Scottish Social Security Consortium

Minutes of meeting 10 May 2005

Present:
Nahid Aslam     Waverley Care
Abigail Bremner     Citizens Advice Scotland
Kate Higgins     Capability Scotland
Lindsay Isaacs     Citizens Advice Scotland
Maureen Closs     One Parent Families Scotland
Lee Oliver     Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland
Judith Paterson     Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland
Chris White     Scottish Association for Mental Health
Jo Whitfield     The Action Group

Apologies

Stephanie Miller     Update
Craig McKenzie     One Plus

Welcome

Judith Paterson welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Minutes of the last meeting and matters arrising

The minutes were agreed. Abi Bremner agreed to send an excerpt of the minutes covering the group’s discussions about housing benefit reform to the speaker at the last meeting, Gary Rodgers.

Jobcentre Plus cutbacks
Chris White highlighted that the DWP Standards Committee Consultative Group, of which he is a member, had decided to keep a watching brief on Jobcentre Plus standards following the staffing cutbacks. The group was concerned that the slight improvements they had seen would be lost as a result of the impact of the cutbacks. Chris noted that the group’s role was in relation to the standard of decision-making, rather than administrative processes.

ACTION: Chris asked group members to keep an eye out for any instances where decision-making standards had dropped and feedback to him.

Cohabitation and tax credits
Maureen Closs noted that she had had a client who had been accused of cohabiting by the Revenue. Revenue staff had told her that it was up to her to prove that she wasn’t. It was also noted by the group that the Revenue was focusing heavily on financial criteria to establish cohabitation.

Lee Oliver highlighted the issue of penalties, which he expected to come to the fore in August when the reconciliation process was in full swing. It would become an even bigger issue when existing income support claimants were transferred onto child tax credit as that group would include many lone parents. Judith noted that the Revenue had stated informally that they would take a soft touch approach to penalties where people did not have the ability to repayand no fraud or negligence was involved. She asked that, if group members came across instances of penalties being applied that people could not afford to pay, this was fed back to the Revenue. It was hoped that this might persuade them to issue guidance on the use of penalties to staff.

Incapacity benefit reform

Kate Higgins highlighted some of Capability Scotland’s concerns about the current proposals. She noted that the approach outlined in the DWP’s Five Year Plan is very broad brush at present, so a lot of the details have yet to be nailed down. Primary legislation will be necessary for some aspects of the proposals; however, a number of things may be able to be brought in through secondary legislation.

Kate further noted that the proposals in relation to incapacity benefit fitted in with proposals for other marginalised groups such as lone parents and older people. The Government had increased its target for employment from 75% of the population to 80% and had made a commitment to ‘extend real employment opportunity to all’. This was all good from Capability Scotland’s point of view as it recognised that those with health problems had faced real exclusion from opportunities to take up work.

However, in preparing for the announcement of the reforms in political and press circles, the Government had concentrated on much more negative images, including portraying IB claimants as a drain on resources, workshy and downright fraudulent. Kate highlighted some of the facts behind the Government spin:

• The Government claims one in ten of the working age population are on incapacity benefits – however, this does not take account of those who are only getting national insurance credits.
• The Government claims it’s a benefit for ‘bad backs and depression’ – what they actually mean is ‘musculoskeletal diseases’ and ‘mental and behavioural disorders’.
• The Government tells us that 1 million IB claimants want to work but doesn’t mention that one third of employers think employing them is a risk.

The reform plans will abolish incapacity benefit, with all sick/disabled claimants going onto a ‘holding’ benefit paid at IS rates until they undergo some sort of employment and support assessment. The results of this will determine whether they go onto ‘Rehabilitation Support Allowance’ or ‘Disability and Sickness Allowance’. The Government is saying that the changes will apply to new claimants only, but it will be looking at other methods to get existing claimants to engage in back to work activity. Group members noted that there was already proposals for the ‘Pathways to work’ initiatives to be compulsorily extended to those who had claimed in the past three years.

The employment and support assessment (which would incorporate the personal capability assessment) would include a judgement on future work capacity. Those who were deemed to have potentially manageable conditions would receive rehabilitation support allowance – to be paid at a higher rate than long-term IB, but requiring compulsory work focussed activity. If claimants did not take part in work-focussed activity, they would be returned to the holding rate benefit. Those who had more severe conditions would get disability and sickness allowance, also to be paid at a higher rate. Claimants would still be expected to engage in some work-focussed activities, but the Government claims there will be no sanctions for those who do not comply.

The group also noted that severe disablement allowance claimants were included in Government proposals. Although SDA could no longer be claimed on the basis of new entitlement, those with existing entitlement were able to claim. Claimants were likely to have the most complex and serious conditions (eg. from car crashes, degenerative diseases). Judith noted that SDA was currently paid at a very low rate, so it would be in the interests of claimants to be able to claim the new benefit if it is to be paid at a higher rate.

It was also not clear what effect reform would have on the contributory nature of incapacity benefit. Kate reported that the Government had stated that the contributory element would remain – suggesting that there would be contributory and non-contributory provision as there is right now. This would ensure that the reformed provision will remain just as difficult for claimants to understand as the current situation. Judith noted that if there were any attempt to limit entitlement on contributory grounds (in the model of contribution-based jobseeker’s allowance, which is only available for six months), this would clearly represent a significant diminishment in current entitlement.

There was concern that the work-focussed activity offered to claimants would not be sufficiently tailored to their needs – eg. recognising that some claimants would be unable to attend interviews in the morning. Cutbacks at the DWP were a big issue if the sort of intensive, personalised service that would be needed was to be provided. Chris White noted that the DWP were also the lead agency for the Disability Discrimination Act and the ‘Improving Life Chances for Disabled People’ agenda (from a Cabinet Office report of the same name). However, they saw no conflict between this and their role in providing services for disabled people.

Kate noted that the Government were planning to address some employer/workplace issues as part of their proposals, including:

• Health and Safety Executive role to create healthier workplaces
• Work with employers to address discriminatory attitudes to disabled people
• Work with GPs to encourage them to promote more active engagement in work

It was noted that GPs are likely to be resistant to any proposals which increase their workload. A pilot project in Pollok involved putting back to work advisers into several local surgeries. However, group members expressed concern that it appeared that Jobcentre staff were actually being used, although they appeared to be under the banner of the WISE group (employment support and training organisation), so it was not clear to service users that this was the case.

ACTION: It was agreed that we would ask the DWP whether this project had been evaluated and, if so, whether we could see a copy of the report.

The Pathways to work pilots were also being expanded as part of the process and would cover 30 local authority areas with concentrations of long-term sick claimants. As noted previously, those who had claimed in the past three years would be brought into the scope of some Pathways to work areas, including Renfrewshire. The evaluation of the Pathways pilots had reported that the voluntary IB participants felt that personal advisers did not take into account long-term health issues and things like up-coming operations or changes to treatment. It was also reported that advisers did not seem to make use of the various waver and referral powers they had, even when people’s conditions warranted it.

Kate also noted that the New Deal for Disabled People had not been successful and therefore had been abandoned. However, there didn’t appear to be any evaluation of the project (at least not in the public domain) so no one really knew why it didn’t work.

Chris White then spoke to the group about some of the concerns the Scottish Association for Mental Health had in relation to claimants with mental health problems.

• The current assessment process doesn’t work – as evidenced by the number of successful appeals. However, the reform proposals appear to be making the process more complicated without doing anything to address current problems. This does not bode well for being able to effectively judge who should be on the rehabilitation benefit and who should be on the disability benefit.
  
• The DWP are dividing claimants into those with ‘mild to moderate’ health problems and those with ‘severe and enduring’ problems. However, there are likely to be people who have moderate to severe conditions who will find themselves falling between the two stools.
  
• For those who are on the rehabilitation benefit there will be top-up payments for engaging in work-focussed activities. However, those with moderate to severe problems are those who are least likely to be able to engage in this process to get the top up payments (eg. missing appointment, not being able to express their needs or the effects of their conditions effectively). This may lead to people being significantly worse off as they are forced to live on a JSA rate benefit, perhaps with sanctions.
  
• Chris was currently doing a study into the Renfrewshire Pathways to Work pilot. All the people involved in the study had benefited financially from the move into work. However, they were also all new claimants and therefore weren’t receiving the disability premium and often hadn’t applied for DLA. For longer-term claimants it would be more difficult to make the move into work pay.
  
• On the back of this Chris raised concerns about ‘better off’ calculations which assumed that DLA would continue once a client had moved into work. Both Jobcentre staff and voluntary organisations were guilty of doing this. Chris stressed that starting work does not necessarily affect a DLA claim, but in reality, it was impossible to predict whether the reward would remain or not. He had been informed by claimants that they had been told that a return to work has to be reported as a relevant change in circumstances.
  
• There were also concerns that people were returning to work voluntarily through the support of specialist mental health projects. However, if this was the case, there was a risk that they would miss out on the back to work credit.
  
• The idea of ‘condition management support’ – the sorts of services like physiotherapy, councillors, occupational health practitioners, community psychiatric nurses etc which will be offered to those on the rehabilitation benefit – comes from Australia. The Government of Australia has given it a glowing report: however, disability organisations there do not share this view.
  
• SAMH broadly welcomes the back to work support being offered – however, they do not support the coercive element. Chris noted that, whether it was the DWP’s intention or not, disabled people did not feel supported by the proposals, but bullied and intimidated instead. Due to the number of enquiries they’ve been dealing with from concerned members of the public, SAMH have produced a briefing on the reforms – available at http://www.samh.org.uk/pdfs/Incapacitybenefitreform.pdf.
  
• SAMH intends to run some sort of campaign about the reforms, and Disability Agenda Scotland will also be campaigning on the issue. SAMH have a conference for service-users to consult on how the campaign should look, taking place on 28th June.

It was also noted that Alan Johnston (previous secretary of state) had written to a number of disability and voluntary organisations asking for views on the IB proposals in advance of the publication of the green paper in July. [A copy of this letter has already been circulated to group members, and we have been informed by the DWP that the deadline for submissions is 13th June.]

ACTION: It was agreed that group members would share their responses to the proposals.

Group members noted that it was unclear how the proposals would work in practice. Lee understood that the judgement between who will be put on the rehabilitation benefit and who will be put on the disability benefit would be done on the basis of points in the personal capability assessment. However, it appeared that the precise mechanism was unclear. Kate noted that her understanding was that, in the 12 week period on the holding benefit, claimants would undergo a personal capability assessment, an employability review and a work-focussed interview, all at the same time as dealing with their own health crisis.

It was also unclear how statutory sick pay would fit into the process. Judith was of the view that there would have to be changes to this aspect of support for sickness and disability too.

Judith raised concerns in relation to the work-focussed interview. Under current Jobcentre Plus work-focused interview regulations, if you have missed an interview, you have to give a ‘good cause’ explanation within five days. This would be extremely difficult for those who were very ill, or depressed or simply not able to keep appointments – it was therefore important that the normal one month period remained, plus extra provision for extenuating circumstances.

Chris highlighted that money was also a major issue in the reform process. The DWP had no extra money at the moment and, without extra cash, it appeared unlikely that they would be able to deliver the rehabilitation support outlined. Kate said that the DWP had reformed the systems for paying support organisations to help people into employment. The new emphasis was very much about getting people through the support systems and into ‘open employment’. It was not clear what the intention was for those who would struggle to make it into unsupported employment. The worrying impact is that organisations are already cherry picking as to who they will accept onto their programmes, leaving the more complex cases behind.

Kate noted that she had now finished working on the briefing she had produced on IB statistics (as discussed at previous meetings).

ACTION: Kate agreed to circulate the briefing, with a view to taking things forward under the auspices of the consortium.

Information exchange

Tax credits
Lee Oliver, CPAG tax credits project worker, reported on recent tax credits developments:

• The renewals and reconciliation period had started again, with a deadline for returns of 30th September.
  
• The Scottish Executive were still working with HM Revenue to try to find a solution to payments towards childcare made under the ‘Working for Families’ initiative. However, they hoped to minimise any potential fallout for the families involved.
  
• Migration of existing IS/JSA claimants was now scheduled to end by December 2006. [The DWP have since stated that the process should start at the end of 2005, to be finished by early 2006.]
  
• Salary sacrifice – the Revenue had introduced a scheme where employers provided childcare vouchers instead of a proportion of salary. This was good for employers (as they didn’t have to pay national insurance on them) and good for higher earners (as it reduced their tax liability). However, it was not necessarily good for lower earners. Tax credits only covered childcare costs which the claimant was actually liable for so, by accepting vouchers, the costs which could be claimed were reduced, leaving people no better off. It would be necessary for advisers to do the calculations before advising clients whether they would be better or worse off taking childcare vouchers.

Kate noted that the childcare voucher scheme was also very bureaucratic for childcare providers – many of whom preferred to be paid weekly.

Maureen reported that she had come across some clients who were in work and would be significantly better off claiming tax credits. However, they did not want to do so on the basis that it would lead to debt problems.

It was noted that, before the migration to tax credits, it may still be possible for existing IS/JSA claimants to claim for new children under those benefits – however, this was only possible if they were already claiming for children. If it was a first claim for a child, they would be required to claim child tax credit. But even in these cases, there have been suggestions recently that the law could be interpreted in such a way that IS/JSA could still be claimed for children, although in practice it was understood that the DWP do not award IS/JSA for children in these claims.

Lee also highlighted that there were further dates for training events – full details were available on the CPAG website – www.cpag.org.uk (click on CPAG in Scotland on the left bar).

Jo Whitfield noted that one of her clients had had their hours reduced to eight per week. The Revenue was notified (and it’s noted on their system that this is the case) – but the employer continued to pay. The client has therefore been building up an overpayment since August 2003. The problem has been compounded by the fact that the client didn’t return the reconciliation form at the end of that year (as he thought he wasn’t getting tax credits by that point). The Revenue are therefore stating that he has no entitlement at all to tax credits. It was noted that, if there was agreement on the amount the client was entitled to, then the issue was an overpayment, which couldn’t be appealed. It is possible to argue official error – however, it would be difficult in this case, given the hard line the Revenue are taking and the fact that working tax credit was noted separately on the client’s wageslip. The Revenue are likely to take the line that he should have realised that there was no entitlement to working tax credit at eight hours.

Judith noted that new regulations had been published in relation to tax credits and housing benefit which appeared to provide a simpler method for calculating the level of payment.

Other issues
Maureen highlighted problems with local housing allowance in Edinburgh. Those transferred onto the system had had their claims protected for one year (ie. they couldn’t be worse off, so payments were made, even if their rent levels fluctuated above the reference rent rates). However, this transitional protection had ended so clients were now appearing who were being forced to supplement rent payments from their benefits income.

Maureen also noted that One Parent Families Scotland had also put a standard letter on their website to encourage people with tax credits problems to contact their MP.

She had also heard that, under the New Deal for Lone Parents, the amount of discretionary grant the personal adviser could approve themselves had been decreased from £300 to £100 (for amounts higher than £100, approval from a superior was necessary).

Judith highlighted a commissioners’ decision (CDLA/1721/2004) which discussed the issue of calling children as witnesses in their own case. The decision extended the protections available to children in these circumstances. More information is available from the CPAG website.

CPAG in Scotland had also been able to put their student handbook online, so it can be updated regularly and accessible to more advisers.

Topics for future meetings

The group agreed that incapacity benefit should be the topic for the next meeting as well as a lot more detail about the proposals would be known by then.

Suggestions for future meetings included a presentation from the Veterans’ Organisation (as many clients, including almost all older men, would have done some military service), which could give assistance with funeral payments, support to families and also for civilians who had been injured. The Civil Partnerships Act was also highlighted – which would have a significant impact on benefits and tax credits claims.

AOB

There was no other business.

Date of next meetings

The dates for the year are as follows:

• Thursday 29th September, 1pm-3.30pm, CPAG offices in Glasgow
• Monday 21st November, 1pm-3.30pm, CAS offices in Edinburgh

Back to the Scottish Social Security Consortium main page

For more information contact:
Judith Paterson
Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland,
Unit 9, Ladywell
94 Duke Street,
Glasgow G4 0UW
0141 552 3303
email jpaterson@cpagscotland.org.uk

Abigail Bremner
Citizens Advice Scotland
Spectrum House
2 Powderhall Road
Edinburgh EH7 4GB
0131 550 1000
email bremnera@cas.org.uk