WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY 2000

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

  120. 2.3 makes it absolutely clear. If you think you are going to come to this Committee and somehow slip past this Committee an expression of doubt about what apparently has been agreed between your Chief Executive and the C&AG, you are very much mistaken.
  (Mr Davison) That was not my intention. The answer that I was giving to the question earlier was that we do many checks on the accuracy of assessments. We look very closely at the reasons why the accuracy is incorrect (and this is the accuracy of the actual assessment) and we have found no evidence, and we have agreed today to go away and do further research, as to why the errors should be skewed one way.

  121. I suggest you look again and I suggest, Mr Davison, that it might be constructive for you to look at cases found against you by the Ombudsman and by the Independent Case Assessor to see what the grounds were for the findings against you and I think you will get some management clues from that.
  (Mr Davison) The difference between the case you quoted is where somebody notifies a change of circumstance and we subsequently do the assessment or have done an assessment would not come out in these particular figures because the figures here are the assessments that we have actually done.

  122. The problem is that having given a higher figure you do not believe a lower figure when an honest respondent tells you there is a lower figure. Let's leave that and turn to the C&AG. Normally we get such a clear picture, but can I say as a non-accountant who loves accounts I was totally perplexed by what we got today. I wonder if I could refer you to page 84 in our offering where we are told under 6.2 about the analysis of collectability of balances outstanding and to see Note 5.5. Is there any particular reason why Note 5.5 was kept from Members of the Committee or this Member of the Committee? I think not. Let me ask to collectability because in response to Mr Curry and others we heard that there is a legislative requirement and that unlike a commercial body you cannot write off debt, it is still hanging in there and the figures become quite preposterous. What makes the difference between "probably uncollectible" and "possibly uncollectible"?
  (Sir John Bourn) They are defined on the previous page, Page 82, and it is Paragraph 5.5 that gives the definitions.

  123. You have the advantage over me, C&AG, that I leap from page 78 to page 83 and I think most of us do.
  (Sir John Bourn) "See Note 5.5" and it would mean going back slightly to see it. There you do see the definitions that differentiate "possibly uncollectible" to "probably uncollectible".

  124. Can I have a copy of those pages?
  (Sir John Bourn) I can give you one now.

  125. I do not need one now but could you just summarise for us what the distinction is because it does affect both note 6 and note 7. Certainly in Note 6 you have got possibly uncollectible in the table and the probably uncollectibles of past years are swung right out of there and are in a footnote.
  (Sir John Bourn) Technically, Mr Wardle, I should give it to Ms Boardman to do because it is a note to her accounts but I will read out the definitions for the Committee. "Possibly uncollectible" is defined as "Amount outstanding which the debt analysis exercise revealed some uncertainty over whether it will be collected. The amounts are considered doubtful where, for example, payments have been infrequent or it has not been possible to establish an arrears agreement or impose a reduction of earnings order."

  126. Thank you, C&AG, I am so much the wiser for that! There is a reason for my line of questioning. Ms Boardman, what I am left wondering is if the legislation requires you not to write all this off, and you have got these different categories and different definitions, and you have told the Committee that you do not spend a lot of time on these because effectively in your team's mind the money is not going to be recovered, have you ever done an analysis of the staff time expended on the "probably" category and the "possibly" category? I am trying to unpick some of your management challenges from these figures.
  (Ms Boardman) I understand the point. Could I ask Mr Davison to respond to that.
  (Mr Davison) We looked at the analysis of debt following our last appearance before this Committee when one of the recommendations that the Committee made was that we should actually write off the debt that we felt we could not collect so we could concentrate our efforts on the debt that was more likely to be collectible and following up that recommendation we were advised that we could not legally write off—

  127. I understand that. That is taken for granted. We all understand that. What I am asking you is have you analysed the amount of staff time expended on those cases, these files—and I have seen them at Ashdowne House, they are hard files—that fall into one of these two categories?
  (Mr Davison) Yes. In the cases that fall into the category of "probably uncollectible" we would not actively pursue the debt unless we had contact from one of the parties, normally the parent with care, contacting us to advise us that she could now give us an address or a contact point for the non-resident parent.

  128. We have heard interesting examples from other colleagues that seem so familiar. I am bound to say that I can think recently of a case where a woman came to see me and she had been informed by Ashdown House that there was no way of finding her husband. She gave me his address and he was not simply living less than five miles from Ashdown House, he was working for the local authority and had been doing so for more than a year. She showed me letters that she had written to Ashdown House telling them precisely that but nothing was done. I suppose because the wretched MP then wrote off a letter this was pulled out of "probably uncollectible" and time began to be spent on it. It is a pity that you do not have a clearer idea for this Committee of what all of that costs.
  (Mr Davison) We do not have that information, no.

  129. I, like you, welcome the principles of the new legislation, and the detail is going to be debated as it goes through Parliament to the Bill, but what worries me and what I asked the Secretary of State when he made his statement is what you are going to do with the backlog of disputed cases? It is all very well to go to a shiny new world with a nice simple system, terrific, and I hope it works, but what about that backlog of disputed cases? How much time is that going to take? Is that going to snarl up your computer system and keep on giving you a bad PR image apart from anything else, as well as staff morale being dented?
  (Ms Boardman) One of the major objectives of the new legislation is to enable us to stop spending so much of our resources on collecting information so that we can move them into areas such as debt management in order to improve compliance.

  130. Are you satisfied then that you are not going to be bogged down in old disputes when the new system is up and running?
  (Ms Boardman) I think there will be a transition period in which we will need to put more effort into those areas.

  131. Do you feel brave enough to give us an idea of how long that transition period might run?
  (Ms Boardman) I do not think I am able to give you that at this stage in time.

  132. I respect that. In the little time left may I just offer a comment and turn it into a question so I can get it on to the record. My overwhelming impression, Ms Boardman, from the dozens and dozens of cases that I have seen is that they fall into two categories. There is the deserted wife, such as the one I was describing, who knows that the husband can pay and will not pay and that causes all sorts of grief. The other category of case is the absent husband who is left by his wife who has probably done a clean break settlement in court. The wife then takes up with somebody else, possibly on benefit or not, is tipped off by somebody to start working through you asking for more and the good husband, who is a soft touch, has been taken up by another woman who has settled in with him—this is a typical series of cases—because he is a decent man, he has started a second family and that partnership is then under pressure because the decent man is doing what he can but he and the second partner feel that they are under constant attack, a barrage of letters and phone calls such as Mr Steinberg talked about. Do you recognise that scenario?
  (Ms Boardman) I think I recognise both those scenarios. There are aspects of the new legislation which are meant to tackle each.

  Mr Wardle: I am touched by your optimism, I shall wait and see. Thank you for your responses.

  133. Good evening, Ms Boardman, gentlemen. You have told the Committee today that in 1993 you had insufficient resources to set up this system, that the IT supplied did not do the job it was meant to do, that there was not the provision of the necessary support for staff and that the complexity of the 1991 legislation makes it impossible for a single member of staff to deal with a case from end to end. Is it not shocking that these problems were not recognised by legislators at a much earlier stage?
  (Ms Boardman) I think that really is a question for ministers rather than for myself. I can only testify to the practical difficulties which that has resulted in for both my staff and for customers. I think those clearly are not acceptable and have been recognised as not being acceptable.

  134. You made a plea for a simpler system, do you believe you are going to get one under the White Paper's proposals?
  (Ms Boardman) The proposals are certainly radically simpler than the 104 pieces of information which we are required to collect at present. They will remove some of the most difficult aspects of the formula, particularly those around housing costs, and a myriad of special expenses, all of which are very difficult to ascertain or to prove, and essentially concentrate the issue on earnings.

  135. How many of those over 100 bits of information and questions that you are required to ask are in the legislation and how many are part of a bureaucratic construction?
  (Ms Boardman) They are all in the legislation. We will go down to something which is approaching seven to 11 rather than 104.

  136. How many cases do you now have on your books approximately?
  (Ms Boardman) We have just over one million.

  137. What has been the trend over the past year or two in terms of cases? Have they increased or decreased?
  (Ms Boardman) They have been increasing year on year by about 22 per cent, so altogether in absolute terms they have approximately doubled in the last three years.

  138. What customer service initiatives has your Agency introduced?
  (Ms Boardman) We have regarded this as a very important aspect of doing what we can under the current legislation. I think there are about four or five main ones. The first is to put in place a face to face service, which is something which many customers have called for over the years. The second is to make significant improvements in our telephone access, both in terms of the hours at which our centres are open, which now include evenings and Saturdays, and also in terms of the numbers that we put on to the telephones who are available to answer customers. We have gone from a position where customers often had to ring 12 or 15 times before being answered to one in which 75/80 per cent are answered the first time they call. We have improved the plain English of the various notices and the information that we give to customers. We have given training to our staff about customer handling, which as I mentioned in earlier answers has been recognised by call centres and other labour employers. Overall that has resulted in the number of complaints actually reducing by about a third over the last 12 months at the same time that our caseload has been increasing by 22 per cent.

  139. What action has been taken to improve your Agency's ability to provide a better service?
  (Ms Boardman) It has been largely in improving the productivity which has basically doubled in the last three years and re-investing those savings into better service initiatives, which include those that I have just mentioned. They also include a speedier service in terms of responding to requests for changes of circumstances or making the initial assessments.