Benefits system is 'mystifying'
The benefits system is confusing and stressful for service users, say charities.
The comments were made by people working with benefit recipients, at a work and pensions select committee meeting on Monday.
The panel of MPs questioned six people on issues such as efficiency, experience of clients and possible improvements to investigate decision-making and appeals in the benefit system.
Dr Mark Baker, head of social research and policy at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, said: ‘The first point of contact between the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] and the client is sometimes the form.
‘It is the first part of the journey [to getting benefits] and it is mystifying. From then on it just gets more mystifying still.’
He also said cases ended up in appeals because ‘people were not making the right decisions in the first place’.
MP Joan Humble was concerned the tribunal system - where people go when they appeal – was too formal for some claimants.
Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, responded: ‘The mental health awareness levels of staff, particularly providers and through the tribunal system … does not recognise these are very, very stressful circumstances for people.’
Daphne Hall, welfare rights adviser at Bristol council, talking about the whole system, said one of the ‘most shocking things’ was ‘no client is being told “you are being scored points on this”’.
‘Why are they going to give the right information if they are not told the way they are being assessed?’ she asked.
The panel heard people do not know the difference between reconsiderations – asking the department to reconsider a decision before an appeal– and appeals.
Alan Barton, social policy officer at Citizens Advice, also said there was a ‘focus on the appeal process’ and ‘one of the reasons [DWP] keep losing appeals [is it does not] have any processes as an organisation where they learn from that’. He also believed: ‘The decision makers need to be encouraged to look more widely at a series of information.’
Chair of the committee MP Terry Rooney finished the session saying on average about 3 to 4 per cent of benefit decisions are appealed.
The committee announced it would look into decision-making and appeals in the benefits system in July this year. The oral evidence could take several months before a report is presented to the House of Commons.
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Readers' comments (3)
St Alban | 28/10/2009 2:46 pm
How to access benefits:
Approach a civil servant to obtain the required form and have it initiated.
Send the completed form, and required enclosures, to another civil servant.
Yet another (or even a team) of civil servants will process and assess the application.
Another civil servant will officially adjudicate the decision.
If it is turned down, you can ask all of the above civil servants to do their work again.
Failing that you can appeal to another civil servant who will set up a panel of civil servants to consider the matter before instructing another civil servant to tell you their decision.
If you eventually gain a payment, it will be processed by a civil servant and sent to you.
Periodically further civil servants will require being fed regular pieces of paper that they can use to repeat the process to ensure you remain entitled.
How much could be saved if all of the above papershuffling was replaced by a fair living allowance paid to all. But then I can not see the civil servant charged with making such a decision to implement a cost effective process would ever agree, at least not without several years of a few thousand colleagues giving it their fullest consideration for filing!
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kass | 28/10/2009 5:25 pm
C Webb | Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:46 GMT...
and of course the many times applications are lost, or never received, etc. etc.
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Ged Quayle | 29/10/2009 1:25 pm
part of the problem is it's an old system now, it's been layered on and fiddled with for decades and you have lord knows how many systems clashing. There are all sorts of weasel tricks you can use to play them off against each other - IS premiums and HB anyone? AA and disability premium?
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