 Dcri입니다, wrth gwrs, a i dweud y fath ar gweithio mewn cyfnodol. Does hefyd yn y fath ar gyfer ailfawr o fynd i'w sefydol? Yr yn dweud y gwaith am y fath ar gyfer ei gwaith bref belowfodol? Rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r dugfyrdd yn ei gwaith a'r gallu gael ei bach? Rydyn ni'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r busr ar gyfaedd a'i gwelleth ar cwrwm, neu at roedd gennym yn eu bod yn y gyrdyn ni, ac nid oes i ddysgrifennu'r gwaith? Rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r gael Gordon Lindhurst The committee has asked to agree that item 4 consideration of evidence is taken in private. Is the committee agreed to that? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We move to agenda item 2, social security and work poverty, and agenda item continues our inquiry into that particular topic, and there is our penultimate evidence session, so we are nearly there with a short, focused inquiry. I welcome Dona Ward, DWP policy director of children, families and disadvantaged, Pete Serrow, DWP policy director of working age benefits. Denise Horsfield, DWP universal credit area director of Scotland. Thank you, all of you, for coming along this morning. You're very welcome, and we appreciate your attendance. I know one of you is making a short opening statement, but I'm not actually sure which of you, so who's going to do that? Dona Ward. Dona, thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you so much for inviting us. I'd just like to start by saying that we absolutely recognise that in work poverty has increased. We now have 3.3 million adults in the UK in work poverty, and two-thirds of children in poverty, and I know child poverty is such a big issue for you in Scotland, are now in families that work, so the whole composition of the population and poverty has shifted, and we absolutely recognise that, and the UK Government has done quite a lot of work to try and understand that, and to see what we can do about it, and to check that all of our policies are consistent with helping to improve the situation. So most of this issue is kind of the flip side of a really good labour market. We now have three-quarters of all adults of working age are now in employment, so that's across the UK, but also in Scotland. We've had a million fewer workplace households since 2010, so it's really quite remarkable kind of change in the labour market since the financial crisis, and so it's really about that rather than a really big shift in the underlying risk of being in work poverty. So the risk of being in work poverty has stayed quite flat at around 10% for working people, but I'm not going to sit here and say it's just about that. Of course it's still much better to be in work, you're five times less likely to be in poverty as a child if you're in work, so of course that's still much better, and the risk hasn't fundamentally changed of being in poverty if you've been in work, but that's not the case for absolutely everyone. As we said in our written statement, which came in advance, we know that for children in poverty, after housing costs, the risks of being in work poverty have increased, so that's partly down to the greater cost of private renting, but it's also to do with some aspects of the labour market. We know from the JRF report, which was really helpful on poverty in Scotland, that the risk of being in work poverty has increased for lone parents in Scotland, so there are issues there. And we've done some extensive analysis about who is in work poverty. So, if you take the whole population in in-work poverty, it really breaks down to mostly being those families who are only working part-time, one earn a couple, and then low earning self-employed people, so there is a small residual element of people where both couples are in full-time work, but actually full-time work within the household virtually eliminates in-work poverty for both the whole of the UK and for Scotland. So, there's definitely something about working patterns and work intensity, and we believe that universal credit is really well designed to get people into work in the first place, but then also to smooth their incentives to work more. It's removed a lot of the cliff edges from the old tax credit system, and it's helped if people are worried about fluctuating earnings, whether if they take a job will they then lose their job, or they're going to have to navigate between two systems. And the incentives under universal credit have improved thanks to the recent budget measures, so the increase in the work allowance, that was the main thing that the JRF had recommended as a change to universal credit to help tackle in-work poverty, and of course the UK government has been listening. So, of course, I know your main interest is in relative poverty, there's lots of different measures of poverty, and relative poverty, as you know, is the sum total of everything that happens in the benefit system, the labour market, but then also the wider macroeconomy. So, it also obviously matters what happens to the median income line, and we know that relative poverty has improved after the financial crisis, but that was really because median incomes collapsed, but also relative poverty tends to stagnate when median incomes grow faster and it's harder for poorer families to keep up. So, it's quite a complicated picture in terms of what drives the final outcome on relative poverty, and the benefit system is one element of that, but it has to sit within a wider context. So, that's why UC incentives, which are good and have improved, are being reinforced by increases to the living wage and also increases to the personal tax allowance. So, you have to kind of see that all together, not just what's happening on the benefit side, but also wages and taxes, and then, of course, much wider government agendas also have to come together. So, in terms of trying to get people to work more, it's not just about incentives, it's also about what employers are willing to offer, and all of the good work that the UK government's doing and you are doing to halve the disability employment gap to eliminate the gender pay gap, and to make work fairer and decent for all, all comes into play alongside what happens in the benefit system. And finally, it's obviously much more likely to be an in-work poverty if you have children, and so a big element of that, we know that one earn a couple's, tend to be one earn a couple's, because somebody's looking after the children and lone parents also face barriers to working because they've got childcare responsibilities that they have to deal with on their own. So childcare is a really important element to this story as well, and universal credit is more generous on the childcare side than tax credits was. Alongside that, the UK government and the Scottish government is doing more to subsidise free childcare places, but it's not just about what government can do to subsidise childcare, it's also about the provision in the market and whether flexible childcare is available to people in low-paid work. So I think what, I hope I've managed to make the point that in work poverty is the collection of a lot of different things coming together, especially if you look at it in a relative sense, and the benefit system is one element within a wider context, and the UK government has been very concerned about this issue, too, and has tried to see all of these elements together. That's helpful, Donna Ward. It might be worth placing this enquire into some context as well, because much of what you said there, which was helpful, mixed between delivery of the policy intent of the UK government and the policy intent of the UK government, we had hoped next week to have had the UK Secretary of State, Esther McVey, here along with the Scottish Cabinet Secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville. This morning, we received a reply from Alex Sharma, the Minister of State for Employment, who has agreed to come to our committee but waited six weeks for a reply from the Secretary of State. We got a reply this morning from the Minister of State. Unfortunately, they won't be available for this particular inquiry. There are maybe some policy matters that we'd wish to interrogate, and it's whether we interrogate that with DWP staff, staff, senior staff or with the relevant politicians. Unfortunately, they are not available to us. I'll also note that you put a number of statistics on the record there in relation to poverty. I think that those are quite crucial, because we are making a point about part-time employment and full-time employment, and the poverty aligns, who prepared a briefing for the universal credit debate in the Parliament last week, have stated that 1 million people in Scotland are living in the grip of poverty, including 230,000 children. 65 per cent of all children living in poverty living in the poverty line are in working households, and 59 per cent of all working-age adults living in poverty live in working households. Obviously, getting people into employment does not solve poverty in itself because of the nature of low-paid, uncertain employment in Scotland and across the UK. That brings us to the merging of the tax credit system into universal credit and the idea of putting conditionality on those quite often in part-time work, who will no longer receive tax credits but will receive universal credit, and the idea that they will be asked, encouraged or eventually instructed to increase their hours of work, or to increase their hourly rate, or to take on a second job. Those are all clear things that work coaches could request or eventually instruct individuals who are working to do. We asked the PCS, the workers representatives and the job centres on how realistic they thought it was to have a meaningful conversation with someone who is in work, to have that meaningful conversation, tailored conversation with them, to be realistic about what the expectations were to move into better paid employment if those opportunities exist at all. David Sempo from PCS told us that the current number of work coaches simply would not be able to do that work in any meaningful way. Given the additional footfall of claimants into our job centres, the number of job centres has been cut over the past couple of years, as the committee will be aware, it would not be sustainable for work coaches to have meaningful conversations and to raise the kinds of questions that you have mentioned. That was myself talking about whether there were available opportunities for work, whether there was suitable childcare, whether there were suitable transport links, the whole gambut of things that you would have to have a conversation with an individual about. The union does not think that it is achievable. It has said that it thinks that there has to be 5,000 additional staff in the system to make universal credit work, but here we are rolling out. How would you respond to that? That is one for me to start with and Denise may want to come in. I think that, first of all, the points about in-work conditionality, there is a very light touch system in place now. We are not asking work coaches to do that now. We would acknowledge that if we did want work coaches to start having intense conversations with people in work, that would require more resources. That is not something that we are asking them to do now. That is not a plan that we have in place. We ran a trial, the in-work progression trial that we published the results of back in September this year, that did test a range of different things that work coaches could do to help people to progress in work. I stepped back a bit, as well, that if we are concerned about in-work poverty, people who could work more, I think that we would all like them to be able to work more. It is about how we can enable that, because that is something that could come back in work poverty. We ran that trial. That showed that if you did do some fairly intense things, and the intense things were at the most intense, it was an intervention after eight weeks, so a 10-minute conversation with a work coach after eight weeks, and then every two weeks after that we would have a further conversation, a face-to-face conversation with a person who was in work. That actually did lead to wage increases on average, so the people who had those interventions did work more. Now, we need a lot more evidence, a lot more research before we will be in a position to say what is the best way forward on this, because we do not have evidence at the moment about what really could work, what is the best way of interacting with people in work, because they have jobs to go to. They do not need to be popping down to the job centre every five minutes, so we need to get that evidence. We have funding from the Budget 2017, £8 million from the Treasury to do that sort of research over the course of four years, and by doing that we will learn what works and we will think about the best way forward. However, as things stand, we are not asking our work coaches to spend any significant amount of time helping those people in work to progress. Do you want to add anything? Before you come in there, Denise, that raises some additional questions as much as it does answers. You have said that, at this time, it is a light-touch approach, but it will not always be a light-touch approach. You have said that there will be no moving from a light-touch approach until there are additional resources for the avoidance of doubt. By moving away from a light-touch approach, do you mean sanctions and conditionality on the working poor? It could mean a whole range of things. That is what we want to test. Could it mean that someone who is currently in receipt of tax credits moving over to universal credit has been told to get more hours or increase their pay and if they are unable to do that, there could be a financial sanction on them? Is that what you mean by moving away from light-touch? As I said, it could mean a broad range of things. Is that one of the things? Conditionality would certainly be part of it, so that is one of the things that we look to test. That is a yes. That is important to know, just for clarity, because you might speak at length that we do not actually get the clarity that we are looking for. You said that there is a need for additional resources. The PCS has said that 5,000 more employees are required at the front line to have any kind of meaningful conversation. Is that a number that you would recognise, Mr Serrell? I do not recognise that number. I do not know on what basis the PCS would have calculated that, because they do not know what the intervention would be. We do not know what the intervention would be. We want to test. We want to learn. When we have tested and learned, we will work out what the best way forward is. Then we will be able to work out what additional resources would be required. What I can say for sure is that we are staffing our work coaches to do what we are currently asking them to do. If we asked them to do an awful lot more, we would need more resources. That is something that we would have to work out in the light of the research. The PCS has been saying that you are understaffing on what you are asking them to do just now, especially if you look at the service centres where they just cannot cope with the entries into online journals as things currently stand. How many additional workers minimum do you think would have to put in the system to allow meaningful coexaction? We do not have to know what the conditionalities would be. We just have to know that the expectation is that Jobcentre Plus or DWP expects work coaches to sit down and build up tailored relationships, build up trust with those in work at a Jobcentre. That takes more staff. You must surely have a figure for how many more staffs you need. Do you know how many people are in the tax credit system? Do you know how many people are coming over through managed migration? Do you know how much more staff you need in job centres to do that? I think I will explain why it is impossible for us to know that at the moment because we do not know what we want to do. If we wanted them to spend an hour a week with each of these people, that would cost a certain amount. If we wanted them to spend 10 minutes every month, that would cost an awful lot less and require a lot less resources. We are testing. That is a really good reply. Could you tell me how many additional work coaches you need for an hour a week? I could not because I have not got those numbers in front of me. Could you tell me how much it would be for 10 minutes a month? No, I have not got those figures in front of me. All I am saying is that we have got a programme of work over the course of four years to find out what the right interventions are. We will develop that, how much it would cost, what extra resources would be required and what would be part of that. It now seems highly premature to have abstract conversations about what if it was 10 minutes, if it was an hour, what would that involve? I just do not have those figures. It would seem pretty uncordidated and poorly planned if you have not done some modelling work in relation to this. If you have done any modelling work in relation to how many, it seems that you agree with the PCS that additional staff are required. What modelling work have you done to recognise that additional staff are required to have meaningful conversations with the working poor that are going to have conditionality placed on them? What work have you done in relation to that? I think that I have made it very clear that we are looking at this over the course of the next three or four years to work out what extra interventions we require. Then, as part of that, we will model what the workload implications and the resourcing implications are. I do not see why three or four years ahead of doing something, we would have modelled what the impact might be under various different scenarios. We have not done that research to the best of my knowledge and I think that it would be premature to have done so. I am not sure that I agree with you, but that is the answer. Thank you for appearing here today. I think that it would be interesting to pursue some of the lines of inquiry around what the PCS said to us in evidence at our last hearing and give you the opportunity to respond to some of what has been said. The convener has already raised some of the issues. I am keen on finding out about the general state of preparedness of the system to cope with the role of universal credit. For instance, one issue that was raised last week was about the digital first approach to dealing with people who come through the system. Can you offer some comment on the state of preparedness internally to cope with us and be the capacity of such a system to cope with people who simply do not have access to the internet? Given the serious claims that were made by the PCS in their evidence, that the system is prepared for neither? My accountability is to make sure that we are prepared. The first thing is resources, so I will take that first. Certainly our resources are running at a higher rate than expected, so I have against my allocation in the department for Scotland for work coaches. I am around between 100 and 150 on paper to many work coaches. That is not too many in my view, because I am preparing for increase in caseloads as we migrate to roll out. That is not in work, that is people that are at work or people who are making new claim to benefit. We are seeing many more people, remember, that are pre-work capability assessments. We are seeing them from day one. In work coach terms, I am comfortable. We are on the right trajectory. For case managers, I am well below the average expected at this point in time for caseloads. Again, what I have done is looked forward, made sure that we are in advance of the curve, made sure that our resources in each of the service centres are on an ongoing build to keep pace with the roll out as it goes up to December. The second part of the question is about whether the digital first approach is either going to work internally or going to work for people who do not necessarily have accessor ability to contact you by those means. It depends where you are in the country. If we are in the central belt, there is lots of provision to support customers. We make contact with our partners in the locality. You went to Dundee. You saw what we have done in the front of house where we have put digital access and people to support people when they come in to get digital access. That is the same in every single job centre. You raised an important point there about the depends where you are in the country. I apologise for breaking your flow, your train of thought there, but you see it depends where you are in the country. I should say at this point that I represent the Western Isles. If you live in the US, there are not even any job centres within 100 miles. How does it work in that situation? In that situation, firstly, what we do is we contact the customer. We see when they are available. If they cannot get across to the mainland, then what we are doing is either sending a visiting officer the other way or what we are trying to do is make sure that we take the claim over the phone and then progress it when the individual can come in. They do need to sign the claim commitment. They do need to have a conversation. Then what we are trying to do is do it through journals and through the phone. Where it is appropriate to bring somebody in because they need more intensive support, because some of that provision that they might need might be on the mainland rather than on the island. Generally, that is the process. Picking up on that, this is relevant across the country, not just to rural areas. One of the issues that was raised in our last evidence session was about the potential unintended consequences, not so much of going digital, because everybody accepts that that is the future, if you like. However, for the very significant minority of people who simply cannot or are unable to access that system, one of the issues that was put to us in the evidence was that that group of people not being able to access the system online will lead in the view of the unions to a large increase in pressure on the telephone option, if you like, and will lead to delays in applications and contact being processed simply because of that pressure that will be created on the phone system. Is that a claim that you would understand or accept? It is not the experience side. It is an issue that we are working hard to make sure that either people are connected to services to support them, or actually there is a telephony service as well, but it is digital first, as you said. It is building the competence and capability of the individuals that are making the claims. Lots of our services across the whole of the UK and in Scotland are going online. For me, I am not seeing that impact on the claiming process. The process is, you make a claim online, you are then directed to a phone to make an appointment. At that stage, our phone service identifies if anybody needs any special support, and that could be that they cannot get in or that they have health issues and need a visiting officer. If somebody then does not proceed to contact us, even if they have made the appointment, we are on the phone trying to make sure that we do not lose anybody through this new process, which is a transformation of services for the citizens of Scotland. Therefore, they need some support to understand how to navigate it. If you find in the course of the next X months that there are delays or problems around that, would that be enough to consider pausing roll-out while you sorted those problems, or would you press ahead? Well, we are 90 per cent through new claim roll-out, so I have not seen that to date. Yes, there will be people who need further support, there will be people who are referred to us from the third sector, there will be people who are referred to partners. Finally, we also have evidence from the Westminster Public Accounts Committee about the wider attitude of the DWP when presented with problems. It has said that the department, I quote, the department's systematic culture of denial and defensiveness in the face of any adverse evidence presented by others, is a significant risk to the programme. Are they wrong on that? That may be more of a policy question than an operational question, I would guess. If you look back at the last year, in budget 17, we introduced 100 per cent of the answers, we extended the repayment period to 12 months, we introduced a run-on of housing benefit for two weeks, we got rid of seven-day, 18-days, then in June 17 we addressed issues that people had raised around severe disability premium. In the budget, we have increased work allowances, which is something that has been put to this committee. We have reduced the deduction rate from 40 to 30 per cent, again raised with this committee. We have introduced a further run-on for job seekers allowance, income support, employment and support allowance. We have changed the approach for the self-employed by bringing in a broader 12-month grace period. To me, that is a sign of a Government and a department that is listening and responding to try and make this system work as well as possible. I cannot really see how, with those facts, you can say that we have not been listening. Can I add to that? I see the child poverty action group probably about every four months, and my team worked with John Dick's team in between. They have an early warning system, we look at that early warning system to try and understand if there are any trends. I certainly think that we listen from an operational sense, that is just one stakeholder, citizens by Scotland, Scottish Federation for Housing, I see them regularly and we take information from them from an operational sense. We tend to talk about two things, one is the policy context and one is the operational context. I think that we are. My deputy convener was quite right. We should maybe just check a couple of figures that we got last week from the PCS. I appreciate that my initial questioning was concerns that the unions had raised in relation to workload, but figures that came up last week were that the caseload for work coaches could go from significantly below 100 to estimated 343. A second figure that we had was those in the service centres who were having to look at those online journals. Their caseload could go up to almost 900. That seems incredible, but those figures must have come from somewhere. PCS recognise those figures, they have clearly looked at what they think the increased workload to be and those of the ones that were discussed last week in the committee was genuinely deeply alarmed by that increase in workload. I guess that it brings us back again. I do not want to flog a dead horse, I really do not, but it brings us back again to what Ms Horsfall is having to deal with the management of workload for the teams out there. What numbers would you recognise? We are less than the average nationally and that is less than 80 at the moment per work coach, which is I think 85, the figure that PCS quoted. Certainly our case managers, the average is around at the moment 330. Okay, and you would agree that that will increase over the next few years? It will certainly, well, there is activity, certainly if I can, can I talk about the workload for case managers? The workload for case managers is the activity on the caseload, so the more automation there is to payments, the less activity there will be. So caseloads will rise, the more automation we get. So it is a force thought that there is a limit that is unworkable. The issue is that we are working on what is a reasonable caseload for case managers, what can they do, what we want them to do is clear the work so that customers are certainly serviced in the way that we want and at the moment that is happening. Now in work coach terms it comes back to what Mr Sol said, which was that actually at this time the numbers are not at the level that PCS are quoting, they are obviously quoting something from somewhere I don't recognise, I'm sorry I don't, but I don't recognise for some time in the future. Now presumably they've looked at the whole population and divided that by the number of people we've got now. Well that's not the reality we've already talked about, we need to understand what the system will be and then we'll resource it appropriately. That's helpful, there's generally a disconnect between the union representing the workers on the ground and DWP in relation to what workload looks like or we wouldn't have had that evidence last week and we're just very keen as a committee to make sure that ends in the alarming statistics we heard last week are addressed in a meaningful way that improves the service for people on the ground that are very worried about what universal credit means for them but I have to let other committee members in my appall, I am now testing the patience of my committee members, Mr Sarrow briefly. Just very very briefly, I mean just to add to that point we would expect those case loads to go up over time for a range of reasons. One is that actually the mix of cases changes, so the mix of cases on UC now, universal credit now is fundamentally sort of unemployed people who we see every two weeks, so that requires quite a lot of activity. The new cases many of them will be less intensive regime so actually work coaches can increase their case load. The other point is a lot of these work coaches are new so they're building up their experience so over time the average experience of a work coach will increase and they'll be able to deal with more cases so a number of reasons why we'd expect it to increase and that for that to be okay. I think a lot of us just can't really bring my deputy down in a second. I just would like to press you on this because I find that unbelievable what you've just said there. We know that there's going to be a migration from people on tax credits who are currently administered by the HMRC, so how can you possibly say that you don't expect the workload to increase when you're going to take tens of thousands of people into the DWP system that previously weren't? The total workload will increase but then as we bring people on tax credits across and increase the universal credit population so we increase the number of work coaches so it's the average per work coach I'm talking about so absolutely yes the workload will increase but when I say again that tax credits cases particularly with a very light touch conditionality regime we've got they don't require that much activity from work coaches someone who's unemployed and actively seeking work that requires quite a lot of activity so the mix is very important. I think what you're getting Mr Serrow is just that you should go back and look at the official report from last week if you didn't catch it before you come along to the committee because does that whole discussion about a work coach is going to have with someone who's maybe in the part-time employment about how far it's reasonable to travel to get a second job to bring up the full-time hours, what the transport links are like, what that means for childcare, what that means for caring issues if they're a care with other people in their family that takes a lot of knowledge and sensitivity in relationship building with an individual for a work coach to do and PCS assured us they believe that they have workers at the front line who have got the skills to do that what they don't have is enough of them and they don't have enough time so that's the disconnect and there's a difference of opinion between yourselves and what the unions have said but I think it's just fair to put that on the record I think that's where the disconnect comes. We'll go to Mark Griffin. Thank you. Good morning. You will know that many members here have a concern about the single household payment in universal credit and members of this Parliament across all parties unanimously supported an amendment to the social security act to start discussions between the Scottish Government and the UK Government about implementing an automatic split payment in universal credit in Scotland. Will you hear about the progress of discussions on that policy? That's something in principle that we've agreed to do. It's prerogative of the Scottish Government to request that change. I think that we're in discussions now about exactly what the nature of the policy that the Scottish Government would want to have around split payments would be and once we know that then we can work through what it would take to deliver that and what the timetables might be but it's that sort of discussion that I understand is going on now. We've already introduced the other flexibilities around payments to landlords and around more frequent payments but the split payments one is something that we're still discussing with the Scottish Government. Members have had a concern about the single payment in universal credit and I fear that that would exacerbate situations of domestic abuse and the reason I asked that is because I wanted to move on to the managed migration and the natural migration process. Through the managed migration process, people moving from tax credits to universal credit will thankfully receive transitional protection but those who move in the natural migration process through our changing circumstances perhaps a breakdown in our relationship will not receive transitional protection. Similarly to the concerns that we have about a split payment, I would have concerns that the managed migration process attracting transitional protection would affect people's behaviour and that it could encourage a woman who has experienced domestic abuse to stay in that abusive relationship so that they would get the transitional protection with a managed migration process. Rather than going through the natural migration process, what's your view on that? Step back a bit. The most important thing here is to address the fundamental domestic abuse, which is something that we'd all be firmly in favour of stopping through whatever means possible. There are currently single payments across the whole of the benefits system already so it's not as though we're moving to a very different place. I think that the natural migration and managed migration point, if someone splits up and effectively it's a new claim at that point then the circumstances have changed quite dramatically so I'm not sure what you would traditionally protect if they moved across to universal credit because their claim circumstances are very different. What I can say is that we take great care to make sure that our work coaches and one thing I think me and the PCS would agree on is that our work coaches are absolutely fabulous and extraordinarily capable people, take great care in making sure they're alive to and aware of domestic abuse issues and know how to respond to that so most important that they can link up with other organisations locally to try and help people with that fundamental problem. I'm sorry can I just add that I did see the transcript with the evidence from the PCS and they did mention of course they did acknowledge that quite a lot of people do actually gain from moving over to universal credit so they were also quite keen not to slow down migration or stop it completely given that there were a lot of families especially those people working very few hours who would gain from the new system. It's not just a one way thing that you know people would automatically have less money. Yep I think PCS acknowledged that there would be winners and losers but from the analysis that we've seen that one of the losers would be lone parents and one of the big losers in the system would be lone parents and disabled people so that then raises the concern as to whether a mother would choose to stay in an abusive relationship to protect the financial stability of the children and that's why I raised the question but if I could move on to another issue that I raised and discussed with PCS last week was about fluctuating earnings in particular an example in my own region where a local authority pays their workers on a four weekly cycle and will be paying their workers early in December before staff leave for Christmas and the impact that is going to have on their universal credit claim where because of the number of payments within a particular month that they will receive no universal credit and the PCS representative last week said that there were technical options available to them in previous systems they have looked at smoothen earnings out over a 12 month period to stop something like that happening are you looking at what technical options that are available to stop something like that happening? We're certainly aware of the issue but that monthly assessment period is an absolutely fundamental core part of the universal credit system and that does and the reason it's monthly is because the majority of employees get paid monthly so if we had any other assessment period if we had a fortnightly assessment period or something then some fortnights we get all the payment and other fortnights we get none of the earnings and so universal credit would go bouncing up and down greatly so that's why we've got a monthly assessment period it does as you rightly say mean that for those employees who are paid on a four weekly cycle there will be months in the year when for our universal credit calculation we're seeing two lots of earnings and it might be one or two months in the year what I would say is that those are predictable so so we want our work coaches and you know the individuals to see those things coming and to try and budget and we can help people currently with local authorities but also with it from from april with assistance advice help people to to build budgeting skills but we think budgeting to to cope with those those periods is the most important thing and what we can do in the short term rather than anything more structural around universal credit and one other point I'd make on fluctuating earnings you know actually particularly at the bottom of the labour market that there is an awful lot of earnings fluctuation that people have not necessarily the full weekly point but they could be paid monthly or weekly universal credit is very helpful in that respect because if someone's earnings are a high one one week or one month then universal credit will will be slightly lower so it will smooth the income if they if their income their earnings are a low another month then universal credit will rise so actually universal credit helps in those circumstances to give people a slightly smoother more predictable level of income from from month to month okay and what what exactly are work coaches doing with claimants to help them predict how much universal credit they'll get in each month great it's something we're we're looking to build up with work coaches so as part of their relationship with with people to see those sort of patterns of earnings and then through the journal through communication with the customer help them to to see that that coming that point coming where they do have two payments and recognize that their universal credit will drop we're certainly making sure that our work coaches give ensure that people if they do need to reclaim universal credit afterwards they can be helped to to do that sort of rapid reclaim rather than any sort of longer term process and then if you want to add anything Denise yeah so the arrangements locally is is to pick up those points you know where are the employers that actually the the wage cycles are predictable and therefore when can we expect somebody to not receive universal credit for example in december because of two wages maybe and therefore they've got to make a reclaim in january or is it okay because it is just fluctuating as as mr sell says so the other side of that is in budgeting terms each of the work coaches know who their support systems are around budgeting support either through the local authority or through systems advice or through charities so it is about wrapping around that support and also bringing them into the job center as well okay thank you very much there's a few different areas i want to ask you about and i'm quite keen to get some stuff on the record so i clearly understand what you're saying can i begin with the transition of tax credit and child's tax credit which i mentioned earlier could you just clarify at the moment those families so those individuals is that calculated on a monthly basis to i think tax credits for before nightly i'm i'm not sure but i don't think that's well actually tax credits is on an annual basis and then it's paid yeah so it's assessed with a forecast essentially of earnings over the course of the year that's what i thought it's just that you said an answer to mark griffin that the reason that you use the monthly assessment is that's what the majority of people do but there will be literally millions of people who have tax credits calculated in an annual basis so surely you accept that that does not fit with the model i think the problem with the annual assessment on tax credits is actually that huge numbers of people have ended up owing a lot of money back to the system because the reassessment periods are so infrequent so actually tying the subsidies for low paid work with an annual tax assessment doesn't actually fit in with a lot of people's experiences so i think one of the things that we know with people moving across from tax credits is actually a lot of people have built up debt to government through the tax credit system and i think that's something that universal credit is going to make sure it does not replicate on a monthly basis people might actually because you have admitted that the fact that you're saying that people may have to tie to budget would indicate that you think there will be month to month losses for those for many families it will smooth out in that sort of cases we're talking about you know over a period of time um it the amount they receive from universal credit will be pretty well the same um as if they were paid monthly uh it's just that there will be that month where it goes down and other months it will be potentially slightly slightly higher so um it's smooth that the issue that that donna raises is quite right around uh around tax credits where you you know you do because it's it's i would say quite a clunky annual reassessment system then people do find that what they received last year was either you know much more than they should have done or actually sometimes less um and that leads to um to debts or or money that's due to them um universal credit tries to correct that by by making sure it's calculated on a monthly basis on the basis of what people have actually earned have been paid by their employer in that month and adjusting universal credit accordingly that takes a lot of the burden off of customers as well so i think the director of universal credit himself said that probably most people don't know that they will be transferring from the HMRC system to the WP would you accept that i don't know whether most people would know or not i think universal credit has has received quite a lot of coverage it seems to me so i think people will uh know a reasonable amount about it and what i would say about the timetable um and i think this is i mean it's highly public but not necessarily very well known is that we've now as as tony said pretty well rolled out new claims on universal credit across the country so we're sort of 90% there and by the end of this calendar year essentially uh all new claims to to those benefits will be to universal credit rather than to tax credits or something like that then you've got the stock of cases on on existing benefits like tax credits um we will be testing in the latter part of of next year and uh the months uh that follow into 2020 testing in a very light touch way something like 10 000 cases in total uh that migration process because it's really really important we get that right for you know for all of our customers but particularly for them all vulnerable and it's not until 2020 the latter part of 2020 that we would start to to move people across uh in a in a large-scale way and we will do that through until 2023 so i think if we started warning people now uh who might move in 2021 that would feel premature to me now clearly we need to make sure we give them plenty of notice and that's our you know absolute determination to do that um but you know we haven't we haven't started warning people individually now because it's so far away so earlier you challenged the figures that were outlined to by convener bob doris that were given to us by pcs so um we've had the chance to check that but the figures that bob doris is quoting so that workload increase for work coaches is the figures from the national audit office and not pcs which say that the work caseload of individual work coaches by 2024 will be that figure of 919 were you aware of that because you seemed to challenge the pcs figures i don't think we challenged the figures we just said we didn't entirely recognise them if they're from the national audit office reports i can accept that i know the national audit office did so can i can i ask denise horsefield then um i seem to get the impression earlier that you didn't really acknowledge that there would be a significant increase for work coaches earlier i think i'm dealing with this year and next year yeah i'm not dealing with managed migration managed migration in my mind is a is a decision about how we intervene with customers all wrapped up with that what do we do within work all of those decisions still need to be made so how can i agree or disagree really i can't because the national audit office have published these figures well fine i don't accept them no i'm not saying i don't accept them i can't i can only recognise that that's what the national audit office say what i'm saying is my experience is delivery delivery this year and next year i know i've got enough resource to actually manage the business so really the panel are really not in a position then to challenge any of the figures at the moment because you see you don't know but i don't think we have challenged them we just said we didn't recognise this if they're in the national audit office report then that's what the national audit office have said and i think i was quite clear in saying we recognise that caseloads would increase and would increase quite significantly for the reasons that i set out earlier on and that we feel that that actually is perfectly well within the bounds of what work coaches can do because of the change in the mix of cases and because of the automation that Denise referred to and because of the the level of experience those precise figures may or may not be right okay thank you so it's just fine i just want to pressurise me a bit more then on the what your evidence is in relation to light touch okay so is it your understanding how long will the light touch regime remain in place because i think it's an interesting use of language i mean i might be reading this wrongly but the way i'm reading it is that it might be short term and i just wondered if i'm wrong about that and if what factors would be taken into account because obviously light touches kind of a meaningless phrase for example so as i understand that you saw a claimant or someone who's in work claiming universal credit would be expected to aim to earn 35 hours on the living wage and enrich that progression so what factors will be taken into account by work coaches in this light touch regime shall i start Denise and you want to get i mean i think 35 hours is if someone you know is in a position to work 35 hours a week so if someone's got care and responsibilities you know disability something else that means that 35 hours a week is not appropriate for them then that figure would be would be smaller could be 24 could be 16 it depends on their circumstance the discretion of the work coach or will you be issuing guidelines that these are the sorts of things that can be discounted i mean Denise might be better than me i'm not exactly what material work coaches have but you know always i think that's quite important to understand because i would like you would expect people who want to know so if you have sick children if you yourself have health issues if you're looking after elderly parents and the consequences of moving from what might be a secure job to an insecure job i would presume these are all factors that your work coaches would take into account so really i'd like to press it on are you giving discretion to individual work coaches or will you be issuing guidance to administer that do you want to answer the question on the basis of current system and i can then come back to the like touch point because i think this is fundamentally now about people out of work absolutely so answering for people that are out of work at the moment rather than what you're trying to get to which is in work support at the moment people arrive you know this we do the claim commitment we sit down and over a period of meetings try and identify with the individual what they can do and what they can't do and if somebody's perfectly capable has just come out of a job full time job what they're obviously going to be looking for is a full time job if that's what they tell us and they haven't actually a circumstance haven't changed and they've got any other barriers but obviously if somebody's come to us and they're not working at the moment for whatever reason then it's that that we're trying to identify to make sure that whatever we do is personalised and reasonable what we don't want to do is get to a position where we're asking people to do something or working with them and they agree to do something they can't that's the worst of all scenarios so that's how we work at the moment if i give guidelines the danger is is somebody will go well if somebody's alone parent then i'll ask them to do 16 hours if they're somebody who can't work because of other barriers they can do two hours i think this is about trust relationship building and making sure it's personalised at every turn and i use i mean use the go back to the pcs point i mean i think our work coaches are highly capable of doing that and we've done a lot of work to professionalise them further on the light touch point i mean i'll just go back um we we have got four years worth of funding to develop our understanding of what would work and hence what we want to do around this we have no plans as i speak to change from that essentially not not doing much in terms of interventions for those people in in that light touch conditionality regime um so we're not asking stan we're not asking work coaches today tomorrow or any years time to do anything in particular when we do work that out then we're happy to come and talk to you again about about our plans but that's not something we have at the moment and it might be worth adding mr sell reminded me which is um it's the accreditation process so about a third of our work coaches over the last two years have gone through accreditation or apprenticeships so this is 14 months or up to 18 months worth of work on city of guilds and it is making sure that what we do is deepen the expertise of the work coaches so that in operational profession they really do understand and investigate how they can build their capability even further with support from tutors thank you okay michelle ballantine i really want to default a couple of supplementaries for the deputy queeners question there are things i've moved on but would you like to come in now anyway yes i would um thank you and good morning can i just check um the question that was asked about the national audit office figures around caseload i mean that was the average uk figure when you initially answered were you talking about uk we talking about scotland right so that would account for the difference in the figure well yes i mean it will always we're always at different trajectories around recruitment and and people in post and attrition of course and the other one just just a supplementary around conditionality that came from earlier as well um there's a tendency sometimes to talk about conditionality as though it's about penalising people but my understanding is that it's it's actually about moving people on so it's actually about engaging with them to how you take forward their opportunities within work and how they negotiate better how they look and and improve their work chances um and that's about how they move out of poverty so can you can you just sort of clarify around conditionality because conditionality and sanctions um are kind of framed in the same way and they do have a relationship absolutely as i understand it but can you just confirm when you we talk about conditionality what are we actually talking about we you're absolutely right so we're talking about um you know primarily now through the the claimant commitment the relationship we build up or work coaches build up with with claimants is what is the reasonable expectation that we can have of them they can have of themselves to look for work and that will depend in a sort of way that Denise talked about on their personal circumstances but you know there is an expectation that they should make a commitment to you know do look for certain types of jobs um spend a certain number of hours each uh each day looking for for jobs that's the conditionality um and actually that relationship with a work coach the feedback we've had from great majority of claimants is is very positive now there is a difference of view i suspect between the Scottish Government and the UK Government around sanctions you know if you have conditionality um the UK Government would believe that at the end of the day there has to be something uh you know something sitting behind that that if someone doesn't do what they've committed to do in return for um for the benefit payment that taxpayer is giving them then there should be some consequence of that and that's where sanctions come in but sanction rates uh you know actually uh pretty low so currently in universal credits um and i can go into more detail about this if you like but in universal credit it's only about three percent of of people are being sanctioned um at the moment as it's a small minority of the caseload uh you know the other 97 percent are uh operating in fully in line with their claimant commitment and many of them are moving into work as a result and and in terms of the testing period for petitionality you've said that you you're going through a period now starting now going forward on looking at what works so when you say what works what you mean i assume is is the success rate of people increasing their earnings getting into appropriate work um and basically moving out of poverty is is that what you mean when you talk about testing and will those results be published will they be easily accessible to us will we be able to follow that progress and know how how it's going i would entirely expect that to be the case i mean i don't think we've got those detailed research plans yet that's something we're working up but it would be exactly that so someone you know how long if someone's moved into into work but it's you know a low number of hours low earnings and we think they're capable of doing more then how long should we give them before we start um you know ringing them up contacted them and saying well perhaps you could do more let's come in and have a chat about that you know that'd be one of the things we test you know would a shorter period be better or a longer period um what's the best way of contacting that person if they're working uh you know certain hours then actually it may be highly inconvenient to get them into the job centre maybe it's better to do something over the phone we could test that or test face to face is it 10 minutes is it something rather longer what sort of additional um support might they need so you know it could be conversations about childcare transport a whole range of things so looking at different ways of doing it and looking at the impact both on the person while we're trying to to help them to increase their earnings so at that at that initial point but also the final impact in terms of of progression which you know the whole the whole purpose of this inquiry is around in-work poverty so progression must be a good thing can i just say one thing on in-work conditionalities we've talked a bit as if tax credits didn't have any conditionality but actually you could only claim tax credits if you were working 16 hours and then it was 24 and 30 for couples so actually with universal credit being available to people even only working one hour it is a very different system so on the one hand it's expecting you know it's being far more generous but obviously for all of the reasons that we've been talking about around children being in poverty and other things we don't want people to just work very few hours but i think i just wanted to clarify that obviously in the tax credit system there's a very hard edged conditionality that you don't qualify at all unless you're working a particular number of hours thank you can i go on to the other things or do you want to come back can i bring you back in it's just i'm testing the patience of a number of members just now including your own there Alison johnson i will bring you back in on some of the the areas we've touched on already i mean i've had the experience of attending a hearing with regard to sanctions with a constituent who'd been sanctioned for his failure to attend two meetings at the same time that he hadn't arranged one to sign on and one to attend an interview now his appeal was upheld and the judge who heard it felt he was seeing too much of similar cases now that clearly wasn't a case you know you couldn't describe that light touch in any shape or form the person concerned had then to apply for crisis loans in order to support their family so i think you know whether or not this is light touch or the heaviest touch possible this is a world first i think you're unprecedented in introducing in work conditionality um and i'd like to understand why it's you know it seems to me that there isn't an evidence base at the moment to suggest that this is a good idea or it's one that'll have the the positive outcomes that you're seeking um so i'd like to ask for a bit more on who decided this was a good idea in the first place yeah i don't know whether we should just come back to the point that in tax credits you obviously have to work a certain number of hours to qualify whereas obviously in universal credit you can get the in work benefit by just working only one hour so you know having some consistency between what people out of work experience and what people in work experience and what the taxpayer is expected to fund i think brings the whole system uh you know into to bring the whole system into alignment you wouldn't have conditionality for people uh not working and then no conditionality for people working one hour i think it's about being one system but obviously then tailored um according to uh people's hours and what could be expected of them but you go on pete i mean just a few points quickly in addition i mean i think i don't know about that that particular sanctions those sanctions cases my guess is they were out of work cases rather than in work because um you know i'm not aware of any significant number of sanctions for people in work um i i would never describe our our conditionality regime for people out of work who are expected to look full-time for a job i wouldn't describe that as light touch you know that it is what it is but it's that's not the light touch regime the light touch regime is for people who are in work at the moment effectively that light touch is so light touch that we're not we have no expectations of people when you say there isn't an evidence base i mean i think i think in a way you're you're agreeing with me i'm i'm saying there isn't an evidence base and that's why we want to carry on getting more evidence of what could work if if that shows that actually um it doesn't work and we're better off uh leaving people alone and letting them progress on their own right then so then that that could be our conclusion and we don't um we don't change our policy and fine um people are being used as guinea pigs people on low incomes who may be very vulnerable in the first place um are testing out a system effectively uh well right now no i mean we have had one trial but we will have further further trials um you could look at it another way and i personally would look at it another way is again i come back to the point fundamentally we're here talking about in-work poverty so we have a customer who is in work and they are poor and we feel they could do more work they could increase their earnings wouldn't it be a um a failure in our organization not to think about not to work with them not to try to develop a program not to test things that could help that person to progress i i i think if we were doing nothing you'd be criticising us uh for that a man could do more of course you could be providing you know childcare costs up front for example but we've got a couple of cultural shifts here i mean in-work conditionality it's a shift for for people claiming it's also a shift for DWP staff there's another cultural shift i mean people on tax credits at the moment may not even feel that they are claimants and i'd like to understand how much work has been done in making sure that they know that they're aware of the fact that they're going to have to make a claim you know has the DWP put resources into making sure that those people know that they will be expected to claim what will happen if they don't claim will they simply be left without any money at all you raise an extraordinarily important issue around managed migration and how we're going to make that work i set out earlier on the timetable for that and what we're going to be doing very carefully over the course of the next you know essentially it's two years before we start making those changes in a large-scale way is working out what works working out how best to communicate with our customers because some people will respond straight away to a letter other people um you know may not um they may have vulnerabilities we need to test those things we are working extraordinarily closely with with stakeholders um the department had a a big conference around managed migration with a full range of stakeholders about a month ago uh that was kicking off that process how can we work together to co-design the process to try and make sure that we do smoothly move people across um to to universal credits um we're absolutely determined to get that right we're determined to work with people to to design that correctly um and that is you know what we're going to be doing over the next one to two years. Professor Sir Ian Diamond has expressed concerns that people may simply fall out of the social security system and he has spoken off an unreasonable level of risk being put onto the claimant i mean do you share those concerns i mean that's what we're determined to to avoid by doing what i just set out by having that that sort of intensive period over the course of the next one to two years of testing making sure we're designing that correctly to address the very concerns that Sir Ian Diamond set out in that in that SAC report so we're determined that no one should fall through the net and we're going to work very closely with the full range of stakeholders to design a system that hopefully delivers that. I hope so too it's certainly you know one of the main drivers of universal credit was a simpler system and I don't know how colleagues feel but it seems remarkably complicated at the moment and I do hope we get there one day. Thank you convener. Okay thank you George Adam. Thank you convener good morning. We're to start we've heard quite a lot here this morning I'll probably go back to the beginning and during Donna Ward's initial statement she said we the DWP believe that universal credit is a really well designed is really well designed now we've had a debate on Tuesday that says the exact opposite of that and this says but you also said Pete Seryl then on to say inward conditionality will be very light touch and then you further added to that by saying very light touch a conditionality regime within the inward scenario now surely these statements surely are these statements with everything that's happened up until now universal credit surely these statements are nonsense because that's not what we've been seeing in the real world surely there is no credibility for the DWP in these statements. On the analysis of inward poverty which we've done quite a lot of I was saying that once we broke down the population in inward poverty the key issues were around one earn a couple's people working part time very low earning self employed and the policy design around universal credit is to try to help all of those households increase their hours so the design of universal credit in terms of having expectations of people unless they are caring to work more including second earners and for people to increase their hours and to be able to move smoothly from out of work into work with smooth incentives to increase their hours that the policy design is all quite consistent with the analysis of the problem of what's driving inward poverty and that was the point that I was making. Problem is that the policy design isn't what's happening in the real world in the real world are people suffering under the current regime and to say that we're going to transfer this migration to those in work you know there's no credibility for the DWP currently as we stand. That's your opinion that's I don't recognise the world you're describing you know and lots of people are talking about these problems I admit we do not get it right every time. I think that you said earlier that you don't recognise that world and you're working actually to admit to be helping these people. I go on to say and Denise will be coming you know I go out to job centres talking to our work coaches talking to claimants you know on a very regular basis I was in a job centre on Monday Denise will do it even more frequently than me actually our work coaches I go on to say a fabulous people really committed to making a positive difference to people's lives they feel very strongly very passionately that the move to universal credit enables them to do that much more effectively than the legacy system I go back do we always get it right know sometimes we we do get it wrong and where we do fail customers we want to hear about it we want to try and put it right as quickly as possible with the great majority of customers I believe we're making a positive difference for sometimes it's quite it's more than sometimes it's the majority of cases that we get are on a negative universal credit if you ask anyone in the public about universal credit they would not come back to you and say it's a well-designed system but moving on from that scenario Mr Serrell said about the fact that we test and learn and it's very light touch you know I would say and I've said before it's more like test and ignore as the systems rolled out but one of the things that we've had you said this time moved on Mr Serrell you then went and said from very light touch you moved on to we have no expectations of people in work so what what does that mean then have you changed your mind during today's discussion or are you not going to have conditionality are you not because you did say we have no expectations of people in work I mean I think I've already said it but I can repeat it so we call the regime light touch conditionality but you know for all the reasons I've set out in practice now we are not expecting our work coaches to have a lot of conversations spend a lot of time helping people in work to progress because we want to increase our evidence base to fill the gaps that your colleague talked about earlier on so we really understand what the benefits could be of different interventions so that we can help people to progress in work and address in work poverty. Mr Serrell the greatest respect we're talking about families in work who are on the current tax credit system who are living on the edge financially how are they going to feel that that's confident that you're just going to say it's going to be very light touch and it's okay the system says problems in the past but it's okay now and it should be okay for you that still goes back to my original question of lacking credibility I disagree if someone's working I feel like I'm increased size for two different things so if someone's working doing the best they can at the moment then you know absolutely I don't think it will concern them particularly that we're letting them progress in work on their own we do want to help them further and that's something we're looking to develop we're looking to test we're looking to to learn and we will implement changes if we think they're appropriate in a number of years time right now we're focusing on helping people to move into work rather than helping them to progress once they're in work that is no different to the current tax credit system so someone's on tax credits they're not given any additional support to progress in work so it's a continuation of the existing system we do want to improve it but we want to make sure we improve it in the right way Mr Seryl finally convener Mr Seryl the whole situation is that you're talking about testing and as my colleague already said these are real people with real lives and you're using them as guinea pigs in a system that you're not that already previously before you go into in-work individuals are working you know that the system has a series flaws you know and you're just carrying on regardless and that's the concerns for these people that we're dealing with it's real people with real lives and real families for me it's about continuous improvement and I you know I firmly believe in all walks of life all systems all people should focus on continuous improvement that's what that's the approach we're taking I think if we or any other department any other agency rolled out a system and said this is perfect we're not changing it then we would write you be criticised what we're doing is rolling something out that we think is good but recognising that everything could be improved and making sure we have that continuous feedback we test we learn we improve that's that's the way we're operating the system desolute and learn ignore no I didn't give you a list of about about 10 things that the governor has changed over the course of the last year doesn't strike me as as ignoring I think a couple of points on universal credit that's really important to understand first universal credit now post budget um cost more is more generous on aggregate than the legacy system it replaces so in 2023 it will cost two billion more pounds we will spend two billion more pounds through universal credit that that is it's a more generous system on aggregate and the other point crucially which I think is really important I imagine the committee will will be concerned about is there are real issues because of the complexity of the current system around take up so lots of people both out of work and in work don't take up all their entitlements universal credit because it's one system you know you claim one thing you get the whole lot will be greatly beneficial to people then ensuring they take up all of their entitlements so that's over two billion a year additional money going to some of the poorest in society because of universal credit who wouldn't get it under the legacy system so some very important positive changes under you for me it's the policy intention and the reality seems to be the gulf that's the point I've been trying to get across a genuine difference of opinion there mr linters just before I moved to you just before I moved to mr linters um I promised um to ask a specific question which I don't expect you to answer you can write to me afterwards if you want but I've held five information events in my constituency so far in relation to the role of universal credit supported by sickness advice supported by local housing associations welfare rights officers and they would positive and get a lot of information to vulnerable people out there but I got a specific question after one of the events from a employment employability and education advisor in one of the community areas and I was going to read it out um as it was the question I asked was about the support available for refugees who have no or scan English these poor souls have to apply for seven jobs a week many while studying esol part time at college with no computer skills we have a couple of refugees participating in our computer classes and for what I have witnessed even with English intermediate level they take twice as long to pick up the vocabulary required to learn and understand computers what supports available for for this group it's a very very specific question but there are people with additional barriers to accessing a digital by default system it could be English as a second language people who have came through the asylum process and now have the right to work and claim benefits in the country it could be the learning disabled it could be a whole variety of others now for time constraints with with your permission I do want to move to mr linters but I promise to ask that very specific question can I get a commitment that we can get a response to that and perhaps Denise horse will if that's no problem if that's okay absolutely I would really welcome that mr linters yes thank you convener I think I think from your answers to questions you recognise there have been various problems and difficulties with with the system and also that it needs to be developed improved and so forth as it's rolled out and as as we move into the future if I understood correctly I just want to come back on one point I think the suggestion was made to that a system like this indeed one with conditionality has never been tried anywhere else in the world now I'm just looking at the the german system for example just the website about that where conditionality seems to be inbuilt into the system now obviously it's not the same as our system and there are other european systems that one could look to where a very different approach to the previous uk approach to benefits is taken are you able to counter the suggestion that conditionality is something that is new on this in this world's understanding of this sort of system I mean it's a very important question absolutely conditionality is is not new and is not unique to to the uk and it's something in this country you know has been very well tried and tested for people who are out of work so you know we've got an awful lot of experience an awful lot of evidence very robust evidence about what what works in terms of conditionality to help people move into work what is not been greatly tested internationally and not been greatly tested here yet is that well what about when people have moved into work but they could work more what you know what could help them to progress what form of conditionality what form of interventions might actually help people to agree that's the thing that I think we do need further evidence on and that we've committed to do further work to investigate before we roll out any further changes and the conditionality that we see in other european systems and indeed the intention of ours is it not to try and help people into work and assist them in their own particular circumstances to agree that should be the goal of it that absolutely should be the goal and that that is the approach that we that we look to take as I said you know the the claimant commitment the work the work coaches are you know really supporting working with forming good positive relationships with the customers they have helping them to progress and you know behind that we do need that backstop I think of of sanctions but it is in a small minority of cases that we need to invoke that the great majority of people the great majority of relationships are very constructive people do what they've committed to and that helps them to move into into work and can I just add to that which is you know this balance of conditionality is also about making sure that the support is there and that we wrap around services so people can progress so conditionality is only an expression of what can you do and it's about trying to test the best that somebody can do if they advise us that there are issues or they've got gaps in their cf or they've got gaps in their skills it's what can we do to um to connect with other services around so Skills Development Scotland I can see in the future and currently we we're very close to them but in the future we'll be a really good source of connectivity for our customers we use them now we use the world of work we have relationships with Skills Development Scotland but I can see that connection for this group of people being very strong okay um Alice Rallon yes thanks it was really just to pick up on some of the the discussion there that came out the questions which Allison Johnson asked about tax credits and obviously this has come through obviously you'll you'll appreciate that it will come as a big surprise to many people who've been receiving tax credits that the system is to be migrated in the future from from HRC as they would see it to DWP so I just wonder if you can offer a rationale for why that having happened that that should be a reason for those people reapplying or in many cases we feel they would have to reapply for the benefits that they got out of the the tax credit system because forgive me but anecdotally dealing as we do with constituents I would reckon that the awareness that this is on the horizon is very low so so what's the rationale for people having to reapply for something they think they already have uh well partly it's a it's a legal rationale so so legally we couldn't just deem someone to have made a claim for for universal credit we can't pay someone universal credit without them having made formally made a claim so that's that's the process we have to initiate through that managed migration um like you know I say again that yes I accept that many people on tax credits now won't really understand uh expect to be moved on to universal credit in in a couple of years time three years time and to be honest many of them might not expect to be on tax credits in two or three years time their circumstances could change quite dramatically what we will commit to do is to make sure we communicate with them early we warm them up at the right time we're clear about what they will have to do what the timescales will be what the process will be and help people to to move across to universal credit in as smooth a way as possible but given that these are people who have have really in many cases well I've had very little um dealing with the benefit system as they would understand it um what modelling has been done to try to assess how many of the current group who would who would benefit from from tax credits would even begin to have any knowledge that this is on the horizon I mean obviously I'm dealing here and others here we admit we're dealing in anecdotes but quite a substantial number of them given our contact that we have with constituents what I'm not hearing is any as yet any evidence that sustained modelling has been done to try to estimate in the UK how many millions of people understand that tax credits are going to become a thing of the past in their present form and that they will have to go through a reapplication process has any study been done of that or any attempt to measure it personally I think what's important is that in two years time in three years time when it becomes time for those people to move across to universal credit that with the right sort of notice they know what they have to do they're aware then not that they're aware two or three or four years ahead of time so our focus for the next two three years is to really make sure we get that process right to make sure we know how we can engage with all those tax credits customers so they do know that they're going to be switched across when they need to know actually it can you know it can alarm people or frighten people unnecessarily if you tell them something's going to happen in two or three years when their circumstances could have changed dramatically so our focus is on getting the process right when we get the process right then we will try and model whether we think some people might fall out of that process how many people might not be aware and to be honest we'll then try and fill that gap by improving the process design rather than accepting that some people will just miss out we don't want anyone to miss out okay thank you okay can i just give a time check for the benefit of our witnesses as well as as MSPs i think it's been quite a long session we're under 20 minutes or so and so far i know our deputy convener wants to come back in as does Michelle Ballantyne so anyone wanting to come in catch my eye time is is gradually running out Pauline McNeill? Just to quickly follow up on Alasdor Allen i have to say i think you're kidding yourselves if you think that people who are in current receipt of tax credit will not be alarmed and i just put this to you for food for thought the reason is that a lot of the people in tax credits and it has been a successful system or maybe you don't think so have not had any engagement with the benefit system at all and don't regard themselves as benefit receivers so there's a fundamental change in the way that people are going to perceive now and the move to the DWP that they regard and i have to say i could sympathise with that because if you've been working hard for 30 years doing your best and getting a little bit of help from the state and now you're told oh by the way you're going to be treated as if you were unemployed and all your benefits all your tax credits will be managed by and you can't even sell this committee with any confidence how you're going to plan for that i just i think that that's a serious concern to me and i would like to put some figures to Donna if you don't mind so these are figures that the committee asked for from spice just to get some i mean they are obviously selective figures and i'll let you have them but they take two key examples so there's a net household incomes after housing costs and childcare costs the first example is of a lone parent with two children aged two and five the national living wage so average house costs as i say a no childcare cost i will give you this i mean you don't have to answer it today but in the cases of someone who worked 12 hours and then 24 hours and then examples now were 40 hours in every single case they are substantially worse off under universal credit by quite a bit and then you take the second example that spice have given is a couple with two children aged two and five in the national living wage so that's a couple not a single learner and there is one case where they are slightly better off and in the other two cases they're the same or lower so the figures that we are being given don't bear out the evidence that you've given us this morning where there are i mean because that is a fair example i think of a family with two children and they're worse off under universal credit and what we've been hearing on warning is how how successful it is so at any response you want to give us would be helpful but perhaps you might want to respond to the committee in time and i'll let you have the actual workings. I was going to hope that you would actually have those figures in front of you but don award could you try to address that? So there definitely are winners and losers so typically families with children are likely to gain if they work relatively few hours i mean the person on 12 hours they ought not to have qualified for tax credits at all i mean i'll obviously have to look at the example so whereas they would qualify for universal credit and then it also depends whether people make use of the childcare offer and other things so there are winners and losers because we're bringing in people into the in-work benefit system even if they only work one or two hours whereas the tax credit system was very much at particular points on the earnings distribution so i'm not surprised there are some losers but there are also some gainers and i'll be really happy to look at those figures and just to reiterate we will be spending more on universal credit than on the legacy system so on average people will gain some people as you say and the significant numbers of people will receive less than they would have done we're happy to work through those cases and other cases to support you i should go back on the point you made at the outset there about tax credit cases and we're not proposing to treat those people as if they are someone who's not complying with their claimant commitment that is out of work we're proposing to treat them with respect help them give them support they need automatically adjust their universal credit without any great need for them to contact us we think it will be a smooth and easy system and that's what we're looking to to make sure is the case so i don't think they need to be scared Pauline I'm happy to hear that Michelle Ballatine okay thank you just to follow up that i should probably mention because Pauline didn't that the figures she gave were based on UC in 2016 so it takes no account of the budget changes and the changes that have been made over the last year and a half in terms of tax credits couldn't you confirm well i'm in a notes case but actually you have to apply for your tax credits every year so it doesn't it isn't just a rolling thing that continues and there is a period where you have to apply and if you miss the deadline it's not renewed and you have to start again so so in reality the change over will be just just a different application and actually on the website for tax credits it clearly states that that will be moving to universal credit so people are being given notice every year at the moment as they as they reapply and as they come to apply so that information is there but i just wanted to ask you a couple of things journals journals are a really important factor of universal credit and there have been some complaints about journals not being answered so so people putting information onto their journals and then it not actually getting a quick response now my understanding is that there should be a response within 48 hours of a journal being placed on there so can you just sort of update the committee what issues you have what is being done to resolve those and and you know what can we expect if we're asking the same question in six months or a year in terms of that performance around journals yes so journals you're right form part of the way that we interact with customers now we advise them to use their journal some of our customers do believe it's web chat you know there is a problem where you know and if somebody's got an urgent issue then they tend to use the journal and then and then pick up the phone to be honest so and we would want them to stay on the digital form if format if we could so at the moment um if i go back six months i would have been saying to you i had some concerns because we were just implementing and actually our resources were behind the curve not in front we're in front of the curve now i was out in my service centres last week and every team are getting through their journals not on a monday monday is a heavy lifting day because we're closed at the weekend people use their journals over the weekend and we also come back to a number of payments so monday is a particular issue for us which we're thinking about at a uk level of how we deal with that monday load um but the rest of the week we should be getting to our journals now that's in the case management system work coaches again it depends upon their um at the point that they're in the rollout the first three months after rollout it's a transformation for them it's you know we've talked about this is different for customers different for them they have to get used to managing their work loads slightly differently so i've got no doubt that unfortunately we probably might have missed a few along the way but three months after that after we've rolled we're normally back on top of it so i'd be concerned if you are finding any examples once we hit march of any significant issues because obviously we're still rolling out you know historical sites you know should be on top of it but new sites might be having a little bit of a problem going through that those early weeks monitor i mean other statistics around that kind of waiting time that 48 hour sort of response time i mean the way we run the business is through team leaders and work coach team leaders so we run it very much about the team leaders have got a set of 10 case managers they are with them every day looking at what they're they have a dashboard so they have a dashboard you've seen a dashboard of information they will look in on every single one of those dashboards and make sure that they're on top if they're not then actually colleagues help around so it's about active management and that's the same with the work coach team leaders okay thank you and the other question i just wanted to touch on was around the childcare element again there's been some concerns around having to pay the childcare up front which can be quite significant if you've got a couple of children that are in in childcare now i know there's a process through the job centres work coach etc of cards where they can they can put their concerns or things that are worrying that you then pass through and look back so i'm i'm just wondering with the childcare how much concern is coming through and is there anything in the pipeline around how we resolve some of that that burden of upfront payment for people it's partly a policy and an operation yeah shall i start with a policy i think that in policy terms my understanding and i'd have to take this away to make absolutely sure is that you know actually we can people pay people a month in advance of them actually moving into work because we recognise that people may have to you know set up childcare arrangements and and get children in in in those childcare arrangements before they've actually started in work so there is that sort of system in place we've also made improvements over the course of the last year or so so that people can automatically upload their childcare costs onto their account so much easier system than was the case before so i think that's the position from a policy perspective and as as you probably know it is more generous than the legacy system so we pay up to 85% of costs up to a limit compared to 70% under tax credits and i think it is a bit of a catch 22 which i will take away i don't know how many jury tickets have been raised sorry these are the tickets that go up nationally i will check um but it is a bit of a catch 22 isn't it which is we want verification but actually you know some childcare providers won't provide verification of cost and to actually the cost is paid so let me have another look at it and see what it's telling us because i think it is an issue for people okay i think we probably should touch on before we close the issue around delayed payments in relation to the the five week wait which is none other than some changes the five week wait in terms of the minimum wait that people have to go through before they receive benefits and the information trust trust gave out just recently in relation to they recognised there was a 15 percent increase in food bank usage but a year after universal credit's been rolled out there was a residual 52 percent overall increase in food bank usage and there was concerns a lot of that was tied towards that minimum five week delay i think this committee previously looked at them for each where it was eight or nine weeks was the delays that were that were that were before i wanted the committee that was been experienced back in the day now there was commitments in the UK budget and by the secretary of state in relation to those in legacy benefits when the transfer over there were a two week follow through of benefits being received which in theory would lead to a three week delay in benefit was it would that be an accurate description of that particular announcement i mean effectively what it would mean i'm not sure what stage job seekers allowance and income support are paid but if we would be paying people two weeks additional benefit in say job seekers allowance um my guess is that would that be paid in advance to these or would that be paid job seekers is paid in reason so effectively that would be paid let's say two weeks into that five weeks and then there's another three week wait before the first universal credit payment comes in which is actually i mean i know you know time is quite important for people on very low incomes but you know they will be waiting another two weeks anyway for the next job seekers allowance so they're used to waiting that sort of length of time um but yes that means that there is that effectively an interim payment of existing legacy benefits before their universal credit kicks in chin what would be a five week wait down to a three week wait for those transferring from legacy benefits was my understanding of the policy intent there not that good it's i should i should add just so you're clear about that yeah yeah so that wouldn't kick in until july 2020 is my understanding so i'm just wondering would you have some concerns in relation to that because obviously that's the right thing to do it's acknowledgement that things aren't working that not kicking to july 2020 means there's been people let down just now by that gap it's additional it's additional support so we're keen to try and help smooth that process as much as possible july 2020 i believe i believe you're right in terms of that timescale we want to do it as early as we possibly can but you know you'll appreciate that it does take time to build up the system changes and other guidance and so on for for work coaches to be able to do that in the interim we do have the changes we've already made so we've still got 100% advances that people can get you know pretty well from from week one to go into that in a second were you wrong footed by that july 2020 announcement because if it was if it was a planned response to issues with the system you guys been good to go and just make that happen so i don't think the Chancellor and the Secretary of State made this change out of the largeson kindness of the UK Government they did it in response to key pressures in relation to what many see as flaws in the universal credit system so i would hope that would be a planned change and if it was a planned change you guys would be good to go on that now and the fact that july 2020 means many folk will be let down by that would you recognise that as a reality and i think you know the Scottish Government will face the same sort of challenges that any other government the UK Government faces you make a decision to make a change it takes time to implement that change effectively so you know the Scottish Government is taking understandably a period of time to implement that the policies it wants to bring in you can't do these things overnight that is that the duration of time it will take us to do it those would be planned changes and i asked the question were you cited on that were you a month ago two months ago three months ago part of a planning process to make this happen i'm just wondering is july 2020 we just plucked out a thing here or what's the reality around that we have we have been developing that policy for a period of time but you know we haven't been developing it for two years so you know we we don't decide something two years ago and then announce it two years later and roll it out the next day we announce it relatively early in that development process and then we implement it don't i'm sorry to interrupt i was going to say it was one of the it it was part of a a package of things that our Secretary of State asked the Treasury for to ease the managed migration so yes we recognise it's also an issue for new claims but it was one of the things that we were specifically looking for to help ease managed migration which is you know will be there for that timing kind of fits in with that but obviously if we could have had it earlier that would have been even better you know if we could have had the money and delivered it earlier that would have been even better but we couldn't so it's unfortunate that we're we can't accelerate that delivery what about the point people would make if this protection is there for people on legacy benefits and it's not there for new claimants why would you have one group wait three weeks and another get wait a minimum of five weeks there's a disparity in inequality there as well in relation to recourse to public funds would you recognise that different circumstances so when you say new claims i presume you'd be you mean new claims from people who aren't currently on benefit most of those people would be coming out of work so actually most of those people will have a final payment from from work that can tide them over for a period of time most work those payments are in arrears so actually their circumstances will generally be very different to the circumstances of people on legacy benefits hence the different treatment that obviously won't won't be forever i'm just trying to get through some of these because it references made at the start opening statement to some of the changes in the budget we haven't really referred to them just before we close this session i understand that one of the issues i raised on the universal credit debate last week was in relation to the the 12 months advance that people could get we we had information that people weren't always told they could get that advance and before they were told about it they were told could you borrow money off of family or friends or anyone else before you got an advance so is there a need to better better train staff or clear guidelines to staff so that people are made aware of their entitlement to an advance at the very point where they need that money rather than saying to them well you know maybe your family members could get help you out here so i can show you convener that all my staff understand what an advance is and also how to offer it but you're right the recourse to public funds as an advance the first question is have you got any other recourse to other funding first but it's not some sort of interrogation it's just a question once somebody says no it's immediately into how to make an advance also somebody sorry so i i apologize but i know some of my constituents and i i apologize for the discourtesy of interrupting you there but i know some of my constituents will who are just not not used to dealing with that system will what will go oh maybe i'll see what i can do and that would be the end of that particular conversation and off they would go these people do exist and that will happen for some vulnerable people so i'm just not sure about that question at the start maybe that's something that has to be reconsidered i mean that is the training and that's the guidance and that's what's been agreed from a departmental point of view so we're only following what we're being asked to do and it's not unreasonable to ask somebody if actually they've got recourse to other funds um what i would say is that it's also online if somebody is digitally able they can apply for it online now immediately so they can fill in those boxes they can say what they want and don't want to inform us about but actually i think it's probably the most simplest system that i've come across in the 40 years that i've been a public servant so you know it is accessible to people both digitally by the phone or through work coaches there might be a disagreement on that and we're allowed to have that disagreement respectfully that that's absolutely fine the the 12 month payback period that we're referring to that's being extended to 16 months 18 16 months yeah but that would so that's obviously an acknowledgement that when people get that advance that the paying it back can be tough because it started off at a six month it had to be paid back over then it was 12 months it's now 16 months it does feel as if it's taking a hell quite really taking a hell to get right what a reasonable repayment period would look like but but that that additional support doesn't kick in until october 2021 why would that be again that's that's a question of how long it takes us to to make the system changes i would say on that pattern of of changes the six months went up to 12 because we were moving from 50 to 100 so that was to keep the the level of of repayments at the same sort of level 16 16 months is a further enhancement of the system it will take us a while to introduce yes i mean were you aware that that announcement was about to happen for the last few months was was that in the pipeline is the same answer as as before yes we've been working on that on that change for a number of weeks straight months and you know it's been announced and now we need to implement it at the earliest possible opportunity seem a pretty lengthy period of time to do something apparently simplest to say pays that money back over 16 months rather than 12 months some of the people having to wait to october 2020 benefit from that do you think you could look again to bring that forward i think that for many people most people probably 12 months will still be the right period you know we don't necessarily want people having a lower income for for too long we'll certainly go back and look at whether there's any way of bringing that in earlier but my advice is actually with all the other changes we've got to do that's the earliest we can realistically do it that's helpful that you look at see we can bring that in earlier can i just ask you with the same consistency then this would be really helpful the july 2020 date to bring in that continuation of two weeks of legacy benefit do you think you could look to exhilarate that and bring that in sooner also i think it's highly unlikely that would be possible because that's a quite a significant change to you know and actually that's not that long a timeframe to make a sort of change of that scale so we're having to change a whole number of systems the legacy systems as well as universal credit to make that change so i wouldn't want to walk away from here leaving you with any expectation that would be possible to accelerate that that time right okay without expectation will you try sorry would i try without any expectation will you at least try well i can go back and ask the question but i am very confident that when the chancellor and the secretary of state announced that timetable they had thought long and hard about how quickly we could implement it and that was the date they thought it was you know the earliest possible sensible and safe date so i sincerely doubt that there's any way me asking them would would actually get them to change i might say diplomatically the chancellor the secretary of state i've got fluctuating timetables in relation to the whole issue of universal credit and the rollout that seems to be a movable feast but i'm conscious that i said the session was going to come to a close i should point out that Shona Robison MSP has not been able to join us for much of this morning's session because of quite significant issues in relation to the Michelin plant where there could be a looming closure so i'm not going to finish just now Shona do you have any questions you want to ask just before we move on from this session thanks Kavira that would be really helpful my apologies for having to to leave earlier i did want to ask something which i understand hasn't been asked so far about the the tax credit cases where there's obviously been a delay in moving them across and it was two specific questions one on because people on tax credits are going to have to apply so some of them won't know anything about this that they're obviously dealing with the HMRC not the DWP a lot of them will not know that this is coming and the fact that as i understand that they will have to apply for universal credit is there an assumption of an attrition rate there that have you and your modelling assumed that there will be a certain percentage of of those cases that don't apply for universal credit we did get into this a little bit earlier my answer was we're working really hard over the course of the next two years as we've built up our plans around making those those transitions from tax credits to universal credit to make sure everyone does know everyone knows what the process is and if they do want to claim universal credit they don't have to that's a choice but if they do that they do so so you know we're we're planning for a zero percent attrition rate that's our our determined objective as we move forward and as we get closer you know we may think realistically a certain proportion of people will hopefully for choice rather than for for any failure on our part not take up universal credit when they previously would have taken up tax credits we might then build that into our modelling but that's for much later in the process rather than something we do now right now we want to plan for success are you writing to them to let them know this is happening we'll write to them a number of months before they're due to transfer so so that the large-scale migration from tax credits to universal credit won't start until november 2020 and it will then carry on well that migration as a whole will carry on for around three years so many months before that before the individual is due to transfer we will write to them we want to give them suitable notice but not so much notice that they've forgotten by the time it gets there i know one of the issues that the moment is the regulations are being looked at around transitional protection and we have explored a little bit in the evidence previously around the need for those regulations to recognise particular circumstances and have an element of discretion so obviously transitional protection would exist to guarantee someone's income unless there's a change of circumstances there's obviously concerns about what those change of circumstances may be so for example someone fleeing domestic abuse we wouldn't want them in a position of being concerned to do that if it was going to then impact on their income so the regulations as they're being drafted are those the kind of issues that are being looked at around the drafting to make sure that there would be discretion in those kinds of cases the regulations are now they've been laid before the UK Parliament so they were laid on on Monday so they those are the regulations they will be debated and we'll see what the UK Parliament makes of those it doesn't include that sort of provision in those sorts of cases someone's circumstances would have changed quite dramatically certainly we wouldn't want to encourage to do anything that would lead someone to stay in a relationship that they shouldn't stay in i would hope that our processes wouldn't deal with wouldn't cause that sort of problem what we talked about earlier on is the fairly intensive support and training that we give to our people to make sure they're alive to domestic abuse issues and they can help people address those and connect them with people who are more expert to help them in the local community i can understand the concern though here that you know if the message is a change of circumstance could disrupt your transitional protection arrangements i think it's really important that people are aware that they can have those types of discussions and that they're not making choices based on the worry about losing that so could you undertake to take that back and make sure that whether it's in guidance or you know that there's clear that that claimants are clear that you know that if there are circumstances like that that they have the right to and that some and that would be looked at sympathetically i think communication around this is really important yeah no it is a very important issue and i think i may have slightly misunderstood your your question like because i was answering it in terms of people before they've been managed migrated so before they've got transitional protection in place you know actually i will need to check this but my understanding is that we have looked at that case of you know once people have a family unit have migrated across transitional protection is in payment then we will do things to try and make sure that that is in some way protected if you know generally a wife feels they have to leave because of domestic abuse then that is something i believe that we have addressed but i do need to check that that is the clarification about that please because that'd be helpful thank you thanks okay um that's us for this particular evidence session it's been lengthy evidence session we've covered a lot of ground and we're very appreciative at the information you've given us if if you go away and you think oh what he clarifies something we'd love you just to correspond with the committee and update us i know the resource well i can i put you on the spot a little bit about one one particular issue we haven't really explored some of the additional barriers in relation to people with english the second language or learning disabilities or other disabilities and using the digital by default system and there are significant challenges there's anything you can provide in relation to that would would be very welcome but more generally just thank you for your openness and frankness in helping us come grasp how we are going to draw our conclusions in relation to how social security in work poverty relates to each other so thank you all of you for your time this morning and we now move to agenda item three thank you which is a subordinate legislation and the committee is invited to consider the council tax reduction scotland amendment number three regulations 2018 which are subject to a to a negative procedure can i refer members to paper three a note by our clerk the dplr committee drew the regulations the attention of the parliament on the grounds of a drafting error which has been acknowledged by the scottish government and a correction will be made early in the new year the dplr committee also repeated their view that the instrument raised a devolution issue is highlighted previously with council tax reduction instruments the committee's role is to consider the policy and the committee is invited to note the instrument in noting the committee may wish to support the dplr committee's view that if the scottish government assesses that the drafting error could have could have some unintended effects it would be preferable to bring forward an amendment to correct the error promptly given the provisions come into force in the 28th of november is the committee content to highlight the dplr committee's view and note the instrument are we agreed to do that your silence and your silent enthusiasm is noted for the record right okay so thank you so as we agreed agenda item one when i moved to agenda item four which we've previously agreed to take in private so when i move into private session