COMMENCEMENT AND TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS (Hansard, 10 April 1974)

§ Sir B. Rhys Williams
I beg to move Amendment No. 11, in page 23, line 24, after 'dates', insert: 'not later than 3rd June 1974'. I was tempted to raise the point which I wish now to raise in an earlier debate concerning the facilities available for more frequent upratings than the Government propose, but I think it is proper for me to stick to my amendment and make my remarks at this point.
I am concerned because every time a big increase in pensions is announced we have to explain to pensioners that, although we are doing everything possible, it will be weeks before the benefit can be introduced. I am humiliated that 596 no Government seem to be able to tackle the administrative problem of bringing the national insurance system up to date so that we can get the benefits of living in the computer age. There may also be questions here about the necessity to keep the increase in national insurance pension back until we can bring the supplementary benefits into payment at the same time.
I should like to hear from the Minister, and the Committee is entitled to know, whether the delay until 22nd July in the payment of the national insurance benefit at the higher rate is necessary in order to give time to allow supplementary benefit to be brought into line, whether it is the other way round or whether the same amount of time is necessary to adapt the basic pension and supplementary benefit. I have the impression that where supplementary benefit is concerned there is obviously an element of case work, and, therefore, it might be that the whole system is being kept to this grinding and humiliating delay by the supplementary benefit aspect. I do not know whether that is the case.
I remember going with an all-party group of Members to Brussels a number of years ago. Brussels was probably selected by the computer company which sponsored our visit because it was the nearest and most convenient point for Members to go to spend a day and return the same day; but I believe that very much the same system could have been seen in France, Germany and other continental countries.
What we saw in Belgium, however, convinced me that if we were prepared to install modern machinery we would be able to get rid of this humiliating delay and our pensioners would be able to get the benefit of increases decided on by Parliament in a much shorter time—probably a fortnight at most. That is the system that operates in Belgium. We had assurances there from the officials managing the machines that if they were given the new rates of benefit at the end of one month they could have them in payment within about a fortnight—say, by about the middle of the following month. When we went there, they were about to introduce their third uprating of that year.
It must not be thought that the Belgian system is so simple that it is just a matter 597 of percentage increases. They have the same sort of historical anomalies and built-in exceptions as we have. Even if our system is more complicated and we have seven times the number of pensioners, once one has a machine which will handle this sort of problem—it is called up to do the same work each time there is an uprating—adaptations can be put into effect much more quickly.
What are we waiting for? It crosses my mind, but it is an unworthy thought on which I shall not place emphasis, that if machines of this kind were introduced hastily in government there might be redundancies and that there may therefore be pressures not to introduce them. I am most sympathetic to those made redundant by the introduction of machines, but there is a national interest here, and I believe that the Government need to look at this matter again.
If the nub of the matter is not that there is resistance to machines but that the system we use is in some way ill-adapted to the use of machines, let Ministers put their minds to adapting the system so that we can get the benefit of machinery. We should not have to go through this humiliation again and again whereby every time we raise pensions we are unable to implement the increase for weeks because so much work has to be done in the Department.
I am certain that the right hon. Lady is sincere in saying she has done everything possible to get the payments made as soon as possible. I am certain that the officials are doing their utmost. Granted their administrative methods, and granted the machinery which we employ and the system which we have to operate, I am certain they are all doing their utmost to get the benefit we want the pensioners to have to the pensioners as quickly as possible.
But there is something wrong here and we cannot go on like this. Senior civil servants are more and more wont to grumble about this country, saying that it is becoming ungovernable. I often think that when people have a grumble they should ask themselves why. I urge senior people in the Treasury, at the Elephant and Castle and in the other big Departments which have to do with the cash relationship between the individual and the State, that if they are 598 finding that there is increasing resentment, non-co-operation and misunderstanding of what they are doing on the part of the public they should ask themselves "Why?". They should find out whether they are really using the best possible systems, machines and administrative methods. If they are not, they should have the humility to invest in new machines at once.

§ Mr. Robert C. Brown
The hon. Gentleman has perhaps put the cart before the horse in dealing with the subject of supplementary benefits before that of pensions. There are 5 million benefit cases, including supplementary benefit cases, which have to be uprated individually by clerical action, and staffing resources are not available to do this sort of thing by 3rd June. The retirement and widows' pension books are produced by computer, and uprating in the week commencing 3rd June would necessitate over 4½ million additional order books being produced within a period of four weeks. This would be in addition to the production of 2 million normal books in the same period, and would not be within the capacity of the order book production machinery. Uprating earlier than 3rd June would further exacerbate the problem.
Apart from the practical impossibility of uprating from 3rd June, there is the substantial hazard that if any uprating date earlier than 22nd July were to be substituted the normal payment machinery for pensions and benefits could well break down. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would want that.
Because the computer does not keep a detailed record of past payments of retirement and widows' pensions there is no possibility of back-dating the increased payments on the computer. All benefits are affected by a change of circumstances, and to pay arrears of the increase clerically within a reasonable time scale would be administratively impossible. The administrative costs of uprating on 3rd June cannot be sensibly estimated without major decisions having to be taken about the short cuts that would be necessary. They would clearly be very considerable.
11.45 p.m.
The hon. Gentleman referred to other countries and the fact that they could uprate, and he referred particularly to 599 Belgium. There are two basic factors which govern this situation. First, other countries' schemes are not so comprehensive, and in particular they do not have the equivalent of our national supplementary benefit scheme in which payments are tailored to individual needs and in which changes in the amount of other benefits have to be taken into account when the new amount payable is to be assessed. That is one of the major difficulties.
The uprating is being carried out in 17 weeks which, in itself, any fair minded Member of the Committee will agree, is a reasonable achievement. I emphasise what my right hon. Friend has said more than once in the House and elsewhere. It is made possible only by tremendous and arduous team work of the staff of the Department of Health and Social Security, to whom we in this Committee should be extremely grateful.

§ Sir B. Rhys Williams
The Minister must not imply that I am not grateful to the people who are doing their utmost to operate the present system. Of course I am grateful, and the pensioners will be particularly grateful, too. But Ministers must take it on themselves to look at the system.
The Minister implied that the book system which has been in use for many years in this country is the final solution and that there can be no other. There are plenty of other ways of making cash payments, particularly on a repetitive basis. The hon. Gentleman might think of coming to the rescue of the Post Office Giro and making use of that. If he has a prejudice against the Giro he might think of other methods of making cash transfers by machinery. It is not necessary to use manual methods to implement routine payments. The Department must modernise its ideas. We cannot tolerate the present situation any longer.
The Minister has not convinced me that the Department is really up to date in its cash transfer methods. I hope he will bear this debate in mind and see that something is done tomorrow morning to modernise the whole approach to this administrative problem.

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe
Briefly, I wish to lend my support to the approach enunciated by my hon. Friend the Member 600 for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams). I have a strong and growing impression that if in 10, 15 or 20 years' time people look back on the massive administrative conservatism with which the national insurance scheme has been administered over the years and contemplate the paper-shuffling, book—distributing systems to which we have been wedded for so long, they will be astonished and amazed that we have adhered to this system for as long as we have.
The points made by my hon. Friend deserve to be considered very closely. I have often contemplated this matter, and I simply do not believe that it is necessary, in the kind of society in which we live, to have this massive employment of manual labour and drudgery that is woefully inefficient and expensive and does not serve the best interests of the beneficiaries in this country. I say that in no tendentious way because I am sure that this feeling is shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I hope the Government will pursue the point.