HC Deb 01 August 1984 vol 65 cc372-9 12.31 pm
Mr. David Lambie (Cunninghame, South)

I do not apologise to the Minister for Social Security for interrupting his holiday plans and bringing him to the House to answer this Adjournment debate.

Since this case started in Easter 1981 I have been in contact with two previous Ministers for Social Security, the present Minister of State, Department of Transport, and the present Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security. With rumours of an imminent Government reshuffle, I did not want to lose the present Minister while he is still in the dock. After having been on this case for three and a quarter years, I did not want to waste another six months waiting for the new Session of Parliament.

The decision of the social security commissioner in the case of my constituent Karen Craig justifies all the arguments that I first put to the present Minister's two predecessors, personally and by letter. Unfortunately, neither was prepared to intervene. Now, over three years later and at enormous cost to public funds, I have been proved correct. Karen Craig has won a three-year battle to confirm her entitlement to supplementary benefit after she left school on 24 April 1981 but returned to take her Scottish certificate of education examinations.

This case followed a series of contradictory rulings by local tribunals on three constituents of mine who were former pupils at Ravenspark academy in Irvine and who left school on the same day. When their cases were heard at Kilmarnock and Ayr, Karen Craig and Martin Porter were refused social security payments. Karen was allowed to appeal to the social security commissioner. Mr. J. G. Mitchell, giving his decision on 23 October 1981, said: This application"— that of Karen Craig— raises a point of law upon which leave of appeal can properly be granted. Martin Porter, however, was refused leave to appeal. The commissioner in his case, Mr. Douglas Reith, on 22 April 1982, said that his appeal does not raise any relevant question of law. I have decided to refuse the application. In the third case, my constituent Stephen Russell won his hearing before the local tribunal and was awarded social security. I represented each of those constituents at the local tribunal hearings and put their cases for them. Although identical cases, there were different decisions in each.

The chief supplementary benefits officer, Mr. Allan Palmer, wanted to challenge the award to Stephen Russell, but changed his mind. Stephen received his cheque six months after the local hearing. Indeed, Stephen telephoned me one Saturday morning to thank me, and he told me that he had received what he described as a substantial Girocheque". He said that he had won his case. I replied, "That is strange. I have received no notification to that effect. My last information was that the chief benefits officer intended to appeal to the social security commissioners".

Stephen received that Girocheque with no security note attached and with no explanation of what it was for. By deduction, we realised that he had won his case. To be fair to the then Minister, he apologised to me personally. I can only hope that he shot a few people in London in the department concerned.

On 5 April, Mr. A. E. Arthur, on behalf of the chief benefits officer, made a submission to the social security commissioner. He submitted: That the local Tribunal in the case of Karen Craig should have referred the question whether she was entitled to child benefit to the local Insurance Officer. In not doing so, the Tribunal erred in law, thus, their decision should be set aside. On that point—when I again represented Karen Craig before the commissioner's hearing in Edinburgh—the commissioner, Mr. J. G. Mitchell, adjourned a decision on Karen's appeal and sent the matter back to the local national insurance tribunal in Kilmarnock to decide whether Karen's mother had been wrongly paid child benefit. After two meetings of the local tribunal in Kilmarnock, a unanimous decision was reached that child benefit had been wrongly paid to Mrs. Craig in respect of her daughter.

As I pointed out, this all started in Easter 1981. After two years, we were back again before a local tribunal, to be told that Mrs. Craig had been wrongly paid child benefit. We won that case, and luckily, on the basis of that decision, the social security commissioner decided to grant social security to Karen. If that commissioner had not accepted that Karen was entitled to social security, I should have been in the unenviable position of advising Mrs. Craig to appeal on the basis that she had been illegally paid child benefit. In other words, I should have had to have said, "You won the case, but you must pay the money back."

From this short history, I hope the Minister will agree that the benefit and appeal system concerning the interplay of supplementary benefit and child benefit regulations is a shambles. How could commissioner Douglas Reith have ruled that Martin Porter's case did not raise any relevant question of law and refuse him permission to appeal when another commissioner, Mr. J. G. Mitchell, had ruled that the appeal raised a point of law upon which leave to appeal could properly be granted?

I know that both appeals were similar, as I wrote and presented them myself. The wording was identical in each case. The benefits officer, Mr. A. E. Arthur, confirmed on 5 April 1982 the opinion of commissioner J. G. Mitchell, when he wrote that the local supplementary benefit tribunal had erred in law in even hearing the case in the first place.

I remind the House that all this started in the summer of 1981. Throughout the tribunal hearings that I attended a secretary to the tribunal was present to advise members of the tribunal. There were representatives of the benefits officer to put the case against granting social security to my constituent. Yet no one mentioned at any of those tribunal hearings the opinion that was put forward in April 1982 by the representative of the chief benefits officer in London.

I hope that the Minister will agree, based on that evidence, that commissioner Douglas Reith should be sacked, if he is still in office. I do not know whether he is still there, but he should be sacked before he can do any more damage. An investigation should be carried out into the office of the chief benefits officer in London to explain why it took him from the end of April 1981 to 5 April 1982 to decide that these cases should not have been heard in the first place by a supplementary benefits tribunal, but by a national insurance tribunal.

The cases show an element of collusion between insurance and benefits officers to prevent justice being given to claimants. The problem starts at local level, at the local DHSS office in Oban, and ends in London at the DHSS.

I ask the Minister for an assurance that social security will be paid to my constituent Martin Porter, who was refused the right to appeal to the social security commissioner by Mr. Douglas Reith. I also ask the Minister, in view of the commissioner's decision in the case of Karen Craig, which the DHSS does not intend to appeal against according to the press, to review all the cases of young people in Scotland who left school at Easter in 1981, 1982, 1983 and this year and claimed social security but whose applications were turned down by local benefit officers. I should like the Minister to start with the cases of my constituents in Oban and to deal with the local DHSS office.

I am asking the DHSS to re-open the files on thousands of young social security claimants who have been illegally refused social security payments. I am further strengthened in my appeal to the Minister by the recent ruling in the High Court by Mr. Justice Woolf, who upheld a case against a Social Security Minister for refusing to repay money to claimants whose benefit had been wrongly cut.

Finally, I hope that the Minister, if he is still here after the Cabinet reshuffle, will listen more to Members of Parliament than to the legal advisers at the DHSS in London. When one is dealing with cases in Scotland and the Scottish education system, as the Minister knows from his background in education, there is a totally different system and examination system from that prevailing in England and Wales. It is unfortunate that English people who have been trained in the English education system take decisions that vitally affect those who have been brought up and trained in the Scottish education system. In those respects, someone like myself, with a background in education before coming to the House, should be listened to more by Ministers.

I hope that the Minister will assure me today that my constituents will receive money from the DHSS and can take a decent holiday in the near future.

12.44 pm
The Minister for Social Security (Dr. Rhodes Boyson)

I must say at the outset to the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie) that I certainly listen to hon. Members, who write to me regularly. There is no shortage of correspondence coming into my Department. Whenever an hon. Member has a constituency problem that he would like to discuss with me, I am always willing to fix an appointment within two or three days. It is vital to do so because hon. Members know their constituents, and the areas that they represent.

The hon. Gentleman has raised an important matter, in which he has clearly taken a close personal interest over a considerable period. He has clearly used up much time and effort.

Mr. Lambie

Without pay.

Dr. Boyson

The hon. Gentleman says that he has worked without pay. I shall put that on the record from the Government Benches too. There will be a new coalition of those working without pay on this case.

I can well understand the hon. Gentleman's frustration at the long and cumbersome appeal process with which he and his constituents have had to contend. I applaud his persistence in the face of heavy odds. I pay tribute here and now to a former member of my own profession.

Before I deal with the complex details of the particular cases that have been raised today, some of which we shall continue to consider, I should like to outline the basic principles governing school leavers' benefit entitlements. I shall first deal with the Government's intentions.

It is a basic principle of the supplementary benefits scheme that young people up to the age of 19 are treated as dependent on their parents until they have completed their full-time education. These young people cannot claim supplementary benefit in their own right, but child benefit and other appropriate dependency benefits are payable to their parents.

The point at which full-time education comes to an end is often difficult to identify. Prior to the reform of the supplementary benefits scheme in 1980, it was the custom to pay supplementary benefit as soon as a young person stated that he had finished his studies and was prepared to take employment.

This proved to be a difficult system to operate fairly, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will appreciate. Many youngsters do not make firm plans for the future until they know their examination results in the summer. Others claim benefit for holiday pocket money even though they fully intend to return to school after the holidays.

These arrangements were difficult to administer and we decided that it would be better simply to continue to treat young people as dependent on their parents until the end of the holidays following their final term at school. The Department's current system, therefore, enables young school leavers to begin claiming from three fixed dates corresponding with the end of the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. I recognise, with the hon. Gentleman, that this can cause some awkward problems. It is generally true to say that young people continuing in education receive less by way of benefit support than those who have left school and are unemployed. The distinction is particularly sharp when one compares the youngster who completes his education at Easter with the youngster who returns to school the following term to sit examinations in May or June who is consequently unable to claim supplementary benefit until September. This is the sort of incentive problem that we are considering carefully in the review of benefit support for children and young people that I am chairing.

For today we must concentrate on the rules as they are, and their impact on young people like the hon. Member's constituent, Miss Craig. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman knows every detail of the case far better than I shall ever do. Perhaps I can put in the paragraph headings and he can fill in the details of the case. Miss Craig stopped attending school at Easter 1981. When she claimed supplementary benefit at the end of the Easter holidays, she explained that she meant to sit some Scottish certificate of education examinations the following term.

For benefit purposes, the position is that, where a young person is following an examination course, she is not normally considered to have completed her education until she has sat her final examination. There may be a period of interruption when she does not attend for a few weeks, but it is only when the examinations are over that the course is complete.

I recognise that this may appear rather harsh if a youngster has left school at Easter in the expectation of finding a job, is unsuccessful, and then discovers that if she returned to sit an examination she would be likely to lose her entitlement to supplementary benefit for several months. But I must ask the hon. Member to consider the difficulties of an alternative system.

If we were to allow examination candidates who stop attending school at Easter to claim supplementary benefit, we should be creating a positive financial incentive for youngsters to stop away from school for the final few weeks before their examinations. At current benefit rates, the difference would be between £6.50 child benefit payable to the parents, and £16.50 supplementary benefit in the youngster's pocket. To create this kind of temptation would, to the Department's mind, be highly irresponsible.

The hon. Gentleman is an ex-member of the teaching profession.

Mr. Lambie

The Minister is just repeating the arguments put forward at successive tribunals and at the hearing of the social security commissioner on behalf of the DHSS. All the arguments that he is now using were rejected by the social security commissioner. Therefore, I am not interested in what he, as the representative of the DHSS, thought the law was before the social security commissioner's decision. I want to know what he is doing now. The law is clear, and the social security commissioner's decision came down against the argument put forward so often by the Minister's representatives at local tribunals.

Dr. Boyson

I shall reply frankly to the hon. Gentleman because he intervened frankly. I understand his concern. The Department is still not convinced that this one decision makes the application of the law different from what was previously understood by the Department. I was saying that if a person stays on at school, his parents receive child benefit, but if he leaves, he receives supplementary benefit. If a child can get supplementary benefit without taking up employment but while he is studying at home, that would ruin our education system. If people could get £10 more at home while doing an Open University course for children, as it were, and did not go to school, that would make a nonsense of the system. With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, he must agree with me. The case turns on whether the law is what we thought it was. I have not the slightest doubt about the principle and I would be astonished if the hon. Gentleman differed from me. It would be entirely wrong for a Government to legislate to pay people £10 a week more to stay at home rather than to attend school while they were studying. Does not the hon. Gentleman agree?

Mr. Lambie

It seems that the Minister is now rejecting the decision of the social security commissioner. Surely it is wrong for a Minister representing the DHSS to reject the decision of the court of appeal which, as far as I am concerned, was lawful.

Dr. Boyson

I shall come to that specific point in a moment. The adjudication system in the Department is separate from the Minister. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman must listen to me. He is a fervent believer in his cause, and there should be all credit to him for that. We introduce regulations that we believe will carry out our policy. The interpretation is dependent upon the adjudication officers, but if the adjudication is not what we expect we can go to appeal and take up other cases. If we find that the adjudication is still not what we expect, we can change the regulations. The overall policy is our concern. The adjudication officers are independent. If the law was such that everybody could get £10 a week more by staying at home instead of going to school, the law would be nonsense and would have to be changed immediately by regulation. However, we are not yet convinced that the law is nonsense. I am not reading a brief, but saying straight out what the situation is.

As I said, if we allow examination candidates who stop attending school at Easter to claim supplementary benefit, we should be creating a positive financial incentive for youngsters to stop away from school for the final few weeks before their examinations. I do not think that any Government of any colour would want that to happen.

Against that background, I should like to refer to the case of Miss Karen Craig, so ably handled by the hon. Gentleman. Most of the facts have been outlined. I am not querying them. He presented an appeal to the supplementary benefit appeal tribunal, but the tribunal upheld the benefit officer's decision, so Miss Craig appealed, with the help of the hon. Gentleman, to the social security commissioner. If I am in trouble with the law, I shall turn to the hon. Gentleman to represent me, because he has shown great mastery of this matter.

Mr. Lambie

Answer the question. Never mind the credits.

Dr. Boyson

A little credit does no harm on either side of the House from time to time.

Mr. Lambie

It is the money that we want.

Dr. Boyson

As a northerner, although not a Scotsman, I realise that there is a black, or a red, line at the end of any account.

I shall not go through all the details of the case because I realise that time is going on. I would not want to stop the hon. Gentleman intervening again if he wished to do so.

Adjudication officers do not seek leave to appeal to the commissioner in every case where they believe that a tribunal decision may be erroneous in law. They wait for a case that will settle it. The chief adjudication officer is selective in the cases that he puts forward and has regard to factors such as the importance of the point of law involved and the need to establish case law on it, and the relative cost of bringing an appeal in relation to the amount of benefit involved. I am informed that in this case he had regard to the fact that it was almost three years since the original claim to benefit and that the amount of benefit involved was relatively small. He accordingly decided not to seek to challenge the tribunal's decision on this case. I stress that that does not imply acceptance that there was no error in law. Furthermore, it can be held that this was a one-off case that did not set a precedent.

Mr. Lambie

It was not a one-off case, but the second case. We won the case of Stephen Russell without going to the social security commissioner. How many cases must I take to the Minister before he recognises the justice of the point? He keeps telling me that the appeal system is good and is completely divorced from his Department. Two decisions have been made through the appeal system, when I have gone to the referee, but the Minister now says that he will change the rules and that the referee was wrong. He is waiting to get another referee who might make a better decision. When will he pay the money to the thousands of young Scottish pupils who have been illegally denied social security payments?

Dr. Boyson

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a keen watcher of amateur football, especially schoolboy football. We are trying to keep the goalposts where they were, but in this case the interpretation of the offside rule has been a complication. It has been a complication in soccer for the past 30 years.

We shall not have to call upon the hon. Gentleman to help us further on the law because the chief adjudication officer is seeking to establish further case law in this troublesome case. I understand that he is currently seeking leave to appeal to the commissioner on two more recent cases. They concern young people who ceased attending school at Easter 1983 and were awarded supplementary benefit by a tribunal although they planned to return to school to sit examinations. If his application is granted, he will seek an early hearing. We want an early hearing. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we do not want to drag out the time to three years, such as in this case. That is one reason why we have changed part of the appeal system.

If the chief adjudication officer's application is granted, he will seek an early hearing. I shall want to await the outcome and see whether the position can be clarified throughout the adjudication system. However, should the position remain unclear, I shall need to consider very seriously whether we should amend the regulations. One thing is certain. If, in the end, children can stay at home instead of being at school and get £10 a week more, no Government of any colour will sanction that.

We have introduced changes in the appeals system that mean that we shall no longer have the snakes and ladders exercises up and down separate appeal systems, which the hon. Gentleman experienced. Therefore, one will be able to consider employment, social security and other matters as a whole instead of going from one tribunal to the other. Those changes were made in March.

To sum up, I appreciate that the hon. Member's experience of the appeals system has been a frustrating one and that he has good grounds for dissatisfaction with the conflicting decisions that his constituents have received. I accept much of his criticism and I share his concern that the position should be clarified, but I must end where I began in stating firmly the policy that is central to these cases. If youngsters leave school at Easter but do not find work or take up a training place, it is likely to be far more useful for them to return to school and to concentrate on getting worthwhile examination results than to stop at home. The supplementary benefit system would be rightly criticised throughout the country and the House if it encouraged examination candidates to put their longer-term prospects at risk for the sake of short-term gain.

As I have said, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing this case so clearly to our attention today. It will not go away and it is clear that we shall have to look into it. We hope to go to appeal to get the law clarified so that we know exactly where we are. At the same time, we shall consider all the other cases that the hon. Gentleman has raised.