Q
155Steve
Webb: It is 2.9 million. However, if local authorities
have to make progress on child poverty, but no local authority has a
local authority number because the figures are national, it is hard for
them to know if they are making progress. They do not know, and I do
not know how they could know.
Richard
Kemp: That is why we want more partnership with the
Department for Work and Pensions.
Q
156Steve
Webb: On that point, let me move on to the question I was
getting to about benefit take-up, joint working and so on. It
constantly drives me mad—and it drives real people
mad—that if someone gets a low-paid job, they have to tell the
tax credit people, housing benefit, council tax benefit,
jobseeker’s allowance people and so on. You have to tell
everybody—probably several times over in different forms and at
different times. Why is it so difficult? Is it, pejoratively,
“your” fault or is it “their” fault that
these things cannot be brought together so that one set of
information—perhaps comprehensive information—is given to
one person?
You mentioned
one-stop shops and housing benefit administration. Why is it that you
cannot simply take the information that has already been given? We keep
hearing about take-up pilots and that we are going to make benefit
entitlement automatic, but it never bloomin’ well happens. What
is the problem?
Richard
Kemp: Local government was not too good at benefit
collection 10 or 12 years ago. We have made a massive improvement now,
according to the benefit fraud inspectorate. For our own taxes and
benefits, large numbers of authorities are four-star and improving. In
those areas, we believe that there is proven competence. There is a
reach into the communities, so our offer is to take it over.
We have had a
series of small pilots, but no one from central Government has yet been
prepared to try out a proper full-scale pilot. There will be
difficulties; we will have to learn how to do things and I am not
saying that we should do it like that nationally. However, where local
government has proven itself to be an external regulator, I do not know
why we cannot have a full-scale, quick experiment to see what we can
do.
Paul
Carter: But we have a horribly complex system. Put
yourself in the shoes of the customer. They lose their job and have to
sign on, and I am told that that is a horrible, protracted process.
Thankfully, I have never personally experienced it, but I run a
construction
company in London and employ people who have been on and off the dole
and on and off benefits. It is a tortuous, horrible position, and once
someone is on, what is the incentive for that person to take up a six
or eight-week, or three-month job opportunity on one of my building
sites, because they will then have the tortuous process of getting back
on benefits. If you talk to users of the benefits system who have been
able to go in and out, they say it is horrible. It does not incentivise
them to have another go once they are on
benefits.
Q
157Steve
Webb: Has the situation become worse with tax credits? In
a sense, it was once just the good old Department of Health and Social
Security, or whatever it was at the time. Now the Inland
Revenue—HMRC—is far more involved in the day-to-day lives
of families with children through the tax credit system. Has it got
worse on the ground? Is it more difficult to bring these things
together?
Richard
Kemp: I certainly have nothing more than anecdotal
evidence. Perhaps you are indicating an area that we ought to look at.
I know that the people come to my advice centre with the fear of having
to repay things. There is a fear factor, but whether that is a real
factor, I do not know.
Q
158Helen
Goodman: I am not going to take the Committee down the
path of defending the great transformation that is under way at the
moment in the way that benefits are delivered. Instead, I would like to
ask the witnesses about their relationships with the voluntary sector.
Local government finds central Government quite inflexible, and I think
that sometimes the voluntary sector finds local government a little bit
inflexible. I was wondering how you were intending to use the new
partnership arrangements in the Bill to work with the voluntary sector,
and whether you think that the provisions in the Bill are helpful and
adequate.
Richard
Kemp: When I spoke at the House of Lords Select
Committee this afternoon, I invited their lordships to join me on 16
November, and I will invite you to join me as well. At the Local
Government Association, we are taking up that challenge, but in a wider
sense. If we are going to deal with the multiple problems to society,
particularly at a time when public sector finances are going to be
severely constrained, we need to create a new set of relationships
between the public, private and voluntary sectors. We are defining that
partly as kit, cash and culture. Although I know that it would not
apply in this particular field, we should ask what equipment we can use
to help with things, for example that would affect adult social care.
How will we introduce new cash into the system? We all look down on
each other and tie ourselves into contracts that keep us at the lowest
possible level, rather than capturing the innovation and energy that
those three sectors can bring, so how will we work together
better?
I am not
saying that we are starting off from a bad base, because the national
compacts, the community empowerment networks and the local compacts are
beginning to move us forward, but what we are looking at is a step
change. That is where I come back to benefits, because I do not think
that there is a separate argument. People in our communities know that
there are jobs to be done. They know that the people currently doing
nothing could do them, and they would use
benefit money effectively to link the two, because they are meaner with
money than people like us. They watch every last farthing and would
ensure that benefits were applied to people in their community doing
real work, which we know is needed in every community. I just think
that there are major ways forward. Kevan
Collins: I think this goes back to Ms Buck’s
point. I think that the segmentation of the responsibilities is really
important: where central Government have their responsibility; where
local government have theirs; and where community groups and the third
sector have theirs. I am not sure that that settlement has yet been
reached. I am absolutely clear that the powers of opportunity are there
in the way in which the Bill has been drafted. There are things that
only the third sector can do, particularly when you get to the
localisation of getting people back into work or into work quickly. It
is not just about learning how to write a CV—you do that only
once—but about getting you job-ready for tomorrow and linking
that back to the community sector.
Where I live
and work there are some striking issues in relation to belief systems
about the value of being in work, which to me is fundamental to getting
out of poverty, and that takes you into faith groups and to the work we
do with mosques and churches. That is critical to changing
people’s attitudes and relationship to work where it may have
been broken down for a long time. I think that there are very important
roles and responsibilities, but the issue of segmenting and clarifying
who is responsible for what is key to that local plan. To answer your
question directly, I do think that the right kind of arrangements are
there for us to do that.
Q
159Helen
Goodman: Following up on that, would you say that the
experience of bidding for money from the future jobs fund, which is
intended to be Government money from DWP for moving people from
benefits to things that have community benefit, has been a good
precedent that could be built on in that arena?
Richard
Kemp: That depends on who you are asking and where
you are asking them. I know about that because Ministers acknowledged
that the Local Government Association had a major role to play in
producing that money. In my area, that has been passed down for one
council to deal with on behalf of the county, and it has then been
passed to another agency and another. When we discussed it at the
central-local partnership, I foresaw it as being a direct relationship,
as was the case with some of the old youth training schemes, although I
am not saying that it should be another youth training scheme. A
housing association such as mine already runs social enterprises and
wants to take people on, but by the time this has gone through three
layers of bureaucracy on Merseyside, there is frankly so little left
that we are not bidding for it, despite the fact that I was one of the
people who tried to get the money in the first place. In other places
they have managed to deal with it. You really need to look at the
mechanisms you have put in place to get in to people like
us. Paul
Carter: It worries me enormously that we have to find
those 1,700 jobs. I want to give all those 1,700 people, and
particularly the young people, a really good experience of work every
six months, so we must not just create jobs for the sake of jobs so
that people will go and do a bit of community work here and there.
Their self-esteem and ambitions must be raised as a consequence of
being on the programme. Finding so many jobs in community improvement
that satisfy those criteria is a massively big ask.
The other
thing that worries me is the cliff edge at the end of it. Having got
them into work, got them out of bed, got them alarm clocks and got them
motivated, there is a cliff edge at six months. We want to try to
create a longer opportunity for sustainable work opportunity beyond six
months, but that is difficult. A massive amount of public money is
going into it and that is well-intended, but how we go about it, to do
exactly what I have just said, is
difficult.
Helen
Goodman: You may be anxious about how you are going to
find 1,700 jobs, but you must have put in a good bid, because you got
the money to do
it. Paul
Carter: And we are
grateful.
The
Chairman: If Members have no further questions, that
brings us to the end of our business for today. On behalf of the
Committee, I thank very much indeed Richard Kemp, Colin Green,
Catherine Fitt, Paul Carter and Kevan
Collins. Ordered,
That further consideration be now
adjourned. —(Mr.
Mudie.) 6.51
pm Adjourned
till Thursday 22 October at Nine
o’clock.
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