

  74. You say that one of the things you are trying to do to help the process is to make access easier. I have to say I echo what Mr Steinberg said about the problem of phoning up when people lose their temper and the phone is put down and then you are back to base, but you emphasise face to face interviews. It is going to be difficult when you live in Skipton to have a face to face interview with somebody in Belfast, is it not?
  (Ms Boardman) The face to face interviews are provided by a network of local offices. We have put in some 600 staff in those local offices. However, they do not simply sitting in one office, they are peripatetic and they will go to people's homes, they will go to other Benefits Agency offices which are in the locality, wherever it is convenient for the individual.

  75. Quite often I am told by one of my people "if only I could get in the car and go there I am sure I could sort it out".
  (Ms Boardman) Indeed.

  76. And they are referring to Belfast because the local offices then refer the thing back to Belfast for onward resolution.
  (Ms Boardman) Many people have that instinct and that is why we have put the face to face staff in there. We have been providing them with the training which means that in many instances they are able to deal with the whole of the problem although in some instances they do still have to refer back to the centre. We have had extremely good customer satisfaction from those face to face interviews.

  77. Are your people all paid the same rate at a particular grade irrespective of where they work?
  (Ms Boardman) They are basically on the same pay scales depending on their seniority.

  78. Does that make sense because the labour market in Belfast is obviously a very different labour market from that obtaining in some other centres? At the moment when the Government is trying to get differentiated pay for all sorts of professional categories, would it not help your targeting of your budgets if you were to differentiate?
  (Ms Boardman) We looked at that very carefully and will continue to do so but what we found was that each of our centres does have a turnover problem. It might vary between one and two per cent but it is a relatively similar picture and we do not feel it is justified.

  79. How far short do you feel the present salaries are from what one might call the sustainable salary level to get to a minimum level of turnover rather like the concept in economics of the unemployment level which is sustainable? How far short are you of the sustainable salary optimal retention?
  (Ms Boardman) I think this varies. We have pay scales which actually cover in some cases £3,000 to £4,000 difference depending on seniority and we have particular difficulty because we have a lot of junior staff right at the bottom end of those pay scales. Therefore one of the key issues for us is finding the means of helping them to progress rapidly towards the top end of those pay scales which I think would be much closer to what is required.