Responding to MPs’ Queries: DWP Performance

Debate between Peter Grant and Guy Opperman

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) on securing this debate on a very important issue. I assure him that the Government take this issue extremely seriously, and that does not just apply to the Department for Work and Pensions; all parts of Government take the issue of Members’ correspondence on behalf of their constituents very seriously, and in the DWP we certainly do.

I want to start with two preliminary comments before I get to the nuts and bolts of the hon. Member’s important speech. First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) on his recent election and pass on the Government’s congratulations to him; I look forward to seeing him at Prime Minister’s Question Time tomorrow. Although this is a Scottish debate, it is only right, when we have an opportunity at the Dispatch Box, to congratulate the England football team and the England cricket team on their triumphs in Qatar and Pakistan respectively. We should not forget the beating that we hope to hand out to Monsieur Macron and his fellow Frenchmen on Saturday.

The hon. Member for Glenrothes is right to have high expectations of responses to communications that are submitted to the Department for Work and Pensions. As I will set out, in the vast majority of cases the DWP sends out timely replies. However, I accept and understand the frustration that all Members of Parliament, whether Government or Opposition, feel when the Department has not responded in the right way. We have worked constructively with Members on many occasions, and I am proud to serve in a Department with tens of thousands of people who are doing a fantastic job to deliver an awful lot of public services across this great country. In total for 2022-23, Department for Work and Pensions support and services represent £224 billion of public money, which is 9% of all GDP. That reflects the enormous force for good that the Department for Work and Pensions is and, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) set out, the energy and efforts of thousands of DWP colleagues every single day to support people up and down the country, to change and improve lives. We should put on record our thanks for their sterling efforts.

I want to turn to covid, because many of the problems that the hon. Member for Glenrothes rightly identifies date back to the pandemic. We saw the degree of support that the Department gave during the pandemic, with enhanced universal credit to literally millions of extra people and masses of extra work coaches coming in, and there is unquestionably a context for why some of the hotlines were subject to cessation or have taken a while to come back. If he gives me a minute or two, I will explain why.

We rightly focused during the pandemic on ensuring that we got the right support to those who needed it quickly. That included, for example, responding effectively to the doubling of universal credit claims across the country and helping people to move back into work following the pandemic. We also had to make operational decisions, which ultimately are made by Ministers but fundamentally are made by the operational teams that run big Departments such as the DWP. A significant number of colleagues who would ordinarily be handling complaints and MP correspondence were redeployed to essential frontline services.

As part of that, the Department took the decision to temporarily suspend the retirement services hotline, while the disability services hotline was redirected to an answer machine, which was checked, and there was no change to the child maintenance hotline. To ensure that the Department continued to deliver a complaints service during this time, we brought all remaining complaints handlers together into one new centralised DWP complaints team. We also introduced a triage process that allowed us to prioritise complaints from our most vulnerable customers and those relating to payments. The centralisation of the complaints service meant that working-age and universal credit complaints teams were no longer aligned to individual districts. That may potentially have had an impact on any local arrangements between complaints team and MPs. However, the focus at that time was simply on supporting frontline delivery in the middle of a pandemic, with all the complications of running public services with the attendance of staff at that stage.

Following the pandemic, we have slowly but surely returned the handling of complaints and correspondence to service delivery areas, which has seen greater accountability and ownership and allows complaints and correspondence to be investigated by specialist complaints teams. The Department has also improved signposting on the w4mp website, which enables parliamentary staff to find the right contacts for general and case specific inquiries, and to direct complaints to a dedicated mailbox.

I will try to deal with the assertions made about MP hotlines. We now operate a number of dedicated MP hotlines in relation to child maintenance services, which continues; disability services, such as personal independence payment and disability living allowance queries; and retirement services, enabling people to raise issues on the state pension, pension credit or winter fuel payments.

Last month, we started a three-month trial of an MP hotline for queries relating to working-age benefits. This is available from 9 am to 4 pm, Monday to Friday, with a voicemail facility available outside those hours. As part of the trial, we will assess the demand for the service and ensure that it meets the needs of hon. Members and is sustainable for the Department. I assure the hon. Gentleman that his representations—most robustly made—have been taken on board about the degree to which he believes there is a demand.

We are also developing a dedicated universal credit hotline for MPs. System testing is under way and we hope to have the line up and running shortly. All MP hotlines are regularly checked during operating hours and calls from Members are answered directly or a voicemail message can be left that will be picked up and responded to as soon as possible.

The hon. Gentleman raised MP hotlines in particular, but I will briefly address other forms of communication, because this debate is about all correspondence and responses. In terms of written correspondence, as he probably knows, the Cabinet Office publishes guidance that sets out the principles that Departments must follow when handling correspondence from Members of this House, as well as peers, Members of the devolved Parliaments or Assemblies and members of the public. That includes performance response times for responding to correspondence—specifically, a timeframe of up to 20 working days.

In 2021, the Department received a total of 7,116 pieces of correspondence from Members, about 70% of which were responded to within 20 working days. The latest data from quarter 2 of this year shows that about two thirds of the correspondence received was responded to within that timeframe.

[Peter Grant]

Can the Minister clarify exactly what “responded to” means? All MPs—certainly everyone who has been an Opposition MP—will have had responses from Ministers that do not tell them anything. Does he mean a response that actually provides information or does an email that simply says, “Thank you for your email” count as a response within 20 working days?

Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Peter Grant and Guy Opperman

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

[Peter Grant]

[Guy Opperman]

Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Peter Grant and Guy Opperman

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

I gather that we have a possible vote in the House, so I will attempt my entire response in 10 minutes. Before I do so, it is right that, on behalf of the entire Committee, I thank you for chairing the Committee, Ms Ghani. As the former ports and shipping Minister, and in a month when we celebrate the first female Royal Navy captain, some might argue that you are a well-qualified captain to keep what is—let us be honest—a motley crew in order. If you run for Speaker, Ms Ghani, I will definitely be supporting you.

Let me discuss what clause 2 does and does not do. It creates a power to make a loan to the board of the Pension Protection Fund, following the decision of 6 November 2020 in the case of the PPF v. Dalriada. It achieves that by inserting a new section into the Pensions Act 2004 to provide the Secretary of State with a power to loan money to the board of the PPF.

I think it is fair to point out to the Committee that the clause deals with matters that are predominantly––almost entirely––to do with 2010 to 2014. Many would wish to make this a case about pension freedoms, when in fact pension freedoms post-dated these matters. It is clearly a serious and important matter, and, following a court decision, the Government have accepted the entirety of that decision.

The practical reality is that the Fraud Compensation Fund has assets of £26.2 million, and the potential liability arising from the court judgment is £350 million. I accept that points have been made in respect of how the loan is to be repaid in the longer term and I will address that, but I shall now turn briefly to the amendments.

Amendment 3 seeks an impact assessment. With great respect to the Members who tabled that request, it is utterly unnecessary. It is, in fact, precluded by the decision of the House on section 22 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, of which I am sure Members are acutely aware. It states that impact assessments are not required in respect of levies or other such charges in these particular circumstances.

Secondly, the clause is implementing a court judgment.

[Peter Grant]

Will the Minister clarify his last comment? Did he say that impact assessments are not required or that they are not permitted? Surely, if they are not required, we can still ask for one if we think it would be useful.

[Guy Opperman]

That is a very fair question that I shall attempt to answer while I am on my feet, but I believe that it is not required. Section 22 of the 2015 Act excludes impact from the definition of regulatory provision, so I believe that it is an exclusion rather than a requirement. If I am wrong in any way, I shall write to the hon. Gentleman and correct myself. I may be corrected while I am on my feet, although in the brave new world of covid, that is quite difficult, as I am sure that he understands.

Clearly, if we were to do an impact assessment at this time, it would fundamentally delay the implementation of payment to members, and the blunt truth is that the PPF will run out of money by October if we do not progress this legislation. The levy increase will be consulted on post the passing of this Bill. It will need consultation, regulations and debate in the usual way.

Amendment 5 would also delay the progress of this matter. The Government will respond to the Work and Pensions Committee, to which I gave detailed evidence, before the end of the summer term. The full response of the Government in respect of all matters relating to such scams will be made before the end of term. We are already progressing Project Bloom and there is the work of the Money and Pensions Service that was introduced by my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in the previous Act that we worked on. We have produced section 125 of the Pension Schemes Act 2021, which Her Majesty signed on the dotted line in early February, and the consequential transfer regulations that we have consulted on over the past month to ensure that pension scams are prevented on an ongoing basis.

I have been asked to address other matters. It is clear that Ministers are engaging with various organisations, including Google and Facebook. The two of us have made our views very clear to those organisations about how they should regulate themselves. I agree that Pension Wise should be used more but, with great respect, I disagree with the Chair of the Select Committee’s proposal for the many good reasons that I outlined in the debates on Report and Third Reading of the 2021 Act. Clearly the work that we are doing jointly with the Treasury and other organisations, including the FCA, on stronger nudges towards using Pension Wise and other things will make a massive difference.

On amendment 6, there is already an annual report. In true Chamberlain style, I have it here in my hand: the annual report of the Pension Protection Fund, which is published every July. I know, Ms Ghani, that you will have read the most recent version, and will be looking forward with bated breath to the July 2021 report, which will specifically address the issues whose importance today’s witness made very clear.

In those circumstances, I invite hon. Members not to press their amendments.